Chapter 52: Anomalous Creatures of Wuming City

"Go away!" Yang Yi said in a hoarse, low voice.

Daniel suddenly felt a chill run down his spine, as if an invisible giant beast was staring at him; he stopped in his tracks and looked toward Yang Yi.

She leaned both hands on the windowsill, her back to him; her slender figure seemed to tremble, or perhaps it was just the night wind blowing from outside.

He seemed to smell a heavy scent of blood in the air, but after sniffing carefully, it felt like an illusion.

"Are you alright?" Daniel took another step closer, only to be blocked by an invisible barrier.

"Sorry to trouble you, I... I'm not in a good mood right now... please give me some space alone..." she said in a low, hoarse voice, as if struggling to suppress something.

At that moment, Yang Yi's back seemed to twist into a swirling black hole, spinning, distorting, and deforming; Daniel's body hair stood on end, memories of Yang Yi's situation in Misty Town flashed through his mind, and a deep-seated fear drove him to step back several paces.

He steadied himself and looked closely; Yang Yi was still Yang Yi, her back still that same back, as if what had just happened was merely his illusion.

Could this be the power of an S-rank? He was panicked and disoriented, and left in dejection.

After sensing his departure, Yang Yi used the last of her telekinetic force to drag her body back to her room, threw herself into the bathtub, and turned on the warm water.

Thin streams of blood seeped from her facial features and every pore of her body, gradually filling the bathtub...

The bright moon hung high, casting moonlight through the window, leaving the floor covered in cold, clear moonlight.

This night was so long.

#

After returning to Xia Country, Wei Chang'an and Chen Chen Yushu did not return to the capital; they transferred planes directly to Wuming City in Fu Province, where the crisis of anomalous creatures was severe and had already been rated as an A-level hazard.

Yang Yi needed to deliver the infection source of the Soul-Hosting Demon to the Capital Anomalous Creature Research Institute; this was one of only two new types of intelligent anomalous creatures in the world, and no amount of caution was too much.

By the time Yang Yi arrived in Wuming City, Fu Province, it was already the next morning; to cooperate with the institute's research on the Parasitic Demon, she had not slept all night.

As soon as she got off the plane, she sensed an unusual atmosphere here; it was not that the scenery differed from other places, as the major cities of Xia Country looked almost the same, all with high-rise buildings and heavy traffic.

The difference lay in the people; even though it was early June and the weather was hot, almost everyone wore thick helmets, wrapping their heads tightly.

Their eyes were filled with panic, their expressions carrying fear and wavering uncertainty, as if some great terror was about to happen in the next second.

The air was filled with a tense atmosphere, as if a rubber band had been stretched to its limit, ready to snap at any moment.

The closer one got toward the city center, the thicker this tense atmosphere became; she saw many people laying steel plates over their homes and the ground.

As the vehicle approached rapidly, Yang Yi's goosebumps began to rise faintly, as if some unseen gaze was secretly watching her from the void.

However, when her telekinetic sense swept over the surroundings, she detected nothing amiss.

Taking a special vehicle to the temporary base of the Awakened in Wuming City, which was a chain five-star hotel, the Lihao Grand Hotel, she felt the hotel name was somewhat familiar, as if someone had mentioned it to her before.

The entire ground floor of the Lihao Grand Hotel was covered with steel plates, at least five centimeters thick; although the waiters did not wear helmets like the citizens, their expressions were equally panicked and uneasy.

She was led into a reception room where the personnel and equipment were already ready, waiting only for her arrival.

As soon as she entered, the gaze of everyone in the reception room focused on her; a buzz-cut man with a distinct military bearing stepped forward and introduced himself: "Hello, Captain Yang, I am Li Mingliang from the Fu Province Awakened Administration, a B-rank Earth-type, currently serving as the squad leader of this team. These are my team members: Sun Sun Yaxi, a B-rank Fire-controller; Li Yang, a C-rank Body-type Bone Sword; Qian Ming, a C-rank Water-controller..."

After mutual introductions, Yang Yi maintained a calm expression as she took her seat, and the researchers began to brief the situation.

"Starting from May 26, corpses began appearing one after another around Wuming City; some of these corpses were pierced completely through, others partially pierced, but the brains of all corpses had been sucked dry, and every corpse's expression showed pain and terror."

Photos of various corpses appeared on the screen; each one seemed to have been pierced by steel bars drilling up from the ground, with a hole drilled into the head and the brain completely gone.

"According to our statistics, most of these people went missing at night. Our cameras captured some footage; please look..."

The screen showed night; the streetlights were not very bright, and a person was stumbling along an alley like a drunkard. When he reached a corner to urinate, a white tube, as thick as an arm, suddenly shot out from the ground behind him, stabbing straight into the back of his head. The drunkard let out a terrible cry, his whole body shaking uncontrollably; two or three minutes later, he collapsed to the ground and stopped moving.

In another clip, also at night, a man and a woman were walking hand in hand down the street, being affectionate; similarly, a white tube shot out from the ground, instantly latching onto the girl's head. The man was terrified but did not run away; instead, he immediately rushed to rescue his girlfriend, only to be pierced directly through the body by that white tube, skewering the two of them together like candied haws. Then the white tube sucked their brains dry one after another, retracted into the ground, and vanished.

The subsequent footage was sometimes clear, sometimes blurry, but mostly the same.

Even though people were now on guard and wore thick steel helmets, unless their entire bodies were wrapped in steel, there were always gaps for breathing; these ghost-like white tubes shooting out from the ground could always find a gap to stab into the head and suck out the brain.

"The locations where these corpses appeared were not fixed, and the times of brain-sucking overlapped; one night, corpses appeared in eight places simultaneously. Based on the caliber and traces of the wounds on the corpses' heads, we infer that there are at least twenty-three of these monsters."

"At first, residents near Shangyang Village reported cases, followed by missing persons at the nearby Bajiao Industrial Park; as of today, 1,065 people have gone missing in Wuming City. If there are twenty-three monsters, each has already killed an average of forty-six people, meaning each one must suck out the brains of six people per day."

"Just last night alone, 142 people died," the researcher with glasses said in a heavy tone.

"These monsters live underground, possess a certain ability to control earth, can move freely beneath the ground, and only come out to act at night; we speculate they may fear sunlight."

"You haven't caught a single one?" Yang Yi asked. "You don't even know what these monsters look like?"

There was no hint of accusation in her tone; it was simply a genuine question.

But these two questions made everyone present exchange glances, their faces showing difficulty, and some even revealed expressions of indignation; Yang Yi's telekinetic sense caught a faint whisper: "If we could catch them, why would we need to find you..."

Yang Yi remained expressionless and turned to Chen Chen Yushu and Wei Chang'an beside her. "You arrived yesterday and experienced a night; did you make any progress?"

"These monsters seem to number as many as twenty-three, but they are distributed throughout Wuming City, and their speed of sucking brains is very fast, making them hard to track. By the time we received the tip-off and arrived, we only saw the corpses," Wei Chang'an said, knowing Chen Chen Yushu was a man of few words, and quickly took over the conversation.

"Currently, the only person who has seen the true face of these monsters should be Captain Li."