Omen

Seeing those men tie the woman up and prepare to carry her away, Feng Xue shifted his attention to the surrounding onlookers. He wondered whether he should blend into the crowd and follow if they intended to pursue the matter. If no one followed, he would go collect the doctor's corpse and scrape together some elements.

Come to think of it, this doctor's corpse possessed far more elements than any corpse he had seen before. That was probably because the doctor had a proper job and had accumulated quite a few Tags. Unfortunately, his Golden Finger could not directly observe Tags, and the sensory abilities granted by Tags did not work on the dead. Thus, he had no way of knowing how many side jobs the doctor had.

However, that thought did not last long. Just as the woman was being hoisted onto a bicycle, an eerie atmosphere suddenly spread through the area.

It was a peculiar aura that was difficult to describe—trembling, fear, perhaps mixed with something else. In that instant, Feng Xue shuddered almost uncontrollably.

Then, nearly every living person within a hundred-meter radius involuntarily turned their gaze toward the doctor's corpse. In Feng Xue's vision, a vortex resembling the one that appeared when the Golden Finger's Reforge function Activated began to emerge from the corpse.

This vortex was more of an image than an actual visible phenomenon. As it spun, the elements observed by the Golden Finger also began to whirl and converge at high speed. Some were shattered amid the violent rotation and collisions, while the rest fused with patches of Garbled Code, eventually blending into a malformed, twisted thing.

That "This Thing" seemed to be a distorted Tag, yet its meaning was impossible to make out. Feng Xue could not even fully describe what shape the irregular object had taken. But one thing was certain: under its influence, the corpse was undergoing some kind of transformation.

The change came with astonishing speed. The crowd's screams had only just begun to spread when the corpse stood back up. Its muscles twisted and swelled, countless stitches appearing Out of Thin Air all over its Whole Body. Twisted limbs extended from scarlet wounds resembling gaping bloody maws, creating a scene both gruesome and bizarre.

Only then did Feng Xue's Golden Finger identification panel begin working again. Yet above the twisted flesh monster's head, his vision showed nothing but vast patches of Garbled Code. Amid them, Feng Xue managed to distinguish a few recognizable words—

[Corpse]

[Stitching]

[Death]

As the Corpse transformed into a monster, the gang members immediately displayed the same horrified expressions as the surrounding onlookers.

"Damn it! It actually mutated into a Stitched Monster! Normally, a corpse shouldn't..." The gang member who appeared to be a minor leader muttered as he drew a machete. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he turned to the bound woman and asked,

"Did you give him something earlier?"

"Mmph, mmph mmph..."

The woman had been scared witless by the sight before her, and with tape still sealing her mouth, she could only make a string of nasal whimpers. But the minor leader had not truly expected an answer. He turned to his subordinates and said,

"Those carrying weapons stay behind and stall it. The rest of you, take her back! Boss should be here soon!"

With that, he took One Step Ahead, raised the machete in his hand, and charged at the Stitched Monster, which was still in its "entrance animation."

Feng Xue fled with the panicked spectators, but he did not go too far. From a distance, he watched the Stitched Monster surrounded by more than a dozen gang members.

The minor leader had looked quite dashing when he drew his blade and charged in, but his slash did no damage to the Stitched Monster. Instead, it made the monster, which had been "adapting" to its new body, react ahead of time. With a casual swing of its palm—more than twice the size of an adult's head—it sent the valiant minor leader spinning into the air. Before he even hit the ground, Feng Xue could already see the elements on his body.

"He Died just like that?"

Staring at the battlefield from afar, Feng Xue's eyes widened in shock. The Omen, however, darted to the corpse with a speed wholly disproportionate to its bloated body. A huge fissure opened across its belly and swallowed the minor leader's corpse. In Feng Xue's vision, the elements on that corpse were completely scattered in the process, gathering among the Garbled Code on the Stitched Monster.

"So this was an Omen?"

Watching such a horrifying scene, Feng Xue finally understood why Old Li had said that Corpse Collector was a dangerous profession. Just imagining the corpses he hauled turning into something like this at any moment sent a chill through him.

After considering the Omen's speed, Feng Xue inconspicuously retreated another few dozen meters. Yet to his surprise, the gang members did not shrink back because of the minor leader's death. Instead, they maintained considerable order, waving their weapons as they tried to draw the Stitched Monster's attention.

Fortunately, the Stitched Monster seemed to possess little intelligence. After killing someone, it would usually start devouring the corpse. Until it finished eating, as long as no one provoked it, it would not attack again. Though Feng Xue felt that letting it eat slowly was giving it a chance to grow stronger, when everyone died in one slap anyway, there did not seem to be much difference whether it was strengthened or not.

From Feng Xue's earlier observations, the Martial Force possessed by gang members in this world was clearly Far More Than that of an Ordinary Person. When facing ordinary poor residents, they could basically take on ten by themselves. At the very least, during the past few days of collecting corpses, Feng Xue had not seen a single deceased person wearing a uniform.

But against this Stitched Monster, they were as fragile as paper. With only a light shove, they would become a pile of mosaics that definitely were not suitable for children.

This finally made Feng Xue understand the weight behind Old Li's words: "In a small Landfill Area like ours, a single Omen can destroy the whole place."

"These gangsters have more integrity than I imagined! Their methods may be brutal, and they monopolize the paths upward, but when Something Happen, they really step up!"

Feng Xue watched the gangsters die one after another, yet they still did not break apart. They even maintained an "organized march to death" to delay the Stitched Monster's advance. This gave him a new understanding of the local organization in charge. Of course, This Is Not to say that he had developed a favorable impression of the gang.

When Something Happen, they really stepped up—but when profits were involved, they really killed too!

Seeing that only half of the more than twenty gang members left behind remained, Feng Xue felt it was about time for him to leave as well. But before he had gone far, a flash of silver entered his vision—

It was a silver... Electric Bike?