Chapter 464: Misunderstanding? Camera!

The Special Commissioner stared blankly at the large monitoring screen where the signal had cut out, filled with static noise.

"That last face was Feng Ju?!"

Although the surveillance footage cut off abruptly, that fleeting glimpse was already clear enough.

"Looks like I misunderstood him; he really did go into the sewer to pursue 【Mask】, and"

The Special Commissioner narrowed his eyes,

"He was about to catch up to 【Mask】?!!"

Although a trace of doubt remained in his heart — just where did Feng Ju see 【Mask】 slip into the underground shaft? — the facts before him were enough to dispel his earlier suspicions.

"Perhaps... I can give him another chance." The Special Commissioner mused silently.

Chasing into the sewer himself now would be meaningless.

He had not initially believed Feng Ju's judgment and did not follow along to pursue; taking action now would obviously be too late.

However, this no longer mattered.

【Mask】's true appearance had already been exposed to the entire Nine Districts' view; even if he hides temporarily, how long can he hide?

The corner of the Special Commissioner's mouth hooked into a confident arc, yet a hint of gravity flashed in his eyes.

He pondered silently in his heart:

"However, the strength 【Mask】 displayed is a bit troublesome; worthy of being a host body parasitized by the Curse of the Evil Sacrifice — this near-deformed evolution speed is truly shocking."

"Relying on Feng Ju alone for the next operation will likely be far from enough."

His gaze swept gloomily over the campus, landing on Jisi Team Three currently struggling with the monsters, a thoughtful expression appearing on his face.

The Special Commissioner's fingertips unconsciously rubbed the collar button; losing interest in watching the campus drama about to end, he quietly left.

The aftershocks of the explosion still buzzed in Deng Jia Jia's eardrums.

She forced her eyelids open; her vision was still swimming with darkness.

A warm sensation came from the back of her head; only then did she realize she was lying on Tang An's back, the other person having become her human cushion.

The other's face was submerged in the turbid sewage; the pale skin had already taken on a hypoxic purple-blue.

"Cough—puh."

She violently turned her head and spat out a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva; gravel fell rustling from her hair.

When she tried to prop herself up, she suddenly felt something cold and slippery crawling down along her collarbone.

It was a fat rat stunned unconscious by the shock.

Deng Jia Jia sprang up as if electrocuted; that wet clump of black fur went "pa" as it fell into the sewage.

This jolt woke her up completely; her fingers instinctively groped toward her clothing pocket.

"Storage card, thank heavens."

She trembled as she felt for her chest pocket; only when her fingertips touched that hard metal piece did her taut nerves relax slightly.

Confirming the storage card had not deformed or been damaged, she finally let out a long breath.

"Tang An! Wake up!" She knelt down and slapped her companion's pale purple face.

The moment Tang An woke, he curled up like a shrimp, his right hand pressing deathly tight against his left ribs; cold sweat mixed with sewage dripped from his chin.

"Ribs... ribs might be broken." Every word he spoke felt like swallowing blades.

The two struggled to climb up and go find Ren Xuan, but the moment they found him, both froze in place.

Half a rusted iron pipe pierced through Ren Xuan's thick thigh, pinning him like a specimen to the collapsed pipe wall.

White bone fragments and tendons were exposed in the turbid air; black blood snaked along the twisted metal pipe.

Most terrifying was that he was still conscious and twitching; his fingers scratched ten bloody grooves on the wet ground.

"Save me."

Ren Xuan's pupils had already dilated; pink blood foam bubbled at the corner of his mouth.

Deng Jia Jia and Tang An simultaneously grabbed that rusted iron pipe, yet could not budge it an inch.

"Try again!" Tang An's voice cracked.

Just as he exerted force again, faint scratching sounds suddenly rang out all around.

At first it sounded like raindrops on a tin roof; quickly it evolved into a tide-like rustling.

The rats stunned by the explosion woke one after another; one by one they poked their heads from the cracks, their dust-covered noses twitching frantically.

The bloody smell stimulated them like a dinner bell; the first suicide squad had already scrambled up Ren Xuan's trouser leg.

"Ah!!! Get lost! Get—"

Ren Xuan's miserable screams echoed in the pipe; he futilely batted at the rats gnawing his thigh.

It only caused more rats to climb up along his arms; a particularly fat one jumped directly onto his face, its tail sweeping across his wide-open mouth.

Deng Jia Jia retreated half a step: "The iron pipe is inserted too deep; the two of us can't pull it out."

She paused, her voice trembling yet rationally cruel:

"And even if we pulled it out, your leg is broken; supporting you, we still couldn't outrun the rats."

Tang An's face was whiter than a corpse's.

The fishy stench of rat fur still lingered in his mouth; his stomach convulsed wildly.

Ren Xuan's blood-smeared fingers suddenly seized his ankle.

"Don't go."

Those dying eyes stared wide; pupils already dilated to the edges, yet still fixed dead on Tang An.

Tang An violently yanked his leg back, retreating even more nimbly than Deng Jia Jia.

"Camera!" Deng Jia Jia suddenly shouted low, "The footage can't be lost!"

This sentence was like flipping a switch; Tang An hurriedly bent over and yanked the camera, which was stuck upside down beside the other person, hard out of a pile of rubble.

He couldn't pull the iron pipe out of Ren Xuan's thigh, nor the camera half-buried in the ground, but with an adrenaline surge, he yanked it out in one go.

He gasped for breath as he pried out the storage card and nodded at Deng Jia Jia.

Both of their gazes fell simultaneously on the unconscious Feng Ju not far away.

Feng Ju's nasal bridge was clearly crooked, and a camera happened to be pressed under his chin.

Deng Jia Jia had just touched the nylon strap when Feng Ju's mechanical prosthesis suddenly made a "click," its pitch-black fingers twitched once, subconsciously grabbing the camera by his face, and his eyelids trembled slightly.

The two recoiled as if shocked and exchanged a glance.

"Go."

Deng Jia Jia wiped the blood from his face and said in a stern voice:

"It's too late; if we delay any longer, we'll both become rat feces."

Tang An turned back in horror, then hurriedly followed Deng Jia Jia without looking back.

The two fled with uneven steps, and behind them Ren Xuan's screams suddenly rose in pitch, then stopped abruptly like a recording tape being cut off.

Replacing them was a tide-like gnawing sound, the noise of hundreds of pairs of incisors tearing flesh, weaving in the pipes into a lingering farewell ending theme.

Feng Ju's eyelids felt as if they were sewn with lead weights; every twitch tore at the hideous wounds on his face. His right eye was completely sealed by congealed blood scabs, and in his left eye's field of vision, the entire world was covered by a crimson filter.

"Cough"

He spat out a mouthful of blood foam mixed with broken teeth, and his mechanical arm joints hissed with the release of air pressure.

When his metal palm propped against the ground, the blood pool in the sewage rippled outward in circles.

His left finger joints touched his deformed nasal bridge—it was already skewed at a strange angle, and even a slight touch sent a heart-piercing pain.

Feng Ju shook as he stood up; his left eye's vision was half-covered by blood, he reached out and touched it, and his nasal bridge bone was clearly deformed.

Feng Ju's expression was gloomy; he casually pulled out the glass shard stuck in his brow bone, bringing out a string of blood beads.

A few eyelashes still clung to the broken glass, which he flicked into the sewage.

He looked down at the camera with a shattered screen by his feet, then turned toward the mound covered by the rat swarm not far away—there, a pale hand stretched upward abruptly, its five fingers twisted into a desperate grasping posture.

Feng Ju's gaze stayed on that hand for less than a second, as if scanning a piece of unimportant trash.

He turned toward the collapsed shaft, where twisted steel bars jutted out of the concrete, very much like his current violent mood.

He stepped forward, walked a few steps, then suddenly stopped, inexplicably turned back to the original spot, bent down to pick up the damaged camera, and hung it on his shoulder.

The camera on his shoulder swayed gently with his steps; the cracked lens cover struck his metal arm, making a regular clicking sound...

End of Chapter