“Go!”
Shen Ge raised his hand, extending a Decayed Blood tendril to coil around Fang Yaori. Then, stepping firmly with his Strange Skin boots, he leaped into the air. The next second, the colossal hand of the monster fused with the building came smashing down.
Boom!
Despite its immense size, the Fused Monster wasn’t clumsy. The strike was fierce and swift. It left a huge palm print on the ground before immediately lifting again, swiping at Shen Ge and Fang Yaori, who were now airborne.
Fortunately, Shen Ge was prepared. He reached out with his other hand to the right, extending another Decayed Blood tendril to coil around a balcony railing on a nearby building, quickly yanking them both to safety.
“Whoa, this mountain giant knows the Buddha’s Palm technique!” Fang Yaori quipped, unable to resist commenting as he watched the Fused Monster smash the ground again, leaving another massive handprint.
Shen Ge, now fully encased in his Red Mist battle armor, rolled his eyes at the comment. “You were scared to death a moment ago, and now you’re in the mood for jokes?”
“I’m just… holy cow!” Fang Yaori’s attention had been fixed on the Fused Monster, terrified of being caught and crushed by its giant hand. But when he turned his head and saw Shen Ge completely covered in the sleek, menacing Red Mist armor, looking even more like a monster than the actual monster, he gasped in shock. “Sh-Sh-Shen, Shen Tan, you, what is this?!”
Before Shen Ge could answer, Fang Yaori suddenly felt a violent, rapid descent. Shen Ge had used a Decayed Blood tendril to snag a lamppost below, swinging them forward like a pendulum.
Fang Yaori, bound by a single Decayed Blood tendril, was now flailing in the air like a kite on a string. This ultra-intense flying experience was far more thrilling than any bungee jump.
Tossed back and forth, Fang Yaori felt like he was about to throw up. Luckily, he hadn’t eaten much since evening; otherwise, he’d probably be vomiting bile by now.
“Shen, Shen Tan, isn’t there a way to completely get rid of this guy?” Fang Yaori couldn’t help but ask.
Shen Ge was no stranger to fighting anomalies of Rank 5 and above. He knew the most effective way to deal with a large, high-rank monster like this was to get inside its body and destroy its heart.
If he were alone, Shen Ge wouldn’t hesitate. He’d dive into the Fused Monster’s belly and go straight for its vital point.
But with Fang Yaori present, it was different. Once inside, there was no telling how long he’d be trapped. If danger found Fang Yaori out here, he wouldn’t be able to rescue him as quickly as before. And Fang Yaori, being such a prime “research material,” wasn’t someone Shen Ge was willing to abandon.
After some thought, he decided to replicate his approach with Hu Tinglan: entrust Fang Yaori’s safety to Xiao Qi.
“There’s only one way to finish it for good,” Shen Ge stated.
Fang Yaori asked instinctively, “What’s that?”
“Ever heard the story of Jonah?” Shen Ge asked.
Fang Yaori paused. He hadn’t heard of Jonah, but he had seen The Avengers. He remembered when Iron Man asked that question right before diving into the belly of the Chitauri leviathan.
“W-Wait, wait, Shen Tan. Don’t tell me you’re planning to go back inside the building now?” Fang Yaori’s voice trembled with fear. He had been terrified just sitting in the office before, unaware of the Fused Monster’s existence. Now, knowing it was a monster, he was supposed to go back in? You can’t be serious!
“Xiao Qi, keep a close eye on him!” Shen Ge commanded. Then, he kicked off hard against the outer wall of a nearby building with his Strange Skin boots, launching himself towards the Fused Monster in the distance.
“Roger that, Master!” Xiao Qi responded immediately. Several Decayed Blood tendrils coalesced from her Red Mist form and coiled tightly around Fang Yaori.
“AHHHHHHH!”
“HELP!”
“Shen Tan, I can wait for you out here!”
“I’m only 23!”
“…”
But a sharp whoosh cut through the air, followed by a sound like shattering glass. Shen Ge had used his Decayed Blood tendrils to form an Anomaly-Slaying Spear and pierced through a “window” on the Fused Monster’s body, re-entering its interior.
They landed in a pitch-black corridor. Xiao Qi thoughtfully used a few of her tendrils to hold flashlights, shining them around so Shen Ge could barely make out their surroundings.
The corridor was drenched in a bloody red, feeling disturbingly like being inside a monster’s intestine. Upon closer inspection, the walls themselves seemed to be pulsating, wiggle.
No sooner had Shen Ge steadied himself than the entire corridor began to shake violently. Faces emerged on the walls – twisted, ferocious, opening gaping, blood-filled maws to snap at him.
Shen Ge activated his “Immovable Anomaly Domain,” stepping into a bullet-time state. Instantly, the lunging, biting heads stretching towards him on elongated necks seemed to slow down, allowing him to easily sidestep their attacks.
Fang Yaori, wrapped up like a package by Xiao Qi with only his eyes and nose exposed, saw those horrifying mouths rushing at him. Before he could even scream, he felt a momentary daze, and suddenly Shen Ge had calmly brought him to the end of the corridor.
Teleportation? Whoa, that’s unbelievably cool!
Fang Yaori’s eyes nearly bulged from their sockets. Having been affected by the Immovable Anomaly Domain himself, his actual perception was that in the blink of an eye, Shen Ge had extracted them from the encirclement of monsters. How could that not be astonishing!
In that moment, Fang Yaori finally understood why his family elders, when asking his sister Fang Mingyue about her recent missions, would hear her describe Shen Ge as an omnipotent deity!
Shen Ge, still searching for the weakness of this bizarre corridor, was completely unaware that his casual display had just earned him another devoted fan.
Reaching the stairwell at the end, Shen Ge found the number of ghostly faces on the walls had multiplied. The face condensed on the largest wall was slightly different, appearing even more terrifying.
Shen Ge raised his hand. His butcher knife shot forward like a shooting star, trailing a flash of white light, its handle caught by a Decayed Blood tendril. It embedded itself into the wall with a thwump, carving a bloody gash. From the wound, thick, black, viscous fluid oozed out with a series of wet plop plop sounds.
The massive ghost face contorted even more, twisting into a mask of sheer agony and fury, and let out a piercing shriek. The sound was a horrifying fusion of voices Shen Ge and Fang Yaori knew well, gradually morphing into that same spine-chilling, raspy, suppressed voice that echoed down the corridor, stabbing painfully into their ears.
A flicker of recognition crossed Shen Ge’s mind. This scene felt familiar. He’d dealt with a monster like this before. Thinking back, he recalled the high-rank monster he’d encountered on Sakurajima.
“Master, the black gunk on the floor seems off!” Xiao Qi suddenly warned, directing a flashlight beam towards the ground with her tendril.
Shen Ge looked down. Something was squirming in the black liquid seeping from the ghost-faced wall. Countless thumb-sized black worms writhed together in a mass that was almost triggeringly claustrophobic.
It wasn’t just the floor. The bloody gash he’d cut in the wall was also teeming with the disgusting, terrifying black worms.
Shen Ge raised his hand again. The Red Mist armor coalesced into his Strange Fire Gauntlet, which spat a jet of black Strange Fire. The flames licked across the floor and up the wall, crackling and popping as they incinerated the worms, filling the air with a pungent, acrid stench.
Then, the entire wall began to melt under the black fire’s heat. As that huge, grotesque face dissolved, so did all the other faces lining the corridor.
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Whoosh!
Suddenly, a powerful surge of black mist exploded from the stairwell, both above and below. It plunged the upper and lower levels into an impenetrable darkness so absolute that even the flashlight beams couldn’t penetrate it.
Fortunately, Shen Ge had encountered this kind of light-obliterating Anomaly Energy black mist before. He remained calm, simply retreating to the center of the corridor, away from the stairwell, guarding against any potential ambush that might emerge from it.
Once the black mist stopped spreading, Shen Ge extended his intangible Anomaly Domain towards the blackened space ahead and used “Collapse.” The collision between his domain and the distorted space within the mist caused the black mist to warp and twist.
Judging by the rate at which his own Anomaly Energy was being consumed, Shen Ge could tell that this Rank 5 Fused Monster possessed a significant amount of power, nearing the sixth rank of Aberration.
“System, initiate scan.”
[Target locked. Commencing scan now.]
[“Fused Monster.” Characteristic: “Fusion.” Part of Artificial Anomaly Sequence 17. Current Rank: 5. Comprehensive Anomaly Energy: 9869%. Number of equipped Anomaly Energy items: Unknown.]
[Detected abilities—]
[“Worm Antibody”: Controls parasitic anomalies within its body to eliminate intruders. Worms can rapidly heal wounds by devouring each other.]
[“Spatial Distortion”: Creates Anomaly Energy black mist that warps space. Passing through the mist subjects one to spatial distortion, resulting in random exit points.]
[—]
[—]
[—]
[Weakness: Heart.]
Although Shen Ge had already suspected that the vital point for this type of massive high-rank anomaly and monster was the “heart,” having the system’s official confirmation was reassuring.
More importantly, the system had scanned and revealed the special abilities the Fused Monster had already manifested, making it much easier for Shen Ge to formulate a counter-strategy. The 1000 system points were definitely not wasted.
Shen Ge enveloped himself and Fang Yaori within his Unfolding Anomaly Domain and stepped directly into the stairwell shrouded in the Anomaly Energy black mist.
The system had confirmed this particular black mist only caused spatial distortion, with no other monsters hiding within. To Shen Ge, it posed no real threat.
Upon entering the stairwell, he didn’t find the expected stairs. Instead, he materialized in an even longer, narrower corridor.
Xiao Qi shone the flashlight in both directions. The standard-issue flashlight, which usually illuminated a distance of over ten meters, had its light “cut off” at around five meters.
“Shen, Shen Tan!” Fang Yaori suddenly spoke up.
Shen Ge, with Xiao Qi watching over Fang Yaori, had almost forgotten about him. He followed the light ahead and replied casually, “What is it?”
“I… I think I’ve been here before. When I came to the department to visit my sister, they brought me here. This seems to be where the rest rooms and interrogation rooms are,” Fang Yaori said nervously.
“Interrogation room?”
“Yeah, at the very end. According to them… even though the Special Strategy Department deals with anomalies, making interrogation rooms somewhat redundant, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”
Shen Ge wasn’t surprised. The Rong City branch had interrogation rooms too. After all, the department dealt not only with anomalies but also with monsters.
That’s why the interrogation rooms at the Rong City branch had undergone special modifications. Their effectiveness was roughly equivalent to the specifications of an anomaly containment cell, sturdy enough to handle Rank 3 anomalies and below.
“So?” Shen Ge didn’t quite understand why Fang Yaori was bringing up the interrogation room now. The entire building had merged with the monster. All its facilities were just manifestations of its internal organs. The monster could change the building’s internal structure at will.
It was like when Liu Zongrui merged with the villa at Deer Lake Water City; he repeatedly changed the house’s layout to trap Shen Ge inside.
Fang Yaori explained, “When I was waiting for my sister in the rest room, I accidentally overheard two agents from Department Two talking. They said the department had captured a monster before, and during interrogation in that room, the monster ‘melted.’ I asked my sister about it later, but she said the research division had already handled it. But that’s not the main point… The main point is, when that monster melted, it produced a big puddle of ‘black blood’… which was, like, a bit similar to the worms that came out of that ghost face you wounded in the stairwell.”
Shen Ge frowned. His intuition told him there might indeed be a connection. Perhaps it was a method used by the monster organization.
He was currently inside a dream world – a fragmented “ending.” But Fang Yaori had already heard about a similar monster in the “real world”…
This meant that, in the real world, Department Two of the Special Strategy Department might already be under the influence of the “Fused Monster,” slowly undergoing changes.
But even knowing this clue, Shen Ge was powerless for now. He was still trapped in the dream world. To deal with the “Fused Monster” in reality, he had to get out first.
“Wait! You said the interrogation room is deep on this floor?” A crucial thought struck Shen Ge. If the monster had melted inside the interrogation room and then merged with the building, did that mean the interrogation room itself was the “heart”?
“Yes, at the very end of this corridor.” Fang Yaori was certain, having recognized the restroom doors on either side.
Shen Ge moved forward as Fang Yaori directed. But halfway there, the black mist in the corridor grew thicker and thicker.
Stepping into the mist, the space became oppressively dark and heavy. Shen Ge slowed his pace, alert to his surroundings, when he heard a sticky, squelching sound under his feet – splat, splat.
He looked down. His feet were in a pool of dark red, blood-like viscous substance. It looked highly corrosive; the Anomaly Energy of his Red Mist armor was being slowly drained.
Luckily, he was fully encased in the armor. If any of that red gunk got on his skin, he’d probably lose his shoes, maybe even his feet.
The further he went, the more of the viscous substance there was. In less than ten meters, it was already up to his ankles.
“Reporting, Master. The Red Mist armor’s Anomaly Energy can sustain this for a maximum of 30 minutes,” Xiao Qi reminded him.
Shen Ge had to consider not only the time to get in but also the time to get out. The most pressing issue was that, hampered by the black mist, visibility was almost zero. He had no idea how far this so-called “end” really was.
Gurgle.
Gurgle.
Suddenly, a strange, gurgling sound, typical of an anomaly, caught his attention. He stopped, raised his hand, and sprayed a jet of black Strange Fire ahead.
Whoosh. The flame reacted with the Anomaly Energy black mist. In the distorted space, he could vaguely make out a “humanoid” figure slowly approaching him.
