Chapter 91: Eighty-nine: Changes (Two-in-one)

Eighty-nine: Changes (Two-in-one)

Xin Junmao's figure vanished from before their eyes, and the Daughter of Gluttony became even more violent. A single roar from her instantly caused the entire underground to tremble. The close-range bellowing caused Yu Lianyun and He Jia'an to suffer a cerebral concussion; blood flowed from their seven orifices, their vision went black, and they collapsed to the ground immediately.

The Daughter of Gluttony spat out the blood-slurry from her body, which acted like a Venus flytrap, enveloping the bhiksuni within.

Just as the two halves of the opening blood were about to close together, a brilliant white light suddenly erupted. The parts of the Daughter of Gluttony's body that had branched out to swallow and strangle the bhiksuni were blasted into smithereens by the power contained within the white light.

The entire underground space produced an even more intense tremor under the violent collision of the two forces, reaching from the underground straight to the surface.

Another earthquake, another earthquake again!?

What on earth were those people hiding!?

At this moment, the people of Cuizhu City not only felt an even more intense tremor, they also heard the roar of an unknown beast filled with gluttonous desire. It discharged wantonly from the cracks leading underground, from sewer manholes, from the drainage ditches in their homes, and even from the outlets of their water faucets. The sound was shrill and chilling.

If only one person heard it, perhaps it was an illusion, but when a group of people heard it, when an entire city heard it, that would be a reality that could neither be argued against nor covered up.

There must be some creature underground in Cuizhu City that made people go mad with fear. Its power could shake the earth, its voice could pierce the soul, and its existence made those who knew the truth afraid to announce the fact of its existence to the outside world.

Compared to most people, those citizens who had just experienced the explosion at the Di Huang High-rise not only had long since recognized the reality beneath the peaceful world, but had also witnessed with their own eyes those terrifying beasts escaping from the high-rise. They were by no means conventional animals; those crouching, abominable, and ferocious monsters clearly fit the products of every fantasy artist's brushstrokes—deformed, twisted, and filled with cold-blooded chaos.

Could they be pathetic freaks from forbidden research?

Could they be Evil Beasts from beyond the heavens?

Or perhaps, they were a part of Earth all along, only deliberately forgotten by humans after they became the masters of this planet.

Regardless of which it was, those bizarre products that had only lived in art and literature had already appeared before them in the flesh. They existed, and were even more terrifying and chaotic than described or imagined.

They walked out from the ruins of the collapsed high-rise; some were bathed in fire, others did not avoid the flames. They emerged from the smoke and death, and brought death and bloodshed to this city.

In less than a moment, humanoid monsters and wing-membrane creatures, like beasts released from cages, attacked the city. They were violent, powerful, and extremely hungry, devouring the humans in the city, gnawing and destroying everything within it.

Of course, if only that collapsed building were the demon's nest, this would not have instantly caused massive panic. What was terrifying was that the people living in Cuizhu City suddenly discovered that after the people around them heard the roar emitted from the underground abyss, their bodies, minds, and souls seemed to form a resonance with it. Their flesh responded to the instincts in their bloodlines, their minds collapsed into madness, their souls rotted, and they were no longer human...

Some citizens turned into monsters!

Screams, explosions, and tearing sounds shrouded this once-prosperous isolated city. Death, blood, and terror forged a carnival unique to this city, and the humans within it fell into despair.

Until a group of unidentified personnel dressed in black appeared in the city. They suppressed the bloodthirsty creatures with extremely efficient and skilled actions. They were more elegant than the soldiers wantonly pouring out ammunition and gunfire, and more orderly than the scattered civilian organizations.

Facing a group of well-trained organization members who seemed extremely adept at these matters, the city survivors who witnessed all of this gradually believed in this soul-crushing real world after their shock.

Monsters existed, and the human forces dealing with these monsters in the shadows also existed. Those "legends" circulating on the internet and in idle gossip were not entirely groundless.

The tremors lasted for a full ten-plus minutes, and the men in black spent an entire night suppressing and clearing out the monsters.

When the night dissipated and the light returned, the newborn sun shone upon this scarred land, yet not a single person in the city felt a shred of joy at having survived, because only by experiencing that terrifying night could you understand what they had to face after staying alive.

Was it facing the separation of life and death from friends and family?

Was it facing the sorrow and anger of losing their homes?

These were all true, but most importantly, it was how to pick up their shattered courage to face this real world.

"Come quickly, there are survivors here!" A Mysterious Investigator assisting with the city's search and rescue discovered vital signs beneath the ruins and couldn't help but shout.

A group of people busy with rescue efforts nearby heard this and immediately rushed over one after another to help.

After moving away the debris and stone slabs, the scene that appeared before everyone was not a sight to make one weep with joy. Instead, a man and a woman, stark naked and fused back-to-back, were stuck upside down beneath the ruins. Their tongues and eyes had been gouged out, and the sternums of their broken chests had deformed into massive bones that replaced their legs for movement. Their hearts beat violently at the gaps in their broken chests. They were alive in this horrifying state, hissing at the people who had fallen into fear.

"She... Team Leader She, Investigator Zhao Jing..." A Mysterious Investigator recognized the identities of the two from those gradually dissolving and twisted faces. His eyes were filled with grief, indignation, and fear as he roared, "To hell with the Inverted Sanctuary!"

With the assistance of other arriving Mysterious Investigators, She Zi'an and Zhao Jing, who had turned into twisted anomalies, were killed and incinerated on the spot.

For the next full month, the entire Cuizhu City was permeated with the lingering stench of corpses and tar...

A once-prosperous city was burned to the ground, and a great upheaval spread from that city to the entire world.

The people who had once lived on that city's land were dispersed and resettled in other cities. They had to continue living in another city with dead souls and broken hearts, and that city was listed as a forbidden zone for humanity.

The truths that had once been covered up were unearthed one by one. Those forces hidden in the shadows to preserve the lights of ten thousand homes and the peace of reality surfaced. They took the initiative to step before the world to tell people those horrifying truths.

"... I once thought there would be a day when we could no longer hide the facts, but I didn't expect this day to come so quickly." The Xuanmi Group Group Leader stood under the spotlight of a worldwide broadcast. There was not a hint of worry or sadness on his face; he simply spoke calmly, as if unhurriedly, about the duties and tasks of the Xuanmi Group, explaining every difficult mission his organization had undertaken.

Everything he said was as unreal as a novel, yet no one dared to stand up and refute it, because all the truths of what happened in Cuizhu City had already been spread on public platforms through major media outlets with some reservations. Everyone had seen the terrifying events of that night with their own eyes.

"Group Leader Wei Chengye, may I ask what your next move will be?" After a moment of silence, a media person finally took the lead in asking him.

Wei Chengye looked at the media person's camera and spoke slowly with the most serious and sincere expression: "The human world is under extreme danger, and humanity's survival status is facing unprecedented challenges. From this moment on, we, the Xuanmi Group, also welcome other like-minded organizations that oppose and prevent Abnormal events to join us in fighting to save this precarious human world. We will..."

This public press conference held by Wei Chengye for the whole world became a turning point for this era. It transitioned from the "hypocritical" era of peace to the "real" era of the Abnormal. From ignoring and avoiding the Abnormalities that existed in this world, humans began to actively discover and explore them, and attempted to overcome their fear and strike back at them. This was an unimaginable change in human history.

The entire world underwent unimaginable changes due to the existence of Abnormal things. Whether it was changes in human social systems, changes in human life, or changes in humans themselves, everyone was in the torrent of this great upheaval; no one could stay out of it...

Two years passed in a flash.

On a bench in the back garden of the Liuhua Gang Jingshen Liaoyangyuan, a smooth, round head was always hunched over, ugly, looking up at the sky at a forty-five-degree angle. He held a cigarette in his mouth but never lit it, until saliva and teeth made the entire cigarette unusable. Only then would he wastefully tear the cigarette butt apart and throw it into the trash can, then take a new cigarette from the pack, repeating the cycle.

"Team Leader He." An heroic-looking woman wearing a black trench coat called out from behind him.

Hearing the voice, He Jia'an turned his face slightly, looked at the woman walking toward him, and smiled as he called out her name: "Chief Yu Lianyun, how do you have time to visit me again?"

Two years of time had not left any traces of age on Yu Lianyun's face; she seemed to have become even younger, only her eyes had become much sharper. She smiled, hands in her pockets, and sat down next to He Jia'an, saying: "I just happened to be here on a mission, so I stopped by to see you."

As she spoke, Yu Lianyun took a new pack of cigarettes from her pocket. From the exquisite packaging of the cigarette box and the "Special Supply" label, even a layman who wasn't a smoker could see the extraordinariness of this pack of cigarettes, let alone He Jia'an, this guy who was "addicted" to smoking.

He Jia'an's eyes lit up immediately, and he said in surprise: "Holy crap, Xiaoyu, you're something else. Where did you get this? For me?"

"Swiped it from a friend. I knew you liked them, so I kept them for you. It just so happens I have time to see you now, so I brought them over," Yu Lianyun laughed.

He Jia'an immediately laughed and snatched the cigarettes, then examined them like a treasure, sniffing fiercely through the plastic packaging, as if he could smell the scent inside.

"Tsk tsk, though it's really a bit of a waste to give them to me." He Jia'an licked his lips and said, placing the new cigarettes in his inner clothing pocket.

Yu Lianyun shook her head with a light laugh, then looked at the pavilion not far away and asked: "How has your recovery been lately?"

"Same old, same old." He Jia'an's tone was normal, appearing somewhat indifferent, as he bit on the cigarette filter and said.

"Still seeing hallucinations, and the eyes?"

"Rather than calling them hallucinations... it would be more accurate to call it visual sharing, together with some massive thing..." He Jia'an scratched his bald head, which was breaking out in cold sweat, trying to use a relaxed tone to cover up the fear in his eyes. He pointed to his own head: "After reading that book, my brain underwent an irreversible physiological lesion. Sometimes I can't tell if it's a person or a monster, and occasionally I can hallucinate scenes from another dimension."

Yu Lianyun felt a bit uncomfortable hearing this and offered comfort: "It's good to be alive, anyway you don't have to go out and fight to the death anymore."

"True, and there's a not-insignificant subsidy every month." He Jia'an smiled, then asked, "Has that Book of Sand still not been found?"

"It has been confirmed that it mysteriously disappeared." Yu Lianyun shook her head. "We've been tracking it for these past two years, but unfortunately, we haven't heard any news about it since."

"What about that nun?"

"We still can't find her."

"Hmm, perhaps she took it, who knows."

"Let's hope so; it's better than it falling into someone else's hands."

He Jia'an chuckled, then immediately asked Yu Lianyun about her recent situation: "How are things with you lately?"

"Not a single task I have on hand is easy." Yu Lianyun rubbed her brow and sighed, "The target this time is a university student..."

On the streets of the Magic City, a light drizzle fell...

A beautiful woman wearing a cheongsam paced through an alley that had existed for centuries, her swaying figure like a raindrop lingering on a leaf, alluring and playful.

Behind her, a man with a righteous appearance matched her pace, walking behind her to hold up a black umbrella, shielding her from the wind and rain.

Passing by a rainy alley, the woman in the cheongsam suddenly stopped; she heard a faint, mournful cry, walked slowly to a discarded cardboard box beside a trash can, and extended a jade finger to gently push aside the foul-smelling pink cloth.

Looking at the tabby cat lying in the box with a toothpick stabbed into its heart, the woman in the cheongsam suddenly raised her alluring red lips and laughed: "What should we do? I'm suddenly hungry."

"You just ate yesterday, Miss Zhao." The man holding the umbrella for her said with some helplessness, "Besides, you need to understand the situation; I am technically your master right now."

Miss Zhao chuckled softly, her fingers gently stroking the dying cat's face, "In today's world, aren't pets the real masters? Now that the master is hungry and waiting to be fed, why not shove the meal into my mouth?"

Hearing her words, the man laughed: "True, but we also neuter our little masters; do you want the same treatment?"

"Hmm... that's really not necessary." Miss Zhao rolled her seductive eyes upward, licked her red lips enticingly, and said with a smile, "Though, we could try an injection."

The man swallowed hard, then immediately showed a pained expression, hissed, and hurriedly took the scalding hot bloodstone Comb out of his pocket, saying helplessly to the Comb: "I'm not that easily seduced."

Miss Zhao sneered, looked at the kitten that had gradually stopped breathing, flicked her finger, and the toothpick stuck in the kitten's heart was sent flying, after which she placed her finger on the kitten's chest.

A white light flowed over her onion-white fingers, the light making the skin of her fingers appear translucent, and a string of red blood threads flowed toward her fingertips, finally swimming out from her finger and falling into the kitten's wound.

In less than a moment, the kitten that should have been dead suddenly woke up and stood, meowing fawningly at Miss Zhao and Xin Junmao, then jumped out of the box and kept rubbing against the feet of Miss Zhao and Xin Junmao.

"Are you going to adopt it?" Xin Junmao asked in confusion.

"Just emergency rations." Miss Zhao grabbed the kitten by the scruff of its neck rather roughly, threw the innocent-looking kitten into Xin Junmao's arms, and then walked with an arrogant gait toward the dark depths of the rainy alley, her scarlet tongue extending from her mouth to brush aside a strand of black hair hanging before her eyes, "Hey, it's fine if I have a dessert now, right?"

Xin Junmao watched the figure in the depths of the alley, heard the shrill cat cries and the perverted, excited laughter of a man, and did not refuse, only calmly instructing: "Eat it clean."