Foul Bone Saintess

After finishing the explanation, the captain ceded center stage and stepped aside. Then she looked at Zhou Chu. "You'll continue leading the team."

The others wore dazed expressions, still mulling over what the captain had described. Whether or not they signed an Anti-Law pact with Mao Mao King and entered the system she governed, striving to cultivate Uniforms and strengthen themselves was unquestionably a choice with no downside. It had become everyone's consensus.

"Hey, Meng Xi. Will you choose to cultivate a Seed of Power and walk the Mao Mao path?" Yuan Zhu nudged the pink-haired girl spacing out beside him with his elbow and asked.

"Of course not. It's fine to play around with it, but I won't casually sign an Anti-Law pact with an Outer God." Meng Xi shook her head. Zhou Chu had put it well—be wary of every Anti-Law Evil God. Once you encountered one, reject it without exception! "Why?" Yuan Zhu pressed, simply wanting to learn a little more.

"Why? Because there are better choices, obviously! Anti-Law Demon Gods always give people the feeling that they're not very legitimate, like they could croak at any moment and have their roots cut off. If you're going to enter a power system, why not choose one with strong potential, broad prospects, stability and legitimacy—and one that suits you especially well?" the young lady countered.

Yuan Zhu looked full of yearning after hearing that. "Oh? Then what did you choose? Do you think it suits me?"

Meng Xiyue proudly lifted her chin. "I'm a college student, okay? Of course I'm taking the traditional Academy route. The thinking kind—no pollution risk. What's your educational background? What are you good at? Tell me, and let big sis see whether you've got the aptitude."

Yuan Zhu's eyes lit up. "No pollution risk? How is that possible?"

"As long as you don't sign an Anti-Law pact and stop before entering the Transcendent level, the Uniforms provided by Mao Mao King theoretically carry no pollution risk. The Academy route is the same. It relies on your brain and the accumulation of knowledge and experience. We also have our own tools and mediums, used to explore, research, and summarize the laws of different Transcendent powers, indirectly making use of those powers. The methods are extremely cumbersome, but they're safe."

"Oh..." Yuan Zhu put on a half-understanding expression, mentally labeling her a scientist. It fit the Academy faction's style perfectly.

She had also said she was guaranteed to live to three hundred. It seemed that the universities on Du Ling Star all offered research programs in "Transcendent Power Studies," and that the system was already very mature.

He remembered that the boss of Fire Fang had also promised to arrange for him to visit the Rain Institute in Running and consult about a system suited to him. A little excitement suddenly welled up in his heart.

Some team members excitedly envisioned their future paths to strength, while the female investigator squatted beside the active remains and took several familiar test strips from her pocket.

Yuan Zhu remembered that the two investigators examining the evil god pollution in the sacrificial hall had used the same kind of test strips.

Seeing Yuan Zhu's curiosity, Meng Xiyue explained, "Those are pollution test strips distributed uniformly by the Security Bureau, five per set. Each strip contains powders from several forbidden pollutants. So once a test strip comes into contact with pollution of the same origin, it produces a special reaction for simple screening and testing. Burning a contaminated strip lets you judge the pollution's intensity from the strength and color changes of the flame."

Yuan Zhu finally understood what those two investigators had been doing back then.

Zhou Chu, who had dipped one corner of a test strip into the thick green blood, also frowned. She stared fixedly at the twisted patterns spreading across the strip, and hostility gradually surfaced on her face.

The captain asked curiously, "Did you find something?"

Zhou Chu stood up and lit the test strip in her hand. A small cluster of dark-green flame burst forth.

Her expression was grave as she said to the captain, "The situation is extremely bad. I don't understand why these mad beasts' blood mutated into green, but I'm one hundred percent certain that they've suffered forbidden pollution: infection by Foul Bone Tainted Blood. Foul Bone Tainted Blood spreads through blood, biting, feeding... and other means. Its infectious power is extremely strong, and it spreads across an exceptionally wide range. In a closed small world like this, with limited area and a single ecosystem, once it breaks out, it becomes impossible to contain. Even the entire ecosystem could become foul and fallen, reduced to a paradise for Foul Bone Demons."

Evil spirits covered the Du Ling world, and pollution came in countless varieties. The local inhabitants had gradually grown numb and accustomed to it, long since finding nothing strange about it. After all, there was the Spirit Realm Layer, that giant recycling station. Once pollution grew too severe, it could simply be expelled from the mortal world and helped along in its ascension.

If they endured this round of calamity, wouldn't good days come again? Hadn't Earth, over the past several thousand years, been swept in turns by droughts and floods, plagues and locust swarms, wars and man-made disasters, yet everyone still stubbornly scraped out a living? And when night came, they happily went on making babies.

Yet among Du Ling's many Pollution Sources, there were still a few that were utterly terrifying—jointly hunted down by the righteous forces in the open and the major nations, and classified as forbidden. Once discovered, they would be struck with an iron fist and actively uprooted! The Foul Bone Saintess was one of them. In a fantasy novel, she would be a world-ending catastrophe.

"Are Foul Bone creatures really that terrifying?" Yuan Zhu once again looked toward the all-purpose Miss Meng Xiyue. College students were supposed to know a lot!

"Emm..." The young lady looked aggrieved. Did he take her for a question-answering machine?

Still, since he was handsome: "Distorted, rational abnormal bloodlust; incredibly powerful tainted-blood infection; plague-like transmission and spread; terrifying vitality; abnormally vigorous appetite; their signature foul-smelling, black asphalt-like berserk blood; crimson bones that pierce through the skin in abnormal growths... these are all traits of Foul Bone creatures."

Yuan Zhu looked at the chunks of flesh whose surfaces constantly split open, exposing tiny eyeballs before rapidly sealing shut again. He marveled at their vigorous vitality. "Why is their blood dark green?"

"I don't know. I've never seen it before, either. Because they're too dangerous, the school refuses to purchase or introduce Foul Bone test specimens into its laboratories. I've only seen them in illustrated guides, but those were all ferocious giants clad in dark-red skeletal armor. This kind of trash with the color of a pathetic mutt is something I'm hearing about for the first time too. The world is vast; all sorts of strange things exist."

Meng Xi's expression held both curiosity and disgust. As if she had encountered something filthy, she deliberately backed away and put some distance between herself and it.

At that moment, Zhou Chu stood up, snapped a rod-shaped object in half, poured the fuel inside over the pile of vibrant green flesh, then set it ablaze.

The corpses and remnants with their wildly blinking eyes rapidly multiplied, growing mouths full of sharp teeth. They let out shrill baby cries, as though singing in chorus, trying to lure nearby creatures with maternal instincts into coming to save them.

Unable to bear those hyper-realistic cries, Yuan Zhu retreated with goosebumps rising all over him and could not help asking, "Is it doing this on purpose? Has it not died completely? Does it still retain intelligence?"

Zhou Chu's face remained expressionless. "No. It's completely dead. Its head was blown apart—how could it still have a brain to think? These corpses are crying because it's a survival mechanism carved into their instincts. If an animal gets curious, drawn over by the sound of a baby crying and bewitched by the scent emitted by these chunks of flesh, it may be unable to resist eating them and then become infected by the tainted blood. Even if it manages to restrain its appetite, these chunks of flesh can still suddenly spring up and counterattack, biting creatures that approach out of curiosity and achieving the goal of spreading the tainted blood."

As she spoke, she kicked a stone flying. The stone landed among the beast corpses, immediately making the surrounding chunks of flesh writhe and convulse. They opened their mouths—each one a toothy maw grown at the cost of their vitality—and bit at the stone, snapping one sharp yet fragile baby tooth after another.

Then they cried even harder.

"So lively?!" Yuan Zhu and his companions were startled and all backed away. They could not imagine that they had just been whipping their legs out one after another, kicking beast after beast away. How had they become so vicious and disgusting in the blink of an eye? At that moment, the little goat that had wanted to pounce on them and feast to its heart's content, only to be denied, sniffed the burnt stench and cried just as sadly.

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