Shen Ge had “dealt with” the majority of the New God Cult followers in the underground laboratory. According to Sun Wu, the small portion that remained were the ones who had recently been transferred there, and whether they had “colluded” with those demons would have to be investigated slowly after Deng Yuqi took over the place.
Although Shen Ge’s methods were a bit bloody, there was no denying they were the most effective and quickest way for him to achieve his goal.
And this “underground laboratory” wasn’t just limited to the two floors where supernatural equipment was processed—further down was where the New God Cult conducted their research on abnormal humans.
However, their research level was far below that of the abnormal human organization in the “real world,” which left Shen Ge somewhat disappointed. His hope of using clues from this world to track down that organization had fallen through.
That aside, the New God Cult also had a substantial collection of supernatural gear—a whole warehouse full. Unfortunately, most of it was standard-issue equipment, and high-grade gear like what Priest Jiang used was rare; most of it was probably in the hands of the bishops and high priests.
Although the cult’s research data on abnormal humans wasn’t as advanced as that of the “real world,” Shen Ge had developed a good habit: useful or not, he’d make a copy and pass it to Li Xiang.
So he had Captain Chen find him a storage device and copied all the data from the underground lab. Without Little Qi around, Shen Ge had to do this sort of thing himself.
By evening, Deng Yuqi and Liu Jiayi arrived at the underground laboratory with the main force. Everyone had expected a tough fight, only to find themselves walking straight into a finished job.
After capturing the New God Cult’s “branch,” Deng Yuqi, Liu Jiayi, and several captains discussed with Shen Ge and decided that since they now had the cult’s “criminal evidence” in hand, they should press the advantage and take down the entire New God Cult in one go. Even if the Council tried to back them up, they could take the opportunity to root out the cult’s “hidden agents” within the Council, saving the time and effort of investigating later.
After the meeting, Deng Yuqi assigned Liu Jiayi to guard the underground lab and oversee both it and the renovated temporary base. The shelter side would be handled by her, along with Tu Doupi and other fighters from the Hunter Guild.
Shen Ge, of course, was part of the main strike force. When he returned to the shelter with the main army, he expected the New God Cult to resort to desperate measures in the face of irrefutable evidence. But to his surprise, most of the cult members chose to surrender on the spot.
Wary of a trick, Deng Yuqi ordered the soldiers to lock all the surrendered cultists in the underground cells, to be dealt with after the bishops and high priests were taken care of.
With the loss of the bulk of their followers, the New God Cult’s combat effectiveness plummeted, leaving only the bishops and high priests putting up a stubborn resistance. Unlike Priest Jiang, the high priests who stayed at the shelter were the bishop’s most loyal followers, and they didn’t hesitate to turn themselves into abnormal humans to fight the allied forces.
But with Shen Ge’s help, these high priests were subdued without causing too much damage, leaving only the bishop himself, who fled to the secret chamber beneath the church.
When Shen Ge, Deng Yuqi, and the others arrived at the underground chamber, they saw the bishop, draped in a black cloak, kneeling in the center of a blood-red magic circle. He held a red candle in both hands and was muttering something under his breath.
“The New God Cult is finished. You’re the only one left. Do yourself a favor and surrender—don’t make this harder than it needs to be!” Two captains stood on either side of the magic circle, rifles raised, barking at him.
Shen Ge, on the other hand, studied the blood-red circle with keen interest. In his mind, the New God Cult of this world was likely being manipulated behind the scenes by the abnormal human organization, but he had never seen a circle like this before.
Of course, Shen Ge didn’t buy into any “mystical” nonsense. After all, no matter how bizarre the anomalies and abnormal humans were, there was always a “scientific basis” to be found.
Even the most “superstitious” anomalous trait—”misfortune”—could be traced back to the effects of supernatural energy causing natural disasters, without ever needing to invoke gods or spirits.
So to Shen Ge, the bishop’s actions were more “ridiculous” than anything else. He didn’t believe for a second that this shabby little circle could “summon” a seventh-order anomaly.
“Foolish humans! Your actions have thoroughly enraged the great New God! It will annihilate everything here, sacrifice your souls, and let the world be reborn!” The bishop lifted his head. Though he wore a white mask, the venom in his voice made the twisted face beneath it all too easy to imagine.
“Uh, buddy, your ‘New God’ is only seventh-order. There are eighth-order and ninth-order anomalies above that. I haven’t seen a ninth-order one yet, but I’ve crossed paths with eighth-order a few times… and even an eighth-order anomaly doesn’t have the power to ‘rebirth the world,’ let alone your seventh-order god.” Shen Ge’s tone carried a hint of helplessness, his words dripping with disdain for the bishop’s so-called deity.
This infuriated the bishop completely. With a furious roar, he grabbed a blood-red dagger and stabbed himself in the chest, shouting something in an unintelligible language.
?
“Hey, no need to off yourself just because you lost an argument, right?” Shen Ge quipped.
But the moment the words left his mouth, the entire space began to shake violently. Since they were dozens of meters underground, the tremor was intense.
Within seconds, chunks of rock started falling from the ceiling. The area around the bishop’s magic circle was particularly bad—slabs of stone crashed down rapidly, nearly burying the two captains. Luckily, Deng Yuqi was quick on her feet and dragged them to safety.
“Move! This place is caving in!”
“Fall back!”
“Go!”
As Deng Yuqi and the Hunter Guild leader gave the order to retreat, everyone scrambled toward the exit of the church. But Shen Ge didn’t budge.
“Shen Ge, get out first! We’ll talk later!” Deng Yuqi urged.
Shen Ge replied, “You all go ahead. I think something’s off about this guy… Don’t worry, a collapse of this scale isn’t going to stop me.”
“Are you serious?” If the situation weren’t so dire, Deng Yuqi would have really wanted to ask what he meant by “a collapse of this scale isn’t going to stop him.”
After all, the shelter was built atop the original underground research facility of the former Anti-Anomaly Department. If dozens of meters of reinforced concrete and steel came crashing down, even a mole would have a hard time digging out.
But the “confidence” Shen Ge exuded gave Deng Yuqi the strange feeling that he actually had a way. And with the situation growing more perilous by the second—if the shelter really collapsed, the residents and resources would become the top priority.
Seeing that she couldn’t talk him out of it, Deng Yuqi had no choice but to leave first, leading the troops to evacuate the survivors and transfer the shelter’s resources.
Shen Ge approached the bishop, who was still kneeling on the ground with his head bowed, maintaining his sacrificial pose. He reached out to grab the man’s cloak—when suddenly, the bishop looked up, pulled a gun from somewhere, and fired point-blank at Shen Ge.
Bang!
But unfortunately for him, the moment the bishop made his move, Shen Ge had already activated his dual-anomaly state—combining the Stillness Domain and the Barrier Domain. He didn’t even need to dodge; the bullet was stopped cold by the invisible wall.
The shock in the bishop’s eyes behind the mask was unmistakable. But Shen Ge also noticed that the wound where the blood-red dagger had pierced his chest was real—blood was still streaming down steadily. The fact that he was still alive, let alone capable of firing a gun, all but confirmed that the bishop was indeed an abnormal human.
Shen Ge was about to subdue him and drag him out for interrogation when the magic circle beneath the bishop suddenly flared with a blinding white light. In the next second, the bishop vanished from before Shen Ge’s eyes.
“?
What the hell?
Shen Ge clearly hadn’t expected that twist. But before he could think it through, the collapse beneath the church worsened rapidly.
He was about to use “Collapse” to escape upward, but something still felt off—especially that “white light.” It was all too familiar. It was exactly the kind of method the Twelve Branches’ abnormal humans used most often.
With that thought, realization dawned on Shen Ge. He rushed to the magic circle, raised his butcher knife, and slammed it down against the floor several times.
Clang! Clang!
Two strikes carved out a large chunk of the floor, and the hollow sound beneath confirmed that there was empty space underneath.
Shen Ge pried up the floorboards and sure enough, there it was—a teleportation device of the kind used by the abnormal human organization. He had seized one of these before in Rong City, but the branch there had studied it for a long time without making any progress.
“Tch. Sure enough, another charlatan.” Shen Ge stood up and activated “Collapse,” deciding to first get back to the surface to figure out what had caused all that ruckus, and then find a way back down to “salvage” the teleportation machine. After all, with “Collapse,” drilling through the earth would be easier for him than for any mole.
But just as Shen Ge was about to leave, the entire underground area of the church gave way. An enormous worm burst up from below and swallowed Shen Ge in one gulp.
This disgusting, rotting-flesh-colored worm was at least thirty to fifty meters long, cylindrical in shape, with a gaping maw lined with concentric rings of teeth on top.
After swallowing Shen Ge, it kept boring upward. Above ground, Deng Yuqi and the others who were evacuating residents saw this massive creature erupt from beneath the earth, and their hearts sank.
Normally, various supernatural detection devices were installed around the shelter, so any high-level anomaly approaching would trigger an alarm.
But this giant worm had appeared and collapsed half the shelter without any warning whatsoever. Deng Yuqi couldn’t help but suspect it was the New God Cult’s “trump card,” hidden beneath the shelter—to be awakened if their misdeeds were exposed, triggering a final, suicidal attack against the allied forces.
But the truth no longer mattered. What mattered was how nearly a hundred thousand shelter residents could escape this worm’s rampage.
“Captain Deng, you lead the evacuation and keep salvaging resources. I’ll take the team and draw this anomaly away,” Tu Doupi said. He and several captains led a large group of soldiers, opening fire on the giant worm to get its attention and lure it away from the evacuation zone.
But this was underground, and the evacuation was far from smooth. In the blink of an eye, dozens of soldiers were swallowed whole.
This was precious time bought with the soldiers’ lives, and Deng Yuqi couldn’t let their sacrifice be in vain. She pressed on with the evacuation.
Fortunately, the shelter had been built within the underground research facility, with collapse and underground anomaly attacks already taken into account. There were over a dozen safe evacuation routes alone, and evacuation drills were held regularly. So even in an emergency, the shelter residents didn’t descend into complete chaos—things never spiraled entirely out of control.
When Deng Yuqi led the main force to the surface, she saw that the area beneath the fallen “spire” ruins—near the defensive line made of scrap car frames—had collapsed into a massive sinkhole.
The giant anomaly worm was burrowing in and out of the pit, accelerating the shelter’s collapse. According to supernatural energy detectors, this worm was at least fifth-order.
A fifth-order anomaly had been lurking beneath the shelter, and several factions hadn’t found a single trace of it—which spoke volumes about the New God Cult’s terrifying capability.
In that moment, a horrifying thought flashed through Deng Yuqi’s mind: the New God Cult had fallen too easily. This might have been a trap all along!
Just then, in the middle of the giant worm’s body, two figures suddenly appeared out of thin air, as if they had burst straight through the worm’s belly.
The next second, with a deafening boom, they crashed into a nearby abandoned building.
Deng Yuqi only caught a glimpse of the silhouettes, unable to make out who they were. She immediately ordered Fang Mingyue to continue leading the evacuation while she took a few people to investigate.
Inside the rubble, the “bishop” in his black cloak was pinned against a pillar by Shen Ge, who held him by the collar, with the anti-anomaly revolver pressed to his forehead: “Getting your heart pierced doesn’t kill you—I wonder if getting your head blown off will?”
After being swallowed by the worm, Shen Ge had followed his usual approach: find the anomaly’s “core,” destroy it, and dismantle the creature from the inside. But inside the core, he found the bishop hiding and healing himself.
Shen Ge had already suspected the worm’s appearance wasn’t a coincidence—it was clearly a long-hidden weapon of the New God Cult. Now he had proof.
The bishop was stunned by how quickly and easily Shen Ge had reached the core. He had hoped to use his knowledge of the anomaly’s internal structure to escape, but Shen Ge destroyed the core, “blasted” him out, and literally kicked him out of the creature’s body.
“Y-you… I’m immortal! The ‘New God’ has granted me eternal life. Even if you pierce my heart—even if you blow my brains out—I won’t die! The New God is beyond the comprehension of you foolish humans—” The bishop glared at Shen Ge, though a hint of panic crept into his voice.
Shen Ge cut him off: “Save it. You’re just an abnormal human who’s transplanted a few extra hearts using anomalous cells. ‘New God’s blessing’—that line might work on ordinary people, but we’re both abnormal humans here. Drop the act.”
The bishop froze: “Y-you’re an abnormal human too?”
Shen Ge didn’t answer, instead asking: “Let’s start with your background. Celestial Stems and Earthly Branches? The Abnormal Human Association? Or the splinter faction—the Twelve Branches?”
“Y-y-you!” The terror in the bishop’s eyes confirmed Shen Ge’s guess: the bishop was indeed from the abnormal human organization.
“Not talking?” Shen Ge raised an eyebrow, his finger twitching as if about to pull the trigger. “Then let’s see how many shots your three heads and six arms can take!”
With his cover blown, the bishop panicked: “W-wait! I’m not the bishop! I’m not the bishop! Don’t shoot!”
