I've already become a god, and only now you're telling me there are monsters in this world?

Zhou Yuan, who stood in front of him, was the first to notice something wrong. He hurriedly looked toward Gu Qing, who was on the phone nearby, and said urgently:

"Hey, junior, something's wrong with this guy. Look..."

"Aaaah-!"

Before Zhou Yuan could finish, the man in front of him suddenly roared. His body surged with strength, and he tore free of all his restraints in one go, scattering the thick iron bars across the floor.

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32, Biochemical modification

He had snapped iron bars as thick as fingers with his bare hands?!

Was that something a human could do?!

This guy was a monster!!

Zhou Yuan could barely believe his eyes. He stiffened with fright, feeling as though he was going to die today.

"Get lost!"

Having completely broken free of the iron bars, the man gave an expressionless, cold shout and raised his hand to slap Zhou Yuan in front of him.

With just one blow, Zhou Yuan, who weighed over seventy-five kilograms, was sent flying. He slammed into the wall to the side, in too much pain to get up.

His body had suddenly grown a size larger...

His hair had become unusually thick...

He gave off a savage, violent sense of pressure...

Then his strength had multiplied, and he had easily snapped every iron bar around him despite the biological toxin...

What exactly was going on with this man?

Gu Qing stared intently at the man before him, his expression graver than ever.

This was the first abnormal human he had encountered since awakening his cheat tags.

While Gu Qing stared at the man, the man was staring at him too.

A cruel smile curled the man's lips. His voice was low and hoarse, carrying bone-chilling malice:

"You can fight, huh?"

"You really like torturing people?"

"Now I'll let you get a proper taste of what real torture is!"

As his words fell, the man darted forward. His enormous, fan-sized hand shot out, all five fingers curling like iron hooks as he grabbed for the top of Gu Qing's head.

The attack was as fast as lightning. An ordinary person couldn't even follow it with their eyes, let alone dodge it.

However.

In the eyes of Gu Qing, who possessed lightning-fast reflexes.

The attack was as slow as a snail.

The man's movements slowed endlessly. Every tightening muscle, every detail of his swinging arm, and the curve of his bending fingers were perfectly clear.

Gu Qing merely shifted his feet and casually turned his body aside, easily avoiding the fatal grab.

How is that possible?!

He actually dodged my attack?!

Disbelief filled the man's face.

Before he could recover.

Gu Qing reached back with an eagle-claw grip, seized his head, and lifted his entire body off the ground.

"Aaaah-!"

As Gu Qing applied just a little pressure.

The man felt as though his skull was about to split, and he screamed in pain.

His eyes filled with terror. He couldn't understand why, even after mutating, he still couldn't beat a tall, thin-looking male university student.

Thud!

Gu Qing casually flung the man away, smashing him hard against the floor. The pain made him curl up on the ground like a shrimp.

Before the man could recover, a shoe descended over his head the next second, stamping hard onto his coarse, fuzz-covered face with steadily increasing force.

Slumped by the wall and unable to get up, Zhou Yuan watched Gu Qing crush the monster-like man so effortlessly, his eyes full of disbelief.

He had thought Gu Qing was only good at gaming. He hadn't expected Gu Qing to be even better at beating people up.

All he could say was that appearances really were deceiving.

"Talk. Who exactly are you, and why did you attack Zhou Yuan?"

Gu Qing pressed firmly down on the man's cheek, resting his left arm casually on his bent thigh as he looked down at the man and interrogated him.

The man clenched his teeth and remained silent, refusing to utter a single word.

Just then, Gu Qing's gaze swept across the man's shirt, which his taut muscles had stretched until it split, and discovered a strange animal tattoo on his chest.

It wasn't a ferocious beast like a lion, tiger, or leopard.

Instead, it was a rat with a furtive appearance and a sinister air.

The rat in the tattoo had a fat body, an arched back, four claws as sharp as hooks, and a tail tip that split into three bizarre prongs. It was hideous in the extreme.

He had seen tiger tattoos and lion tattoos, and even snake tattoos were fairly common.

But this really was his first time seeing a rat tattoo.

Rats looked disgusting and ugly. What normal person would tattoo a rat on themselves?

Gu Qing stared at the man's rat tattoo, deeply puzzled.

As he kept looking.

He couldn't tell whether it was an illusion.

Gu Qing kept feeling that a faint gray-black haze was seeping from the edges of the rat tattoo, as though a living thing were slowly writhing beneath the skin, exuding a foul, strange, sinister aura.

The design was far too abnormal. Looking at it made him somewhat uneasy.

Huh? Wait!

Suddenly, Gu Qing's heart jolted as he remembered something extremely important.

Some time ago, the university had suffered a rat infestation. Rats had been everywhere on campus.

Quite a few had been abnormally fat and covered in thick hair, looking as though they had mutated.

And those oversized rats bore an uncanny resemblance to the man currently beneath his foot.

First, both were far larger than others of their kind.

Second, both had unusually thick hair.

Then there was Zhou Yuan, who was passionate about biochemical research, being followed and ambushed by this man...

A bold conjecture instantly took shape in Gu Qing's mind.

Namely-

Both the fat rats at the university and the man beneath his foot were products deliberately modified with some kind of biochemical drug.

And Zhou Yuan was someone involved in researching that biochemical drug.

Then, for some reason, the man beneath his foot had set his sights on him, leading to the pursuit and attack just now.

As for the two people who had gone missing from the university, perhaps they had discovered some unknown secret and been silenced or imprisoned.

For example, they might have seen someone secretly performing biochemical modifications on rats at the university.

After sorting out this chain of events.

Gu Qing immediately looked toward Zhou Yuan by the wall, his tone earnest and solemn:

"Zhou Yuan, the man under my foot isn't an ordinary person. He's most likely a hitman."

"Unless something unexpected is going on, he attacked you for your research results, and he most likely would've killed you once he got them."

"Since I saved your life, please tell me everything about your research experiments without leaving anything out. I need to know the truth."

"..."

"You know about my research experiments. I'm trying to develop a universal antitoxin vaccine."

Trembling, Zhou Yuan struggled to stand with the wall's support, his voice weak. "As for results... they're very limited so far. All they can do is increase a person's toxin resistance a little."

"For instance, they can protect against ordinary insect bites, but there are a lot of side effects. They're not worth much."

At this point.

To prove he wasn't lying, Zhou Yuan deliberately raised his head and met Gu Qing's eyes. "So, junior, I really don't know why this man attacked me."

Gu Qing stared into Zhou Yuan's eyes for a while. Seeing that he didn't seem to be lying, he asked no further questions.

Before long, sirens drew closer, and personnel from the public security department arrived at the scene.

In response to the officers' questions, Gu Qing gave a clear, orderly account of the entire incident.

He said he had noticed the man following Zhou Yuan, and when the man attacked Zhou Yuan, he had seized the opportunity to ambush him from behind, successfully saving Zhou Yuan.

Then he had tied the man up and poisoned him.

After that, the man had suddenly mutated, growing a size larger and doubling his fighting strength, breaking free of his restraints in one go.

Finally, the poison had taken effect, and Gu Qing had subdued him again.

Gu Qing had recounted so much.

Everything before the end was true.

Only the final part about the poison taking effect was false.

At present, he knew nothing about the other supernatural powers in this world. To avoid unnecessary trouble, he needed to use biological toxins to conceal his own supernatural strength.

After listening to his account.

And looking at the man on the ground, whose muscles bulged and whose body was covered in thick fuzz.

The public security captain's expression shifted slightly, and he immediately turned away to make a phone call.

Before long, two men wearing black trench coats arrived at the scene.

Gu Qing studied the pair curiously.

But they ignored him completely and walked straight toward Zhou Yuan.

He watched the two black-clad men's receding backs.

His gaze settled on the [Night Court member] tags floating above their heads.

Night Court members?

Was this Night Court... some kind of special department?

The sort that investigated supernatural incidents?

Gu Qing was somewhat curious about this.

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33, The junior girl wilted

After they finished taking statements at the scene.

The officers didn't question Gu Qing much further and soon allowed him to leave on his own.

Zhou Yuan, however, as the victim of the attack, was kept behind by the two men in black.