Flesh and Blood Mangled

Captain Wang had arrived with reinforcements. Several Special Affairs Bureau vehicles came screaming in.

Captain Wang jumped out of the car with a grave expression, one hand already on the weapon at his waist, prepared for a brutal battle.

Yet the expected scene of a rampant rat swarm and hard-fighting team members never appeared.

The street was eerily quiet. Only a faint smell of gunpowder lingered in the air, along with... an overwhelming, nauseating stench of blood and rot.

His gaze swept over Sun Haoran, who was sitting collapsed on the ground, injured and still shaken, then Hua Yin, who was barely standing against the wall, pale as a ghost and clearly severely overdrawn.

"How's the situation? Where's the rat swarm?"

Captain Wang hurried over and asked anxiously.

Sun Haoran opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but he first pointed at the deep well opening. His throat bobbed, his expression incomparably complicated.

Captain Wang frowned and gestured to two team members. "Go down and take a look! Be careful!"

The two fully armed team members acknowledged him and cautiously approached the well. They switched on powerful flashlights and shone them downward, while aiming the detectors in their hands below as well.

A few seconds later, both of them froze.

Then, their faces turned pale at a visible rate, their Adam's apples violently bobbing.

"Ugh—!"

One of them suddenly spun around, rushed to the nearby greenery, bent over, and began dry-heaving violently.

The other was not much better. Fighting down the churning in his stomach, he staggered back several steps and shook his head at Captain Wang with difficulty, then nodded. He meant that it was safe below, but his expression looked worse than crying.

Captain Wang's heart sank. He personally walked to the well opening, took the flashlight, held his breath, and looked down.

The beam of the powerful flashlight pierced the darkness below, illuminating the bottom of the shaft and a section of nearby pipe.

Even Captain Wang, who had seen plenty and experienced more than a few bloody scenes, felt his stomach churn and his expression change repeatedly.

That could no longer be called a battlefield. It was more like a slaughterhouse where flesh and blood had been thoroughly pulverized by violence.

As far as the eye could see, the pipe walls, ladders, and ground... nearly every inch was smeared with a thick layer of dark red, filthy green, sticky "sludge," mixed with tufts of fur, bone fragments, and unidentified internal tissue.

There was barely a single even remotely intact rat corpse. Everything had been broken down and sliced into paste no bigger than fingernails, or even finer, slowly flowing and accumulating in the dim light, giving off an indescribable stench.

The double assault on sight and smell was enough to make anyone with even slightly weaker mental fortitude collapse on the spot.

Captain Wang silently switched off the flashlight, backed away several steps, and took several deep breaths of the air aboveground—though it was also mixed with strange odors, it was far better than down there.

He walked to one side and took a long while before suppressing the discomfort.

He looked at Hua Yin, whom Sun Haoran had helped sit down. The young man had his eyes closed, his chest rising and falling faintly as he clearly tried his best to recover.

Then he looked at the bottomless well opening and the team member still dry-heaving nearby.

"Clean up the scene."

Captain Wang's voice was somewhat hoarse as he ordered the later-arriving logistics personnel, who wore gas masks and specialized cleanup gear, "Conduct full decontamination, collect samples for analysis, and assess potential contamination."

He walked over to Hua Yin and Sun Haoran, looking at Hua Yin with a complicated expression. "'White Butterfly,' did you do this?"

Though he had guessed, he still needed confirmation.

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Hua Yin slowly opened his eyes and nodded. His voice carried the weakness of overexertion. "There were too many rats. Guns were useless. I could only... give it a try."

Give it a try?

Captain Wang's mouth twitched. The result of that little "try" was turning an E-rank demon beast swarm into sewer meat paste. Were S-ranks really this terrifying? That combat power was a little excessive, wasn't it? Forgive him for being an ordinary person unable to understand. Perhaps this was what genius meant.

"Let's head back first."

Captain Wang said no more. "Sun Haoran, help him into the car. We'll make a detailed report when we get back, including..."

He glanced at Hua Yin.

"Including every detail."

Sun Haoran helped Hua Yin into the car. Seeing how weak Hua Yin looked, he smiled awkwardly. "White Butterfly..."

Hua Yin leaned against the seat with his eyes half-closed. "Call me Hua Yin. I'm not really used to White Butterfly. Brother Sun, don't talk to me for now. Let me recover."

"Alright, alright. Hua Yin, get some rest."

Over the next few days, the Special Affairs Bureau's Operations Department and patrol teams went into full operation. Centered on the area where the Rotten-Toothed Rat swarm had been discovered, they carried out a more thorough purge of Youcheng's underground pipeline network.

Sure enough, they uncovered several more small groups of scattered E-rank demon beasts that had infiltrated the city, such as Nocturnal Deer and Rockhide Pangolins. All were promptly eliminated or driven away.

On the surface, the demon beast infiltration crisis caused by the destruction of the Spirit-Pattern Pillar appeared to have been successfully contained.

The city returned to its usual order, and ordinary people knew nothing of it.

Within the Special Affairs Bureau, White Butterfly's use of a large-scale destructive ability on his first mission, as well as his firing shots in the city as a warning, underwent internal evaluation and discussion.

The after-action report explained that these had been necessary emergency measures to clear the area and prevent civilian casualties.

In the end, considering his S-rank potential, lack of first-combat experience, and the fact that he had indeed resolved the crisis and prevented greater casualties, he was given a warning talk and required to strengthen his study of regulations, but received no substantive punishment.

However, the terrifying efficiency of his combat style and ability quietly began to spread throughout the branch bureau.

When Elder Li learned of it, he once again revised his rough estimation of Pale Bewitching Butterfly, this newly appeared S-rank ability. It was already this terrifying in the Meridian-Opening Realm—what would come next?

Yet just when everyone believed the turmoil had settled.

Deep within Youcheng's underground pipeline system, in a large abandoned flood-discharge passage that lay farther down, more remote, and beyond even the Special Affairs Bureau's complete coverage in this sweeping search.

Thick sewage flowed slowly, producing dull echoes.

The passage walls were covered in strange moss that emitted a faint glow.

A long, slender creature as thick as a bucket, covered from head to tail in dark green diamond-shaped scales gleaming with metallic coldness, silently slithered into the passage.

Its movements were supple and strange, yet it moved as fast as lightning. Its scales made only the faintest rustling sound against the ground.

It stopped at a relatively dry platform in the center of the passage, where the moss grew especially thick, and slowly coiled its body, more than ten meters long, into a massive, unsettling dark green disk.

Its triangular head lifted slightly. Its ghostly green vertical pupils were like will-o'-wisps in the darkness as they coldly swept the surroundings.

Then, it slightly raised the lower half of its body.

At the center of its coils, amid the damp moss and silt beneath it, dozens of fist-sized... eggs could vaguely be seen, their surfaces covered in intricate white-and-green patterns.

The eggs rose and fell faintly, as if life within them pulsed slowly, absorbing the cold energy around them and the strange aura emitted by the demon beast mother.

The dark green creature lowered its head. Its cold forked tongue gently probed one of the eggs, and a trace of indescribable, almost sentient coldness flashed through its ghostly green vertical pupils.

It quietly lay in wait, merging with the darkness, as though waiting, and as though guarding.

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