204: Chapter 204 Global Meme Pollution

Early winter of 2030, in the early morning.

Deep underground in Tokyo, Sakura Country, Shibuya High-End Shelter.

Outside the three-meter-thick lead-zinc alloy blast door was the endless Hundred Ghosts Night Parade.

The dull sounds of impact and chewing filtered through the thick walls, making the thousands of chaebols, politicians, and families of senior Onmyoji crammed inside the shelter tremble in fear.

The air here was turbid beyond description, reeking of a despairing stench of sweat.

"It's fine. As long as we hold out until dawn, the High Priest of Ise Grand Shrine will activate the barrier..."

A middle-aged man in a tattered suit sat slumped in a corner, neurotically biting his thumb fingernail and muttering this sentence over and over.

Beside him sat a little girl of about seven or eight, hugging a tattered rag doll.

The little girl suddenly raised her head, a hint of confusion appearing in her eyes that had originally been filled with fear.

"Daddy, did you hear it?"

The middle-aged man was momentarily stunned, halting his nail-biting: "Hear what? Have the monsters outside broken in?"

"No, Daddy."

The little girl pointed to her own head, the corners of her mouth curling into an innocent and lovely smile.

"It's the sound of music, like a music box, and an older brother is speaking."

"He said he dreamed of a White City. Everywhere there was light, and many, many doors painted with white doves..."

The little girl's voice was crisp and childish, appearing exceptionally abrupt in the dead-silent shelter.

The surrounding people turned their heads one after another, looking at this pair of father and daughter with strange gazes.

The middle-aged man irritably covered his daughter's mouth: "Baka! What time is it and you're still talking nonsense! Where is there any White City!"

"But, Daddy, the door is right there. I pushed it open."

The little girl forcefully pulled down her father's hand.

She slowly stood up, stretched out her tender little hand toward the indestructible alloy wall of the shelter, and made a gentle pushing motion in the void.

"Click."

A crisp and pleasant sound of a door opening exploded synchronously in everyone's mind.

The next second.

The middle-aged man watched in horror as his daughter's frail body instantly transformed into white light-sand starting from her fingertips!

That light-sand was like a sand sculpture blown away by the wind on a summer beach, collapsing with a rustle onto the cold concrete floor.

"Keiko!"

The man let out a heart-rending scream, lunging forward in an attempt to hug his daughter.

But his hands only grasped a handful of cold white gravel.

But this was only the beginning.

The "White City" described by the little girl was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake surface.

That sense of imagery and concept replicated frantically in the minds of the thousands of people in the shelter like the most vicious virus.

"I see it too... Such dazzling white light..."

"Are the deities of Takamagahara here to pick us up?"

"Push the door open... Once you push the door open, there will be no more pain..."

One person after another stood up.

Regardless of gender, age, or status, they all blankly extended their hands and made the motion of pushing a door toward the void.

"Click, click, click..."

The sound of doors opening in their minds became as dense as a torrential rain.

Two minutes later.

This high-end shelter plunged into absolute dead silence.

Thick white light-sand covered the ground everywhere.

Not a single living soul was left.

The blast door remained tightly shut, and the fiends outside were still slamming against it, but inside, it had already turned into a dead city made of light-sand.

...

At the same time.

On the other side of the earth.

Eagle Country, the core conference room of S.H.I.E.L.D. deep beneath the Pentagon.

Beside the circular long table, Eagle Country's military tycoons and chaebol representatives were still passionately discussing how to dispatch the "Olympus Squad" to infiltrate Great Xia and steal the genes of the man named Lin Ye.

"General, the first batch of proxies who have been injected with the Zeus serum have arrived in the neutral country."

"Their physical strength is sufficient to immunize against ninety percent of Eastern spell attacks."

A tactical analyst wearing gold-rimmed glasses was reporting.

However, just as his voice fell.

A white officer wearing the rank of major general, sitting opposite the conference table, suddenly stopped the action of recording documents without any warning.

He put down his pen, took off his military cap, and his eyes were hollow.

"Have you ever heard a song about the White City?" the major general muttered to himself.

Everyone in the conference room was stunned.

The old general at the head of the table frowned:

"Major General Mike, didn't you sleep well last night? We are discussing S-rank strategic operations targeting Great Xia, please stay focused."

"No, General. That city is too beautiful."

Major General Mike stood up, a fanatical sense of pilgrimage emerging on his face.

"There is no sin whatsoever, that door is right in front of me, I must go in."

Saying this, he extended his right hand wearing a white glove and pushed in mid-air.

"Mike! What are you doing!"

The old general slammed the table and stood up.

But his voice instantly stuck in his throat.

Under the horrified gazes of everyone, this major general who held Eagle Country's secrets and had been injected with the first-generation enhanced serum instantly disintegrated throughout his body, turning into a pile of white gravel that scattered gracefully onto the expensive walnut conference table.

"Oh God..." The tactical analyst was so frightened he fell back to the ground.

"Is this a biochemical weapon?! Seal the vents! Initiate the highest-level purification procedure!" the old general roared.

However, it was too late.

Major General Mike's description just now had already planted the concept of the "White City" into the minds of everyone present.

This was a rule-type memetic pollution.

No contact was needed, no medium was needed; as long as one imagined that "image," the judgment of death had already taken effect.

"Click."

Another illusory sound of a door opening rang out.

Immediately following, one person after another in the conference room stood up, made the action of pushing the door, and then turned into a puddle of white sand.

Great Xia.

Jiangzhou City, the command center of the Bureau of Abnormal Phenomena Management.

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan had just finished pacifying the family members and returned to the bureau. The moment she pushed open her office door, the adjutant rushed over in a cold sweat, not even caring to tidy his military appearance.

"Deputy Captain Chu! Something major has happened! Jiangzhou City just experienced a large-scale bizarre death incident!"

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan furrowed her brows, casually tossing her coat onto a chair: "Has a Western containment object spread?"

"It's not the music box! This time it's ten thousand times more terrifying than the music box!"

The adjutant slapped a freshly printed expedited report onto the desk, his hands shaking so much he couldn't hold the paper.

"This morning's traffic broadcast program 'Midnight Listening' broadcasted a late-night hotline recording. Within ten minutes after this program aired, everyone who listened to that frequency... all disappeared!"

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan's pupils constricted slightly: "Disappeared? What about the bodies?"

"There are no bodies! Only a pile of white sand was left at the scene!" The adjutant brought up the surveillance footage.

On the screen, a taxi driver waiting for a red light at an intersection suddenly pushed open the car door, made a door-pushing motion toward the air, and then his entire person collapsed into a pile of white sand, scattering on the asphalt road.

"The technical department immediately intercepted that radio recording and found that the sound itself carried no spiritual power fluctuations whatsoever. What killed people was the content inside the recording!"

The adjutant pointed at the audio waveform diagram on the screen.

"The recording described a White City and a door painted with a pigeon. Intelligence analysis experts from Sector One deduced that this is a natural rule-based urban legend based on human cognition, and we temporarily name it [Door-Pushing Ghost]."

"You must not listen to the original recording! Just now, two operatives in the technical department responsible for audio noise reduction listened to the original recording and have already turned into sand!"

After hearing this, Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan felt a chill run down her back.

Yesterday night's music box at least required three conditions: midnight, heavy fog, and opening the door.

As for today's "Door-Pushing Ghost," it was simply a map-wide bombardment cheat that activated the whole map.

As long as that image formed in one's mind, they would be forcibly dragged into the rules of death.

No matter how fierce Great Xia's guns and cannons were, could they fight against a concept inside a human's brain?

"Immediately notify the technical department to cut off all radio broadcasts and network audio transmissions in Jiangzhou! Cut them off! Cut them all off!" Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan decisively issued the order.

"Deputy Captain Chu, they have already been cut off, but the corpses of those dead who turned into white sand... meaning those sands, are undergoing a secondary mutation."

The adjutant brought up another mobile phone footage sent back by frontline operatives.

In the footage, the white light-sand originally scattered on the ground began to wriggle.

They slowly converged and pieced themselves together, finally forming a pattern of a "door" painted with a closed-eye white dove on the ground.

Anyone who accidentally stepped on or stared at that pattern for more than three seconds would also have their eyes turn hollow, and then make the door-pushing motion, transforming into new sand.

This thing not only spread through sound, but now even visual contagion had evolved!

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan stared fixedly at the screen, a deep sense of powerlessness welling up in her heart.

When humanity faced this kind of naturally formed cataclysmic rule, did they really have any room to resist?

A lazy figure suddenly flashed through her mind.

"Prepare the car immediately. Go to Taiping Old Street."

Deputy Captain Chu Hongyan grabbed the car keys on the desk and strode outward.