Two o'clock in the morning.

The easel-filled room at 120 Lakeside Road is still brightly lit.

The long-lost inspiration was like lightning splitting the chaos in David Drayton's mind, and his right hand, colored by paint, quickly sketched an apocalyptic picture of white mist, icy lake, and lightning on the drawing board.

But suddenly a snowflake fell to his neck, and he put down his paintbrush and looked out the window.

Outside, snow drifted unconsciously, and snowflakes danced like fairies, covering the glacial lake, the trees on the shore, the meadows, and the houses.

And just behind the curtain of snowflakes, a cloud of fog drifted over the frozen lake.

David leaned over the window and looked out, the fog was pure white and bright, and it stretched several miles on both sides of the long lake on the left and right, and at least a hundred meters high from the ice, blocking the starlight in the sky, engulfing the trees, docks, and docks along the shore, and swept towards his home with the momentum of thousands of troops.

It's like a slow-moving tsunami, much bigger than it was when it was seen more than a month ago.

"What the hell is this?" David seems to be watching some kind of super special effects from a sci-fi movie, oh no, it should still be a horror movie.

The human fear of the unknown created an illusion in his mind that something terrible was hidden in the fog that would hurt him and his family, and that something bad would happen.

At the same time, David's ears drilled into the ears of yesterday's self-proclaimed journalist Kenny Fantesi's stern warning - the fog killer, who will come to harm children when the fog falls.

Gotta leave! Escape the fog!

David ran out of the studio and rushed up the stairs, shouting frantically,

"Stephen! Billy! Get up, let's leave right away! ”

He rushed into his son's room and rolled up the quilt and hugged each other in his arms.

And the wife ran out with her coat rubbing her puffy eyes, "You can't be quiet at night, Billy has to go to school tomorrow." ”

"Look out the window!"

"God, it's a big fog, is this a biochemical poison gas leak?" Stephen grabbed her husband's arm with a disgraced face, her slender body kept trembling, "David, I'm a little scared, go to the basement and hide." ”

"The basement is useless, get dressed and bring your car keys, let's go to town!" David ran out of the door with his family, entered the yard in less than half a minute, and started the car neatly.

Taking advantage of the acceleration of the car, he turned his head to look behind him, and the mist calmly swallowed the dock of his neighbor's Norton lawyer's house, and then pressed towards the house in vain.

In the blink of an eye, he couldn't even see the windows of Norton's house, and the whole house became as dark and dead as a tomb at night, without any life.

It's not just the Norton family.

Hundreds of households were unconsciously swallowed by the fog in the middle of the night, and the lights of the originally sporadic buildings were also dead as the fog approached.

Boom Boom –

The car sped away.

The white mist that obscured the sky followed closely behind, like a pack of anteaters chasing ants, crushing over the shore of the lake and along the land towards the undulating clusters of buildings in the center of the town.

……

Thousands of miles away, Hawkins.

Lying on the bed thinking about the plan to sneak in, Di An'an suddenly heard a crisp and immature voice in his heart,

"It's coming... Woo-hum... White Mist... Much bigger than last time... The lake is full of fog! ”

"Help me... Find Marsha. ”

The fog appeared again so quickly, could it be that there was an accident at the Shiling Town military base?

Dean sat up from the bed, pulled open a spatial node in front of him, and slipped in.

Roam.

In the next second, Dean was immersed in the icy waters of Long Lake, and the lake monster beside him plucked the lake water with its four flippers and colorful tails, stretching its neck to look up at the ice above its head.

Waves of white air swept across the lake like a blizzard, crashing the ice and humming and shaking, and some huge kite-like shadows drifted forward with the rushing mist.

The fog above the ice, the long lake below.

Forming two worlds, violent and calm, distinct.

Dean glanced into the mist, his temples tingling like pins and needles—there was a great threat in the mist.

"Light Blue, can you feel Marsha's bearings?"

Dean himself failed to find Martha through the dark realm of his mind.

The lake monster nodded, "Once in the mist, I can feel the monster that took Martha's soul as long as I can get close to her." ”

"It's too dangerous inside to go in directly, so you call the water man to search for Martha on the ice, and once you sense her presence, contact me immediately, and I'll help you save her, remember, don't go into the fog."

"Remember, I'll try." The lake monster nodded, and the water around it fluctuated softly, condensing ten small, lifelike humanoid creatures that melted into the ice and immediately disappeared into the mist.

The lake monster's blue eyes looked at Dean with a hint of pleading, "Where are you going, won't you stay with me?" ”

"I'll have to find the other two companions first, and I'll be back as soon as I find them." After Dean's psychic transmission, he patted the round head of the lake monster and pulled away a spatial node in front of him.

He roams to the next node that leads to Sean.

Heaven and earth change color.

Dean felt a cold gas infiltrate his skin, and in a blink of an eye, he realized that he had actually entered the mist.

In the midst of it, he found that this white mist was completely different from the fog formed by the morning dew in the ordinary forest, and there were trillions of tiny plankton living in the mist, their mouths full of needles opened and closed slightly, like spiders spitting out cobwebs, constantly spewing out wisps of milky white gas, weaving this boundless white mist together.

Dean's body shook, and beams of platinum life light burst out of his body, evaporating the moisture in the lake in a jagged shape, and grinding countless flying insects that approached him into ashes.

He stared into the mist, the strange and powerful energy field distributed in the mist shielded his perception, and the perspective of God was compressed to a range of ten meters around his body, and he would lose his sense of direction if he walked a little faster.

And the naked eye, which could have seen through a kilometer at night, had greatly reduced his acuity, and even a red hollow brick wall to his right looked pink.

On the left, a muscular figure emerged from the white expanse.

"Kenny? You're finally here. Sean's nervous and excited face leaned over, and his voice was also weakened by the fog for more than half of it, and it sounded like the sound was much farther away than the actual location, "I didn't search for long in Harrison Town, and I found white fog gushing out of dozens of black pipes near the lake, and I realized that the situation was not right, so I came to the bridge pier antique store to wait for you first." But as soon as we reached Bridgepier Town, the fog had already covered most of the town. ”

"It's good that it's not hurt." Dean volleyed in the air, took out a dark gold spear made of his own bones from the space, added armor made of his own skin and handed it to Sean, "Put on the talisman, let's find Camody first to ensure her personal safety..."

If Carmodi is killed by the White Mist, the event may not be completed, and the Celent runes that are about to arrive will be lost.

"Can you tell the way?" Sean changed into the leather armor resolutely, and the tough and cold touch reassured him, and the panic disappeared, "I seem to be lost." ”

The dark realm of Dean's mind was also affected by the fog and failed, and he couldn't sense Carmody's location.

"But along the back of this house, sticking to every building along the way, there is a good chance that you will find an antique shop." He approached a fence that was also the entrance to a certain shop, and the sign at the entrance read 205 Shopping Street.

The owner of the small shop, a bald man, had closed the doors and windows before going to bed and had the fireplace and chimney shut off the fireplace, so that the fog could not penetrate the interior of the house, and he was still sleeping in the bedroom behind the shop.

In the harsh winter, there are not a few such lucky people.

"Wait, 205 Shopping Street?" Sean gritted his teeth suddenly, "Man, this place is not far from Lucia's house at No. 260, why don't you go to the right and take a look at her, she is alone with Wanda and Victor, two small children, it may be dangerous." ”

Dean glanced at him calmly, "You're an outlier, you just want to be a good person?" Can you save all the townsfolk in the Mist? ”

"I can't." Sean said sincerely, "I just want to do everything I can to save people I know." ”

"Are you willing to risk your life even if you have to risk a certain amount?"

Sean thought for a moment and nodded with a resolute expression, "I just want to retain some humanity before entering Midian, I don't want to be a cruel and cold 'beast'." ”

Dean fell silent, unsure if the disaster had something to do with him...

After a moment of hesitation, he recalled the shoals and threw a dagger over,

"You go in this direction, go to the antique shop to keep an eye on Mrs. Carmody, try to protect her, and be more careful yourself."

"Thank you for your concern, but I'm in tatters, and I'm gritting my teeth, and the monster isn't interested at all, right?" The shallows rolled up their daggers and flew slowly towards the thick fog behind the house.

Dean leaned against the wall and walked to the right towards Lucia's house.

Sean gratefully followed him less than two meters behind, the tip of the spear pointed to the right, and looked around alertly, the beast-like vertical pupils flashing with a faint yellow light, allowing him to have a certain vision in the fog of the deep night with extremely low visibility.

To the right of the villa, a Chevrolet emerges from the fog like a ghost ship, and another trash can sits next to it, like a reaper for the dead.

This world was as dead and silent as a dark forest, and only the two of them were silently advancing in the turbulent fog.

Loneliness, loneliness, the fear of darkness and the unknown, cold tentacles piercing their backs.

They walked quietly for five minutes.

Dean suddenly skipped a jump in his temples and stopped.

Sean then held his breath, hunched his knees in a fighting position, and a sandworm-like streak of blood appeared in his round pupils.

The next second, there was a muffled grunt in the mist.

A furious red like a boiled lobster swept past a stout pine tree at the intersection ahead.

Something sharp then dismembered the trunk in half, snow and pine needles fell to the ground, and a large black shadow stepped over the remaining half of the stake into Dean's sight.

Standing two stories tall and resembling a combination of a lobster and a spider, it was covered in a thick red carapace with fluff, a pair of large striking pincers sparkling with the air under its abdomen, and six cone-aptipped feet supporting its long, scorpion-like body.

It brushed and dragged across the ground, plowing out a row of cracks on the surface of the tires.

At the same time, the eight black eyes on the pointed shrimp head squirmed like a bunch of sea grapes, and the chewer composed of large and small jaws below chewed half of the human corpse, and the very young woman, her eyes were round, and her pale face was covered with blood, and she obviously suffered a great deal of torture before she died.

Dean's face sank, and a white light flashed in his eyes.

Under the perspective of life, the light of life of this large "spider lobster" that appeared in the fog was not the white of the earth's creatures, nor the black of the upside-down world, nor the red of the Leviathan Hell.

Rather, it was a peculiar charcoal gray that made it look like it had rolled half a circle in a pile of freshly burned charcoal.

The intensity is about 4 grades.

There is no such thing as a kind and can be hunted.

Dean turned to make a quiet gesture to a nervous Sean, and then, like a hunting leopard, bent over and bent to his knees, his rocky muscles propping up his clothes high.

With a twist of his right wrist, he pulled out the shiny fanged knife from the void.

Hold the handle of the knife with both hands, and aim the blade at the large lobster that is dragging the floor.

The shadow behind it opened up the realm, instantly weakening twenty percent of the lobster's full attributes, and its pace of progress slowed down.

In the next moment, time seemed to stand still.

Sean, who didn't dare to breathe in the air, only felt a flower in front of him, a gust of wind swept across his cheeks, and a short piece of hair on his forehead was cut in two by the sudden air current.

Two sunken footprints appeared on the ground in front of him, and a straight sword light flashed in the mist, as brilliant as a fleeting meteor.

Slash through the air and smoothly cut through the junction between the tip of the lobster and the multi-link body.

The massive monster split in two with a fountain of gray blood splattering out.

The incision between the head and body is as smooth as a mirror.

The two halves of the stubbornly wriggling body had not yet fallen to the ground, and were lifted into the air by invisible telekinesis.

The carapace of the whole body was peeled off, divided into dozens of segments, and part of the flesh and cerebral marrow fluid automatically flew into the test tube.

The remaining dozens of huge pieces of white shrimp meat were frozen into ice mounds and completely inactivated.

Grunt.

Sean swallowed.

Less than a second.

The two-story monster, big enough to crush itself, was effortlessly killed by Kenny, like a real lobster that had been dismantled by a clever chef.

Who is the monster?

Dean gently shook off the gray blood from the blade and collected the various samples.

A hint flashed in front of my eyes.

"You killed the spider lobster? Mastery +5, Combat lv5 (552→557/700). ”

"Shadow absorbs the essence of the soul, Shadow lv5 (0→5/700)."

"Level 4 creatures only have such proficiency and soul essence?"

Dean was slightly disappointed, this lobster monster was slightly stronger than the average level 4, in addition to its hard carapace, it also had a gray energy field to protect its body.

Ordinary explosions, flames, and firearms could not do it the slightest damage.

It was crushed with the blessing of Dean's nearly 300 tons of huge force.

"The fog is a danger to others, but to me it is an opportunity, and as long as it does not trigger a deadly omen, it can kill all. Keep hunting more monsters and try to take the fight to the next level. ”

He turned to a stunned Sean and threw a round shrimp shell as a shield.

Sean turned into a heavily armed warrior in leather armor on the spot, holding a spear in his left hand and a shield in his right, and followed Dean onwards into the fog.

Less than half a minute.

This world has returned to dead silence.

A ten-meter-long tentacle full of jagged suction cups stretched out from the gray sky, enveloping the frozen corpses all over the ground and retracting into the thick fog.

(End of chapter)