Chapter 430: Drifting Sounds, Sudden Upheaval

The underground shaft was like a vast labyrinth; flashlight beams cast mottled shadows on the damp walls, and a foul, unsettling stench permeated the air.

Feng Ju's mechanical prosthesis scraped against the wall surface, emitting an irritating grinding sound, and scraped off a patch of slick moss.

Feng Ju clenched his pitch-black iron hand, staring at the three forked paths ahead, brows tightly knit.

Viscous liquid seeped from the left wall, the foul stench drifted from the middle, while the right side was dead silent.

Every path resembled a monster's gaping maw, but which one the monster chasing his daughter had taken, he simply could not determine.

His prized manhunting experience and his multifunctional mechanical arm both seemed to have lost their usefulness at this moment, unable to help in the slightest.

"Da Li, you take men to the right; Zhuang Tou, you take men to the left; everyone else follow me; report the situation on the walkie-talkies at all times."

Feng Ju made a decisive decision and dispersed his brothers below.

Then, two minutes later, a similar fork appeared before Feng Ju again.

It wasn't that he didn't know — continuously splitting up manpower to search inside a gloomy underground sewer was an extremely dangerous and foolish tactic, but his heart was tied to his daughter; he could not care about much else anymore.

Before long, only Dong Ping remained beside him, yet the pipes ahead were still intricately tangled like a spider web, as if they would never reach an end.

"Damn it, where on earth is Yu Huai?"

Feng Ju was frantic with anxiety; his fist slammed hard against the pipe wall.

"Captain Feng, this way!"

Dong Ping suddenly called out in a low voice, a hint of excitement in his tone. His finger pointed at the ground, where a string of shattered, fragmented rat carcasses floated down with the sewage.

The carcasses had been soaked white by the sewage, a few strands of not-fully-rotted fur still clung to the edges — clearly they had been shredded by some tremendous force.

Hope flashed in Feng Ju's eyes; he immediately rushed upstream against the sewage flow.

In the distance, from deep within the pipe, a sharp, distorted woman's voice drifted faintly, somewhat muffled and hard to make out, but one could distinguish a woman's hysterical roar, or perhaps a despairing wail?

"Is it Yu Huai?"

Feng Ju's heart leapt into his throat; his body suddenly accelerated, charging rapidly toward the direction the voice came from.

Ahead of Feng Ju, three reporters from Guangliang Television Station sneaked down from some wellhead.

Ren Xuan held a palm-sized instrument in his hand, like a navigation radar, displaying — Pd124 distance southwest 174m.

Pd124 was precisely that brave martyr reporter senior; Pd124 was its factory serial number.

Though it was dead, the Residual Light (Crystal Core) remaining in its body still guided the newcomers' direction forward.

"That way, almost there."

Ren Xuan identified the direction, wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, his gaze scanning left and right in the gloomy sewer.

"Lighten your footsteps; the monster is right ahead."

Tang An shouldered the camera, waist slightly bent, his slightly chubby round face covered in bean-sized sweat beads.

He was breathing heavily, voice pressed extremely low:

"If we can make it back alive this trip, the station will definitely promote and raise pay for the three of us. Save for two years, and I should be able to afford a wife."

The two conversed in low voices while moving forward carefully, trying to use words to ease the fear in their hearts.

Deng Jia Jia walked silently at the very front.

Suddenly, a sharp, distorted woman's cry came from afar.

The three reporters were clearly closer to the sound source, so they heard even more clearly.

They pricked up their ears faintly, trying to capture more information.

Within the cries, they seemed to hear keywords like "Senior Sister," "Mentor," "capture alive," but these terms were like scattered puzzle fragments, unable to connect into complete information.

"What does that mean?" Ren Xuan asked doubtfully.

"Who's talking to whom?" Tang An also wore a face full of bewilderment.

A look of contemplation appeared in Deng Jia Jia's eyes.

Although the keywords could not be strung into complete information, the sensitivity of news workers made the three almost instinctively sniff out an unusual scent.

Combined with the chasing monster in the sewer...

"Exclusive news!!!"

A bright light flashed in Deng Jia Jia's eyes; she shouldered the camera and rapidly charged forward.

The female doctor screamed hysterically at the monster; the pajama-wearing monster lowered its head, overlooking the female doctor, crimson pupils flickering with murderous aura.

As one of the principal persons in charge of the Laboratory, the female doctor knew a little of the Mentor's overall plan.

She knew the Mentor had targeted Feng Yuhuai not for a game, but to find the man hidden behind Feng Yuhuai, thereby retrieving the snatched Black Core.

The female doctor's gaze swept over the monster's ferocious face, suddenly noticing the murderous light in its eyes; her heart turned cold, yet she roared even more furiously:

"Senior Sister, you've all turned into this ghostly appearance, how can you still be so impulsive and foolish, do you really want to be taken back by the Mentor and fed to No. 37?"

The two words "Mentor" seemed to carry some kind of magic; the monster's body stiffened slightly, its crimson pupils flickering unsteadily.

It bared its teeth, letting out a low growl, but its tail slowly retracted, reluctantly lowering Feng Yuhuai from mid-air.

The headless companion lost support and crashed to the ground with a dull, heavy boom.

Feng Yuhuai fell down, crashing heavily onto the monster's corpse, letting out a weak groan.

The female doctor adjusted her Yiliao Jing, hurriedly knelt down, and from her white coat pocket took out a syringe needle flickering with black ghostly light; within the black light, metal particles like living things writhed.

And if a knowledgeable person were here, they would recognize that the lines formed by those writhing metal particles looked extremely like the eerie patterns on the surface of the large Black Core.

"This is the Mentor's newly developed Calamity Induction Agent, able to revive those doomed to die; compared to the previous model injected into the Senior Sisters, the new model has smaller side effects, and will not damage memory or the brain."

The moment the female doctor took out the syringe, the six still-living monsters, except the blind one, all uniformly made a stress reaction, stepping back a pace, as if seeing a disgusting dirty thing.

Watching the Senior Sisters' fearful reaction, the corner of the female doctor's mouth hooked into a retaliatory, contemptuous cold laugh.

She hesitated no longer, raised the needle, and viciously stabbed toward Feng Yuhuai's neck.

Tss—

The fractured pale arm spun at high speed in midair, blood droplets splashing like dark red agate, while the surrounding monsters scrambled to avoid it as if fleeing a plague.

Letting the arm trace an elegant arc through the air before plunging handle-first into the sewage sludge, half a wrist exposed, five fingers still clutching the syringe.

Ripples spread across the turbid water as a blood-stained red thread suddenly withdrew from the water, dragging a string of clinging mud, shooting back into... Feng Yuhuai's shattered chest.

The female doctor did not even feel pain, her gaze still fixed on Feng Yuhuai's neck.

Only after a moment did her gaze, stiff as if waking from a dream, shift downward, revealing a bloody cavity crawling with red threads, writhing, rolling, entwining...

Chapter End