Who the Prey Is Remains to Be Seen!

"Who the prey was remained to be seen!"

"A Hairless Monkey with no trace of cultivation actually managed to reach this level."

"There was actually such a genius on humanity's Ancestral Star—his qi and blood were perfectly unified, his body and mind flawless and without leaks. He was practically a living great medicine!

If I ate him, my qi and blood would recover by at least fifty percent. My bloodline might even undergo a transformation. This was more useful than eating a hundred—no, ten thousand—Hairless Monkeys!

Unfortunately, I burned too much qi and blood to bypass the Starry Sky Great Wall around Blue Star. If I failed to strike him down in one blow, I could easily expose myself. Otherwise, I truly would have wanted to eat them all. But I've remembered your scent."

Its Gills twitched constantly, as though it wanted to carve that scent thoroughly into its mind.

"I have to eat him before the relic is found. Only then will I have a chance to get a share of the spoils!"

The mud oozing from its eyes increased with its greed. Vaguely, within that mud, distorted human faces twisted in agony, crushed tightly together. They wept soundlessly, as if enduring unspeakable torment. One of those faces was unmistakably the owner of the Makeup Bag.

Zhang Meng was a pretty good driver. Before long, the two of them returned to the entrance of the residential complex.

"By the way, I wanted to ask earlier—what's with that Makeup Bag in your hand?"

"Could it be..." Zhang Meng suddenly seemed to think of something, and her expression turned teasing.

"Little Su Tu, don't tell me you're—eh~"

"No wonder you're so handsome but don't have a girlfriend. So that's why..."

Before Zhang Meng could finish her unreliable nonsense, Su Tu covered her mouth with one hand.

"Don't overthink it. I just picked this up by the roadside and was planning to hand it over to the Public Security Bureau..."

Su Tu had only gotten halfway through his sentence when the hand covering Zhang Meng's mouth snapped back like a spring.

"Sister Zhang!!!"

Zhang Meng shot Su Tu a wicked grin.

That woman had actually tried to bite him just now.

But Su Tu's awareness of his physical body was now extraordinarily sharp. The instant she moved, he noticed it.

"What a pity. I was going to help 'correct' you if you really were one of the girls~" Zhang Meng said in an ambiguous tone.

But Su Tu did not respond. He had long since grown used to teasing of this level. As for what Su Tu looked like in this life...

Delicate yet not lacking masculinity—calling him the God of Soft Rice in Ancient Greece would not have been an exaggeration.

Su Tu opened the car door, waved, and headed toward the Public Security Bureau beside the residential complex.

"I'm off, Sister Zhang. I'm taking the bag to the Public Security Bureau. You should go home and rest too. Staying up late isn't good for your health."

Zhang Meng smiled faintly and was just about to say something more.

But her phone suddenly vibrated. She took it out, glanced at it, and frowned slightly.

Her previously charming face abruptly went cold. She answered the call. "Boss, I really did want to go meet that important figure with you, but I'm not feeling well today. What a shame.

I know, he's the young master who came down from New Star, with power that reaches the heavens. But I really am unwell today. Such a pity."

After Su Tu delivered the Makeup Bag to the Public Security Bureau, he made a report and left his phone number. The police said they would contact him once they found its owner.

Afterward, he returned home. At that moment, his mind was filled with the prompts the system had thrown out.

"My instincts weren't wrong. Something really was hiding there."

"But what exactly was it? I clearly felt that punch miss—it didn't hit anything. And why didn't that thing attack me?"

"Was it because Sister Zhang showed up?"

Su Tu sat on the sofa, thinking over everything that had just happened.

His body trembled faintly—not from fear, but because Su Tu felt somewhat excited at that moment.

It was excitement toward the unknown. Deep in his bones, Su Tu possessed an intense desire to explore. When he was young, he had been obsessed with stories of the extraordinary, the mysterious, the unknown, All Gods and Immortals. But as time passed and he grew older, he gradually forgot that feeling.

Yet today, he had come into contact with too many mysteries he had never encountered before: a painting that drew him into a mysterious space, an "enemy" invisible to the naked eye, and martial arts that would be included in the college entrance examination in the Interstellar Era.

All of it left Su Tu incredibly excited.

But he quickly calmed down.

"There really is a monster lurking in the shadows. That means the hostility and malice I felt were real. I just don't know whether its malice is directed at me, or at all humans."

"If Sister Zhang hadn't appeared, that thing would definitely have attacked me. It would have been hard to say whether I could even escape from it, let alone what would happen if ordinary people faced it."

"If it had attacked before..."

Su Tu quickly walked over to the computer, opened a news website, and began searching for recent missing-person cases.

And he did find something.

In the past half month, thirteen disappearance cases had occurred across North Sea. The missing people had progressed from children and the elderly at the beginning to women living alone.

The missing persons had left behind no trace, as if they had evaporated from the face of the earth.

Looking at the information in the news, Su Tu instinctively felt that these cases were all related to the monster beneath the shadows.

"It's evolving." Su Tu stared at the photos of the missing people in the news, his gaze turning cold.

Children, the elderly, women—its prey was growing stronger and stronger.

A faint sense of crisis wound around Su Tu's heart, like a layer of dark clouds slowly pressing down.

If Zhang Meng had not suddenly appeared, perhaps he would already have become one of those missing people.

Su Tu disliked this feeling of "luck."

A monster hidden in the unknown shadows, a populace constantly being hunted—he was like the only "prey" in a horror movie who knew the truth.

Watching helplessly as the monster hunted, struggling powerlessly, waiting for death.

In this situation, calling the police would be utterly useless. If not for the system prompts, he would never have known that something existed in the shadows. With more than ten disappearance cases, he did not believe the police had not suspected a connection between them. Therefore, Su Tu concluded that the police might not be able to see that monster either.

Rashly going to the police station to report it would bring him no benefit beyond dragging himself into the whirlpool.

He had one other option.

"I'll ask Brother Feiyang tomorrow. He's no ordinary person."

Su Tu thought of Lin Feiyang's behavior. The other man was definitely not ordinary. Perhaps he knew some secrets. Perhaps he could help Su Tu.

And the most important thing now was to wash up and sleep.

Going to bed on time before midnight was a habit Su Tu had maintained without fail for eighteen years. Chen Xi said he lived like an old fossil, always focused on health preservation.

"I wonder if health preservation counts as a skill too."

The next morning, Su Tu ran through the early streets in his school uniform.

He needed to grow stronger as quickly as possible. The stretch from school to home was perfect for grinding the Proficiency of "Body Strengthening."

About ten minutes later, Su Tu reached the school entrance and checked the distance.

He had run five kilometers from home to school, yet this amount of exercise had not even made him break a sweat.

You have completed a sprint. Body Strengthening Proficiency +3

Body Strengthening (Beginner Grade): 233/300

"The Proficiency gained really did decrease. Once it reaches Mid Grade, it'll probably be like Spiritual Wisdom, increasing one point at a time."

He used to gain 10 points of Proficiency by running from home to school, but now he could only gain 3.

Standing at the school gate, Su Tu's height of 1.81 meters was exceptionally noticeable for his age. With sword-like brows, starry eyes, and a high nose bridge, sunlight shone over him, making him look as though he had stepped straight out of a movie.

Quite a few younger girls' gazes swept over Su Tu, open and covert.

Although he kept a low profile at school, his grades and looks were both far too outstanding. From his first year of high school to his second, someone nearly confessed to him or expressed affection for him every day, but Su Tu politely turned them all down.

At the most exaggerated point, the snacks secretly stuffed into his desk could have fed a whole class of "pigs."

It was only in the second semester of senior year, when everyone became busy studying, that things finally quieted down for a while.

Inside the little grocery shop at the entrance, two girls huddled together and whispered while looking at him.

One of them wore a white dress. Her big, watery eyes seemed capable of speaking, and her slightly chubby baby face was adorable. She shyly held a sheet of paper covered in writing, looking at Su Tu in the distance with what seemed like tiny stars flickering in her eyes.

"Come on, go already. If you don't try now, you'll graduate soon. With your male god's grades, he might even go to New Star for college," her best friend encouraged her softly.

"But I'm scared he'll reject me..." the girl said in a soft, sweet voice.

"Scared of what the hell? If you can't get him, drug him. If you can't be his bride, be the mother of his child!!" her best friend declared with boundless bravado.