Night fell, and Nuoding City shed the bustle of the day, sinking into silence. Gas lamps along the streets cast a dim yellow glow, stretching the pedestrians' shadows. Drunkards shouted inside taverns, and the blacksmiths' fires gradually cooled. Everything seemed no different from usual.
No one knew that a silent revolution was unfolding in the underground veins of the city.
The Umbrella Corporation, third underground level, newly built Central Control Room.
Cold LED lights illuminated the room as bright as day. Qin Feng sat before the main console, facing a huge black screen that covered an entire wall.
"Doctor, it's your turn to put on a show." Qin Feng lifted a cup of hot cocoa and spoke without looking up.
"Hehehehe..."
Orochimaru let out a sinister laugh.
He walked over to a huge glass incubation tank in the center of the control room. Tens of thousands of tiny white snakes, thin as strands of hair, floated inside.
These were his creations, the Synapse Snakes, cultivated from genetic fragments of Datura Snakes combined with the nerve cells of various Soul Beasts, using the Rapid Gene Editor Grey Wolf had provided.
They had no independent consciousness. Their only instinct was to seek out heat sources and transmit everything they sensed back to the host through a special kind of bioelectric signal.
"Go, my children." Orochimaru pressed his hand against the tank. "Turn this city into my domain of perception."
Purple light flashed in his palm, and a valve at the bottom of the tank opened. Tens of thousands of Synapse Snakes poured through pipes connected to the city's sewers, like a white flood surging into Nuoding City's dark underworld.
West side of the city, general store.
Old Wang, the shopkeeper, sat behind the counter working an abacus. He owned the store and was also one of Spirit Hall's seventeen agents hidden in Nuoding City, codenamed "Bookkeeper."
He had been undercover here for five years, seen three bishops of the Nuoding Spirit Hall Branch come and go, and considered himself thoroughly familiar with every little change in the city.
But today, he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong.
"Squeak. Squeak."
A mouse squeaked in the corner. Old Wang frowned and pulled a packet of rat poison from under the counter.
But he soon realized something was wrong. That wasn't the sound of a single mouse. It was hundreds, even thousands. From inside the walls and beneath the floor came the countless faint sounds of things crawling.
Old Wang's expression changed. He immediately held his breath.
He was a forty-second-level Soul Ancestor whose Martial Soul was an Earth-Listening Rat, exceptionally skilled at reconnaissance. His hearing far surpassed that of an ordinary person.
He could "hear" that those things weren't mice! They were smaller, more numerous, and moving with greater purpose! They were following the sewers, burrowing beneath the foundations of every building and crawling onto every rooftop. Some were even squeezing through drainpipes into the toilets of the rich district.
They were weaving a web.
A living web that covered the entire city!
Cold sweat instantly soaked Bookkeeper's back. What was this? The migration of some kind of pack Soul Beast? Or a terrifying Soul Skill cast by an Evil Soul Master?
He immediately pulled an inconspicuous bone whistle from his robes. It was Spirit Hall's emergency communicator. He had to report this anomaly!
At the same time, the brothel in the south of the city, the stables in the north, the clock tower in the city center... All sixteen of the other Spirit Hall agents noticed the suffocating anomaly at the same time. They ranged from a Soul Elder disguised as a prostitute to a Soul King posing as a bell ringer.
Fear silently spread among them.
They were all battle-hardened agents, but they had never encountered such a bizarre enemy. They couldn't see it or touch it, yet it was everywhere.
Inside the Central Control Room.
On the huge black screen, countless tiny white points spread outward from the center, quickly filling the outline of Nuoding City. Buildings, streets, sewers... Every detail of the city was perfectly mapped out in three dimensions by the glowing points.
[Beep! City-wide Biological Neural Network Monitoring System deployment complete!] [Neural node coverage: 99.7%] [Data transmission stability: Good]
"A beautiful work of art, isn't it?" Qin Feng took a sip of hot cocoa, admiring the city model on the screen, built from living creatures.
"Now, let's start cleaning out the trash."
He swiped a finger across the console and pulled up the personnel files of the Nuoding Spirit Hall Branch. They included detailed information and approximate patrol areas for every hidden agent.
"Brother Wolf, run the 'heat signature code' comparison program and find those seventeen rats on the map."
"Piece of cake!" Grey Wolf held a grilled sausage in his mouth and rapidly pounded away at the keyboard.
The city model on the screen instantly switched to thermal imaging. Among countless green dots representing ordinary people, seventeen yellow dots representing Soul Masters stood out.
[Signature code comparison in progress...] [Target 1: "Bookkeeper," Soul Power level 42, Martial Soul: "Earth-Listening Rat," location locked: west-side general store.] [Target 2: "Hongxiu," Soul Power level 51, Martial Soul: "Spider Web," location locked: Chunxiang Pavilion in the south of the city.] [...] [Target 17: "Pendulum," Soul Power level 63, Martial Soul: "Gargoyle," location locked: top of the city's central clock tower.]
In less than ten seconds, all seventeen yellow dots had turned a glaring red. All their information, including their real-time heart rates and Soul Power fluctuations, was clearly displayed on the screen.
Under the surveillance of the Biological Neural Network, they had nowhere to hide.
Inside the general store, Bookkeeper was about to blow the bone whistle.
Suddenly, he felt a chill against his neck.
He whipped around. There was nothing there.
He looked down and saw a tiny white snake, no bigger than his little finger, crawling out of his collar and flicking its tongue at him. Its eyes had no pupils—just pure darkness.
Bookkeeper's body stiffened.
He wanted to shout, but no sound came from his throat. He wanted to move, but he had completely lost feeling in his limbs.
A cold numbness spread rapidly from his neck throughout his body.
He watched helplessly as more little white snakes surged out from the corners of the room and the cracks in the floor. Like a tide, they covered his body, then dragged him into endless darkness.
The bone whistle fell to the floor, making not even the faintest sound.
At the same time, Chunxiang Pavilion's top courtesan, Hongxiu, was getting ready at her dressing table when a white "hairpin" slipped from her bun and bit into the back of her neck.
Atop the clock tower, Pendulum was cautiously watching his surroundings when two little white snakes suddenly shot from the eyes of the gargoyle statue beneath his feet.
The captures unfolded simultaneously in seventeen corners of the city.
There was no fighting, no shouting, and not even a single ordinary person was disturbed.
These elite agents, whom Spirit Hall had been so proud of, disappeared from the world without a sound, like insects eliminated by natural selection.
"Nicely done." Qin Feng nodded in satisfaction as he watched the seventeen red markers on the screen turn gray.
"They're mine now, Qin Feng." Orochimaru appeared behind him. His tongue slid over his lips, and his eyes shone with uncontrollable delight.
"Of course, Doctor." Qin Feng stood and headed for the elevator leading to the fourth underground level, the Biological Laboratory. "I hope they'll help you cultivate some interesting 'toys.'"
[Beep! Main quest: Establish the first "Hive" base, Stage One complete!] [Quest rating: Perfect!] [Shock value gained: 30,000 points!] [Reward unlocked: T-Virus First Generation Stable Strain!]
Qin Feng looked at the system panel. The T-Virus? That was a good one.
Just then.
"Beep—beep—beep—!!!"
The Central Control Room suddenly erupted with the highest-level red alert! Its shrill sound made the grilled sausage fall from Grey Wolf's mouth.
On the huge screen, fifty kilometers beyond Nuoding City's east gate, a massive purple point radiating terrifying energy appeared out of nowhere!
The data analysis window beside the screen instantly filled with a series of explosive readings.
[Warning! Energy source of extremely high specification detected!] [Energy index: ??? (exceeds current detection limit)] [Spatial fluctuation rating: Extremely dangerous! Target is performing a spatial jump!] [Estimated arrival time: 10 seconds!]
Grey Wolf stared at the point, which shone a hundred times brighter than a Titled Douluo. His fur stood on end.
"M-my Wolf Granny! W-what the heck is that?!"
"Could the Angel God from Spirit Hall have come here in person to kill us?!"
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