Chapter 402: Out of Control

It was 2:17 p. m., the sunlight was beautiful, so beautiful that one felt this city should have no disaster.

But disaster came.

It did not fall from the sky, nor did it drill up from the ground. It grew out of every street, every residential building, every face illuminated by a phone screen.

When the crowd surged out of the subway entrance, Special Forces Team 3 Captain Chen Feng was patrolling the outer perimeter of the Weird Domain isolation zone with twelve people. He heard a sound, turned his head, and stared dumbfounded for a full three seconds.

It wasn't dozens of people.

It wasn't hundreds of people.

It was thousands of people.

A black mass of heads spread from the far end of Linjiang Avenue, covering every inch of the eight‑lane two‑way asphalt. Someone held up a hand‑written placard, ink still wet, the characters crooked—"Expose the Truth", "Break Privilege", "Share Information", "We Have the Right to Evolve".

Someone played a live‑stream video on a phone; the North American United President's voice blasted out of thousands of speakers at once, mingling into an indistinguishable stew of noise.

Chen Feng's radio crackled.

It wasn't a single channel sounding.

All channels rang simultaneously.

"Report to headquarters! Massive crowd detected on Linjiang Avenue, estimated over three thousand, moving toward Weird Domain isolation zone A‑07!"

"Same on Wenchang Road—at least five thousand—we can't stop them!"

"Eastern Suburb isolation zone alert! Civilians have pushed to the second line of defense! Repeat, second line of defense!"

Chen Feng turned the radio volume down to the minimum.

No need to listen.

He looked up at the black tide before him. The frontmost people were less than two hundred meters from the riot‑control barbed wire, moving quickly, driven by a blind, ignited frenzy.

Their eyes shone frighteningly.

Not anger, not fear.

It was longing.

A longing that had been suppressed for too long, and upon suddenly seeing an exit, cared for nothing else.

"Captain, what do we do?" Behind him, teammate Xiao Zhou lifted his gun, muzzle down, finger resting on the trigger guard, his whole arm trembling.

Chen Feng gave no answer.

Through his earpiece came Wei Gong's voice.

The elder's voice was somewhat distorted by the encrypted channel, yet each word struck clearly.

"All units, receive orders."

"Never fire on civilians."

"Repeat—never fire on civilians."

"They are the deceived, not enemies."

"Use every non‑lethal means to block. Do not fire."

"Violators will be dealt with by military law."

The channel fell silent for two seconds.

Then all channels simultaneously replied, "Copy."

Chen Feng slipped the gun back into its holster and locked the safety.

"All personnel holster weapons," he said evenly, "form three horizontal lines and block in front of the barbed wire."

Xiao Zhou opened his mouth: "Captain, over three thousand—our twelve—"

"I'm not as good at math as you; don't make me calculate this."

Chen Feng pulled the riot shield from the vehicle, held it before him, squatted into a horse stance, the soles of his shoes grinding the ground as he shifted forward, finding the most stable posture.

"Just hold it."

The crowd pressed forward.

One hundred fifty meters. One hundred meters. Fifty meters.

The faces of the front row were now discernible: a middle‑aged man in a plaid shirt, a university student with a backpack, an older woman pushing a small vegetable cart, a young mother cradling a child.

Ordinary people.

All of them ordinary people.

They shouted slogans, wave of sound pressing upon wave, pushing those behind them forward; those in front were shoved by those behind and couldn't stop, turning the whole street into a one‑way flowing river.

Thirty meters.

Twenty meters.

The frontmost people collided with the Special Forces' riot shield.

The impact traveled from the shield's surface to Chen Feng's forearm, then to his shoulder, then to his spine. He clenched his molars, his foot slipped half a step backward, the shoe sole scraping a white line on the cement.

"Hold firm!"

Twelve shields. Over three thousand.

The numerical crushing manifested faithfully in the physical realm. The crowd kept pressing forward, the riot shield squeaking under the push, the teammates' backs nearly touching the barbed wire behind them.

"Stop pushing! Behind is the Weird Domain isolation zone! Entering will kill you!" Chen Feng shouted hoarsely.

No one listened.

Or rather, even if they heard, they didn't care.

Someone in the crowd laughed, laughing until tears streamed.

"Scammers! All scammers! What Weird Domain! What danger! You just don't want ordinary people to have power!"

"Why can you be the masters of the Weird, while we can only wait for death!"

"Move aside! We're going in!"

Chen Feng's shield was seized from the side by a hand. It belonged to a woman in her fifties, with permed curls and a floral pajama, indistinguishable from the aunt playing mahjong in the game room downstairs.

Her finger joints gripping the shield's edge turned white.

Then—

Crack.

The riot shield's frame warped.

The carbon steel frame.

was bent by hand.

Chen Feng's pupils contracted sharply as he stepped back half a pace.

The woman's arm bulged with blue veins, but the vessels' color was off—not the normal blue‑green.

They were red.

Crimson.

It seemed something was flowing beneath the skin, staining the vessels into fine red lines.

At the same time.

West City, quarantine zone B‑03 of the Weird Domain.

The scene of the crowd battering the defense line was almost a copy‑paste.

But this side collapsed even earlier.

Because the leaders were not a single person.

They were seven.

Three women in their fifties, two youths who looked like students, a middle‑aged man in sanitation uniform, and an old man leaning on a cane.

The old man was the first to move his hand.

He hooked his cane onto the steel wire mesh, like pulling a clothesline, and with one hand ripped the thirty‑kilogram electrified riot wire net off the concrete post.

The current crackled, sparks splashed onto the old man's hand, scorching a patch of his skin black.

He didn't even furrow his brows.

The two 'students' followed closely, each grabbing an end of the wire mesh and tearing outward.

The sound of metal hinges snapping was piercingly clear amid the clamor.

The twelve‑meter riot wire net was ripped in half by two youths who seemed under twenty, as if tearing newspaper.

"Charge!"

No one knew who shouted the first cry.

The crowd surged in like a flood through the gaping breach.

The Special Forces member guarding the second line was knocked to the ground by the wave of people. Someone stepped on his back of the hand, another kicked his helmet; a piece of his visor shattered, glass shards embedding in his brow bone.

Blood ran down his eye socket, smearing half his vision.

He didn't let go.

Both arms clutched the concrete barricade tightly, his whole body being trampled by the crowd; the Anti‑Stab Suit on his back was deformed by the pressure, and a dull ache radiated from his ribs.

"Stop, don't go forward......"

The voice was drowned out by the footsteps and chants of thousands.

No one heard.

The other member beside him was shoved down, his occiput striking the curb stone, instantly losing consciousness. Yet his final action before blacking out was to reach out and grab the strap of a little girl's backpack as she ran forward.

The girl, about eleven or twelve, wore a pink backpack and was swept by the crowd toward the quarantine zone.

The member yanked her out of the flow and shoved her behind the low wall of the roadside flowerbed.

Then he himself was trampled by the surging crowd behind him.

Investigation Bureau Headquarters.

On the command center's big screen, forty‑eight panels flickered simultaneously.

Each panel showed the same scene—crowd, defense line, collapse.

The only difference was the speed of collapse.

L's fingers hammered the keyboard at breakneck speed, speaking so fast his tongue almost bit itself.

"A‑07, B‑03, and C‑11 quarantine zone defenses have been breached. D‑05 and E‑09 are under pressure, expected to fall within six to eight minutes."

"The Special Forces' request for reinforcement has already been queued to the seventeenth channel."

"But we have no one."

The last five words, L said slowly.

Wei Gong stood before the screen, his hands clasped behind his back.

He said nothing.

L continued: "After the 'Scavenger' operation cleared three hundred ninety‑one Fake Persons, the headquarters' actual personnel shortfall reached twenty‑one percent. Adding the losses from the Bone City battle and the Ling Shui operation, the currently deployable mobile forces—"

She paused.

"... are less than forty percent of the normal strength."

On the screen, within the C‑11 quarantine zone view, three Special Forces members linked arms in front of the Weird Domain boundary. Fifty meters behind them lay the domain's influence zone, where the air visibly warped along the line.

The crowd pushed them backward.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps.

Retreat two more steps, and they themselves would enter the Weird Domain.

But they didn't move aside.

Wei Gong stared at those three people.

"L."

"Here."

The old man's voice wasn't heavy, but the pauses between each word were drawn out.

"Summon back all the manipulable tricksters."

L said nothing further, turned and sat back at the terminal.

On the screen, the image of Isolation Zone B-03 flickered briefly, as if something had struck the camera.

When the picture recovered, the camera captured the leading "civilians" at the front.

The aunties' floral pajamas had sleeves rolled up above the elbows.

On their exposed forearms, scarlet vascular patterns stretched from the wrists to the shoulders, writhing beneath the skin like living roots.

Wei Gong's gaze fell on those scarlet patterns and lingered for three seconds.

The old man's jaw muscle twitched.

"Gospel Church."

His voice was very low.

It wasn't a question.

Things had completely gone out of control.

The Weird Domain isolation zones of the six Core cities were breached simultaneously.

Not pierced by Weird.

But smashed by people.

On the large screen in the Investigation Bureau's command center, the surveillance of Isolation Zone D-05 finally captured the full view of those "leaders"—nineteen in total, positioned at the front of the rioting crowds across the six cities.

Their disguises varied. Some were fishmongers at a market, some high school girls in uniforms with ponytails, some retired senior cadres with party badges pinned to their chests.

But the same thing crawled on all their arms.

Scarlet vessels. From fingertips to collarbones, dense and tangled, as if something had rewired a circulatory system inside them.

They didn't shout slogans.

They were responsible for only one thing—clearing a path.

They twisted streetlight poles by hand as battering rams.

With one arm they flipped two‑ton riot trucks.

They smashed tempered‑glass barrier panels with their foreheads; the scalp split open then healed within three seconds, barely any blood spilling.

Then the real civilians poured in through the gaps they tore.

A black, unhesitant tide.

In the command center, a young communications soldier stared at the screen for a long time, his coffee gone cold untouched. He turned to ask the colleague beside him, his voice wavering.

"It's over......"

On the screen, a middle‑aged man in slippers sprinted past a toppled barbed wire fence, excitedly racing toward the Weird Domain. He ran about forty meters, crossing the visibly warped air line.

Then his body began to deform.

It started at the ankles. Bones cracked with a crisp sound, skin melted like wax and flowed down. He opened his mouth to shout, but what emerged from his throat was no longer a human voice.

Three seconds.

A puddle of unidentifiable flesh appeared on the ground.

The people behind saw it.

Some stopped. Some screamed and ran back.

But more kept charging forward.

Because they didn't see.

The crowd was too dense; what happened up front couldn't reach the rear. Those in the back only saw people ahead running, only heard the chant "Charge," and only knew that direction held the "Evolution" and "Power" they craved.