Chapter 74: A Calamity Without Cause

That night, Gu Sha began to absorb corpse cores with a frenzy. After consuming more than a thousand, he found himself much closer to breaking through to the King level.

The next morning, Gu Sha left early, carrying the Beast King’s bone as he appeared throughout the fortress. His goal today was no longer corpse cores, but instead, he specifically sought out places where special mutant beasts had appeared. By the end of the day, he had acquired four rare bones.

Shortly after he returned home that evening, soldiers from the military knocked on his door, delivering two thousand corpse cores.

After a night of cultivation, Gu Sha realized he was still far from the threshold of King level. The King stage was a realm of transcendence, requiring an immense amount of energy. It was only because this was still the early days of the apocalypse that these lower-grade corpse cores had any value; in the later turbulent era, few ninth-level warriors would even bother with such meager sources of energy, as they were a mere drop in the ocean compared to what was needed for a breakthrough.

That day, Gu Sha activated his power to foresee the future. Guided by the glimpses he saw, the following day he collected seven rare bones, and the authorities sent him four thousand corpse cores.

Yet, the King level remained a distant goal. However, with eleven rare bones gathered over two days, his temporal abilities advanced to the fourth tier. The area over which he could control the flow of time expanded greatly, and his foresight extended to twelve hours ahead.

By the time Gu Sha finished cultivating, dawn had broken. He immediately activated his foresight. In an instant, a stretch of future events, nearly twelve hours long, played out in his mind.

After absorbing this vision, Gu Sha’s expression grew grave.

In the future he had seen, just two hours from now, a massive earthquake would strike City C—a cataclysmic upheaval, far more violent than the previous one. The earth would shatter, the sky turn upside down, and in a single moment, more than two-thirds of the City C fortress would collapse.

Immediately following the quake, torrential acid rain would fall, so heavy it would almost form rivers.

What troubled Gu Sha most was that the earthquake struck so suddenly that the headquarters of the Transcendents’ Association could not be saved, and he wouldn’t be able to claim a single rare bone stored there.

“Everything’s in chaos—utter chaos!” Gu Sha took a deep breath. This was completely different from his memories of his previous life. Before, the slight discrepancies in his recollection had little impact on the broader course of history. But this time, one of the ten great fortresses of Long Continent, City C—a globally top-ranked safe zone—would be wiped out.

After pondering a moment, Gu Sha took out his phone and dialed the operator, Nie Qingqing, who then connected him to Han Ze at the front lines outside the fortress.

Over the phone, the sounds of artillery and fierce gunfire could be heard. Han Ze shouted, “Mr. Gu! Is there an urgent matter?”

Gu Sha spoke calmly, “President Han, in two hours—no, in one hour and fifty minutes—City C will experience an unprecedented earthquake. The fortress can’t hold. You’d better prepare. Don’t ask how I know.”

Han Ze was silent for a moment, then said, “Mr. Gu, on behalf of all survivors in City C, thank you.”

“No need,” Gu Sha replied flatly. “Pass a message to the fortress management center—for me to retrieve the rare bones.”

“Understood.”

As Gu Sha made his way to the management center, a heated argument erupted among the fortress leadership in a command room on the outskirts.

There were three main factions. The first, led by Han Ze of the Transcendents’ Association, believed Gu Sha’s warning of an impending earthquake and advocated for the immediate evacuation of as many survivors and troops as possible. This group was small, made up solely of members of the Association; no other departments supported them.

The second, led by the Liu family patriarch from the management center, opposed evacuation. They refused to believe Gu Sha, as the fortress’s research institute had found no seismic activity whatsoever. They therefore rejected the idea of withdrawing.

The third faction, the neutrals, was led by the Yang family patriarch of the Law Guard House. His stance was special—he and a few close aides formed the entire neutral camp. In truth, he too doubted Gu Sha’s warning. To abandon the fortress on the word of a single man seemed foolish, given the sacrifices so many had made to defend it. With war raging and the military fighting desperately, it was risky to discard everything based on the warning of a non-official.

However, he refrained from opposing Han Ze’s proposal because of his previous dealings with Gu Sha during the Bai Ziyu incident. He had developed a trust in Gu Sha, believing him not to be a man who spoke carelessly.

“Whatever happens, we must evacuate!” Han Ze insisted. “If this is true, the entire fortress will be destroyed!”

“And what makes you think it’s true?” the Liu patriarch shouted. “President Han, have you lost your mind? Countless soldiers are fighting and dying to barely hold the line, and you want to throw everything away on the word of this Gu Sha? He’s no better than Bai Ziyu—another madman, cold-blooded and utterly selfish. Why trust him over the institute’s professors and experts? He utters a single sentence, and you’d gamble the lives of tens of thousands of warriors and millions of civilians?”

Han Ze replied, his voice low and resolute, “But what if he’s right?”

“What makes you think he is?” the Liu patriarch roared. “Has he put you under some kind of spell? Since Gu Sha arrived, you’ve done nothing but act irrationally. You’re mad! The institute’s reports are clear—there’s no seismic activity. Not in two hours, not in ten days or half a month! There will be no earthquake!”

Han Ze answered, “I trust him because he is the most advanced human in terms of evolution. Extraordinary power now surpasses technology. We have to believe him.”

“You—”

Just as the two were about to come to blows, the Yang patriarch stood up and tried to mediate. “President Han, Patriarch Liu, both of you have your points. Perhaps we could compromise? President Han, why not start by moving a portion of people, within controllable limits, so as not to affect the war effort in the fortress too much…”

“How can it not affect us?” the Liu patriarch snapped. “The skies swarm with mutant beasts, and the land outside is a tide of corpses and monsters. What troops can be spared? Who can be withdrawn? One wrong move, and the fortress will fall…”

At that moment, the Liu patriarch’s phone rang. He answered, and a staff member from the fortress center reported, “Sir, the external consultant from the Transcendents’ Association, Mr. Gu, is here. He requests access to the warehouse to retrieve the rare bones.”

The Liu patriarch flew into a rage. “I knew it! He made up this lie just to get those bones! He’s a scoundrel who would doom the entire fortress for his own gain! Arrest him immediately—if he resists, shoot him on the spot!”