Chapter 604: She is Mutating

"Mom, have you been waiting long?"

Yang Yixie hurried back to his mother's side; he should have come straight back after checking his email, but he got lazy and used a bit of energy to encrypt the email, which directly caused him to lose control again.

Even though he has long adapted to this, he still tends to slip up in his outward disguise.

No, how long has it even been?

Mother smiled gently, she patted the empty seat beside her to signal Yang Yixie to sit and wait, occasionally looking up at the big screen in the waiting hall, waiting for the plane to land.

And after Bai Mu Yun noticed that Lei Zhao's group had no intention of contacting him, he also breathed a sigh of relief.

But...

The two people with Lei Zhao...

Out of caution, Bai Mu Yun still picked up his phone without changing expression, struck a selfie pose to find an angle, and captured those few people in the shot.

Just because of the angle, he only captured Lei Zhao and Jiangdu, but that was enough.

Weird, why hasn't Xiao Tang come back yet?

The girl busy behind the bar looked up; she and her partner were in charge of this place, originally there was another girl as well, but after just making that coffee for Bai Mu Yun the ingredients were almost used up, so the other girl temporarily left to go to the back warehouse to get supplies.

It's just to get some supplies; it shouldn't take this long.

She's not hiding in some corner secretly playing on her phone, or unable to find it.

The girl glanced at the situation; the VIP waiting hall usually has few people, and now there are only a handful, all busy with their own affairs, so stepping away briefly should be fine.

Thinking that, the girl temporarily left the bar and headed toward the back warehouse, trying to find her work partner to see where he had gone to slack off.

The warehouse door was ajar, revealing a gap about two fingers wide.

Inside, the lights were off.

In the corner's shadow, something was slowly writhing; its shape lay between beast and reptile, its skin as if a layer had been peeled off alive, with uneven bone spurs jutting from its spine, the tips of the spurs glowing with an eerie Ying Guang Lu.

The creature was larger than an adult man by a full circumference, and a drag-produced bloodstain on the floor stretched all the way into the warehouse's deep shadows; the stain was still fresh, appearing in the dim light as an ominous deep red.

Footsteps sounded down the hallway.

"Xiao Tang? Are you slacking off again?"

The girl who came to find someone pushed open the ajar door, casually felt for the wall switch, pressed it twice, but the light didn't turn on.

"What's wrong with the warehouse light? It couldn't be that you went to find a master for repairs, right? We said you could just send a message for this kind of thing."

She tried a few more times, the bulb didn't even flicker; it seemed completely broken.

Since it's come to this, she might as well get the materials and head back to the bar.

She took out her phone, turned on the flashlight; a beam of white light cut through the warehouse's gloom, illuminating rows of metal shelves ahead, the light sweeping back and forth between the shelves.

The cardboard boxes held everything: sacks of coffee beans, bundles of disposable paper cups, large vats of syrup...

In the corner's shadow, that mass of dark red outline slowly moved; the bone spurs scraped against the metal rack, making a screeching sound like nails scraping on metal.

The girl jerked her head back, the light following the sound, but revealed nothing.

Darkness always makes people think of horror stories; she dismissed it as her own auditory hallucination, swallowed, and continued toward the spot she remembered.

Lowering her head, the light beam fixed on the puddle of dark red liquid on the ground.

The bloodstain was still spreading outward, unnoticed it had already reached the edge of her shoe.

The girl's pupils suddenly contracted, her lips opened—just as she was about to scream, that mass of dark red lunged at her.

It landed behind her, its arms spanning several meters when outstretched, the joints where arms met body linked together like a huge flesh-colored sheath that enveloped her entirely.

The phone fell to the ground, flashing for an instant and revealing the girl's eyes filled with despair.

The warehouse plunged back into darkness.

Only a faint rustling sound persisted in the darkness for a moment.

On the other side, the boarding announcement chimed just then; Yang Yixie helped his mother up, Lei Zhao's group began gathering their belongings, everything orderly, quiet, and peaceful.

Bai Mu Yun was the last to leave; he set his empty coffee cup on the table, but the bar was deserted.

Neither of the two girls who left came back.

Maybe they just went elsewhere to get busy.

That thought merely flashed through Bai Mu Yun's mind; meddling isn't his style, and besides, his current situation isn't suited for such actions.

He merely adjusted his sunglasses and quickly fell in step with the boarding crowd.

Not many people were queued at the boarding gate; the ticket inspector smiled while checking each person's boarding pass.

VIP passengers have a dedicated boarding channel; Bai Mu Yun stood by the upstairs railing, from which he could overlook Yang Yixie and his mother slowly queuing below.

Although that conspicuous Ying Guang Lu hair was gone, a slight activation of the Ying Duo energy left in his body let the mini-map clearly capture Yang Yixie's position.

Normally Bai Mu Yun doesn't let this annoying Ying Guang Lu system intrude on his world; he only used this ability to locate Yang Yixie, yet on the mini-map he saw an abrupt red dot.

Immediately, his nostrils twitched slightly as a sweet-sour scent slipped in.

The scent was extremely faint, but more than the smell, what caught his attention was the emergence of a quite weak mutation factor in the air.

He abruptly turned his head, looking toward the nearby safety passage.

At the same time, Lei Zhao, who had just been about to walk away ahead, suddenly stopped; almost simultaneously with Bai Mu Yun he turned his head, scanned around, and finally locked onto the fire door of the safety passage not far from Bai Mu Yun.

The fire door was burst open from inside.

That person's fingers were curled at an unnatural, eerie angle, the nail grooves filled with dark‑red stains; wearing a uniform, her ID badge blurred by blood, only the first character "Tang" of the girl's name could be faintly seen as she staggered out of the safety passage.

Her gait was strange, like a baby just learning to walk on two legs; each step she wobbled, her knees bending forward yet she stepped sideways.

Her head also hung low, long hair covering half her face; faintly visible beneath the skin were dark‑purple veins threaded with Ying Guang Lu Undercurrent.

It's a pity Bai Mu Yun's knowledge of this world is still a bit lacking; otherwise he could have directly equated the monster before him with the cinematic creature known as a zombie.

The girl's pupils had fully dissolved, veiled in a grayish film; her throat emitted a gurgling water sound, and as she moved, the wound on her throat continually seeped blood.

She is undergoing mutation.