Your Coffee Is Still Untouched

"G-Gone?"

In the distant building, all the observers stared blankly at their monitors.

The intense conflict they had rehearsed in advance never happened, and none of the three plans they had prepared was used.

It was clearly a standard Level One Mental Pollution Zone, and clearly a Mental Mutant with limitless potential. Their encounter should have been an excellent opportunity to stimulate each other and conduct tests. Through this, they could locate the Pollution Source's true body in the café and eliminate it precisely, while also properly judging Observer No. 13's potential and deciding whether to recruit him or eliminate him as well.

Yet all they saw was Observer No. 13 entering the Pollution Zone, then walking back out.

Without the slightest abnormality...

The staff in the room subconsciously turned to look at the short-haired woman in charge.

She, too, looked confused for a moment before decisively issuing an order. "Continue monitoring. Prepare a fourth response plan immediately!"

Lu Xin jogged away from the café and hurried toward the subway station, wanting to get home as quickly as possible.

He had no idea what exactly he had seen in the café.

But at least now, he had confirmed what Sister had specifically come to warn him about.

There were monsters!

Although the world had changed beyond recognition after the Crimson Moon incident, with countless madmen appearing outside and wandering the wilderness day after day, those madmen were still human. But the thing he had just seen was definitely not "human"!

He had no intention of provoking something like that. He just wanted to run.

The subway station was empty, except for an old security guard dozing in the duty room.

Lu Xin sat down on a bench and finally relaxed slightly.

He turned to look around, but Sister was nowhere nearby, so he had no way to ask her what that thing had been.

He could only wait until he got home tonight.

Lu Xin had always known that his "family" knew certain things.

"Scrape... scrape..."

Suddenly, the sound of shoe soles dragging across the floor came from nearby. Lu Xin looked up and saw people entering the subway station.

The subway station, empty just moments ago, was now filling with more and more people. Dressed in all kinds of clothes and walking briskly, they hurried into the station, but showed no intention of heading for the platform to wait for a train. Instead, they quickly spread out around him. Lu Xin sensed something was wrong and abruptly looked up, recognizing them from an old man in a worn sweater beside him.

They were all people from that café.

Lu Xin shuddered and got to his feet. Then he saw a figure emerge from behind them.

It was the café waiter. His face still wore that kind smile, though it looked somewhat eerie beneath the lights.

He held a cup in his hand—the very coffee Lu Xin had not drunk earlier.

Then, facing Lu Xin, the corners of his mouth slowly stretched apart. In an incredibly soft, slow voice, he said, "Your coffee is still untouched."

A chill crept through Lu Xin's heart. He hurriedly stood, trying to leave.

But as he moved, the people around him moved forward too, blocking his path.

The group that had seemed so warm and happy in the café now suddenly became extraordinarily eerie, like sleepwalkers.

They made no unnecessary movements. Lu Xin's reflection could not even be seen in their pupils. They simply advanced stiffly, shrinking the space around him and trapping him inside, like a prison made of human bodies that left him unable to move an inch.

The café waiter's smile deepened as he slightly raised the coffee toward Lu Xin.

Lu Xin was embarrassed, but also frightened. "I don't have any money. I can't afford it..."

The café waiter's smile grew even stranger. Suddenly, something sprang from the cup—the eye that had been soaking in the coffee, or perhaps an egg. It leaped out, drawing a black streak through the air as it flew toward Lu Xin's mouth.

Lu Xin was horrified and shoved outward with all his strength.

Young and strong, he knocked down two or three people at once, trying to force his way out.

But the café patrons around him moved with him, stretching out rigid arms to grab him.

So many arms and bodies formed obstacles everywhere, making them impossible to avoid.

Lu Xin's struggles grew weaker and weaker. The crowd had pinned him down, and some people even came over to pry open his mouth.

"What's going on?"

In the observation office, the short-haired woman frowned. "He looks like an ordinary person."

"Perhaps he still can't control his ability."

A staff member beside her said, "Should we have support step in and end this test?"

Seeing Lu Xin nearly swallowed by the crowd, the short-haired woman slowly nodded and looked toward Doll in the next room.

The girl had silently picked up the umbrella beside her.

"Wait..."

Just then, one of the staff suddenly shouted.

Everyone looked toward the mental detection equipment in front of him and saw violent fluctuations in the data.

At that moment, Lu Xin had been forcibly pinned down. His mouth had even been pried open when he heard a light laugh beside his ear.

"Heehee!"

Looking up from the corner of his eye, Lu Xin saw Sister hanging upside down from a sign, hugging her teddy bear and swaying back and forth.

"Beat 'em..."

With his mouth being squeezed, Lu Xin let out a muffled cry for help.

"Brother hates me. He always pretends not to see me when we're outside, and he never talks to me..."

Sister swung through the air, speaking in a wronged tone.

"Beat them, Brother..."

Watching that "eye" bounce from one person's head to another as it approached his mouth, Lu Xin cried out in despair.

"Sigh, then you'll have to promise to buy me the best toys..."

Sister giggled. Her eyes, which seemed to have no whites at all, revealed a mischievous glint.

"No money!"

Lu Xin got angry. Throwing his body back, he shouted loudly.

At that moment, the eye crawled to Lu Xin's lips. Its pupil rolled toward his face and contracted slightly, as though it were smiling. Then it suddenly sprang forward. At the same time, the hands around him squeezed harder, forcing Lu Xin's mouth wide open. Like a helpless prisoner, he watched that thing fly closer and closer to his mouth.

Despair descended!

But at that very moment, a small icy hand suddenly clasped Lu Xin's palm.

Sister had jumped down!

With a whoosh, Lu Xin suddenly seemed to turn into a loach in everyone else's eyes.

His arms had been tightly restrained and twisted behind his back, his mouth held forcibly open. Yet he suddenly became incredibly strange. With a fierce twist, his arm rotated at an unimaginable angle. Then, with a swift twist of his waist, he flung off several more arms that had been holding him. Taking the chance, he freed his mouth from the hands gripping it, tilted his head aside, and the eye flew over the top of his head.

In an instant, he had broken free from every restraint with bizarre, eerie movements and squeezed toward the edge of the crowd.

People packed the area around him, all rushing toward him. It looked completely impossible to escape.

But Lu Xin's movements became almost impossible to follow, weaving left and right through the crowd with extreme eeriness.

"Precise bodily control... Spider-type!"

At that moment, in the distant building, the staff had seen Lu Xin escape through the surveillance footage. Their mouths fell open in shock. On the complex display screens, they saw that Lu Xin had been restrained and was about to be forcibly "polluted" by the monster. But then his body suddenly became nimble and agile, breaking free from the restraints.

Facing the countless monsters in the subway station, he moved as though no one was there. His body was agile to the extreme, capable of making angle changes that ordinary people could scarcely imagine. Though he had clearly been boxed in by the "people" from the coffee, he could evade and maneuver in poses that defied common sense. Without using any tools, he could even climb vertical walls using both hands and feet.

"What percentage is it?"

"We can't draw a conclusion yet. Judging by that speed, the preliminary estimate is over 50%!"

"Wouldn't that mean his initial potential is nearly on par with Gecko's?"

The staff in the building were shocked and delighted, excitedly watching the figure on the monitor rush toward the exit.

"This is bad!"

Someone suddenly noticed a change and shouted in alarm.

Inside the subway station, Lu Xin held Sister's hand. Seeing that they had broken through the encirclement, he prepared to flee.

But the café waiter standing outside the crowd watched Lu Xin's bizarrely agile movements. The strange smile on his face grew deeper and more eerie, becoming stiff and frozen, until his entire body seemed to turn into an empty shell.

At the same time, seven or eight enormous tentacles suddenly shot out from behind him.

Each tentacle was as thick as a water bucket, covered in backward-growing bone spurs and bizarre eyes.

"Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" "Whoosh!"

The tentacles stabbed rapidly toward Lu Xin.

As Lu Xin fled along the wall, bursts of debris exploded around him, scattering countless fragments.

Under the violent bombardment, the whole subway station trembled as though it might collapse.

Yet no matter how fast or terrifying the tentacles growing from the waiter's body were, Lu Xin's movements remained incomparably bizarre, yet naturally eerie. Sometimes he leaned sideways, sometimes he twisted his body into poses that violated physics, evading each tentacle in turn. It almost looked as though he were dancing along the walls and ceiling beneath their attacks.

In just a few seconds, he had climbed dozens of meters away, reaching the area near the exit.

Seeing this, the short-haired woman at the observation point took a deep breath and turned toward the girl in the other room.

"Prepare to wrap this up!"

The girl stood expressionlessly, picked up the parasol in her hand, and slowly opened it.

"Wait..."

But at that moment, a staff member in front of the screen cried out in shock. "Look... quickly!"

Everyone in the office turned their heads in surprise. They saw Lu Xin in the subway station, who had already escaped the tentacles' pursuit with ghostlike speed and was only a few meters from the exit. He looked as though he was about to escape the station, but suddenly paused. Instead of fleeing, he hung upside down from the ceiling, slowly turned his head, and crooked a finger forward.

Even the short-haired woman was startled. "What is he doing?"

"It looks like... he's provoking it?"

"..."

"How could this happen?"

The atmosphere at the observation point grew tense. The staff exchanged confused glances.

From the moment Lu Xin revealed his Spider-type ability, they had begun preparing for the final cleanup. They understood how terrifyingly fast Spider-type abilities were. Under these circumstances, the Pollution Source in that café could not possibly keep him there. Or rather, there were not many places or people in this world capable of trapping a Spider-type ability user.

But they had not expected that the Spider-type ability user would not flee...

Instead, he turned around and provoked it!

What kind of person, when faced with those monsters, would not immediately run away but turn back to provoke them instead?

"Sister, what are you doing?"

At that moment, Lu Xin was also shouting in surprise.

The exit was right behind him. He could escape with a single turn, but Sister stubbornly held him back.

Sister curled her lips. "Then what are you doing?"

Lu Xin was both angry and anxious. "Running away! Didn't you see there are monsters?"

"Brother, why are you so afraid?"

Sister laughed softly as she continued crooking her finger provocatively at the café waiter.

Beneath her dirty, messy hair, her eyes shone with unusual brightness. "Obviously, he should be the one who's afraid..."