Chapter 423: Field Study

The Qiu Ce Yuan heavy armored vehicle rolled over the gravel road, and the chassis kept shaking continuously.

The carriage was packed with thirty-two students; the seats were hard plastic, and even the anti‑shock cushions under their bottoms did little—each time they hit a pothole, the whole row bounced.

"Damn, this road is terrible!"

Sitting in the back row, Fatty Li Xiang massaged his sore tailbone, grinned, and pulled a bag of spicy sticks from his backpack, the ripping of the wrapper sounding especially crisp in the carriage.

The girl beside him disdainfully covered her nose.

"Put it away, what are you eating?" Across the aisle, the leading teacher Fang Ming gave Li Xiang's chair back a tap.

Fang Ming was in his early forties, his face not very fleshy, but the corners of his eyes bore several deep scars—not from knives, but scraped by some kind of Weird tentacle. He is a senior agent of the Federal Weird Investigation Bureau, codename "Iron Wall," with abundant combat experience. Today he leads the team for a field study, with an agent partner on each side, the three of them sandwiching the students in the middle, forming the front and rear lines.

"Report, Instructor, I'm not eating, I'm doing psychological conditioning," Li Xiang held up the spicy stick, his expression absurdly serious, "Fear makes people hungry, hunger makes people irritable, irritability makes people err. So for mission safety, I must first feed myself."

A burst of laughter erupted in the carriage.

Fang Ming was too lazy to reply, turned his head and scanned the students in the whole vehicle. Most of them were in good spirits, chattering about what they might see later, their excitement far outweighing any nervousness.

That's normal.

Today's destination was the Ling Shui District B-09 quarantine ruins, marked as "Class C Harmless"—meaning the internal Weird had been completely cleared by the clearing team, and although residual Weird Domain frameworks hadn't fully dissipated, they possessed no offensive capability. In plain terms, the place is now just an empty shell.

Safe beyond safety.

Suitable for bringing a group of junior division newbies to see the world.

The armored vehicle slowed and stopped.

The rear hatch hydraulically opened, and the outside light poured in, gray and dusty, carrying a damp, musty smell.

The students streamed out like fish, stepping on the broken asphalt, looking around with varied expressions.

On the left, a residential building was cleanly sliced off at the seventh floor, its cross‑section's reinforced steel bars twisted outward, covered with gray‑green unknown mycelium. On the right, a bus lay skewed on the road, half its body crushed, the windshield smeared with dried, blackened blood.

The distant sky looked off.

It wasn't the normal overcast gray, but a faint, uneven milky hue with a weak halo flowing at the edges. That was a visual effect of the residual Weird Domain framework refracting atmospheric light, called "Domain Membrane Afterimage" in the bureau's textbooks.

"Wow," Li Xiang said, chewing the spicy stick, tilting his head at the broken building, "it's like a bug clipping through a model in a game."

Fang Ming walked to the front of the squad, raising a palm‑sized black device in his right hand.

A indicator light was embedded on the front of the device.

Green.

It glowed steadily.

"Everyone, listen up," Fang Ming's voice was low but carried far in the ruin's silence, "this thing in my hand is called the TR-07 Weird Detection Instrument, just fielded last year, its sensitivity four times that of the previous generation. A steady green means no active Weird reaction within a two‑hundred‑meter radius. A flashing yellow indicates a faint fluctuation, possibly residual Weird energy decay, or perhaps an interference signal on one of you. A red—"

He paused, his gaze sweeping over each young face.

"If the red light comes on, you drop to the ground, say not a word, and wait for my command. Understand?"

"Understood!" thirty‑two voices shouted unevenly.

"Your voice sounds like a mosquito. One more time."

"Understood!!"

Fang Ming nodded, fastening the detection instrument back to his waist.

"Alright, form ranks. Two per team, spacing no more than three meters. Watch your footing; there's a lot of broken glass—don't twist an ankle and have to write a casualty report back."

The squad began pushing deeper into the ruins.

Students at the front were still whispering, some secretly snapping photos with phones, and Fang Ming gave a glare, prompting them to put the devices away quickly.

Chen Yao walked at the very end of the squad.

She hunched her shoulders, both hands gripping her backpack straps, the knuckles turning a powder‑white from strain. Every time she passed a severely damaged building, she lowered her head, her steps becoming smaller and more tentative, wishing she could shrink herself into the unnoticed weeds by the corner flowerbed of the playground.

A textbook cowardly template.

Two steps ahead of her, Lu Yu walked hands‑behind‑back, his stride casual.

His gaze was scanning.

Not the curious, dart‑around kind, but a rhythmic, fan‑shaped visual sweep—every three seconds his sight rotated, covering sixty degrees to the left‑front, straight ahead, and sixty degrees to the right‑front, then using peripheral vision to fill the side‑rear blind spots.

It's the standard observation pattern of a scout.

Yet he performed it so naturally that to an outsider he seemed just an ordinary boy curious about the ruin's scenery.

The squad turned into a narrow alley.

Gray mycelium clung to both walls, some spots swelling into bun‑sized fungal pods, their surfaces damp, resembling the outer membrane of some organ.

"Are these mycelia poisonous?" a student asked.

"Harmless," Fang Ming replied without turning his head, "the organic residues left by the Weird Domain have been tested; their composition is close to ordinary fungi, with no Weird energy activity. But don't go touching them—if you get allergic, I won't take responsibility."

The squad continued deeper.

Lu Yu's breathing rhythm changed.

From a normal fourteen breaths per minute, it adjusted down to ten.

That frequency expands the diaphragm's range by twenty percent, creating a minute pressure differential in the chest cavity's airflow—in simple terms, it turns the lungs into a low‑precision barometric sensor.

A crude method, but effective.

He was using his own body to sense changes in the surrounding air density.

When passing the third intersection, his pupils contracted by a few tenths of a millimeter.

Something was off.

Hard to pinpoint what was wrong. If forced to describe, the air had an extra "texture"—not temperature, not humidity, not scent. It's the feeling you get when you step into an empty room, see no one, yet the hairs on the back of your neck tell you something is watching.

He kept quiet.

The green light on Fang Ming's waist‑mounted detection instrument remained steady, like a reassuring safety pill.

Lu Yu glanced at that green light, his mouth twitched slightly, and he said nothing.

The squad passed through the narrow alley into an open plaza ruin. In the center, there had likely been a fountain, now only the concrete shell of a pool remained, half filled with turbid rainwater, a gray film floating on the surface.

Fang Ming raised his hand, signaling the team to stop.

"We've arrived. Operate within this vicinity, radius no more than fifty meters. Split into groups to record Weird Domain residual features, take photos, measure, fill forms. Gather after twenty minutes."

The students dispersed.

Li Xiang pulled the skinny tall guy from his group toward the abandoned shop on the left, muttering, "Can we find any valuable Weird fragments here?"

Chen Yao stayed still. She stood in place, both hands still gripping her backpack straps, eyes fixed on her toes.

Lu Yu walked to her side and turned his head sideways.

"Aren't you going to take a look?"

"I... I'm a bit scared."

Chen Yao's voice was as thin as a mosquito's whine, her eyelashes fluttering continuously.

Well performed.

Lu Yu lifted his gaze, his eyes passing the edge of the Square and landing on the truncated skyscraper in the distance. The building's cross‑section, against the milky sky, showed a sickly gray‑white; gray‑green mycelium hung from the fissures, motionless in the still air.

No wind.

He had felt a faint air convection in the alley earlier, but now, in the open area, there was none.

And—

He inhaled gently.

The damp musty smell in his nasal cavity was fading. It wasn't merely weakening; it was being diluted by some colorless, odorless substance. The composition of the air was changing.

Lu Yu lowered his head and glanced at the back of his hand.

The hairs stood upright.

All the hairs, aligned in the same direction, were upright.

Physiologically, this is called the piloerection reflex. The usual triggers are cold or fear. Yet the temperature was around sixteen degrees, and he felt no fear.

Then only one explanation remained.

His body was issuing a warning to his consciousness.

Three seconds later, the warning became reality.

The temperature began to drop.

It wasn't a gradual cooling but a cliff‑like plunge—skin on his cheek tightened instantly, his exhaled breath solidifying into a puff of white mist before his eyes. The thin layer of sweat that had been evaporating on the back of his right hand instantly froze into a fine sheet of ice crystals.

Fang Ming also noticed. He cursed, lowered his head, and looked at the detector at his waist.

Green light.

It was lit.

No change.

A fifteen‑degree temperature differential, and the detector gave no response.

Fang Ming's complexion completed the full shift from puzzlement to a steel‑blue hue within two seconds. He was a veteran investigator, not a rookie. He knew exactly what it meant—

It wasn't that the instrument was broken.

It was that the physical laws in this space had been altered.

The very definition of temperature had been rewritten, so a detector operating on conventional physical parameters could not register any anomaly. Under the overwritten Rules, this temperature was "normal."

The Federation's proud scientific inspection system, two years of development, billions invested, claiming a Weird warning network covering all frequencies, was no different from a scrap piece of metal before the true high‑level Rules.

"All assemble! Everyone, move toward me! Now! Immediately!"

Fang Ming's shout erupted across the Square.

The students were terrified. Several girls who were taking photos hadn't even put away their phones, scrambling and rolling toward Fang Ming. Li Xiang's spicy snack fell to the ground, and the skinny tall guy grabbed his arm, pulling him back desperately.

Lu Yu didn't run forward.

He stepped back half a pace, approaching Chen Yao calmly.

With his left hand turned back, his five fingers hooked onto her slender wrist. The force was precisely balanced, pinching the gap between the radius and ulna—the spot hardest to escape.

"Countdown five seconds. Run with me."

His voice was pressed to a whisper, the airflow almost brushing Chen Yao's ear.

Chen Yao jerked her hand sharply, the motion large, appearing purely as a startled reflex.

But during that swing, her right hand retrieved from her school uniform pocket a black disc the size of a nail cap. She pressed with her fingertip. The rice‑grain‑sized red crystal at the disc's center was crushed, emitting no light, no sound.

That was the emergency distress device Chen Shao had given her.

"Five."

Lu Yu began the countdown.

At the edge of the Square, the gray‑white mist began to churn unusually. The uniformly distributed milky Domain Membrane remnants were contracting toward the center from all directions, and at the contracting edge, a thread of color seeped out.

Crimson.

Rich as arterial blood before dilution.

"Four."

Fang Ming drew the standard‑issue weapon at his waist. The two agents beside him stood back‑to‑back, one raising his gun to block the left flank's view, the other kneeling on one knee, rummaging in his waist pouch for a signal flare.

"Three."

The gathered students huddled together; some began to cry, others trembled, Li Xiang's face turned as white as paper, his lips quivered a few times, but no sound emerged.

"Two."

The crimson mist had already engulfed the entire north wall of the Square. The mycelium on the wall, upon contact with the red mist, twisted violently, swelled, then melted like a lit candle into a viscous black liquid, flowing down the brick seams.

"One."

Lu Yu's hand tightened.

But he didn't have time to run.

Because an odd sound came from the crowd.

Pat.

It was very light.

Like a drop of water hitting a stone.

The boy walking at the front of the student crowd stopped.

His name is Qian Cheng, from Class B, average grades, ordinary looks, wearing a pair of black‑framed glasses, the type that disappears completely when thrown into a crowd.

He raised his right hand and slowly brushed the back of his neck.

Then he turned around.

Everyone saw his face clearly.

Or rather, they saw the spot on his face where features should have been.

The eyebrows were gone. The eyes were gone. The nose and mouth were gone, too.