Chapter 6

Luo Nan stared for a long time, confirming that there was no need for any additions or deletions, and then he simply processed the completed sketch with some 3D effects, transmitting it into the vehicle's AI database. Using the video editing function, he integrated his work into the recorded footage.

The AI functions of the Phantom Car were indeed incredible, but this kind of professional video editing still required specialized software. The hastily done work was completely out of style, looking quite strange.

But for Luo Nan, this crude video stitching best matched his memory.

At that moment, Luo Nan clearly saw the massive demonic shadow emerging from the explosive flames, towering over a hundred meters high, roaring in the collapsing ruins and dust.

The roar's shockwave hit like a heavy punch, or like a giant wheel rolling over. It made Luo Nan feel as if his internal organs were deforming, and his flesh and blood were cracking, with the air filled with the stench of blood and death...

For a moment, he really thought it was over.

This was the full picture he saw and felt!

The real world is not a fantasy movie, and Luo Nan knew that what he saw and heard was too bizarre. So he returned to the scene, comparing the environment, watching the video playback, and observing the reactions in the surrounding areas.

As for the results... they were mundane, normal, with no surprises.

An illusion?

Luo Nan slowly flexed his fingers, closed his eyes, adjusted his breathing, and silently recited the sixteen-character mantra. In the void, the visualized shape appeared: a regular tetrahedron and its inscribed and circumscribed spheres slowly rotated. The first few rotations were slightly obstructed, but gradually they became smooth and fluid.

An illusion... the visualized shape didn't say so.

The visualized shape indicated that the "container" had minor damage but was rapidly recovering.

Years of marathon training hadn't given Luo Nan a particularly strong physique, but it had endowed him with exceptional resilience and recovery ability.

It wasn't a big problem, but Luo Nan was very concerned.

In fact, in Luo Nan's own logic, he already had an answer, but he didn't rush to a conclusion. After thinking for a moment, he gave the AI a command to retrieve the environmental data from the time of the incident.

Soon, the relevant data list appeared.

At the time of the incident, the initial "earthquake phase" had already passed, with the surrounding air pressure at 104 kPa, roughly equal to standard atmospheric pressure; the decibel level of the shockwave was just under 90, not enough to damage hearing; the instantaneous wind speed at the incident site was 44 km/h, equivalent to a 6-level wind. Apart from this, all other data such as temperature, humidity, and radiation were within normal ranges.

From the data alone, it was just a slightly noisy windy day. Such an environment causing two grown men to be terrified? Come on!

There was one more point...

In the video analysis, Luo Nan used his finger to mark the distance: "The broken bridge is 2.9 kilometers from the epicenter, and the sound wave should have lagged by about 8 seconds, but in reality?"

Cold data is more authoritative and even more incredible. It showed that the Phantom Car received the strong sound wave vibration 7 milliseconds before the flames erupted.

Sound outran light... by common sense, this was absurd. The source of the shockwave and the flames, in the face of the data, split into two.

At this point, there was a clear contradiction between the flames and the shockwave, and between the shockwave and the human reaction.

Luo Nan tilted his head back, no longer looking at any images or videos, and leaned heavily against the back of the chair.

An illusion? Bullshit illusion!

In the unseen, there was clearly a force, a strange force, interfering with the connections and filling in the blank areas!

The burning demonic shadow was the "manifestation" of this force.

This was unscientific... Luo Nan wanted the "unscientific"!

The "format theory" built by his grandfather, from the beginning, entered the realm of metaphysics.

Emotionally, Luo Nan was almost fanatical about his grandfather's theory, even placing it on par with his life; but in terms of current results, he couldn't find a clear reference.

Even if the abilities of "big eaters" and "hypnotists" had already surpassed the limits of ordinary people, their ability levels were not decisive, at least not reaching the level of "qualitative change."

What is the qualitative change of "self-format"? What is the standard of qualitative change? If it's so-called "extraordinary power," what is its manifestation?

In his grandfather's complex and messy experimental records, Luo Nan couldn't find the answer.

For five years, he had been self-isolated, self-studying, and talking to himself, seemingly making progress step by step, but he couldn't solve the "standard" problem.

And now, a reference point had appeared!

The blood pumped by his heart was hot like magma, but Luo Nan ultimately just took a deep breath, propped his chin with his fingers on the notebook, and suppressed the dual excitement of his limbs and heart.

It wasn't time to celebrate yet; that force had only revealed the tip of the iceberg, and it seemed ready to retreat back into the shadows of the world...

He still had a lot of work to do.

At this moment, the vehicle's AI completed the route switch, changing lanes to detour. However, the destruction of a more than ten square kilometer area had a significant impact on urban traffic. Even in the early morning, multiple aerial traffic layers were temporarily closed, causing slight congestion, and vehicles couldn't speed up.

Luo Nan deleted the data and retrieval records automatically stored by the AI, to avoid exposing the information about the burning demonic shadow and causing complications. He then opened the news channel and searched for reports on the "earthquake."

Due to the short interval, most media were still in the short news broadcast stage. Only "Star News Agency" demonstrated the prowess of a world-class media outlet, promptly purchasing the overhead footage from nearby police drones and combining it with satellite images to capture the first-hand data.

This video, less than two minutes long, had already gained increasing attention on social media.

The overhead images were clearer, showing that the elevated bridge was only on the periphery. The "epicenter" had completely collapsed, and the massive amount of debris couldn't fill the collapsed area, exposing a huge pit. Inside, there were still faint blue electric sparks, standing out in the dim light.

What was the situation in the huge pit? How many casualties? No media had a definitive report.

At this time, municipal and police authorities began to intervene, guiding traffic on the periphery. The cleanup and rescue operations hadn't officially started, but transport aircraft were already appearing in the sky, dropping various engineering robots.

Relatively speaking, the government's response was already very swift... far exceeding its average level.

The flying car's speed was getting slower and slower. While the police were directing traffic, they were also inspecting passing vehicles, one by one, for unknown reasons, seemingly as a routine check.

Luo Nan hit the jackpot.

A police officer on the side of the road signaled him to stop. When the window opened, he made a request: "Sir, to avoid interfering with the rescue efforts, please turn off the vehicle's radar and related equipment."

Luo Nan nodded and complied, issuing the command to turn off the relevant systems in front of the officer.

The police officer waved him on.

However, just as the car started moving, the temporary directional sign closed again, and the police officer ran a few steps to signal another stop. This command wasn't just for Luo Nan but included all vehicles on the lane.

Some impatient drivers shouted, "What's going on?"

"Temporary transfer of rescue equipment, the traffic layer near the scene is temporarily closed. Please be patient."

This police officer was about forty years old, calm and polite. No one dared to argue with him because he was a standard riot police officer, wearing defensive combat gear, supported by exoskeleton armor, standing over two meters tall, broad-shouldered and muscular, capable of lifting a one-ton flying car and throwing it to the other side of the road.

Equipment? They had just dropped a batch, and another batch would be hard to deploy in the accident area...

Luo Nan looked up at the sky. The sky was gradually brightening, and his field of vision expanded. There were indeed medium-sized transport ships hovering in the air, seemingly from the military, but no equipment was being dropped.

"Things are changing!"

In the news channel, a senior on-site reporter from Star News Agency, on a helicopter, described the current situation while filming the incident area:

"The surrounding traffic congestion is getting worse, and more and more vehicles are stopping. From what we can see, the government and police are not focusing on traffic control. Instead, police control measures are becoming stricter, and the封锁范围不断外扩..."

Drivers stuck in traffic would certainly resonate with this report. Most of the surrounding roads had turned into parking lots, and many cars hadn't moved an inch in over ten minutes.

The riot police's inspections were becoming stricter, and some vehicles that had already been inspected had to be rechecked.

Compared to the complaints of other drivers, Luo Nan was much calmer. His current task was to collect relevant information and linger near the incident site, which suited his intentions.

He switched between several news channels, looking for valuable information, and also cast his gaze to social media and forums he frequented. While watching the news, he browsed web pages, mobilizing the vehicle's AI, e-paper screens, and even his wristband, busy but without any leads.

Less than half an hour after the incident, no media had produced in-depth reports, and social media and apps were mostly filled with rumors. Extracting useful information from them was extremely difficult.

"The news still needs to fly a bit..."

Luo Nan shook his head, his finger swiping across the e-paper screen, subconsciously tapping an icon. The interface opened, revealing a familiar dark background with scattered stars, the Secret Star Forum, which he frequently visited.

For Luo Nan, the Secret Star Forum was a source of information. For safety, he never posted in public sections, only browsing topics of interest.

Small, specialized forums reacted slowly to breaking news and were hard to generate discussion heat. Collecting information here was not very meaningful.

He entered purely out of habit.

The hot topic on the main page today seemed to have no news value, titled "Collective Nightmare, Spirit Wave Release," a typical mysticism style.

Luo Nan wasn't interested in such topics. With a bit of free time, he considered sending a private message to the moderator of the internal section, trying to get his account unblocked early.

After a few minutes of careful wording, when Luo Nan exited the private message interface, he saw that the number of discussion pages for the hot topic had increased several times, triggering the "Bright Star" effect, with the topic page becoming a blazing star.

At this moment, perhaps the moderator felt the original title was not specific enough and changed it to "Summer City R&D Zone Earthquake Nightmare Discussion Thread, Merged."

"Oh?"

Surprised, Luo Nan clicked into the thread immediately.

The main post was simple. According to the poster "u Ling," he was a resident of Summer City near the R&D zone. When the earthquake occurred, he was sleeping. In a half-sleep, half-awake state, he had a dream. In the dream, he was engulfed by flames and heard a massive roar, with the shockwave like a giant wheel rolling over his body, reminiscent of a "sleep paralysis."

If that was all, it wouldn't be much. The key was that when u Ling woke up in a start, his wife was also startled awake—both had had the same dream, with every detail very similar, as if they had watched a horror movie together!

u Ling posted this experience on the forum, initially not getting much attention, and he didn't take it seriously either, so he started a live broadcast of earthquake news in the thread.

Unexpectedly, a few minutes later, someone opened a new thread about the earthquake nightmare, with the dream content almost identical to u Ling's description.

After that, more and more people joined in, some replying in the thread, others opening new threads, eventually igniting the Secret Star Forum in the early morning, starting a large discussion.

However, the popularity of a small forum had its limits. Luo Nan quickly scanned through the discussion, feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

"Only a couple of examples with real experiences..."

Even in a small forum, the members were from all over the world, with over 70,000 registered IDs, and dividing by 88, there were fewer than 1,000 people, and even fewer living near the R&D zone.

Some people recognized this and began to import relevant topics from mainstream communities and social media.

With many people, things got done. The information Luo Nan struggled to find was presented in a surge with the collective search of thousands.

Many people were only then surprised to realize that the "Summer City Collective Nightmare" topic had already formed a hidden trend online, and it was growing stronger.

The discussion on the Secret Star Forum became even more heated. Even though the moderator had set the rule to "merge threads," people kept opening new topics, delving deeper into the subject.

A user with the ID "Historical Shredder" opened a new thread, creating a statistical chart for the event, importing all related cases from the internet, and continuously updating it, quickly triggering the "Bright Star" effect.

Luo Nan found his points well-supported and the data well-organized.

"From the chart, you can see that the 'Nightmare Spirit Wave' affected an area up to 300 kilometers away, covering the entire Summer City. With the incident area as the center, within a ten-kilometer radius, which I call the 'core area,' there are already over 20 cases on the internet, regardless of whether the individuals were asleep or awake."

"Historical Shredder" organized over 50 valid cases, with half of them in the core area.

Outside the core area, the density of cases dropped significantly, becoming sparse with distance, and it was hard to verify.

However, "Historical Shredder" claimed that, based on his understanding, many of the perceivers outside the core area were recognized as "practitioners" in the community. He stated that he would continuously update the data and hoped for everyone's help.

Later, the original poster u Ling also replied, saying he would take his wife to the hospital for a check-up and post the results on the forum, drawing a chorus of "waiting" responses.

Luo Nan lightly pinched his chin and then contacted the school's medical department via his wristband, booking a physical examination to compare with the results of u Ling and his wife.

"Bang, bang!"

An out-of-tune noise suddenly entered his ears, and the window on the driver's side was forcefully knocked.

Luo Nan was taken aback. Just this moment of hesitation, the person outside directly stomped on the car door. The sharp voice that followed, even with the well-insulated car, couldn't be blocked:

"Xie Junping, come out!"