Chapter 383: Abnormal

The Weird Domain codenamed "Mud Swamp" was officially declared flattened seventeen minutes ago.

Jiang Yuan knelt on one knee on the charred ground, gulping sulfur‑smelling air into his lungs.

Sweat ran down the line of his jaw, staining a dark patch on the collar of his combat uniform.

He spread the palm of his left hand.

A murky eyeball lay there silently, its pupil vertical, the iris an unnaturally gray‑green hue, its surface covered by a thin, oil‑like film.

It felt icy, without warmth, yet a clear, regular pulse of fluctuation spread outward from its interior.

This is the core of the Mud Swamp Weird Domain.

Jiang Yuan stared at the eyeball, and in his mind a manual was force‑fed to him—not text, not voice, but an intuitive "understanding":

Placing it before the eyes can pierce all falsehoods cloaked by Weird disguises.

While possessed, the ability to sense Weird crises gains a brief boost.

The Shadow Legion beneath his feet continues to contract slowly back into shape.

Those soldiers formed from condensed darkness receded like ebbing tide, one after another slipping back into Jiang Yuan's Shadow, and the last to vanish was the vanguard Rain Night Butcher, which, before sinking into the ground, silently glanced back at Jiang Yuan, its hollow face revealing no expression.

Jiang Yuan clenched the eyeball, rolled over and stood up.

His knees felt a bit weak. After forty‑six consecutive hours of combat, even though his body had been reshaped by Weird power, the fatigue accumulated in his muscles was no joke.

He shook his head, shaking off the buzzing in his temples, and began to examine the object in his hand seriously.

So nice.

In today's battlefield, Weird disguises are proliferating, and the greatest fear in combat isn't a head‑on clash but being unable to tell whether what stands before you is a person or something else entirely.

Seeing through the essence is like having a cheat that lets you see through cards.

He fished a palm‑sized lead‑lined Containment Box from behind his waist; its lining was the latest rule‑blocking coating issued by the Investigation Bureau's Research Department, designed to temporarily seal unclassified Weird artifacts.

With the latch snapping open, Jiang Yuan gently placed the eyeball into the groove, closed the lid, and locked it.

"True‑Sight Eye."

He muttered a name for it, then slipped the Containment Box back onto the most convenient spot on his waist, the clasp clicking shut.

This thing must be taken back to headquarters and handed to Wei Gong, so the Research Department can study it thoroughly; perhaps they can replicate a similar detection device.

The Weird Domain's boundary is already receding, the ink‑green mist hovering over the ruins thinning at a visible rate, revealing a grayish horizon behind it.

The lingering sense of rule‑pressure in the air also wanes, like a clenched fist slowly releasing its fingers.

The safe zone was set up at an abandoned gas station three hundred meters beyond the Weird Domain's edge, where the Special Ops Squad had already built a campfire. The flames flickered on the broken walls, giving a faint illusion of a makeshift camp.

Jiang Yuan dragged his lead‑filled legs over and sat on the nearest concrete slab to the fire. As his rear touched it, he leaned back, his occiput resting against the icy metal panel, feeling so comfortable he almost hummed.

"Jiang Team."

Deputy Captain Lao Zhou carried a pot of warm water over, jingling it in his hand. He had a square‑shaped face, a scar from an old injury on his nose bridge, and when he smiled the scar squeezed together with the wrinkles, giving him a very earnest look.

"Good work, have a sip of something hot."

He handed over the kettle, and the free hand patted Jiang Yuan's shoulder with just the right amount of pressure.

"We owe this to you. If your Shadow Legion hadn't blocked the retreat, that core would have escaped and caused a huge mess."

Jiang Yuan took the kettle, unscrewed the lid, and a burst of steam hit his face.

"When we get back to headquarters I'll need to take leave," Lao Zhou crouched, tossed a log into the fire, sparks crackling onto his face, "and then I'll give my newborn‑moon daughter a good hug."

He rubbed his hands, his tone carrying a slightly embarrassed smile.

"These days, watching a child grow up isn't easy."

Jiang Yuan was about to reply.

The aluminum spout of the kettle was already at his lips, warm vapor carrying a faint metallic scent into his nostrils.

But in that instant, his right index finger twitched unconsciously.

It wasn't cold. It wasn't fatigue. Something on his perception layer detonated an extremely faint spark—like a half‑heard mosquito buzz at his ear, its source unknowable yet unmistakable.

"True‑Sight Eye."

He had just touched the eyeball with his bare hand. The box was closed, but the lingering rule resonance still clung to his senses, like stepping from bright light into a dark room, the after‑image on his retina not yet fully faded.

His Weird sensing ability is, at this moment, in an unusually acute window.

Jiang Yuan lifted his head.

Lao Zhou's face was close, less than two feet away. The firelight struck from the side, splitting his square face into half warm orange, half Shadow. The corners of his mouth were upturned, his cheekbones slightly raised, three lines etched at the corners of his eyes.

A standard, relaxed, heartfelt smile.

Wrong.

Jiang Yuan's back, from the coccyx upward, grew cold segment by segment.

This smile—the degree of the mouth's upward tilt, the arc of the cheekbone muscle contraction, the angle the orbicularis oculi folds the eye corner—was too precise. So precise it was as if someone used an anatomy textbook, calibrating fiber by fiber.

A genuine human smile isn't like that.

When people smile, there are flaws. The corners may be slightly crooked, the crow's‑feet on each eye differ in depth, and the activation order of facial muscles carries unrepeatable individual differences—physiological habits built over decades that cannot be perfectly replicated.

Yet Lao Zhou's smile lacked all that.

Every line, every angle landed exactly on the standard answer.

As if it had been "drawn" on.

Jiang Yuan kept his expression unchanged. He brought the kettle to his lips, took a slow sip. The warm water slid down his esophagus but could not suppress the cold churn rising in his stomach.

His peripheral vision began to shift.

Five people gathered around the fire.

Directly opposite was communications soldier Xiao Li, wiping the shortwave radio antenna with a grayish cloth, three strokes, glancing up at the fire, then lowering his head to continue wiping.

To Xiao Li's left was demolitionist Zhao Zheng, leaning against a tipped gasoline drum, arms crossed over his chest, chin slightly raised, chatting intermittently with nearby scout Sun Rui.

Sun Rui nodded, with small but steady motions.

To the right were sniper Chen Lei and medic Wu Ting, sitting back-to-back; Chen Lei was maintaining the bolt of his sniper rifle, while Wu Ting was organizing supplies in the first-aid kit.

Six people, plus Old Zhou squatting in front of him, made seven in total.

Everyone was doing their own thing. Everything was normal. Everyone was relaxed.

But Jiang Yuan noticed something.

They were blinking.

That would be trivial—of course living people blink. But the issue was that their blinking frequencies weren't quite the same. Xiao Li blinked about once every three seconds, Zhao Zheng every four to five seconds, Sun Rui just over two seconds—at first glance it seemed each had their own rhythm, matching normal physiological variation.

But at one extremely brief moment,

everyone blinked at once.

Six pairs of eyelids closed and opened in the same millisecond, as if the picture had skipped a frame.

Then their frequencies returned to normal.

If it weren't for the aftershocks of the "True Vision Eye" pushing his perception to the limit, Jiang Yuan could never have caught this detail—it happened too fast for the naked eye to register.

He saw it.

He also saw more.

Zhao Zheng's chest rose and fell—breathing, a three‑second cycle.

Sun Rui's chest also rose and fell—breathing, likewise a three‑second cycle.

Xiao Li, Chen Lei, Wu Ting—three seconds, three seconds, three seconds.

Seven people. If you count Old Zhou as well,

they had identical breathing rates.

The onset of inhalation matched the same beat, and the extent of chest expansion matched the same increment.

Seven bodies.

the same metronome.

Jiang Yuan's finger slid down from the kettle and lightly rested on his knee; his fingertip rubbed the rough fiber along the seam of his pants, back and forth.

They were his teammates who had fought side by side with him for forty‑six hours. Old Zhou, in the third‑layer Weird Domain Rules Zone, warned everyone to dodge the acid spray. After the communications were destroyed, Xiao Li lugged a twelve‑kilogram backup radio four kilometers to rebuild the signal link. Zhao Zheng blasted open the first layer of armor on the core entity.

Jiang Yuan looked around; the wreckage of the gas station beyond the firelight quickly fell into darkness, and the lingering mist of the Weird Domain in the distance had not yet fully cleared, limiting visibility to no more than fifty meters.

He set down the kettle, stood up, and brushed dust off his pant legs.

The motion was natural and casual, like a young man who had finished heavy work preparing to digest and take a leisurely stroll.

"I still feel the outskirts aren't completely clean; I'll do a patrol."

Old Zhou looked up at him, concern appearing on his painted smile: "Don't go, Jiang Team—you're almost fifty hours without sleep."

"I'm used to it."

Jiang Yuan turned his back to the fire and stepped into the darkness.

Firelight stretched a long shadow behind him; the edge of the shadow twitched subtly, not a normal play of light and shade, but no one noticed—or rather, the things by the fire chose not to notice.

He walked twenty steps.

Thirty steps.

Forty steps.

The firelight could no longer reach him.

In the dark, Jiang Yuan's steps did not stop, but his right hand quietly slid to his waist; his fingertip found the edge of the containment box's latch, and his thumb pressed against the spring.

A light flick.

Click.

The latch sprang open.

The box lid popped open a slit, and the dull gray‑green eye within leaked a thin cold gleam that fell on the web of Jiang Yuan's thumb.