The Hellish Scenery After the Great Catastrophe

The oppressive, dark red light in the studio gradually cooled, turning into a deathly white, like that of a graveyard.

Zhu Dijun stood behind the podium, his chest rising and falling slightly. He looked at the barrage of comments on the holographic screen urging people to watch "Yiwu Miners" and "Qi Family Army's Dimensional Reduction Attack," but did not immediately get to the point.

He grabbed a stack of documents from the table and slammed them heavily onto the control panel.

"Family members, I know you're all waiting for the Qi Family Army to emerge!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was hoarse but carried an undeniable coldness and hardness.

"But as I just said, it was a dead end that even God was going crazy with! Before talking about those ruthless people in Yiwu who would risk their lives for the mines, I have to finally piece together this jigsaw puzzle that has been torn to pieces by natural disasters and man-made calamities!"

He pounded on the keyboard, and the image on the big screen exploded. The map of the anti-Japanese resistance along the southeast coast was instantly shattered, replaced by a map of the vast Northwest, riddled with ravines and gullies, as if torn apart by a demon.

Let's turn our attention back to the devastating earthquake in Guanzhong that killed 830,000 people!

The red laser pointer in Zhu Dijun's hand was like a bloodstained scalpel, firmly embedded in the map of Shaanxi.

"The earthquake struck in the twelfth month of the thirty-fourth year of the Jiajing reign (1555), which was the year of Yi Mao! After the major earthquake, was that the end of it? Could we rebuild?"

He laughed in fury, his laughter like a dull knife cutting flesh: "Bullshit! This catastrophe of the Ming Dynasty has only just begun! A whole year! Aftershocks continue in Shaanxi! In this hell on earth, piled high with the bones of 830,000 people, a series of extremely terrifying, even magical, bizarre phenomena have occurred!"

On the holographic screen, several tattered local chronicles appeared as phantom images crashing down.

"Local chronicles and elders' notes from Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces record numerous extraordinary events that occurred after the earthquake!"

Judy Jun slammed a stick into the screen.

"Weinan and Huazhou were the hardest hit areas. The earth's energy was completely disrupted! Inexplicably, deep fissures, dozens of feet deep, appeared in the plains! What spewed out of these fissures wasn't water, but rather raging sulfurous fire!"

The screen effects turned on instantly.

In the dark wilderness, eerie blue flames erupted from the bottomless chasm.

"A faint blue flame, scorching to the touch, and it won't go out for months!"

Zhu Dijun roared out.

"That's not all! Black water gushed out from the ground, carrying an extremely pungent, fishy stench, flooding the fields! Any seedlings and vegetation that could barely survive were instantly scorched, withered, and uprooted! Vast tracts of fertile land were transformed into barren, toxic wastelands!"

The live stream chat exploded with comments.

"Holy crap, sulfurous fire and poisonous water, this is like a biohazard!"

"Scientifically, this should be called a geological fault leading to the leakage of underground mineral veins and toxic gases, right?"

"The ancients didn't understand science; they would have been absolutely terrified if they had seen this!"

Zhu Dijun moved closer to the camera, his eyes bloodshot.

"That's right! We modern people know this is a secondary disaster, but did the people of the Jiajing era understand it?! In their eyes, this was a world-destroying divine punishment sent down by God!"

He grabbed a black marker and drew several strange shapes on the whiteboard with great force.

"The ancient wells are malfunctioning; the water level rises and falls erratically, and some wells have even dried up completely. Most terrifyingly, strange, hairless, scaleless, and extremely distorted subterranean beasts and fish have crawled out of the wells!"

Zhu Dijun spread his hands with a mocking expression. "This is clearly a collapse of the underground water system, forcing out the blind fish and underground creatures that have never seen the light of day! But in the eyes of ordinary people, these are nothing short of demonic beasts crawling out of hell!"

"The common people were so frightened that they knelt by the well, burning incense and kowtowing, worshipping these monsters as gods and praying that they would stop bringing disaster! Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't that pathetic?! This is the only thing that people with no way to survive can do under a rotten government!"

A parallel Chongzhen era of the Ming Dynasty.

Under the old crooked tree on Coal Hill, the north wind howled.

Zhu Youjian stared intently at the eerie blue flames and poisonous water in the sky, his whole body trembling.

"Divine punishment...this is divine punishment..."

Emperor Chongzhen's chapped lips trembled violently. "Emperor Jiajing sought immortality through cultivation, but all he created were poisonous fires and demonic beasts from the earth! The dragon veins of the Ming Dynasty were severed by divine retribution from that time onward!"

He closed his eyes in anguish, for the natural disasters that plagued his late Ming Dynasty were also endless. It turned out that the Zhu family had offended Heaven long ago, and there were already clear signs of it.

On the backdrop, the stark white lights of the studio suddenly began to flicker violently.

"Besides the poisonous water and monsters, the geographical landmarks of the Great Northwest have also gone completely mad during the earthquake!" Judy Jun grabbed his pointer and pointed it heavily into the sky.

On the screen, the majestic outline of Zhongnan Mountain appeared, but then, with an extremely muffled roar, the entire massive mountain suddenly moved several miles horizontally out of thin air!

"The Zhongnan Mountains collapsed! Villages at the foot of the mountain instantly caved in, turning into mudflats, leaving no trace of human remains!"

Zhu Dijun's voice was deafening.

"The ancient West Mountain Pagoda in Huayin suffered a two-story collapse due to the earthquake, but at night, the dilapidated top of the pagoda emitted a faint, bluish-green divine light, illuminating an area of ​​ten miles around! This light shone day and night!"

He slammed his fist on the podium and roared:

"Family members, do you know what this meant in ancient times? The earth shook and mountains moved, and the ancient pagoda shone brightly! This is called 'the earth dragon turning over'! In that feudal era, this was the most extreme phenomenon the common people used to point in the direction of the Forbidden City and curse the emperor for his immorality! They cursed this cannibalistic world for being unforgivable!"

The image on the big screen suddenly cut off.

The entire studio fell into an extremely oppressive, cold silence, where even breathing could be clearly heard.

Zhu Dijun slowly took a step back, half of his face disappearing into the shadows.

"Those things before, whether it's poisonous fire or mountain shifts, can at least be explained by modern geology." His voice suddenly lowered, revealing a chilling sense of dread that sent shivers down one's spine.

"But among these strange tales of Guanzhong, there is one that stands out, a bizarre story that took place in Lantian County, a severely affected area, and still sends chills down one's spine. It is also the most tragic and despairing drama of the Jiajing era of the Ming Dynasty."

On the holographic screen, four large, scarlet characters appeared as if seeping out blood—【Red-Clad Snow Maiden】.

"In Lantian County, after the disaster, only one-tenth of the ten-mile stretch of city walls remained, turning it into a completely dead city ruin."

The laser pointer in Zhu Dijun's hand moved slowly across the large screen.

"The earthquake was immediately followed by heavy snow. Several feet of snow covered hundreds of thousands of mangled bodies and rubble. The whole world was so silent that not even a crow could be seen."

In the scene, snowflakes fall in a flurry, covering an endless expanse of desolate wasteland.

"Right here in these ruins, where even the living dare not set foot, the villagers nearby witnessed a scene that made their scalps tingle!" Zhu Dijun suddenly sat up straight, his eyes sharp as knives.

"A frail, orphaned girl, dressed in an extremely conspicuous bright red dress, danced gracefully amidst the snow-covered ground atop a pile of corpses!"

Zhu Dijun frantically drew red circles on the whiteboard.

"That's not a person dancing! According to the locals, this woman in red neither eats nor drinks, and works day and night without rest! The snow falling on her doesn't melt at all! She just dances slowly and gracefully in the ruins, as if she's lamenting, or as if she's summoning a spirit!"

The live stream chat vanished instantly, replaced by a collective gasp from all viewers.

Watching a live stream in the dead of night creates an eerie atmosphere that's sure to evoke terror.

"Ordinary people dare not approach it at all. They say it is the transformed soul of the 830,000 victims! It is the vengeful ghosts mourning this catastrophe!"

Zhu Dijun grabbed the blackboard eraser and violently wiped the red circle off the whiteboard!

"What's even more ironic is that?!"

He roared.

"When the local officials heard about this, those usually incompetent bailiffs actually went to search the ruins! And what was the result? They searched for days and nights, through heavy snow, but couldn't find a single footprint! The woman in red vanished into thin air, without a trace!"

The studio's stark white lights suddenly shifted to an extremely oppressive dark red.

Zhu Dijun pressed his hands firmly on the podium, his eyes bloodshot as he stared intently at the camera.

"Family members, do you think this is a ghost story?! Wrong! This is an extremely sharp scalpel!"

"Why would ordinary people fabricate this story? Red clothes like blood, white snow like frost! This is the ultimate metaphor for snow falling in June and a grievance waiting to be redressed! The government didn't repair water conservancy projects before the disaster, didn't distribute relief grain during the disaster, and now they come to catch ghosts after the disaster! The people can't survive, so they can only place their resentment and despair on a non-existent red-clothed female ghost!"

A parallel Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty.

Inside the Fengtian Hall, there was a deathly silence.

Zhu Yuanzhang stared blankly at the red-clad phantom dancing amidst the snow-covered ruins in the sky.

"They didn't distribute relief supplies during the disaster...but after the disaster, they came to exorcise ghosts..."

Old Zhu managed to squeeze out a broken, hoarse sound from his throat.

He abruptly closed his eyes, his whole body trembling violently. He recalled the devastation at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, when his parents starved to death and his brothers perished one after another. How similar the horrors of that time were to the ruins of Lantian in the sky!

"The officials of the Ming Dynasty were actually even more ruthless than the corrupt officials of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty..."

Zhu Yuanzhang suddenly opened his eyes, his gaze bloodshot, and grabbed the jade seal from the imperial desk, slamming it to the ground. With a loud "bang," the jade dragon shattered!

"Investigate! Immediately dispatch the Imperial Guards to Shaanxi! To Lantian!"

Old Zhu was like a raging tyrannical dragon fiercely protecting its cubs, roaring and shaking the palace.

"Turn the local government's granaries upside down! If there's a single grain of stale rice or a single penny that hasn't reached the people, we'll skin all the officials in that entire prefecture alive, stuff them with straw, and hang them on the city walls as a warning!"

On the sky, Zhu Dijun casually pushed aside the whiteboard covered in red marks.

All the studio lights were turned off, leaving only a blinding, cold spotlight shining on him.

"Family members. Along the southeast coast, the people say that Xu Hai transformed into a black wind and escaped into the water, and that the pirates possessed demonic magic; in the northwest Guanzhong region, the people say that monsters emerge from deep wells, and that a snow maiden in red dances day and night to summon souls."

Zhu Dijun's voice was terrifyingly low, as if he were reading a verdict.

"Different locations, different disasters. But at the point between the thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth years of the Jiajing reign, the extremely unified state of mind of the people told us a bloody truth—the sky of the Ming Dynasty had completely collapsed. The human world had become a purgatory, and the people could only rely on fabricating these legends of demons and monsters to relieve the despair of not being able to live."