Another Frequency

One slash, two slashes, three slashes...

The growth rate of the "rotting flesh" on Taisui's surface gradually failed to keep up with the rate at which the Aberrant Long Blade stripped it away. Like a chef preparing ingredients, Sun Hang skillfully cut off the inedible parts, separated bone from flesh, removed the fascia, and carved away the rotten, spoiled areas...

Taisui began to emit a piercing wail... Though Sun Hang was not sure whether that sound, like shards of glass scraping across a blackboard, was truly its wail, it no longer mattered.

More and more limbs broke through the soil, but these later limbs had nothing to do with humans anymore. They were more like tumors growing wildly... Their purpose was no longer to attack, but solely to block the Aberrant Long Blade as it continued to fall.

After Sun Hang severed the fourteenth overgrown limb, Taisui's true body finally appeared before him in its entirety—it was an enormous mass of flesh over fifteen meters in diameter, its surface covered in tumor-like growths. Countless malformed limbs were wrapped in translucent sacs, like juvenile organisms still in the embryonic stage... The immature limbs that had just burst from the ground to block his attacks were the products of these things being "forcibly ripened."

Supported by those limbs, Taisui began moving away from Sun Hang... It had realized that it simply could not kill him. Its only option was to flee.

But the next second, that terrifying "humanoid monster" had already caught up. The fifteen-meter Aberrant Long Blade severed every limb Taisui used to support itself, then pierced straight down through its main body, pinning it firmly to the ground.

By the time the Investigation Bureau convoy arrived, Taisui had long since been reduced to an empty shell of "rotting flesh" and "dead skin." Its malformed white shell lay shattered across the ground. The more-than-ten-meter-deep pit amid the ruins had been filled with foul-smelling blood, while a gigantic pallid arm stretched straight toward the sky. More than half of the dozen or so "fingers" extending from its palm had been cut off, and the rest were curled into a ball like the limbs of a dead spider.

Several investigators, surrounded by fully armed Peacekeepers, rushed into the scene. Yet all they saw was a scruffy young man, looking like a beggar, squatting beneath a broken wall and calmly picking his teeth with the nail of his little finger.

"Zero Four Two Zero? What are you doing here?!" A familiar voice rang out from among the investigators.

Sun Hang turned around. The beautiful woman with a sour expression waved at him.

Yang Lian strode forward, frowning as she looked Sun Hang over. Just as she was about to speak, Sun Hang beat her to it.

"I thought you said you weren't an investigator. Are desk workers being sent to the front lines now?" Sun Hang teased.

"Nearly half of the Investigation Bureau's management personnel went missing during the South City Public Cemetery incident. Almost all remaining investigators have been dispatched for the search and rescue operation, so the Bureau is severely short-handed right now," Yang Lian explained with a straight face. "On the other hand, why aren't you at South City Public Cemetery? Why are you here, and what exactly happened here?"

"Your sister got me special leave. Got a problem with that?" Sun Hang shrugged. "There was just a small accident."

"An accident?"

"While I was on vacation, I happened to help you deal with a Cult Organization that worshipped and raised anomalies. I also took care of the big thing they were keeping... Say, this counts as overtime, right? Is there overtime pay?" Sun Hang said, pointing at the devastated ruins behind him.

"A Cult Organization? Raising anomalies?" A flash of shock crossed Yang Lian's eyes. "What exactly is going on?"

"The way you talk makes you sound like a Peacekeeper interrogating a criminal suspect," Sun Hang remarked. "Do you know the two biggest differences between you and your sister?"

"What?" Yang Lian asked instinctively.

"First, your sister talks to people more like a normal person. You, on the other hand, always act like everyone owes you a huge sum of money... Don't look at me like that. Even if I did owe a huge debt before, my creditor was the Xiazhou Federation, not you."

"Then... what's the other difference?" Yang Lian gritted her molars and forced the words out through clenched teeth.

"Your chest isn't as big as your sister's."

"..." Yang Lian glared at Sun Hang, her chest rising and falling several times before she finally said, "Can I consider that sexual harassment?"

"Call it whatever you want. My work here is done anyway. I'll leave the cleanup to you."

Having gotten the verbal upper hand, Sun Hang yawned contentedly, got to his feet, and prepared to leave.

But at that moment, a sentence from behind him stopped him in his tracks.

Several researchers from the Anomaly Research Institute had accompanied the investigators to the scene. While Sun Hang and Yang Lian were talking, they had already put on protective suits and entered the ruins with specialized equipment to examine the Taisui remains left behind—just as Sun Hang was about to leave, one researcher holding something like a Geiger counter suddenly said, "A special anomaly response has been detected! There's still a living anomaly at the scene! Everyone, stay alert!"

"A living anomaly?" Sun Hang froze for a moment, then quickly turned back. "The special response you detected... it isn't me, is it?"

Sun Hang remembered clearly that Taisui's main body had been completely devoured by him. Not a single bit of anything "edible" had been left behind... And after he finished eating, he had no longer sensed the aura of "food." Logically speaking, there should not have been any living anomalies at the scene.

"No, it's not you." The researcher shook his head. "The relevant data for every officially registered Anomaly Hunter is on file. Besides you, I detected another special response on a different frequency!"

The moment those words were spoken, the investigators and Peacekeepers immediately became tense.

Detecting a special response from an unknown anomaly in a densely populated urban area... That was not funny at all.

"Are you sure this machine isn't malfunctioning?" Sun Hang asked again. "Uh... Could it be detecting something left behind by the anomaly I just killed?"

"No... This equipment is actually used to detect an anomaly's 'memetic frequency'... Although the 'meme' in your body has also undergone some changes, its primary frequency still matches the data on file. As for anomalies that have been eliminated, their 'memes' cannot be detected."

"Could that anomaly from earlier not be completely dead?" Sun Hang looked toward the large pit in the distance. "Could part of that thing still be hiding underground?"

"That's not it either... The anomaly from earlier was indeed eliminated by you. Examination of its remaining shell can confirm that," another researcher said. "The other frequency we detected should belong to an entirely new anomaly."

Besides Taisui, was there another type of anomaly hidden in this residential complex?

"It's very close..." the researcher holding the detector murmured. "Less than twenty meters away from us..."