The Security Team's New Humans

A group of people walked along the main road of the villa district. They wore blue-armored protective suits with D-class defense, capable of resisting an adult's punching force. These suits were the security uniforms An Rongru had commissioned. They carried mismatched bladed weapons, and two of them held C-class electric stun pistols as they headed toward the security hall.

Within the group, a dark-skinned, powerfully built man chatted back and forth with another muscular man sporting a crew cut.

"Of all days, it had to be our turn to patrol today. What rotten luck!" the dark, muscular man grumbled. "It just happens to coincide with last night's huge disturbance. Commander Hu sent us to investigate, and if we run into some powerful monster, we're dead."

"We might not encounter any monsters. We've already cleared out quite a few of the monsters in the villa district. Last night's commotion was indeed a little too big, but luckily those monsters didn't spot us. Otherwise, there would've been a bloody battle," the crew-cut man said, still shaken.

"If we make it back alive today and find useful intelligence, Lan Wende's streamer mistress will be mine." The dark, muscular man burst into laughter. "That Lan Wende used to be some stock market genius, but now he's nothing but a dead dog. He can't even protect his own woman. To save his worthless life, he even handed her over to Commander Hu. And they call that a successful man? What a joke."

"Tch." The crew-cut man sneered. "That bitch Xie Yuan was looking for a new backer anyway. If she really had any backbone, she wouldn't have become Lan Wende's mistress in the first place. Still, I didn't expect Commander Hu to give you such a fine piece. The guys already played several rich young ladies and society wives to death in the early days. There aren't many women with good breeding left now. That bitch Xie Yuan is one of the better ones."

"Forget about me. Didn't Commander Hu promise you a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl to play with?" the dark, muscular man said with a lewd grin. "She's a young miss from the Xu Family, a top student from a prestigious school. How about we trade after we get back and share them?"

"Haha, I knew you had that in mind." The crew-cut man laughed as well.

The people behind them joined in the jeering, their mouths full of filthy obscenities.

These two were the leaders of the group. They had once been security guards in the villa district, but after the world changed drastically, they stayed behind and rallied around a chief commander. Together, they resisted the mutated monsters while indulging in a life of pleasure they had never dared imagine before.

Mu Xiao and An Rongru pressed themselves against the inner wall of a villa, clearly hearing their obscene conversation.

"As expected, human nature possesses its most terrifying dark side..." Mu Xiao sighed. "Things have more or less developed in the direction I expected. They couldn't possibly be righteous New Humans, or New Humans with any moral bottom line. They're a group of depraved New Humans driven by desire."

Mu Xiao turned to look at An Rongru, whose face had gone pale. Her eyes were dull as she leaned weakly against the wall, as if she had already seen her daughter fall into this den of demons.

"Maybe it isn't as bad as you imagine." Mu Xiao took her hand and said, "Come on. Once you return home and confirm it yourself, you'll know the answer."

"What if I can't see her... What do I do then?!" An Rongru clutched Mu Xiao's hand nervously, treating him as her only support and desperately seeking more strength from him to keep going.

Her daughter was all she had in this world. She could disregard anything else, but she could not live without her daughter, nor could she bear for her daughter to be harmed.

Mu Xiao understood that feeling. Before his rebirth, when he learned of his younger sister's death, he had completely fallen into an extreme, self-destructive state. He destroyed others and destroyed himself. No one understood that torment of the soul, that knife-like pain, better than he did.

"Don't worry. I'm here." Mu Xiao cupped An Rongru's pale, delicate face and said seriously, "If your daughter has been harmed, I'll send every last one of them to hell."

An Rongru closed her beautiful eyes and offered up her soft red lips of her own accord. Mu Xiao paused, then lowered his head and kissed her cold, trembling lips. In that instant, he understood the fear and unease in her heart.

They did not linger in their intimacy, instead continuing deeper ahead.

"Why don't we capture them and question them?" An Rongru asked quietly.

"Two of them are New Humans with fifteen gene resonances. Their abilities are unknown, but they have weapons, and those weapons definitely work. There are also ten guards with A-class physiques. Under those circumstances, do you think we can kill them all without alerting anyone?" Mu Xiao explained. "Our target isn't those small fry, but Commander Hu. As long as we kill the strongest person here, those small fry won't be able to cause much trouble."

Then Mu Xiao asked, "What kind of person is Commander Hu?"

"His full name is Song Tianhu, the chief commander of the security team," An Rongru said. "He used to be an elite soldier, but he committed some offense when he was young and was kicked out of the military. He was already in his thirties when he applied here. I saw that he was mature and steady, without the arrogance of a young man, so I hired him as the leader of the security team. I never expected him to be such a deeply scheming person."

"Mm." Mu Xiao understood and did not press further.

An Rongru was worried about her daughter, and her heart was burdened with anxiety. She did not speak again.

The two walked silently down the secluded path.

"The place where I live is up ahead. I..." An Rongru suddenly did not dare move forward, afraid that she would be unable to detect her daughter's life aura.

"Right." Mu Xiao stopped as well, as though he had thought of something. "Why have you always been so certain that your daughter isn't dead?"

With an apocalyptic disaster erupting across the world, even adults could not claim they would certainly survive, much less a young girl.

"I don't know." An Rongru's expression was resolute. "But my intuition tells me that my daughter isn't dead."

"Intuition?!" Mu Xiao's eyes suddenly lit up as he thought of an ability.

"Go ahead and enter the detection range. If your intuition is correct, then not only is your daughter alive, she may even be completely safe and unharmed." Mu Xiao looked at An Rongru with blazing eyes, as if he were looking at a precious treasure. He felt more certain than ever that breaking through her psychological defenses last night had been a wise choice.

"W-why do you say that?" An Rongru's cheeks flushed red beneath Mu Xiao's burning gaze, making her feel uncomfortable. Yet after hearing him, it felt as though half the weight in her heart had been lifted.

"If I'm not mistaken, your ability may be related to intuition. But you still need to verify it yourself," Mu Xiao explained.

If An Rongru's daughter truly had not encountered any disaster, just as Mu Xiao said, then his guess would be almost certainly correct.

"I understand." An Rongru took a deep breath and stepped forward. When the mental power of her "Life Detection" enveloped an elegant, beautiful villa, she quickly sensed a life aura within it. The instant she felt that aura, an incomparably familiar feeling surged up in her heart.

"She... she's fine! I sensed Han Yao's aura!" An Rongru grabbed Mu Xiao's arm in excitement and joy, wishing she could immediately rush into the villa.

But Mu Xiao stopped her in time. Seeing the surprise and confusion on her face, he reminded her, "I suggest you carefully scan the surrounding area. Your daughter is alone in the villa. Those guards couldn't possibly leave her alone unless she's unbelievably ugly. Otherwise, as the young miss of this villa district, those guards should be very interested in her noble status, rather than simply leaving her here unattended."

An Rongru immediately calmed down after hearing Mu Xiao's words. From what the guards had said earlier, she could tell how they treated the women here, especially the once-noble young ladies and elegant society wives, who had become nothing more than tools for satisfying their base desires. She did not want to believe anything had happened to her daughter, but there was no reason those men should have spared her.

"My daughter isn't ugly. Don't upset her later..." An Rongru said as she carefully scanned the surroundings. Before long, she discovered more than twenty people hidden in two nearby villas, apparently watching the villa where her daughter was staying.

An Rongru anxiously told Mu Xiao what she had found. Mu Xiao also sensed people lying in ambush around them with his mental power. Though it was not as clear as An Rongru's "Life Detection," his pure mental power was highly sensitive, allowing him to sense the hostility and malicious intent emanating from those people.

"They aren't watching the place from every angle. We'll find a blind spot and sneak inside. I think your daughter must know what's going on." Mu Xiao's expression turned serious. He had no choice but to deal with the trouble in the villa district. First, he did not want An Rongru to remain under potential threat, because her innate ability might be extremely valuable. Moreover, she was already half his woman, and he could not abandon her either emotionally or logically. Second, the villa district was an ideal base. If he wanted to claim this place, he was bound to become enemies with the New Humans inside.

Cooperation?

Mu Xiao had never been in the habit of cooperating with strangers.

Since a conflict was inevitable anyway, Mu Xiao did not mind striking first.

After hearing Mu Xiao's words, An Rongru used "Life Detection" to find a blind spot where no one was watching, while Mu Xiao used his own mental power to assist her, scanning the areas around them where the surveillance was weakest.

Both of them, being psionic users, deftly located the direction of the infiltration. They silently passed through the small woods in the backyard and slowly made their way toward the rear of the villa. There were no exposed balconies behind the villa, nor anything to climb with—only several flower-filled windowsills.

"Mm, we'll go up from here." Mu Xiao looked at the windowsill more than ten meters above. The wall was constructed from a mixture of crystal stone and rock, with extremely high resistance to damage. Considering that An Rongru was not as agile as him and her physique was weaker, making it impossible for her to climb such a smooth, sturdy wall, he said, "I'll go up first, then find something to bring you up."

"I'll keep an eye on the surroundings," An Rongru said with full vigilance.

"Good."

Mu Xiao drew two high-vibration electromagnetic military blades from either side of his thighs. He stepped back several paces, crouching halfway with his body bent like a bow. The muscles in his legs compressed tightly like springs. Then he burst forward, kicked off the ground, and shot upward like a speeding arrow. With his chest pressed completely against the wall, he rapidly surged seven or eight meters into the air. Before reaching the edge of the windowsill, Mu Xiao drove the high-vibration electromagnetic military blades in his hands into the wall with force. A hard recoil jolted his wrists; the blades sank only one-third of the way in, but that was enough for him to use as leverage to climb the remaining distance.

One blade hole after another appeared in the wall as Mu Xiao smoothly used the two military blades to climb up to the windowsill. Only he had enough strength to drive the blades into the solid wall and use them as anchor points for climbing. An Rongru, on the other hand, did not have the strength to stab the military blades into a wall with such extraordinarily high durability.