There were no strange entities visible nearby, yet the system detected a shielding reaction and a spectral energy reaction of tier 5 or above. Combined with the spectral black mist filling the surroundings, the very absence of any strange entity was itself extremely strange.
Shen Ge stood on a small boat at the center of the lake. The spectral black mist around him was slowly gathering, and as it drew closer, it grew thicker, connecting with the gloomy sky to form a giant black egg that seemed intent on slowly swallowing Shen Ge whole.
“Gurgle.”
“Gurgle.”
At that moment, Shen Ge heard the distinctive swallowing sound of strange entities—loud, like two claps of thunder suddenly exploding.
What surprised him was that the sound wasn’t coming from the vortex channel at the bottom of the lake. It seemed to come from the black mist in all directions.
The drum-like swallowing sound gradually faded, then became somewhat like a fish blowing bubbles, accompanied by the sound of bubbles popping.
“No strange entity visible, yet I can sense spectral energy and hear sounds made by strange entities…” Shen Ge felt something was increasingly off.
The lake surface still showed no change—not even a ripple, let alone the sound of popping bubbles.
Just then, the lake water suddenly condensed into several water tentacles that lashed toward Shen Ge at extreme speed. Although Shen Ge dodged sideways, the limited space on the boat meant the water tentacles caught up with him.
Fortunately, Shen Ge was in the habit of condensing invisible barriers for defense, so the water tentacles failed to wrap around his body and were blocked by an invisible barrier.
But these were tentacles made of water, after all. The moment they touched the invisible barrier, they spread to both sides, binding the defense Shen Ge had condensed.
The next second, Shen Ge felt a tremendous force dragging him toward the bottom of the lake. But the instant the water tentacles bound the invisible barrier, Shen Ge had already amplified his strength. With a fifty-fold strength enhancement, the water tentacles couldn’t drag him into the water as they wished.
If the water tentacles hadn’t appeared, Shen Ge would likely have wrapped himself in an invisible barrier and descended to investigate the vortex channel at the bottom of the lake. But since the other party wanted to drag him in, the situation was different. At the very least, he couldn’t rashly enter the water before confirming it was safe.
The water tentacles failed to pull Shen Ge down, but it seemed they were about to be pulled out of the lake surface. Strangely, Shen Ge’s pulling didn’t reveal any strange entity being dragged out of the water. Instead, the lake surface bulged upward—it felt like a “slime” from a magical world.
“Wait, could this whole lake have come to life?” Shen Ge increasingly felt that this lake was a gigantic strange entity. Combined with the strange giant mouth he’d seen on Cherry Blossom Island that could lead to the “future,” this feeling of “familiarity” was becoming more and more obvious.
With his strength amplified, Shen Ge successfully suppressed the strange entity’s power. The next second, with a loud “splash,” a “wave” was pulled out from the bottom of the lake by Shen Ge.
The tilting giant wave made the small boat slide downward. Seeing this, Shen Ge directly condensed an invisible barrier in mid-air to escape the boat. Just as he expected, the entire “lake” transformed into a gigantic water-type strange entity, looking overall like a transparent octopus.
The water octopus, formed from the condensed lake water, simultaneously controlled dozens of water tentacles beneath its body to attack Shen Ge. Shen Ge raised his Specter-Destroying Revolver and fired a rapid series of shots—”bang bang bang”—the spectral energy bullets hit the tips of the water tentacles and burst into splashes of water.
“Gurgle—”
After a dozen of its water tentacles were severed, the water octopus opened a giant mouth on its body and unleashed a deafening sonic wave attack.
Unfortunately for it, Shen Ge was immune to sonic attacks. The moment the water octopus opened its mouth to release the sonic wave, his Silent Spectral Domain dissolved the sound waves, not even managing to stir up a splash.
Clearly, this strange entity had no consciousness. Even after its sonic attack was neutralized, it was still gaping its mouth and roaring. Shen Ge took the opportunity to pull the trigger and fire several spectral energy bullets into its mouth.
The penetrative power of the Specter-Destroying Revolver allowed the spectral energy bullets to pass through the water octopus’s mouth and burst several more splashes on its back.
Then, Shen Ge withdrew his Silent Spectral Domain and directly deployed his Invisible Spectral Domain, using “Heart Grab” to lock onto the opponent’s heart position.
Since the water octopus’s body was very murky, he couldn’t see inside at all. Shen Ge didn’t know whether it even had a “heart.” But so far, he had never encountered a strange entity without a heart, so he could only spend some time locking on with spectral energy.
But the water octopus clearly wasn’t going to let Shen Ge have his way. When the spectral energy of “Heart Grab” spread over it, it closed its giant mouth, and its entire water-ball body became like an iron wall, forming a hard spectral energy that solidified the water surface, making Shen Ge’s “Heart Grab” unable to penetrate the target’s body for the first time.
“Tch, interesting.” Shen Ge increased his spectral energy output, trying to break through the water octopus’s defense. But unfortunately, the opponent’s spectral energy intensity was on par with his own.
“Hardening, huh? Fine!” Shen Ge clenched his fist. With his strength enhancement reduced to thirty-something times but still active, he threw a punch straight at the iron-wall water barrier before him.
Splash—
Shen Ge’s spectral energy collided with the water octopus’s water-wall defense, producing a violent spectral energy distortion reaction. The distorted spectral energy made the previously calm lake surface surge like a tsunami, raising towering waves that formed water tornadoes sweeping outward, only to be torn apart by the distorted space and fall as torrential rain!
Shen Ge’s spectral energy dropped rapidly—”whoosh whoosh whoosh”—and he’d used up more than half. But in the end, this water octopus of the same tier as him ran out of spectral energy first.
Splash!
However, as the water octopus’s spectral energy was exhausted, Shen Ge—who was about to press the advantage—lost his target, because the water octopus simply “fell apart” entirely, and the water waves filled back into the lake.
Shen Ge looked at the lake water beneath his feet and once again released spectral energy to detect. He found that the lake surface had returned to the state it was in before the water octopus appeared.
“Well now, if you can’t win, you just shrink back, huh?” Facing the gradually calming lake surface, Shen Ge didn’t know what to do about this lake water for a moment. He couldn’t exactly go find a few water pumps to drain it, could he?
Shen Ge waited on the lake surface for nearly half an hour. After the water octopus disappeared, everything became calm. No strange entity traces were visible, but spectral energy intensity could still be detected, and it was affected by a shielding effect similar to “Non-Exit.” In other words, the system’s detection scan showed no changes whatsoever, as if that water octopus had never appeared.
Now Shen Ge was left with only one choice: enter the vortex channel at the bottom of the lake to investigate. This had been his original plan anyway—it was just that after the sudden appearance of the water octopus messed things up, he couldn’t quite figure out what the strange entity or weirdo hiding in the shadows was plotting.
If they were trying to stop him from entering, the water octopus that appeared kept trying to drag him into the vortex channel. If they wanted him to enter, the spectral black mist kept obstructing his advance.
What did this mean?
Playing hard to get?
Strange entities were playing such elaborate games now?
But following the convention of “since I’m already here,” he was already at the doorstep of this vortex channel. Not going in to take a look would be like visiting West Lake on vacation—knowing full well that West Lake vinegar fish is a trap, but still having to order one to feel complete.
With that thought, Shen Ge stopped agonizing. He deployed his Non-Exit Spectral Domain, and whenever he encountered obstruction from the spectral black mist on the lake surface, he increased his spectral energy output, forcibly condensing an invisible barrier to open a path to the vortex channel.
After Shen Ge jumped into the vortex channel, he found it closely resembled the throat passage of a high-tier strange entity leading to its rear—something he had to visit every few days. Combined with the water octopus…
If he considered this entire area as a gigantic fused strange entity—the water octopus as the head, the vortex channel as the throat, and further down as the strange entity’s body—it seemed to make sense.
After passing through the narrow vortex, he fell into a pitch-black place. Stepping on it felt soft and spongy, like stepping on a strange entity’s internal organs.
Shen Ge, as a frequent guest inside strange entities’ bellies, was naturally very familiar with this feeling. He pulled out a spectral energy flashlight and turned it on, shining it around.
Below was a “bottomless abyss.” On the “flesh walls” surrounding the passage, blood-red corrosive liquid continuously seeped out. When Shen Ge’s defensive invisible barrier touched it, it immediately sizzled—”zzz zzz zzz”—with white corrosive bubbles.
Shen Ge then noticed that in the crevices of the flesh walls, besides the seeping red liquid, there were many thumb-sized white things. Looking closer, they were all white flesh worms.
Shen Ge had seen these flesh worms before inside high-tier fused weirdos’ bodies. So he could be certain that the “mutation” of East Ring Lake was related to fused weirdos.
“System, scan the surroundings,” Shen Ge said.
[Consuming 100 system points, now beginning to mark targets containing spectral energy within a 10-kilometer radius—]
[Marking successful.]
This time, the system didn’t indicate being affected by a shielding effect similar to “Non-Exit.” Clearly, the world inside this vortex channel was different from outside.
Looking at it this way, if the earlier guess was correct—the water octopus was the fused strange entity’s head, the vortex channel was the throat, and below was the body—then what was blocking Shen Ge and the system’s detection scan was this “fused” strange entity’s outer skin.
“Is it the ground? Or something else?” Shen Ge had a bad feeling. This situation closely resembled how the weirdo organization had cultivated spectral kings in Cherry Blossom and Bang Country.
He’d only been in Dajing for less than half a month, and the weirdo organization had already stolen his base?
But on second thought, it seemed unlikely. After all, cultivating a spectral king—not to mention the manpower and resources required—just the cultivation time alone made it impossible to do without the Special Strategy Department noticing.
The current Rong City branch was not what it was two years ago. They could even prevent ordinary strange incidents in advance. There was no way they could miss something as big as cultivating a spectral king—unless this spectral king was being secretly cultivated by the Rong City Special Strategy Department themselves.
But in Shen Ge’s view, this possibility was even lower than not discovering a spectral king during the previous East Ring Lake investigation. After all, the previous East Ring Lake incident was never “closed”—the area was just sealed off for the Quanlong Mountain base to continue investigating. And Shen Ge had also been tied up by a series of events, with no chance to continue the investigation.
The most crucial point: Rong Mountain Psychiatric Hospital, the headquarters of the Weirdo Association, was right here by East Ring Lake. Combined with his several experiences exploring Rong Mountain Psychiatric Hospital in the dream world, then a spectral king that had been hidden for a long time suddenly appearing here… didn’t seem like such a big deal?
Anyway, he had to investigate either way. Shen Ge stopped overthinking and continued walking deeper into the “abyss,” first trying to see if he could find the “bottom.”
However, Shen Ge walked for about two hours and still saw no sign of reaching the bottom. The biggest difference along the way was that more and more blood seeped from the flesh walls, and the white worms wriggling in the flesh walls grew larger—from finger-sized at first to palm-sized now, like white bricks embedded in the flesh walls.
Just as Shen Ge continued walking forward, suddenly—besides the surrounding flesh walls—even the “ground” began to slowly wriggle.
“Gurgle—”
“Gurgle—”
As a deafening swallowing sound rang out, the entire passage came alive. The flesh walls and ground all showed visible writhing, “carrying” Shen Ge toward the abyss.
“Finally noticed my presence?” The main reason Shen Ge hadn’t entered using the three-trait concealment method from the start was that he wanted to use himself as bait to verify whether East Ring Lake had truly become a high-tier fused weirdo—which would mean there really was a spectral king beneath Rong City.
He’d walked for so long without any reaction from the other side, yet now it suddenly woke up, acting like it wanted to carry him toward its stomach.
“Fine, the conveyor belt’s already running. Saves me the walking.” Shen Ge simply gave up resisting and let the flesh walls carry the invisible barrier forward.
Then, the speed grew faster and faster. Shen Ge felt like a roller coaster starting up, reaching the peak, then suddenly plunging from the top.
After two or three minutes of extreme acceleration, suddenly—
“Splat—”
Shen Ge felt himself fall into a sticky pool. Fortunately, the invisible barrier blocked it, preventing him from being swallowed by the corrosive, disgusting sticky substance. But he had to continuously inject spectral energy to reinforce the invisible barrier, so his spectral energy hit rock bottom in an instant.
Shen Ge had no choice but to take out a mental apple and eat it in this disgusting environment, replenishing his spectral energy to prevent the sticky substance from penetrating the invisible barrier and swallowing him too.
Just as Shen Ge was still thinking about how to escape, it was as if a gate opened below, and he and the entire pool of sticky substance instantly poured out.
“…”
This is f**king ridiculous!
Shen Ge thought he’d been expelled by the fused weirdo in some unspeakable way, but the next second he found himself plummeting at extreme speed from high in the air.
Even if a strange entity took a dump, this was a sky collapse!
Below was a wasteland of ruins—collapsed buildings, a desolate apocalyptic scene. Not to mention humans and living beings, he couldn’t even see a single strange entity.
Thud!
With a loud crash, Shen Ge was slammed into the ruins. Fortunately, this time, to avoid such a situation, he had borrowed a spectral protective arm from Fang Mingyue that could deploy a spectral energy inflatable cushion.
During his previous trip to the dream world, the lack of Red Mist Battle Armor made Shen Ge realize many inconveniences. So before entering the dream world to transfer Cheng Shengnan back from Dajing, he had specifically “borrowed” several spectral energy equipment pieces from Fang Mingyue and other spectral agents.
These spectral energy equipment didn’t affect their combat effectiveness—they were mainly functional equipment like the “spectral protective arm inflatable cushion.”
He hadn’t expected them to be useful during the transfer process, but they came in handy here.
