After the short woman dissolved into smoke, the women in Mongolian robes around her began to change, one after another.
They stopped wailing.
Stopped struggling.
Their eyes simply rolled back as they stood rigid, like a pile of marionettes stripped of their souls, propped up by their last breath of life.
Their mouths opened and closed, producing indistinct, babbling sounds.
Like some ancient, sinister scripture.
Or curses forced out from deep in their throats.
More than a dozen people made those sounds at once, their voices overlapping and drifting across the open grassland.
The scene was eerie beyond measure.
Yang Yong and Wang Ying exchanged a glance, and both saw the same thing in the other's eyes...
They were spooked. Completely spooked.
Yang Yong's original plan had been simple:
Capture these women, interrogate them harshly, and force them to reveal who was pulling the strings behind the scenes.
But now?
Every last one of these women was trembling like a leaf, shivering, foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolled back until nothing but a lifeless white remained.
Whether they would even survive was in question. To hell with interrogating them.
"Where's Doctor Zhu!" Yang Yong turned toward the Survival Convoy and shouted.
Before his voice had even faded, Zhu Yuhao rushed out of the crowd, his wife, a nurse, right behind him. The couple ran at full speed, one after the other.
Zhu Yuhao rushed up, took one look, and knitted his brows tightly.
"These symptoms look a lot like epileptic seizures!"
He spoke rapidly. "Get some people over here and hold down their arms and legs!"
"Quick! Find something for them to bite down on! Don't let them bite through their tongues!"
Over the past few days, Zhu Yuhao had treated people in the convoy, saving lives and tending