Breaking Through the Meridian to Innate Realm, King at Peak Third Heaven

According to the internet, the average walking speed for a normal human is about five kilometers per hour.

Since I had no real concept of what "five kilometers per hour" actually meant, yours truly decided to test it out. Turns out: that's honestly not slow at all. In ideal conditions—no stoplights or random interruptions—a healthy adult male power-walking, even breaking a slight sweat, only manages about six kilometers per hour.

The standard marching speed for soldiers is around four to five kilometers per hour, and even then, a whole day’s march covers just thirty to forty kilometers. At that pace, you’ll start feeling tired after about an hour of walking, and if you don’t take a break, you’ll risk muscle strain. And that’s with standard gear, full sports kit, and solid training.

There’s no way a random mix of regular city folks—young, old, men, women—can hit that kind of speed.

Of course, people only move fast when they have to. During fire drills, college students shuffle along listening to music and chewing gum, and it takes half an hour just to get everyone together. But if there’s a real fire? Trust me, everyone moves like their life depends on it.

There are monsters in the Black Veil, and those monsters kill people.

If you’re still dragging your feet at a time like this, either you’re a total badass, or you’re just asking to get yourself killed.

So, even though Jasper Xiao deliberately kept the group’s pace under control to avoid chaos and accidents—even with a ton of unexpected incidents and all sorts of obstacles—five hours after the city was shrouded in fog, the whole crew had made it far out of the city center.

As we left the city, more and more survivors joined us, which naturally meant more problems and more drama.

With the elderly and kids joining in, our pace slowed way down, which made a lot of people anxious to get further away. But the real worry was food and water. Finding it was one thing—plus, Spasm Fiends didn’t seem interested in old pickled noodle cups—but after you find something, do you dare eat it? What if the food or water’s been tainted by the Black Veil and you get poisoned? Now that’s a real problem.

Besides all that, the biggest challenge was the Black Veil.

The Black Veil drastically reduced visibility. Even though Jasper Xiao tried his best to organize the three thousand people into neat columns, it was impossible to see, hear, or know what was happening at the back. If even one or two monsters suddenly burst out of the fog and attacked the middle of the group, there would be major casualties because the fighters couldn't respond in time.

If it’s just regular Spasm Fiends, it’s not so bad—humans are adaptable. Anyone who’s survived this long, even if they can’t grab a fire axe and take one down, can at least run for cover and minimize injuries. But all the panic and scattered formation inevitably slowed us down.

If Jasper Xiao hadn’t gone full Saint Light mode and dashed into the fog multiple times to find people, the split-up groups would’ve never found each other again.

And as time went on, the monsters bursting out of the Black Veil just kept getting stronger and deadlier. Jasper Xiao had to keep patrolling back and forth. Even with stamina like Captain America and power that could totally outclass him, he was still exhausted.

Of course, starting out is always the hardest. Inside the city, it was nearly impossible to move, but once we finally made it out, the concentration of the Black Veil dropped and the chance of running into monsters went down. As visibility stretched past a hundred meters, things got a lot better.

Jasper Xiao organized everyone to help the elderly and kids trek south. Once things started looking up, the survivors all dug deep and pushed south as fast as they could. Following Linhai Highway, we kept seeing cars stalled out on the road, looking like they’d been through acid rain—rotten, broken, and empty. Sometimes you’d find a couple of terrified survivors hiding inside, but most of the time, the cars were deserted.

Some even had bloody stains and corpses inside.

All these things pushed everyone’s nerves to the limit. Even the smallest issue could set off huge problems.

“No!” A shrill scream came from the middle of the group: “Don’t kill him!”

"Kill him, kill him now! Do it before it's too late!"

The uproar rattled everyone’s nerves. Even though everyone was exhausted, they couldn’t help but pay attention. Jasper Xiao let out a silent sigh, then rushed over. The truth was, the biggest problem for the whole group of survivors wasn’t food or water, or even outside threats—it was something that could completely destroy people from the inside out: mutation.

Perfectly normal people, right in front of everyone, could suddenly mutate into monsters.

"Enough! Everybody stop!" Jasper Xiao’s shout cut through the chaos. There were special ops members on the scene, and after a quick low-voiced explanation, even Jasper Xiao found the situation tricky.

The person who’d screamed just now was an old lady, clutching her three-year-old grandson tight in her arms. The kid’s parents were missing, so it was just the two of them sticking together. And the people yelling for blood? They wanted to kill the child. Jasper Xiao vaguely remembered this grandma—she’d caused a stir not long ago, swearing that boy’s urine could ward off evil and trying to sell diapers soaked in it.

The story spread fast among the survivors. Some didn’t believe it, but there were always those who did. After all, nothing could be weirder than what was already happening, right? Maybe boy’s pee really could handle the Black Veil. When faced with a crisis that made no sense, even superstition started to seem reliable. People traded food, water, and formula for those diapers, hoping the extra layer would shield them from the fog.

The diapers sold so well, there was even a buying frenzy for a while, which slowed the whole group down.

Jasper Xiao could only sigh helplessly when he found out, but he couldn’t stop it. Maybe what everyone needed was just a little psychological comfort—even if it was superstition, it was better than nothing. And who’s to say boy’s pee didn’t work? Jasper Xiao had no idea what kind of weirdness the Black Veil was packing.

In the end, the old lady was just trying to boost her own chances of survival. Maybe she figured her little pee scheme was the only thing keeping her and the kid from being abandoned. But now, even the ‘factory’ that supplied the so-called magical medicine was in trouble. People who’d clung to their stinky diapers for comfort started to snap. Feeling cheated, they tore off the diapers and took out all their frustration and anxiety on the grandma and her grandson.

Of course, someone had to be leading the charge. It was a middle-aged fat guy: "Kill him, do it now, before he turns into a monster!"