Chapter 995

Adam stood under the stage lights, dressed in a crisp black tuxedo, immersed in the performance nearing its end.

In the audience, the VIP section, and every private box, every single seat was occupied by rapt listeners~.

They were lost in a dreamscape woven by the notes, utterly enchanted; everything outside the music had vanished.

The final note fell, and the concert hall plunged into a brief silence; time itself seemed to stop.

The next moment, applause and cheers erupted like thunder, and the audience rose to their feet.

The primal symphony echoed through the concert hall's meticulously designed structure, swelling continuously.

After the conductor bowed, Adam followed the other members in bowing to the many guests present, then exited the stage in an orderly fashion, heading backstage.

His leather shoes creaked against the wooden floor backstage; Adam was already considering whether to pan-fry a steak for dinner or continue eating a vegetable salad.

Just as he took his next step, an odd sensation in the sole of his shoe interrupted his thoughts; he realized something was wrong and tried to pull his foot back, but the momentum of his movement defied his will.

The next moment, a sharp pain shot from the sole of his foot, straight to his brain.

"Hiss—ow! Ow, ow, ow, ow!!!"

Overcome by the sharp pain, Adam stumbled and nearly fell, but fortunately, a band member behind him reacted in time and caught him.

Backstage staff rushed over, and after a quick inspection, they discovered a nail was actually stuck in the sole of his shoe, having pierced into the center of his foot without warning.

The conductor told Adam to hurry to the hospital to treat the wound and get a tetanus shot; as for the storage of his instrument and other matters, the orchestra would handle them.

Upon arriving at the hospital, medical staff administered a local anesthetic, removed the nail, and cleaned the wound; as for the tetanus shot, he had to wait in line.

"It's like hell today; why are so many people injuring their fingers? Do we have a tradition of cutting off fingers in England?"

A doctor walked into the examination room and began to complain.

Curiosity drove Adam to ask a question or two.

It turned out that among the trauma cases received today, more than half of the patients had injuries concentrated on their hands—

Cut by saw blades; crushed by closing car doors; snapped by hinges; or the entire palm crushed in mechanical accidents...

All the incidents were independent, but when added together, it gave one an eerie feeling.

Some kind of collective physical trauma event?

Adam tried to share his hypothesis with the doctor, but was met with a confused look and a "Sorry, I don't understand what you mean."

Adam didn't take it to heart, until he witnessed a "living" finger in the waiting room.

He suspected his eyes were playing tricks on him, so he took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

But when he looked again, he saw a severed finger wriggling like a caterpillar, crawling in a certain direction; the surrounding patients and medical staff seemed to turn a blind eye to it.

What the hell is this???

Young Adam was stunned on the spot, his mind flashing through various urban legends and currently popular alien-themed stories.

In the stories, aliens would disguise themselves as humans, replace the unlucky victims, study human society, and conduct kidnappings and human experiments.

And the protagonist of the story would accidentally discover their disguise, observe and track them calmly until confirming their lair, and finally defeat the aliens' conspiracy to invade Earth single-handedly.

Adam felt a faint sense of excitement and thrill in his heart, as if he were about to personally lift a corner of the "real" world hidden by the authorities.

But the sight of the severed finger crawling like a worm still gave him a chill.

He raised his hand and gripped it repeatedly until he confirmed that his body wasn't rebelling and didn't suddenly possess its own will, intending to cultivate some superpowers, before deciding to begin this great exploration.

Adam followed closely behind.

The finger wriggled along the long corridor, slipped into a corner of the hospital, and passed through a slightly ajar door.

Finally, it snuck into an empty auxiliary building.

And there, Adam saw a scene that was like a nightmare, no different from hell.

There were only fingers in there, but there were fingers everywhere.

Hundreds upon thousands of living fingers, each like a fat, oversized maggot, tangled together, constantly wriggling, exploring, slowly splitting, and lengthening.

!

Adam decisively closed the door, his movements swift and gentle, ensuring he wouldn't startle the monsters inside, and also ensuring no one would accidentally wander in and trigger some unpredictable consequence.

He suppressed his pounding heart, lightened his footsteps as much as possible, ran out of this haunted house, and then sprinted all the way, ignoring the discomfort caused by the anesthetic, until he found a payphone booth.

He dialed the emergency service number, and faced with the mechanical prompt, he hesitated repeatedly before finally choosing to request emergency large-scale pest control, hazardous materials management, or psychological assistance services.

After the numeric keys were pressed, there was a long silence.

Subsequently, the operator who connected—whose calm and composed tone made Adam suspect she was a robot—was not suspicious at all of what Adam said, nor was she shocked in the slightest!

After listening to Adam's description, the voice on the other end told him to wait where he was, and that a specialist would come to meet him.

In less than a quarter of an hour, a capable female agent appeared before Adam.

Her name was Ma Liang.

……

"Oh my god! I'm going to throw up."

"Ugh—thanks to the 'Administrator,' you successfully helped me dispel the thought of going out to eat tonight; I'm on a diet now."

"My trypophobia is acting up; I don't dare to look, I don't dare to look."

"I demand a memory wipe! I demand an A-Class memory wipe! I don't want to see this! I beg for a pair of eyes that haven't seen this Foundation containment file, a brain that hasn't seen it!"

Obviously, this kind of intuitive impact initiated from the visual level was quite "shocking to the soul."

The containment objects that appeared in containment files in the past, even if ugly, never reached the extent of challenging the limits of physiology and psychology like this.

"Yes, yes, yes, you all run away; I'll hog the probability of becoming a reality bender. This file has a supreme divinity appearance; don't waste the chance for a freebie."

"Do you think the Foundation has KPIs? Every time a file with a supreme divinity appearance comes out, how many lucky people must awaken? What kind of sweet dream are you having... It would be more accurate to say the Foundation has KPI restrictions for getting D-Class personnel from the entire universe."

"Now when I look at my own hands, I always feel that the next moment, my fingers will have lives of their own, and then the rest of my body will also go off to become an undefined 'it'."

"The question is: will the brain give birth to a brand-new consciousness outside of our own?"

"This should be 'Containment Object-4051' in the Adam file, right? I thought Adam and Ma Liang both became younger after deleting their memories..."

"Still so disgusting... I'm going to sleep first; now no matter how I look at my fingers, I feel like they're going to jump off on their own the next moment and crawl all over the room like bugs..."

……

"You're the Adam who called?"

Ma Liang asked routinely, then felt that Adam was a bit unnatural. She looked him up and down and realized this unnaturalness came from the latter's standing posture.

Foot injured?

"Are you still able to move?"

Adam was slightly taken aback, but instantly understood what Ma Liang meant.

As expected of a professional who had received professional training, she had already understood the relevant situation without him saying anything.

"No problem for now; the wound isn't big, and even if the anesthetic wears off, I can walk if I endure it."

Adam naturally had the intention of fulfilling his civic duty, but it couldn't be denied that he also had the intention of showing off in front of a beauty.

"That's good."

Adam led Ma Liang toward that door and, under her gaze, pushed it open slowly.

They stepped into it together; Ma Liang signaled Adam to stay quiet, leaned down, took out a flashlight with a scanning function, and locked the beam onto those wriggling finger-like creatures.

Behind their backs, a faint, imperceptible movement came, and the door closed silently.

· ·Asking for flowers··· 0

But a crisp sound of the door lock closing betrayed it.

"Click!"

The two turned around to check simultaneously, only to see a behemoth far more terrifying than a demon, a creature more nauseating than the most nauseating B-movie.

They turned and ran.

……

In the previous room, another pile of severed fingers and limbs had gathered, like elephant entrails after an explosion, densely occupying the entire space, making one's hair stand on end.

Some severed fingers spread along the sensory route like greedy mold, invading the medicine cabinet, while the rest pieced together a posture similar to a curled-up fetus on a hospital bed.

The moment Adam pushed the door, this mass of eerie objects swiftly reached a part of itself toward him.

Adam reacted instantly and pulled the door shut in time.

The next moment, the dull sound of that flesh mass hitting the door still came from behind the door, making Adam regret not calling for more people.

He should have called the Royal Air Force directly and burned this place full of blasphemy to ashes with napalm!

Fortunately, the quality of the door was fine and blocked the monster's surprise attack.

Adam stumbled back two steps, leaned his back against the wall opposite the door, steadied himself, and rested for a moment.

In the moment the door opened and closed just now, Adam seemed to see a horrific scene on another hospital bed.

The twisted and deformed human figure on that hospital bed was not a corpse, but a living person with wide-staring eyes.