Chapter 351: Infiltration

The entrance to the Underground Black Market is a sloping drainage pipe, its diameter just enough for an adult to pass through while bending over.

Su Ming didn't bend over.

He braced one hand against the pipe wall, his whole body sliding and walking down, the soles of his boots scraping a harsh friction sound on the damp cement.

From behind came a muffled metallic deformation noise—Jia Shan, whose height was just over two meters, forced the pipe entrance to deform, the alloy restraint rings scraping the pipe wall, sparks crackling down.

The air grew increasingly murky.

The smell of rusted iron, the sweet putrid odor of decaying flesh, and an indescribable, damp, hot stench like that of a reptile house in a zoo.

Su Ming's nostrils were filled solidly with the scent; he furrowed his brows and said nothing.

At the end of the pipe was a fire door knocked crooked, its panel smeared with half‑dry, non‑dry brown liquid that glistened oily under the pallid emergency light. Su Ming slipped sideways through the gap and stepped onto the Black Market floor.

His soles were sticky.

He glanced down.

It wasn't mud, it wasn't water.

It was a thin layer of oxidized, blackened plasma. The entire passage floor was covered by this substance, and boots stepping on it produced a hissing sound, much like tearing tape.

This place was completely ruined.

Su Ming's gaze swept over the crooked iron‑sheet stalls, overturned tables and chairs, and counterfeit goods scattered on the ground. A few weeks ago this had been an illegal yet living market; now it resembled an abandoned slaughterhouse.

Traces were everywhere.

The walls bore claw marks, five in a set, spaced almost twice as wide as a human palm. Several ceiling conduits were ripped out, cables hanging and swaying lazily in mid‑air.

The most eye‑catching were the piles of stuff in the corner.

Clothes. Shoes. Glasses. A pink children's backpack printed with some cartoon character.

No corpses.

Only human belongings were carelessly tossed there, like empty shells.

Su Ming took in these details with his eyes, his steps never halted.

Jia Shan squeezed in from the fire‑door side, his massive body widening the frame another two inches. His body covered in Compound Eyes automatically adjusted in the dimness, emitting faint red glimmers that made the surrounding bloodstains reflect a Weird sheen.

"Stay close," Su Ming said.

The two words were spoken in a tone as flat as ordering takeout.

They advanced along the main passage toward the depths of the Black Market.

After less than thirty meters, Su Ming stopped.

Jia Shan also halted, his Compound Eyes all aligning toward a side branch on the left.

The sound came from that direction.

It wasn't a human voice.

It was a wet, rubbing sound mixed with low, wheezing breaths, somewhat like an asthmatic's wheeze. But the density was too high—it wasn't one source, but several emitting the noise simultaneously.

Su Ming's right hand hung at his side, his fingertip tapping the Suppressor Electric Blade at his waist.

In the shadow at the branch entrance, the first silhouette emerged.

That thing had once been a person.

Now one could only say it roughly retained a human shape—two legs, two arms, a head—but every proportion was off. The arms were too long, the knees bent backward, the head tucked between the shoulder blades, the whole upper body hunched forward, the spine's outline clearly protruding beneath the skin.

Its skin was gray‑white, covered with a layer of keratinous shell like a beetle's elytra.

Its face was gone.

The features had degenerated into a smooth gray surface, with only a horizontal fissure where the mouth once was, densely packed with inward‑growing fine teeth.

Low‑grade Mutated Entity.

A mass‑produced item of the Gospel Church.

The first Mutated Entity sensed a living human's breath, its fissure widening, emitting a sharp screech.

That screech sounded like some kind of signal.

Deep in the branch, a clattering commotion rose in the darkness—more gray‑white silhouettes surged from the shadows.

Three. Five. Eight.

When Su Ming finally counted to the fourteenth, he grew too lazy to continue.

They crowded the narrow passage, trampling and shoving toward Su Ming and Jia Shan. Their speed wasn't great, but their numbers made up for it. The whole branch was packed with gray‑white bodies, like a pot of boiling dumplings.

The one leading the charge had already surged within ten meters.

Su Ming didn't even raise his hand.

"Up."

A single word.

The indicator light on Jia Shan's restraint ring switched from green to red.

A click as the latch sprang open rang out.

But before the latch hit the ground, the two‑meter‑plus behemoth had already charged out.

Su Ming stepped aside.

The step was carefully placed—just enough to avoid the flying debris and shockwave air gusts kicked up when Jia Shan started.

Jia Shan's collision with the Mutated Entity horde could be described with a single word.

Crushing.

Crushing in the literal sense.

He used no technique at all. The red glows from his Compound Eyes left scorch marks on the keratinous shells, but the true lethality came not from those. It was mass. It was kinetic energy. It was the physical effect of a 180‑kilogram mutated body slamming into a dense crowd at near‑sprint speed.

The first Mutated Entity was flung outward, its broken spine producing a crisp snap that echoed through the passage.

The second was slapped against the wall, its keratinous shell shattering, the interior tissue spraying out like a burst tomato‑sauce packet.

The third one tried to leap onto his back.

Jia Shan didn't even turn his head, reached back, grabbed that thing's head, and smashed it onto the ground.

One strike.

The ground cracked.

Two blows.

The head was gone.

The remaining Mutated Entities, provoked by this brutality, triggered a fear‑like instinct and began to retreat. But the passage was too narrow; those behind squeezed forward, those ahead shrank back, and the whole group got stuck, unable to move.

Jia Shan ignored all that.

He plunged in headfirst, like a bulldozer blade into a sand pile.

Gray‑white limb fragments and viscous tissue fluid splattered to both sides, coating half a wall. The muffled clamor merged into one, sounding much like a demolition site.

Su Ming stood where he was, watching Jia Shan, ten‑plus meters away, twist the last two Mutated Entities into two pieces as if wringing a towel.

The whole thing took less than forty seconds.

The passage fell quiet, leaving only Jia Shan's heavy breathing and the drip‑drip of liquid falling.

Su Ming stepped forward, his boot soles treading over a field of debris, the shattered keratin layer creaking beneath his feet.

Jia Shan obediently kept up, his body smeared with gray‑white debris and tissue fluid. His Compound Eyes kept rotating, like a large dog that had just fetched a ball and was waiting for praise.

Su Ming gave him no praise.

Because it wasn't over yet.

His peripheral vision caught an anomaly—something was moving among the tangle of pipes on the right side of the ceiling.

It wasn't just one.

At least three.

They differed from the previous batch. Smaller in size, their limbs had specialized into arthropod‑like structures, clinging to the interlaced pipes, moving almost silently. Agile type.

Smart. Knowing a frontal charge would be a death sentence, they chose to ambush from the ceiling.

Three directions, launched simultaneously.

One's landing point was calculated precisely—straight for Su Ming's nape.

Su Ming didn't even turn his head.

His right hand rested on his left wrist.

His thumb and forefinger pinched the skin on the inner side of the wrist bone and gave it a light twist.

Under the skin, the dormant Time Marrow Worm was awakened.

The world slowed down.

No, it wasn't slowing.

Everything except Su Ming was being poured into amber.

The three agile Mutated Entities that dropped from the ceiling hung in mid‑air, their poses frozen like a snapshot. The nearest one was less than forty centimeters from Su Ming's nape, its open claws still bearing fragments of a previous prey's skin and flesh.

Jia Shan also froze, maintaining the motion of turning his head toward the ceiling, his body of Compound Eyes locked in a half‑turned, unmoving state.

Throughout the Underground Passage, the only one still operating at normal temporal flow was Su Ming.

He drew the Suppressor Electric Blade from his waist.

The blade's activation hum rang especially clear in the silence.

Su Ming took a step.

His stride wasn't fast; it could even be called composed.

He circled to the back of the first Mutated Entity, the electric blade slicing horizontally, fitting precisely into the gap between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae. The blade's entry into the keratin layer felt light, like cutting through a piece of hard rubber.

The second.

Su Ming took three more steps; the electric blade changed angle, inserting from the lower jaw and piercing the brainstem.

The third.

He even made time to wipe the tissue fluid splattered on his cuff, then, at an unhurried pace, walked over, found the cervical joint on the frozen body, and pushed the blade horizontally.

Having done that, Su Ming returned to his original spot.

He retracted the electric blade to his waist.

He twisted his wrist once more.

Time resumed.

Three headless corpses spewed fluid at the same instant, plopping onto the ground. Their bodies, still retaining the momentum of the strike, slid forward a short distance, leaving three long trails on the plasma‑covered floor.

Jia Shan turned his head; those Compound Eyes widened—within his perception, nothing had happened ahead, and then the three ambushers suddenly became three headless meat segments.

He looked at Su Ming.

Su Ming walked forward with a blank expression.

"Continue."

Just two words again.

Jia Shan, understanding, closed his mouth—though he rarely spoke anyway—and obediently kept up.

The passage widened, and the scent in the air changed. The sweet, putrid smell of rotting flesh faded, replaced by a stronger, living‑creature body odor.

A light source appeared ahead.

It wasn't a lamp.

It was a flickering crimson glow, emanating from an open area deep within the Black Market, dyeing the far end of the passage a dark red.

Su Ming slowed his pace.

The ground beneath his feet changed as well—no longer just plasma and debris, whole human skeletons began to appear, cleanly gnawed, their bone surfaces riddled with tiny bite marks.

At the end of the passage is the Black Market's central Square.

Su Ming stopped at the Square's entrance and saw clearly the scene inside.

Su Ming said nothing.

Jia Shan didn't move either.

In the center of the Square, something crouched.

Saying "crouch" isn't quite accurate; it's more like "pile"—its volume is so huge that its crouching there occupies almost a quarter of the Square.

A gray‑white keratin layer covered its whole body, but unlike the low‑grade goods around the periphery, this thing's keratin layer was absurdly thick, stacked layer upon layer, looking as if it wore a full set of stone armor.

Its limbs no longer showed their original proportions, having become grotesquely stout support pillars, each as thick as an adult's waist. Its back rose high, and from the spinal fissures sprouted a dozen or so twisted white Bone Spikes.

And its face—or rather the place where its face once was—had only one detail left recognizable.

One eye.

A scarlet vertical pupil, set in the center of that massive keratin‑covered face, turned slowly.

Du Yan.

the Earth Emperor of the Black Market.

one of the first batch of believers of Sai Men.

It was feeding. Scattered on the ground before it were several half‑gnawed human remains—flesh and blood oozed from its split giant maw, flowing down through the keratin layer's fissures.

Su Ming's boot sole rolled over a bone, producing a faint crack.

Du Yan stopped chewing.

The scarlet vertical pupil turned toward Su Ming, fixing its gaze on Su Ming.

The air in the Square suddenly became scorching.

The massive creature rose slowly. The sound of its keratin armor grinding against itself echoed through the cavernous underground space, resembling the low rumble before an earthquake. Once upright, its shoulders nearly touched the Square's ceiling.

It split its mouth open.

The giant maw, capable of swallowing half a small car, opened, revealing tiered inverted sharp teeth. A wave of heat mixed with gastric acid and putrid blood surged toward Su Ming.

Then, from the depths of that throat, which should no longer possess any human function, two muddled syllables, twisted by tongue and teeth into near‑unintelligibility, forced out.

"Bless... sound..."

Su Ming stared at the scarlet vertical pupil, their expression unchanged.

Su Ming drew the electric blade again.