Chapter 397: Why Did You Betray Me?

Gray‑white filaments grew wildly from Mo Shu's palm, pierced the skin, broke the Nail, and within less than two seconds covered her entire right arm.

Mo Shu's almond eyes still held tears.

Those eyes looked at Jiang Yuan, their pupils reflecting his outline, the sorrow and despair in them about to overflow, her lips trembled as if she still wanted to say something.

But she didn't have time.

Jiang Yuan saw with his own eyes—the last glimmer in Mo Shu's eyes, that thread which, even after learning she was a Fake Person, never went out, the part that belonged to "Mo Shu", was snuffed out within a fraction of a second by an invisible hand.

Clean and swift.

Leaving no residue.

Her pupils suddenly dispersed, the iris color fading from dark brown to gray, then from gray to a murky white that exists on no color chart. Both eyeballs lost focus at once, no longer seeing anything, no longer recognizing anyone.

Immediately after, her face began to collapse.

Not deformation. Dissolution.

The contours of her features resembled erased pencil lines: the bridge of the nose vanished first, then the corners of the mouth, then the eyebrows. The skin surface of the whole face erupted with dense gray‑white signal specks, swirling, churning; those specks were not optical phenomena but tangible matter—tiny particles burrowing out of pores, boiling on the skin surface.

The cartilage in her ear cracked with a "ka‑ba" sound and shattered.

The cheekbones spread outward to both sides.

The jaw dislocated, the mouth opened to an angle impossible for human facial bones, empty of teeth and tongue, becoming a gray‑white void leading inward.

Mo Shu's body expanded.

The fibers of her combat suit emitted a dense cracking sound as they were torn from the inside—first the shoulders, then the chest, then the waist and abdomen.

Gray‑white flesh chunks surged out of the fissure, each covered with fine filamentous Tentacles; the tips of the Tentacles opened and closed with miniature Tooth‑like Structures, resembling a sea anemone yet not a sea anemone, because sea anemones do not emit that metallic, hissing friction sound.

A stature of about 1.6 meters swelled in less than ten seconds to three meters. Four meters.

The ceiling was pushed upward. The Reinforced Steel Bar concrete slab developed spider‑web cracks, debris rattled down, striking the ever‑growing gray‑white flesh, and was instantly engulfed.

The Corridor was no longer sufficient. Both walls were simultaneously burst, bricks and pipes splashing outward, dust filling the air, Jiang Yuan was blown five or six meters by the gust, his back smashing hard against a load‑bearing column at the corner.

But his eyes never closed for a second.

He saw.

At the base of the gray‑white Meat Mountain, at the very core of the constantly writhing, proliferating tissue spreading in all directions—not a single core, but countless ones.

Dense gray‑white nodules, some fist‑sized, some only the size of a Nail, each nodule's surface covered by a translucent film, beneath which wriggled signal specks.

Those nodules pulsed.

Frequency consistent. Rhythm consistent.

Like a heartbeat.

Not the beat of a single heart, but the resonance produced when hundreds of hearts beat together.

The entire Corridor vibrated with that frequency, the still‑standing light tubes overhead shattered, glass shards raining down across the floor.

The True Sight Eye flashed wildly in the ruins.

A white light column struck the Meat Mountain, illuminating its internal structure completely.

At that moment, Jiang Yuan realized.

Each nodule was a Seed of a Fake Person.

Each Seed, upon close inspection, was attached to an ethereal gray‑white Umbilical Cord extension, those Umbilical Cords passing through walls, floors, the entire building's structure, radiating outward in all directions.

Three hundred ninety‑one Umbilical Cords.

Jiang Yuan knew that number all too well.

He had personally cut off three hundred eighty‑five tonight, and before returning he cut six more.

Now he understood.

Why the Investigation Bureau contained so many Fake Persons.

Why, when he previously observed Lao Zhou and the other team members, their breathing rates and other metrics were all identical.

Because they all originated from the same Mother Body, the same Mother Body fabricated them.

Mo Shu.

She is the Uterus.

She has, since a certain day, rooted within the Federal Weird Investigation Bureau, continuously splitting, replicating, and spawning new individuals—the source.

Those three hundred ninety‑one Fake Persons were all birthed by her.

Jiang Yuan's lower spine went numb, numb to the point of losing sensation.

The True Sight Eye's light column kept rotating, the light reflected off the Meat Mountain's surface, painting the collapsed Corridor space with crooked white light strips.

Each sweep of those light strips allowed Jiang Yuan to clearly see the changes within the Meat Mountain—nodules pulsing faster, Tentacles extending outward, new gray‑white filamentous strands sprouting from the broken Umbilical Cord remnants, attempting to rebuild connections with the slain individuals, consolidating their power.

The reconstruction failed.

Because those individuals had already been completely destroyed by Jiang Yuan.

But the failure itself enraged the system.

All the nodules of the Meat Mountain lit up simultaneously.

The gray‑white turned a ghastly green, like hundreds of eyes opening at once. From the deepest part of the Meat Mountain came a tremor—a vibration not of physical sound waves, but of the Rules layer.

Jiang Yuan's bones resonated.

They weren't being shaken. They were resonating. The lingering Weird factor in his skeleton responded to this frequency, the Shadow Ghost in his chest emitted a heart‑rending screech, desperately resisting the forced synchronized tug.

Quasi‑S.

The weight of those three words finally hammered into Jiang Yuan's perception.

He has seen S-Class Anomaly Domain. He has trampled A Rank Monster. He wields the Spinal Sword, commanding a full regiment of Shadow troops, and is hailed by the Faction: The Federation as the Strongest Yujie.

But he knows one thing clearly.

His current strength is merely the ceiling of A Ji.

The thing in front of him had already almost crossed that line.

Besides that, Jiang Yuan did not know that.

The Fake Person's rule—"always able to kill the others within the group"—was taking effect.

He was a member of the Investigation Bureau.

Mo Shu was also a member of the Investigation Bureau.

The same group.

The rule determined: she could kill him.

This rule was not a physical amplification. It was a probabilistic distortion.

It meant that every coin's heads or tails would fall in the direction favorable to Mo Shu. With each attack‑defense exchange, Jiang Yuan's judgment lagged by a few hundredths of a second, his strength weakened by a few percent, his luck fell just that little bit.

Those "little bits" stacked together became absolute suppression.

In this battle, relying on himself alone, he was destined to have no chance of victory.

Meat Mountain emitted a second tremor.

This time it came with a sharp scream.

The frequency was twice the upper limit of human hearing; Jiang Yuan couldn't hear it fully, but his eardrums were bleeding. Warm liquid ran down his ear canal to his jaw, stuck to dust, and formed a dark‑red scab.

Then Meat Mountain moved.

There was no warning.

A gray‑white mass six meters tall and weighing several tons was catapulted toward him, its speed compressing the air into a visible white cone. The remaining load‑bearing structure of the Corridor was shredded by the shockwave, fragments scattering to both sides, and the Reinforced Steel Bar twisted into a braid.

Jiang Yuan's body began to act before his brain could react.

Shadow Ghost exploded outward.

Black shadows surged from behind his spine, covering a ten‑meter radius in 0.3 seconds; the Shadow Legion's formation filled instantly—hundreds of Shadow Soldiers materialized simultaneously from the floor, walls, and ceiling, howling as they lunged at the incoming Meat Mountain.

He grasped the Spinal Sword at his waist with his right hand.

The blade lit up. A milky‑white Bone Flame ignited along the edge, and within the Bone Flame was not fire but a Weird‑against‑Weird absolute corrosive force.

Jiang Yuan stepped forward.

That step pressed a two‑meter‑diameter pit into the cement floor. Shadow Ghost pushed his bodily functions to physiological limits of over a thousand percent—muscle fibers were reinforced by Shadow at the microscopic level, bone density tripled instantly, and the oxygen content in his blood surged to four times normal.

The price was excruciating pain.

Every muscle burned.

But he didn't care.

He raised the Spinal Sword above his head; black shadows and white Bone Flame intertwined on the blade, twisting into a spiral. Hundreds of Shadow Soldiers simultaneously contracted their formation, compressing all within a three‑meter range in front of the blade, stacking into a layered Shield Wall.

Then Meat Mountain arrived.

Impact.

The world shuddered.

The ground beneath Jiang Yuan shattered outright, and he and his sword were blasted backward.

Ten meters. Twenty meters.

His back pierced two partition walls; the third wall was a solid reinforced‑concrete load‑bearing wall, and his occiput left a human‑shaped dent in it.

The Shadow Shield Wall was more than half gone. Hundreds of soldiers lost over ninety in the collision; the survivors were crippled, wavering in the air, ready to disintegrate.

Something was dripping from Jiang Yuan's corner of his mouth.

He lowered his head.

It was red.

Not just a little. It surged out mouth after mouth. Something in his lungs had ruptured; with each breath, the blood‑froth he coughed up carried fragments of tissue.

The Spinal Sword remained in his hand. He didn't let go. Three cracks appeared on the blade.

Jiang Yuan leaned against the wall, tilted his head back, and stared into the smoke‑filled depths of the Corridor.

His mind raced faster than ever, but every calculation path reached the same conclusion.

He couldn't win.

An A Ji ceiling striking a S Ji target wasn't off by a fraction; it was a dimensional crushing—his previous sword swing had already been at full‑state maximum output, and it cut into Meat Mountain's surface by less than twenty centimeters.

Twenty centimeters.

Against a six‑meter‑tall Meat Mountain, that was like a tickle.

The smoke was slowly dispersing.

The gray‑white outline re‑solidified within the dust cloud; Meat Mountain bore no damage. The cut had fully healed, and the newly formed surface was even smoother than before.

It slowly straightened its body.

Hundreds of grim green nodules flickered, appearing and vanishing in the dust, arranging into some Weird pattern.

Then, from the indescribable depths of that Meat Mountain, a voice emerged.

It wasn't a roar.

It wasn't a scream.

It was a human voice.

Sweet. Lively. With a rising intonation.

Playful, matching the shallow pear‑shaped dimples.

"Jiang Yuan...... why did you betray me?"