Senior sister, stop working and go home for dinner.

Chapter 45 Night Flight in the Dead Zone

After an unknown amount of time, Chen Anran was awakened from a strange chill while half asleep.

He opened his eyes abruptly. The cabin was silent; most passengers seemed to be asleep, with only a few seats still lit by reading lights. He glanced at his watch; the fluorescent hands showed it was just past one in the morning.

The instant his gaze fell upon the watch face—

"Snapped!"

A very faint cracking sound seemed to come from deep within the aircraft itself.

Immediately afterwards, all the lights in the entire cabin—reading lights, overhead lights, even the guide lights under the seats and the indicator lights in the cabin crew work area—went completely out without warning in a fraction of a second!

The engine's loud, reassuring roar also mysteriously disappeared.

"Ah!" Lin Xiaoman let out a short scream and subconsciously grabbed Wei Qingyi's arm next to her.

"What happened? Power outage? Plane engine failure?" Fatty Li's voice trembled violently, filled with fear. "Flight attendant! Where's the flight attendant?!"

Chen Anran's heart sank. "Calm down! Don't panic!"

He tried pressing the call button above his head, but there was no response. He looked out the window again; outside was an impenetrable darkness, with no starlight or ground lights, as if the plane had entered an absolute void.

Wei Qingyi quickly calmed down. After all, she was a cultivator in the early stage of Qi Refining. Although her divine sense was weak, her perception was far beyond that of ordinary people.

She lowered her voice and said to Chen Anran, "Something's wrong... It's too quiet. Apart from the few of us, we can barely hear anyone else breathing."

Upon hearing this, Chen Anran immediately held his breath and focused intently on sensing. Sure enough, the steady breathing and soft snoring of the passengers that had just filled his ears had all vanished! It was as if only the four of them remained awake in the entire economy class!

He suddenly stood up and looked at the nearby passengers. He saw that all of them, regardless of age or gender, were still in the same position, their heads tilted to the side and their eyes closed, but their chests did not rise or fall at all, as if... they were in the deepest coma, or more like... time had stood still for them.

"What...what happened to them?" Lin Xiaoman's voice trembled. As someone who cultivated Yin Sha magic, she was even more sensitive to these kinds of abnormal auras. "Yin energy...such heavy Yin energy! A hundred times heavier than the Yin energy on the little ghost I raised!"

Although Lin Xiaoman is just a rogue cultivator who has only learned a little bit of the family tradition since childhood, making her somewhat weaker than Chen Anran and the others at the same level, when it comes to her judgment in this area, perhaps only the Taoists on Longhu Mountain or the monks of Jingang Temple can compare to her.

Fatty Li was so scared he almost collapsed in his seat. "Are we seeing ghosts?!"

"Shut up!" Chen Anran hissed, forcing himself to calm down. He realized he had to figure out what was going on. "Senior Sister, Xiaoman, Boss Li, we can't just sit here and wait to die. We have to find out what's happening."

"I...I'll go with you!" Fatty Li was terrified, but he dared not stay alone in the deathly quiet cabin.

Wei Qingyi had already unbuckled her seatbelt. "Let's go!"

Chen Anran took out the powerful flashlight and several exorcism talismans that Feng Xiaolu had given him from his backpack. He distributed the talismans to Wei Qingyi and Lin Xiaoman, and then took out a peach wood sword and handed it to Wei Qingyi.

"Take this sword, just in case."

Wei Qingyi didn't see where Chen Anran took it from at all, but she didn't think much of it and casually took the peach wood sword, which felt slightly heavy in her hand.

"And what about you?" Wei Qingyi looked at the talisman in her hand. She could tell whose handiwork it was just by looking at it, so she trusted the wooden sword in her hand more than the talisman.

Chen Anran smiled slightly and took out the Soul-Nourishing Shrine again, "I'll use this."

Wei Qingyi blinked, full of doubt. The sword was one thing, but where did they get such a huge spirit shrine from? Could her junior brother's backpack really hold that much?

Although Lin Xiaoman was frightened, she was taken aback when she saw the spirit shrine in Chen Anran's hand, because she felt that the thing looked somewhat familiar...

Chen Anran walked at the front of the group. Looking out the window at the seemingly still, pitch-black night, he guessed, "It looks like the whole plane has been dragged into some other dimension."

Fatty Li's teeth chattered as he followed closely behind Chen Anran, almost touching her. "An...another dimension? Mr. Chen, don't scare me like that."

Lin Xiaoman, who was behind her, swallowed hard and said, "Haven't you seen the news about those missing planes? Our situation is pretty much the same as that."

Fatty Li's voice suddenly rose, "Out of contact?!"

"Keep your voice down! Do you want to attract any 'things' that might be here?" Chen Anran scolded in a low voice, while turning the high-powered flashlight to its lowest setting, a faint beam of light sweeping across the front.

Under the light, the faces of the motionless passengers were eerily serene, as if they had simply fallen asleep, but the lifeless stillness sent chills down one's spine.

"This isn't the work of ordinary ghosts," Wei Qingyi said, gripping the peach wood sword tightly. The faint warmth emanating from the blade calmed her slightly. "It feels like... a domain, or a barrier. We're trapped."

Lin Xiaoman held an exorcism talisman in each hand, her body trembling slightly, but she tried her best to remain calm. "This yin energy... is eroding the life force of the living! They're not unconscious; their souls are being suppressed, and their life force is slowly draining away! If we stay any longer, we'll become like them!"

Upon hearing this, Fatty Li's legs went even weaker, and he almost clung to Chen Anran's arm. "Losing life force?! Isn't that just waiting to die? Young Master Chen, Master Wei, Master Lin, you guys have to think of something!"

Chen Anran took a deep breath, forcing himself to calmly analyze the situation. The soul-nurturing shrine in the Museum of Evolution trembled slightly, seemingly reacting to the surrounding yin energy, but it did not warn of any directly aggressive soul approaching.

"The most urgent task is to find the source, or find a way out of this 'domain'," Chen Anran said in a deep voice. "We can't stay here. Let's go and see what's ahead."

The four carefully moved forward along the aisle, passing through the curtain between economy and business class. The faint beam of a powerful flashlight swept into the business class cabin, and the sight before them made everyone gasp.

In the business class seats, some sitting, some standing, were the crew members of this aircraft—the captain, first officer, and flight attendants in uniform… They all maintained the postures they had taken in their final moments before death, but their bodies presented a semi-transparent, bluish-gray, ethereal state! A dense, black resentment emanated from them as if it were a tangible substance.

These spirits seemed unaware of Chen Anran and his companions' arrival, only continuously and repeatedly uttering low, muttered murmurs filled with endless pain and hatred:

"I hate it... I hate it so much..."

"Resentment...may never be reborn..."

"Monk... damn monk..."

"Why...why did you have to hurt us..."