Chapter 355: The Spread of the Gospel

Honghai City, the "Cloud" private club.

Sixty‑eight floors.

When the elevator doors opened, Yan Ming smelled the popping of champagne bubbles in the air, mingled with the fatty aroma of white truffle and Iberian ham.

He adjusted his cuff.

A flawlessly cut Deep Blue Three-Piece Suit covered his marble‑pale skin tightly, and the High‑Collar Shirt perfectly concealed the abnormal white patch on his neck.

The cufflinks were silver, the tie clip was old; they were a reward he bought for himself in his first year of practice.

The banquet hall was larger than he had expected.

A nine‑meter‑high vaulted ceiling held seven Swarovski crystal chandeliers; their light fell, making the hall's jewels and Name Watch sparkle dazzlingly. Women's laughter was delicate, men's voices were deep, and amid the clinking glasses each polite exchange was worth a fortune.

"Lawyer Yan! Long have I admired you, long have I admired you."

The public‑relations Manager in charge of introductions smiled professionally, holding a roster to usher him in.

Yan Ming gave a slight nod and glanced over the guest seats.

He recognized those faces.

At the head of the main table sat Tao Zhengyang, Executive Deputy Director of the Federation Central Region Development Committee, sixty‑three, who was just named by the media last year as "Annual Public Service Pioneer."

To his left was Chairman of Hai Tong Group Zheng Kui, whose net worth exceeded forty billion, whose charitable foundation's annual donations were headline‑worthy, and Yan Ming spent two months uncovering whose pockets the money actually flowed into.

Three more people sat on his right.

From the judicial system, the financial regulatory side, and the urban construction side.

Their names were neatly ordered in Yan Ming's mind, each followed by a number, case summary, amount involved, and number of victims.

He hadn't only investigated them today.

They were accumulated through the process of repeatedly submitting tip‑offs in the past.

Not a single one had been dealt with.

Not one at all.

They had never directly killed anyone, nor instructed anyone to kill.

Yet under their command were countless dead souls, undeniably.

"Lawyer Yan, your seat is at Table Three in Section C, please follow me—"

"No rush."

Yan Ming walked toward the bar.

His gait was exactly the same as it had been in the courtroom before: back straight, steps even, his leather shoes striking the marble floor with a rhythm as steady as a metronome.

The bartender behind the bar was polishing glasses.

Yan Ming stopped in front of the bar, took a flat, silver‑metal container the size of a cigarette case from his suit's inner pocket, and opened it.

Inside were scarlet particles ground into an ultra‑fine powder.

He poured the powder into a freshly opened bottle of Bordeaux red wine.

The deep red wine's color did not change at all.

Yan Ming personally poured five glasses, placed them on a tray, and said to the bartender, "Five distinguished guests at the main table, please serve the wine."

The bartender glanced at him, about to say that this violated Regulation.

Yan Ming's gaze fell calmly.

The bartender's mouth closed, his eyes went dim, and he lifted the tray and walked toward the main table.

Yan Ming watched the tray leave the bar.

He turned, walked to the corner of the banquet hall beside the grand piano, pulled out the bench, and sat down.

His fingers rested on the keys.

He played lightly: Mozart's Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, third movement.

"Turkish March."

The sprightly melody floated beneath the crystal chandeliers; a few guests turned, gave him a polite two‑clap applause.

At the main table, Tao Zhengyang lifted his wine glass.

"Come, come, to the Federation's prosperity—"

Five glasses clinked, the crisp glass sound almost inaudible amid the lively piano.

They drank.

Yan Ming's fingers slipped from A major into B♭ minor.

Chopin, Piano Sonata No. 2, third movement.

"Funeral March."

The transition was extremely natural; no one around noticed the change, only feeling the melody had subtly become more solemn.

When the prelude ended, the first odd sound came from the main table.

It was Zheng Kui.

He froze as he set down his glass, his arm convulsing twice as if shocked, while his neck twisted leftward at an anatomically impossible angle—his cervical vertebrae emitting a rapid series of creaks.

"Old Zheng? Had too much to drink?" Tao Zhengyang laughed, patting his shoulder.

As his hand touched, Tao Zhengyang's smile froze.

Because the shoulder he touched was bulging.

Not a swelling of muscle.

Something inside was pushing outward.

Zheng Kui's suit split open. Under the stark white lighting, everyone could clearly see what surged from the fissure—a gray‑yellow, wet, blood‑streaked mass of tissue, its surface covered by a transparent membrane, beneath which tiny dark‑red vessels writhed.

Zheng Kui opened his mouth to shout.

His mouth didn't open—because his mouth was disappearing.

The skin at the edges of his upper and lower lips fused and healed at a visible speed, as if someone had sewn it shut from inside. Within ten seconds, the lower half of his face became a single bulging wall of flesh, only his nostrils still flaring violently.

"Ah——!!"

The scream came from the other end of the main table. The bureau chief of the Urban Construction Division, wearing a silver-gray custom suit, pushed himself up from the table—his hands were no longer hands.

His ten fingers swelled and thickened, bones flipped outward, and after the nails fell off, the nail beds were growing curved gray keratin layers.

His skull swelled rapidly; the skin at his temples stretched to the limit and suddenly split, two clusters of trembling feelers probing out from the crack.

The banquet table was overturned.

Shards of porcelain, lobster shells, red wine, and sauce splattered everywhere.

The screams in the banquet hall peaked within two seconds.

Five people.

Five of the most skilled at disguise within the federal system, in front of everyone, revealed their true forms in an irreversible way.

Tao Zhengyang's mutation was the most spectacular.

He ripped off his own shirt, revealing a chest and abdomen no longer human—his entire torso bulged with countless pustules of various sizes, which swelled and burst under body heat, each burst pustule sprouting a semi-transparent fleshy tendril tipped with a barb.

His spine burst out from his back, becoming a series of jagged bone protrusions like a zipper, dragging flesh upward and coiling, holding his shape into a deformed silhouette over two meters tall.

He could no longer speak.

The sound issuing from his deformed throat sounded like someone scraping glass with a fingernail.

Those tendrils began to lash.

The guest nearest him—a middle-aged woman in a qipao—had her ankle seized by a tendril, lifted upside down and flung toward the ceiling.

Blood spattered half the wall.

The banquet hall collapsed completely.

Hundreds of guests screamed toward the exit, stiletto heels shattering wine glasses on the floor, someone knocked down and never able to rise again.

Zheng Kui's mutated form charged into the crowd.

He had no mouth, but had grown four thick meat legs. His running speed was absurd; each step smashed spiderweb-like cracks into the marble floor. He caught up to a desperately fleeing middle-aged man, and with his mutated arms now like pincers, he clamped down—

The sound was lost in the screams, hard to hear. But the red blood seeping from his chest shone especially bright under the lights.

Five monsters.

One hundred twenty-seven guests.

All the doors of the banquet hall locked at the fifteenth second of the mutation, the internal mechanical seals of the locks filled tightly with an unknown gray-white substance.

No one could get out.

The piano music did not stop.

Yan Ming played Chopin's Funeral March in the corner.

The left-hand bass octaves advanced steadily, the right-hand melody mournful yet restrained. His ten fingers walked the keys with a composure unbefitting a slaughterhouse, more like a soloist in a concert hall seeing off an old friend.

Someone crawled up to his piano.

A young woman, her face covered in blood, nails torn off, clung to the piano leg, crying and begging for help.

Yan Ming glanced at her.

His fingers didn't stop.

"Who's your secretary?"

The woman sobbed, unable to catch her breath: "Director Tao, Director Tao's——"

"How many times did you pass his bribe approval for 97 million through your hands?"

The woman's sobbing hitched.

Federal Weird Investigation Bureau headquarters.

The alarm in the Data Center blared.

Thirty-six large screens simultaneously switched to external surveillance of the Yun Duan Club in Honghai City. The light leaking from behind the sixty-eighth floor's floor-to-ceiling windows was off—not the warm yellow of lamps, but a murky, pus-like orange-red, flickering behind the glass.

"B1-level Biological Mutation Alert! Target area: Sixty-eighth floor of the Yun Duan Club!"

"Detected five or more high-intensity anomalous energy sources activating simultaneously——"

"Confirmed: the attendee list includes Deputy Director Tao Zhengyang of the Federal Central Development Commission, Chairman Zheng Kui of Hai Tong Group, Judicial Supervision Committee Member Xie Lanting——"

The data analyst's voice grew faster and higher, ending in an uncontrollable tremor.

"Sir, up there it's all——"

"I saw it."

Wei Gong stood behind the command console.

He held a thermal cup in his right hand; the lid wasn't screwed on, steam rose from the rim, drifting over his immobile, mountain-like face.

But the veins on the back of his hand all bulged.

"Gospel Church." Wei Gong set down the thermal cup; the base tapped the metal tabletop, a soft sound that cut through the clamor of the Data Center.

"They've stabbed straight into upper society."

He lifted his head and scanned everyone present. His usual half-closed, murky old eyes were now opened to the limit.

Clear.

Cold.

"Pull all video records of everyone who entered the Yun Duan Club tonight, finish comparison within three minutes. Lock onto the mutation source. Simultaneously notify the Honghai City garrison to seal off a two-kilometer radius, launch civilian evacuation plan."

Orders came down one after another without pause.

Then he picked up the encrypted communication terminal on the table.

Dialed.

He waited for two sounds.

"Su Ming."

Lord Wei's voice sank three pitches.

"Yun Duan Club, 68th floor, top‑priority emergency. More than five High‑risk Mutated Entities, over a hundred guests, live casualties unknown. The Gospel Church's Seed has already seeped into the Federal Core Layer—"

The other end of the Communicator was silent for less than half a second.

"Understood."

Two words, then hung up.

Su Ming shoved the Communicator back into his waist.

The lights in the Underground Parking Garage were dim, and beside him Jia Shan crouched, gnawing on a Mutated Entity's limb fragment, his mouth full of Compound Eyes turning in the darkness, the chewing sound sticky.

Su Ming drew the Suppressor Electric Blade from his lower back and pressed the switch.

A blue‑white arc of electricity leapt twice across the blade's edge, illuminating his expressionless face.

"Go."

He kicked Jia Shan.

"Go collect the corpses for the big shots."