...Boom!
Flames began burning from the Suffocation Puppet. In the dry warehouse crammed with clutter, they spread incredibly fast. Thick smoke billowed upward, and the masses of flesh crackled as they burned.
At this moment, Xiao Xiao had no time to care about anything else. Together with the three vicious dogs, he charged toward the outside at full speed.
They still couldn't breathe, which at least kept them from inhaling the poisonous smoke. All they had to do was move as fast as possible and escape this already extremely dangerous cannibal warehouse before the fire fully took hold.
"Has this guy gone crazy?"
A little farther out, Ruan Ruan suddenly widened her eyes when she saw the flames growing more and more intense, and forcibly sucked in a breath of cold air.
She stamped both feet against the ground, shot high into the air, smashed through the warehouse roof, and leaped straight outside.
"...Has a cannonball gained sentience?"
The commotion startled Xiao Xiao as well. He complained inwardly and charged even faster.
At the same time, right in front of them, twisted, grotesque arms and pale, eerie faces swayed endlessly, overlapping into countless layers of afterimages.
These suffocating corpses seemed completely blind to the flames. Driven only by some mysterious instinct, they frantically reached out to grab them, as if they intended to keep Xiao Xiao and the three dogs inside the warehouse.
Facing the arms that pulled and dragged at him from all sides, Xiao Xiao gritted his teeth and pushed the potential within his body to its absolute limit.
The Violence Factor displayed the function it should have had.
His body seemed to possess strength beyond the human limit. He charged left and right, forcibly tearing himself free from the countless hands and breaking through a path of blood.
He could even feel the sluggish sensation of rotten arms being ripped off by sheer force.
Finally, before the oxygen in his body was completely depleted and he passed out, he led the three dogs out through the warehouse doors in time, then continued charging forward without stopping for even a moment.
At the same time, as the fire spread, the abandoned oil drums piled inside the warehouse—possibly containing residual fuel—also caught fire.
Blazing light filled the cramped space, rapidly forming a vast sea of flames.
Within that sea of flames, twisted fire serpents writhed and surged. As they collided with one another, they began releasing an enormous force of impact outward.
The sturdy warehouse walls were blasted apart like thick paperboard. Seven or eight windows shattered under the violent blaze, and surging flames drilled out from inside.
Countless suffocating corpses, writhing in agony with grotesquely twisted bodies, were swallowed by the flames at that moment. They crackled as they burned, gradually turning into charred remains.
"Whew..."
Xiao Xiao left the blazing fire behind him, raised his head toward the star-filled sky, and let out a deep breath.
The sensation of oxygen flooding back into his chest actually brought a peculiar feeling of happiness.
After taking several deep breaths, he turned back toward the warehouse, which had been completely engulfed in flames. The entire building had already disappeared into the fire.
Through the wide-open warehouse doors, he could still vaguely see burning corpses moving sluggishly.
However, these corpses seemed to have no ability to escape the warehouse—or perhaps the Choking Nest had none. After a long, long while, they merely collapsed slowly, returning to the peace they should have had...
"It looks like the Suffocation Puppet can only deprive people of their ability to breathe. It didn't actually extract all the oxygen from the air."
Xiao Xiao thought to himself, "Physics still exists..."
He had already realized this when he struck the match.
Of course, he hadn't expected the flames to burn so fiercely or cause such a huge commotion.
Could it have something to do with those abandoned oil drums in the warehouse?
As expected, he was still only a newcomer. He seriously lacked experience in handling these matters...
As he silently pondered, Xiao Xiao felt no excitement at having completed the mission. Instead, he felt an inexplicable sense of loss.
The three vicious dogs beside him, however, didn't sense his loss at all. They seemed extremely excited.
Perhaps because they had just experienced such an exhilarating battle alongside Xiao Xiao, they were now completely hyped up. Each of them wagged its tail furiously, darting around Xiao Xiao from side to side.
One of them even looked eager to climb onto Xiao Xiao. It stretched out its tongue and struggled to reach for something on his body.
Xiao Xiao lowered his head and was suddenly startled.
There was actually a withered, twisted hand hanging from the front of his clothes. It had probably been torn from one of the corpses when he escaped the warehouse.
He hurriedly pulled the hand off and threw it aside.
The three vicious dogs saw their master throw something down and immediately rushed over, scrambling for it and chasing one another around.
"Is this guy feeding the dogs a dead person's hand?"
Ruan Ruan had just come around from the other end of the warehouse and happened to see this horrifying scene. Her scalp went numb.
At this moment, she had completely lost the attitude of a senior in front of Xiao Xiao. Looking somewhat bewildered, she walked step by step to stand before him. Her slightly chubby baby face looked unusually solemn.
"What exactly did you just do?"
"..."
"I..."
Xiao Xiao turned to glance at the warehouse burning fiercely and hesitated briefly before saying, "I dealt with the problem..."
"Did dealing with the problem require setting the warehouse on fire?"
"This..."
Seeing that Ruan Ruan seemed unable to understand, Xiao Xiao hurriedly explained, "Since a Choking Nest had already formed, simply killing the Suffocation Puppet might not have been enough, right?"
"So, to be safe, I thought it would be best to burn everything down."
"Was there a problem with that way of dealing with it?"
"..."
For a moment, Ruan Ruan didn't know how to describe it.
The problem was that nothing he had done in dealing with the situation had been wrong?
It was simply too damn reasonable.
At first, she had thought he might not realize the difference between a Choking Nest and a Suffocation Puppet. She hadn't expected him to consider it, much less come up with a solution.
But that only made the strange feeling in her heart even stronger.
"You..."
Unable to hold back, she asked, "Are you really a newcomer?"
Could a newcomer fire without hesitation when facing hostile thugs?
Could a newcomer remain calm and composed after opening a warehouse door and seeing a corpse pounce at him?
Could a newcomer accurately locate the Suffocation Puppet when facing a dangerous Choking Nest that had escalated—and even burn it down in one go?
A newcomer...
...Forget it. There were simply too many examples. Even Ruan Ruan couldn't guarantee that, in the same state as him, she could have handled all these matters so decisively and cleanly.
"Of course I'm a newcomer..."
Faced with her question, Xiao Xiao looked somewhat bewildered. "Wasn't what I just did the decision any normal person would have made?"
"A newcomer..."
Faced with Xiao Xiao's candid answer, Ruan Ruan seemed as if someone had lit a fuse. The confusion in her heart suddenly burst out.
"How can someone like you count as a newcomer?"
"How could a newcomer possibly perform this well?"
"How could a newcomer possibly not wet his pants?"
"..."
"This..."
Xiao Xiao instantly became awkward. Was this considered performing well?
Wasn't having a brain enough?
But faced with Ruan Ruan's two wide, glaring eyes, he pondered for a while before tentatively saying, "Perhaps being powerful is simply an innate instinct?"
Ruan Ruan immediately drooped like a defeated rooster...
I only said that back then to show off...
You took it as your life motto?
Seeing Ruan Ruan's frantic appearance, Xiao Xiao grew somewhat concerned. This cannonball's emotions seem rather unstable. Is her head really all right?
He quickly changed the subject, turning to look at the warehouse blazing fiercely as he said in a low voice, "Actually, I wanted to ask too..."
"What exactly happened here?"
"..."
Ruan Ruan turned to glance at the warehouse and sighed. "What else could have happened? You've already resolved the matter. A newcomer who hasn't even reached one hundred points resolved a Class C crisis..."
"No..."
Xiao Xiao interrupted her. "I mean, that Suffocation Puppet... how was it formed?"
"The causes of aberration vary."
Ruan Ruan composed herself. Seeing how serious Xiao Xiao looked, she also gathered her spirits and said:
"Some are affected by a Mysterious Source. Some are transformed by a special power. And some are formed because the Pain Substance accumulated within their bodies reaches its limit."
"For example, the Suffocation Puppet we faced was said to have formed when certain people, unable to bear the burdens of life, were tormented by the overwhelming pressure everywhere until they reached their breaking point, causing them to undergo aberration and become monsters."
"They couldn't find a chance to breathe amid their overwhelming lives, and thus gained the ability to produce a suffocating field."
"Usually, when a city develops a Suffocation Puppet like this, it also unconsciously attracts other equally desperate people to the area. They influence one another and form a Choking Nest..."
"And if we don't deal with it in time, the Choking Nest's influence will grow increasingly powerful, gradually eroding the city and creating an even greater disaster."
"And the reason the intelligence for our mission was wrong this time was because..."
"..."
Ruan Ruan continued explaining as clearly as possible. It seemed she had prepared this explanation long ago, intending to use these events to help Xiao Xiao understand this world as much as possible.
But Xiao Xiao's mind gradually wandered.
Ever since learning the true nature of this world, he had felt that the city was especially false. Whether people or buildings, everything seemed fake—merely monsters' disguises, deliberate performances.
Yet after seeing the Suffocation Puppet just now, he unexpectedly felt something special...
...If he had to describe it, this was probably what they called reality?
Before you continue