Dark red blood blisters bubbled up from Cheng Shengnan’s palm. The boiling rotting blood armor slowly began to spread, from her palm to her arm, then to her shoulders. Soon, her entire “person” appeared to be in a boiling state. Although it looked strange and horrifying, Cheng Shengnan said she didn’t feel any pain or anything like that.
Little Seven had quickly completed a full scan: “Master, the abnormality with the secondary armor isn’t caused by external manipulation. Based on the test results, it looks more like it’s being influenced by the glowing dream fragments inside the mistress’s body, trying to fuse with her body to absorb the strange energy.”
According to Little Seven’s test results, when Cheng Shengnan wore the secondary armor to catch the glowing dream fragments, a “syncing” effect occurred. This allowed her, with the help of the secondary armor, to absorb the power of the dream fragments into her human body. The Red Mist Armor, essentially a Weird entity, sensed the dream fragment’s strange energy inside Cheng Shengnan and wanted to devour and fuse with it, thus causing the current situation.
After hearing Little Seven’s explanation, Shen Ge generally understood Cheng Shengnan’s condition. He clearly hadn’t expected this situation to arise.
There were only two choices now. One was to watch the secondary armor sync with Cheng Shengnan, turning her into a monster through this process.
The other was to use the monster samples from Yun’er, combined with the serum developed by Li Xiang, to try and separate Cheng Shengnan from the secondary armor.
“Captain Yang, contact the Minister and report the situation. I’ll take Shengnan and Yun’er to Professor Li Xiang’s lab,” Shen Ge said. He scooped Cheng Shengnan up by the waist, reached out and curled his hand around Yun’er, taking both of them as he leaped high, disappearing into the dark night sky on his Strange Skin Boots.
Professor Li Xiang had his own lab and team in the capital. Although it had become a “ghost town” after Li Xiang was pulled to the Quanlong Mountain Base, the equipment was still there. Plus, Shen Ge had given Li Xiang many research materials before entering the dream world, so he was definitely holed up in the lab right now.
Shen Ge had Little Seven call Li Xiang. It took several tries before he answered, and when he did, he immediately started complaining, clearly annoyed that Shen Ge had interrupted his experiment.
When Shen Ge told Li Xiang about Cheng Shengnan’s condition, the man suddenly became interested. “Strange energy fragments from a collapsing world? You have something like that hidden away?”
Shen Ge couldn’t explain everything to Li Xiang in a short time. After arriving at the lab with the two women, he had Li Xiang look at Little Seven’s test data.
By then, the fusion between Cheng Shengnan and the secondary armor was getting worse. In some places on her arms, the rotting blood armor had already started merging into her flesh, looking extremely gruesome.
What was even more terrifying was that the flesh on her arms was being torn open, and the Red Mist Armor was burrowing into her arms like insects, but Cheng Shengnan felt no pain at all.
What Shen Ge couldn’t understand the most was that Yang Yuxin couldn’t even touch the dream fragments, so how was Cheng Shengnan able to absorb them?
After all, strange energy strongly rejects humans. Without the boost of monster cells, “fusion” should be impossible.
After examining Cheng Shengnan’s arm, Li Xiang said, “It’s not clear what’s causing the fusion yet, but the situation isn’t good. We need to take immediate action to stop the fusion. Otherwise, once the secondary armor fully merges, it’ll be too late to separate them.”
Affected by the secondary armor, Cheng Shengnan already had one foot in the door of becoming a monster. Once the Weird cells in the secondary armor successfully fused with her cells, even if the fusion rate was less than 1%, according to current monster research conclusions, there would be no way to turn her back into a human.
Fortunately, according to Little Seven’s scan, the secondary armor was mainly focused on absorbing the strange energy from the dream fragments, not trying its hardest to take over Cheng Shengnan’s body.
“Miss Yun’er, the serum we developed last time is gone. I need to extract some of your blood and monster samples. Please cooperate,” Li Xiang said, picking up his tools and looking at Yun’er.
This wasn’t the first time Yun’er had cooperated with the monster research team led by Li Xiang at the Rong City Branch. She skillfully rolled up her sleeve, striking a bold pose that said, “Take as much as you need, don’t be shy.”
Extracting Yun’er’s monster samples wasn’t something Li Xiang could finish in a minute or two, but Cheng Shengnan’s situation was critical right now.
Strange energy is the energy of Weirds, and also their “food.” The Red Mist Armor was essentially a “fusion-type” Weird, so it couldn’t resist the temptation of the dream fragments.
After the last capture of dream fragments, the Red Mist Armor had gorged itself, leaving Shen Ge with a pile of dull fragments. That showed just how strongly the Red Mist Armor was attracted to them.
Shen Ge tried using his “Misfortune” transfer ability to move the strange energy inside Cheng Shengnan, but unfortunately, it failed.
His characteristic ability couldn’t stop the spread of the strange energy, and his strange domain couldn’t block the fusion of the secondary armor either. Shen Ge thought of one last option—
The recovery items provided by the system.
Through Shen Ge’s “verification,” he had determined that these recovery items were transferred by the system from the surrounding area or from the Strange Space using a transfer ability.
And the Strange Space was just the tip of the iceberg of the dream world. This meant the “extracted” recovery items could be products of a certain outcome or “future” research.
But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that the recovery items were developed based on Weird entities. They could have a healing effect even when the human body rejected strange energy.
Shen Ge had verified this in previous missions when he used recovery items on “sidekicks” like Fang Mingyue.
So, Shen Ge’s first thought was to use the “Internal Injury Recovery Pill” and the “Recovery Bandage” together, inside and out, to treat Cheng Shengnan. Even if it couldn’t stop the fusion of the secondary armor, as long as it could slow down the symptoms to some extent, it would buy time until Li Xiang extracted the monster samples.
After Cheng Shengnan took the “Internal Injury Recovery Pill” and was wrapped in “Recovery Bandages,” Little Seven scanned her again. The result showed that the fusion of the secondary armor had indeed been slowed down.
Mainly, the recovery speed provided by the “Internal Injury Recovery Pill” successfully stopped the tearing caused by the secondary armor, but it didn’t stop the secondary armor from absorbing the strange energy inside Cheng Shengnan. Compared to devouring Cheng Shengnan’s holy body, the strange energy inside her was more interesting to the secondary armor.
Cheng Shengnan had caught a total of six glowing dream fragments. According to Little Seven’s scan, two of them had likely been directly devoured by the secondary armor, and the remaining four were absorbed into Cheng Shengnan’s body.
In other words, Shen Ge and Li Xiang had to find a way to solve the fusion problem before the strange energy from the remaining four fragments was completely absorbed by the secondary armor.
The two of them worked hard for nearly two hours. Meanwhile, Yang Yuxin had found Deng Yuqi in Department 2. After learning what had happened and that Cheng Shengnan was in trouble, Deng Yuqi rushed over immediately.
When Deng Yuqi and Yang Yuxin arrived at the lab, they saw Cheng Shengnan lying on the operating table, covered in bandages. One of her arms was still normal-sized for an adult, but fist-sized blood blisters bulged from it, looking terrifying.
Her other arm had swollen to about three times its normal size. Some of the blood blisters had already burst, staining the bandages blood red.
The abnormal changes in her arms were the most severe; the changes on her body were minimal. Li Xiang guessed this might be closely related to the direct contact with the dream fragments.
Everyone helped Li Xiang with his work, bustling about until the next afternoon. Li Xiang successfully extracted the monster samples from Yun’er’s body and injected them into the secondary armor.
The reason for injecting it into the secondary armor, rather than into Cheng Shengnan’s body, was that the goal was to stop the fusion between the secondary armor and Cheng Shengnan, not to turn her into a monster.
The monster samples would cause the secondary armor to transform into a “fusion monster.” This would only make it work harder to absorb the strange energy inside Cheng Shengnan. Then, Shen Ge could try to peel off the secondary armor.
Waiting for the monster samples to take effect was a long process. It wasn’t until late the next night that the secondary armor had successfully fully absorbed them. But Li Xiang tried several methods to peel off the secondary armor, none of which succeeded. Shen Ge also tried many things on his end, all ending in failure.
Little Seven performed a scan and found that there wasn’t much strange energy left inside Cheng Shengnan, at most the equivalent of about half a fragment.
Shen Ge had to face a choice: continue injecting more reflective fragments into Cheng Shengnan’s body at greater risk, or find a solution before the energy of the last half fragment ran out.
Little Seven suggested, “Master, how about I control the Red Mist Armor and try to do a secondary fusion with the secondary armor, forcing a recovery?”
After discussing it with Li Xiang, Shen Ge agreed that this was the most likely method to stop, or at least delay, the fusion between the secondary armor and Cheng Shengnan’s body. So they approved Little Seven’s suggestion.
Little Seven controlled the Red Mist Armor to leave Shen Ge’s body. This was the first time Shen Ge had peeled off the Red Mist Armor. It felt like having his jacket taken off.
The rotting blood of the Red Mist Armor formed an “empty shell” covering the outer layer of the secondary armor on Cheng Shengnan’s body, and it began to devour and fuse with the secondary armor.
The next second, the entire Red Mist Armor – it was hard to tell if it was the main body or the secondary armor – began to boil, forming a giant, boiling blood ball on the operating table.
“Little Seven!” Shen Ge stood by the operating table, ready to deploy his strange domain at any moment. If Little Seven also got pulled in, he would have to use his strange domain to try and peel them apart.
Fortunately, he quickly heard Little Seven’s reply: “Master, the secondary armor’s resistance is much stronger than I imagined. Although I can’t force a recovery of the secondary armor, the good news is that the main body’s powerful energy has caught the secondary armor’s interest. It has given up on fusing with the mistress and is now trying to fuse with the main body.”
Hearing Little Seven’s answer, Shen Ge and the others breathed a sigh of relief. This was indeed good news. Because after the secondary armor was fused by the Red Mist Armor, it would essentially become its derivative. It’s like a lizard shedding its tail. Even if that tail becomes sentient, it wouldn’t be easy for it to devour the original lizard and become a new lizard.
Watching the rapidly flashing data on the instrument beside him, Li Xiang used the instrument to gather information and asked, “Little Seven successfully controlled the Red Mist Armor to complete a fusion before. I believe you’re very familiar with this process. In my opinion, the moment the secondary armor gives up on devouring Director Cheng and starts probing is Little Seven’s best chance to counterattack.”
“Understood. I’m trying to release the Red Mist’s strange energy to lure the secondary armor away. This process will take a lot of time,” Little Seven replied.
Li Xiang said, “I’ll help you with the detector… Oh, you’re the most advanced AI system. Even in this situation, your immense computing power allows you to multitask. I guess you don’t really need my help. Then I’ll try to prepare two more doses of monster samples, just in case.”
By noon, Little Seven still hadn’t managed to peel off the secondary armor, but it had successfully stopped it from continuing to devour Cheng Shengnan’s body. Inside the giant blood ball, her arms had noticeably returned to normal size, and there were no signs of disease on her body.
Li Xiang lamented that it was a pity they were in the capital. The entire experimental process was restricted. If they were at the Rong City Branch, assisted by his teacher and his Junior Sister’s teams, they could have cut the monster sample preparation time in half, and maybe Cheng Shengnan’s problem would have been solved already.
But transferring now was impossible. First, the “blood ball” state was just too eye-catching. Even if the headquarters didn’t intervene, there were so many foreign Weird Investigators here for the Asian Weird Research Conference that no one could guarantee they wouldn’t get ideas.
The only option was to have Jiang Peiwen’s team come to the capital. But even if the people came, the equipment would still be in Rong City, so they wouldn’t be much help.
The best solution Li Xiang could think of was to first find a way to control Cheng Shengnan’s condition, at least making her appear normal like an ordinary person on the outside, and then have Deng Yuqi secretly transfer her back.
Of course, if Little Seven could successfully solve the secondary armor problem through the Red Mist Armor right now, that would be even better.
Around noon, Deng Yuqi went out to take a phone call, then returned to the lab looking slightly grim: “Shen Ge, Fang Mingyue found news about Director Chen. Apparently, he took his team on a secret mission assigned from above, so the entire team is in a confidential state. Although the incident in Department 2 was reported, someone above seems to be trying hard to protect Director Chen. The investigation isn’t going well.”
“However, the foreign Weird organizations and investigators coming for this Asian Weird Research Conference have arrived one after another. The higher-ups are planning to hold a welcome banquet tonight. While investigating the Sakura organization kidnapping Maple Flower Youcai, Fang Mingyue found out that the Sakura organization plans to release some research information about the Ancestral Weird at this conference.”
“Director Chen seems very interested in this research information, so he sent his people to investigate Sakura. Fang Mingyue originally wanted to follow this lead to investigate Director Chen, but the other side was very alert and cut off contact early. But since Director Chen cares so much about the Ancestral Weird information, he might make a move at this welcome banquet.”
“Fang Mingyue’s idea is for us to attend the banquet too. She and I will look for clues out in the open, while you investigate behind the scenes.”
Shen Ge listened, lost in thought. He was now certain that Director Chen and Doctor Chen were somehow connected. Finding him meant he could follow the lead of the Monster Association and uncover the truth about what happened back then.
Cheng Shengnan’s condition was currently relatively stable. Moreover, Little Seven was the one doing the main work. Staying here, he couldn’t really help.
