Scared Again, Rage Evolves

Black crows perched atop a corpse engulfed in flames, carving something into it. Each crow was black as ink. One of them turned around, its beak smeared with mottled blood, mimicking the act of chewing flesh.

Even more shocking was that it had only one eye!

Set right in the middle of its head, that blood-red eye resembled a full moon!

After the black crow let out a series of caws, the other crows turned around as well. Every one of their beaks was stained with blood and flesh. Dozens of single eyes watched them, their moon-red pupils reflecting their figures. Their beaks seemed to be smiling...

Then, with a flap of their wings, they flew toward Hong Ying and the others.

Suppressing the nausea in her stomach, Hong Ying drew the sword at her waist and swung it at them. Yet striking the crows was like striking ink; they instantly scattered, wasting a great deal of her strength.

"Get lost! Get lost!"

Hong Ying shouted irritably, swinging her longsword to drive them back. Her teammates sprayed water and fire, unleashing all kinds of abilities. Amid shrill, miserable cawing, the black crows dissipated like ink, leaving only pools of black residue on the ground.

Hong Ying patted away the black substance that had dripped onto her shoulder, her expression utterly grim.

They were an elite squad from the Special Affairs Department, yet a few black crows made of filthy water had left them scrambling.

With a bellyful of anger, she was the first to walk over to the corpse. When she looked down, her pupils contracted again.

The headless corpse was flayed open, flesh scattered everywhere, its intestines spilling across the ground. On the few remaining patches of skin and flesh, twisted blood-red words had been pieced together:

"King in Yellow!"

Hong Ying's expression abruptly changed. Stories about that being had been the perfect way to frighten children who refused to sleep when she was young. Who could have imagined that legends could become real one day?

Why would he...

King in Yellow!

No...

Wasn't that just a legend...

So... the legend had come alive?

Was that person killed by him too...

Hiss...

First Burial Venerable, then the Lord of Shadows, and now the King in Yellow...

What a headache!

"Damn it! Return to headquarters first!"

Hong Ying gritted her teeth. Mortals did not investigate taboos too deeply—this was the hard-earned wisdom that had allowed the Special Affairs Department's seniors to survive.

Even in their weakened state of awakening, those beings still possessed the power to destroy planets!

Too many strange incidents had appeared in River City lately. It was time to make a unified report.

While Hong Ying was inspecting the sewers, Su Ziyu arrived at the alley where Ruan Xiaoqi was.

In the spacious alley lay the corpse of a Faceless Ghost Fox. All its tails had been torn off, leaving only its bare body twitching continuously, the movements gradually weakening. Ruan Xiaoqi stood in a corner by the wall, fiddling with several large tails covered in yellow bristles. The Dread Demon Eye flew around her, emitting faint squeaks.

After extracting materials from the Faceless Ghost Fox, Su Ziyu left with Ruan Xiaoqi.

A curtain of darkness descended and concealed them. When they reappeared, they were already at an abandoned factory five kilometers away.

Inside the abandoned factory, the Rage Knight seated on a black warhorse suddenly brightened. The flames in his eye sockets grew much more luminous as he watched black mist rise in the distance like vapor, and Su Ziyu emerged from it.

Rage immediately leaped off the warhorse, knelt respectfully on the ground, and cupped his hands. "Master, everything was handled exactly as you instructed."

Su Ziyu glanced around and nodded in satisfaction. "Not bad."

Corpses and all kinds of organs littered the ground. To others, this might have looked like a slaughterhouse, but Su Ziyu saw it differently. This was practically a materials warehouse.

Every corpse lying here was material.

His gaze fell on the blue-haired cultist. If he remembered correctly, these people called themselves followers of the Calamity Serpent Society. They worshipped a Sea Serpent God from the ocean, and their bodies had all developed varying degrees of distortion and mutation.

Most obviously, their feet had turned into snake tails. The priest-like man had mutated beginning from his head: snake head, snake tail, and a body covered in slick scales, as though he had just been fished out of the water.

After collecting the materials, Su Ziyu went to several other corpses. These belonged to the Grotesque Circus led by that clown commander. They worshipped the Grotesque Mother Goddess, and their bodies had become severely asymmetrical and distorted. After their materials were extracted, they collapsed into black ash and dispersed.

Last were the cultists led by the woman in the qipao. Su Ziyu already knew that this cult was controlled by Zhang Huan. After the seven-segmented ringworms in their cranial nerves were destroyed, they lost their vitality. With Zhang Huan, the alchemist, also dead, these cultists had become nothing more than piles of worthless scrap metal and minced rotten flesh.

Simply put, they had no value as materials.

However, after analyzing these corpses and the Black Bear man he had encountered earlier, Su Ziyu roughly understood how Zhang Huan had made living-skin dolls.

First, he used alchemy to shape a human model. Then, he implanted creatures like seven-segmented ringworms into the cranial nerves, connected the neural lines, and finally controlled them by awakening the ringworms.

The method was not particularly brilliant, but it was extremely covert.

The fact that the Black Bear man had appeared at the night market several times without being discovered showed that, to low-level Beyonders, these living-skin dolls were no different from ordinary people.

"Whew..."

After gathering the materials, Su Ziyu surveyed the abandoned factory again.

Although it was thirty kilometers from the city center, it was still his territory. The core materials had been extracted, but the blood and rotten flesh all over the floor had not been cleaned up. No matter how he looked at it, it felt unpleasant.

"Rage!"

Su Ziyu's expression abruptly turned stern as he shouted.

"Here!"

The Rage Knight hurried forward and dropped to one knee.

"You contributed the most to guarding the factory this time. I'll grant you some more authority!"

Su Ziyu slowly spoke as he looked into Rage's deeply sunken eye sockets.

The flames on Rage's face instantly blazed more fiercely, some even seeping through the gaps in his armor. He was clearly extremely excited.

"I obey your will!"

Rage lowered his head even further.

Su Ziyu smiled faintly to himself. Extending an arm, spiritual light motes surged together and formed a massive pair of Spirit Scissors.

Dark Wisdom: Spirit Severing!

Just as he had done at the psychiatric hospital, he would use the flesh and blood of these cultists to complete Rage's next evolution and better arm the Netherworld Army.

From the scattered corpses, monstrous spirits that looked nothing like humans crawled out.

Snip! Snip! Snip!

The Spirit Scissors rose and fell swiftly. At the same time, their spirits and flesh were torn free and swirled into the air, circling the Rage Knight. The white warhorse also ran over and stood beside Rage. Threads of flesh wrapped around them layer by layer, eventually forming a huge cocoon of meat.

The remaining flesh and spiritual energy flew toward the other eighty-two evil spirit warriors. One of them threw back his head and howled. Fine spiritual energy poured from every hole in his skull-like head before forming another huge cocoon of meat. The rest were likewise bound within flesh cocoons.

Looking at the flesh cocoons that resembled silkworm pupae, Su Ziyu nodded in satisfaction. Especially after this treatment, the place had become clean all at once, making it much more pleasing to the eye.

As he waited for them to hatch, Su Ziyu's consciousness entered the System Space. He had accumulated almost enough materials—it was time to start editing a new monster.