Page 8

Screech-hiss-

The streetlight, 10% damaged, let out a hiss.

Ye Jiang finished patting the dust off her slippers before straightening up to look at the uninvited guest charging recklessly at her.

The newcomer had a shriveled body, with a dark red flower growing where its head should have been. Its thick, ugly petals writhed like a mouth, with unidentified protein tissue caught inside and foul-smelling pus dripping down.

Ye Jiang glanced at the pus and discreetly drew her feet back, moving her right foot away from a drop of it. A little dirty.

The pedestrian with questionable hygiene turned around and charged at her again.

Ye Jiang: "..."

Not an ordinary pedestrian, but someone picking a fight?

So that was it.

This time, Ye Jiang did not dodge. She raised a leg in self-defense and kicked the newcomer flying. It slammed into a utility pole. The streetlight reached 100% damage, and the pole snapped with a crack.

The troublemaker broke, too. Its spine twisted at a severe angle, it lay on the ground, unable to get up, wheezing as it spat out mouthfuls of pus.

Having rested enough, Ye Jiang continued on her way.

Before she had gone far, she met another troublemaker and dealt with it.

The city had a vibrant nightlife, but public safety was truly terrible. There was little fun to be had. She could not help reflecting on this when she encountered the eleventh troublemaking pedestrian.

Several blocks away, a member of the Ability Control Bureau was bandaging herself with one hand. The corpse of a C-Rank Polluted lay at her feet. The fierce battle just now had reduced almost everything around her to rubble. A C-Rank Polluted was no weak opponent, and handling one alone was still a bit of a stretch, but there was no choice. They were short-staffed right now.

An A-Rank Polluted's rampage would always drive lower-rank Polluted into a frenzy, drawing them toward it like pilgrims. Thus, an A-Rank Polluted incident was never an isolated incident. Although City A had rarely experienced such incidents, the relevant training had not been neglected. Tonight, all the Ability Control Bureau's field personnel had been deployed to deal with the Polluted.

But there were too many Polluted, far more than the Bureau had ability users.

"Fuck, how did I not know there were this many Polluted in our city?!"

The Bureau member bandaging herself cursed under her breath and spat out a mouthful of saliva mixed with grit.

"Ptooey! Ptooey, ptooey!"

She flexed her injured hand, took out her phone, and contacted a teammate. "I've handled things here. How's it going over there? Do you need me to come hel-"

Before she could finish saying "help," a piercing whistle sliced through the night sky overhead. The sound was so shrill that her expression went blank for several seconds. Her

ears rang wildly. A few seconds later, she clutched her ears and let out a pained groan. Blood trickled between her fingers.

A sonic attack!

On alert, the member raised her head to search for the target, but saw nothing.

"Skree-"

The whistle sounded again. She sharply turned toward it, and the instant she looked up, a shadow hurtled toward her with a rush of wind. Alarmed, she bent backward and barely dodged it! Bang-the ground beside her shattered, leaving a deep crater. Yet nothing was there. The shadow had returned to the air at a speed almost too fast for the naked eye to follow.

"Skree, skree!!!"

In the blink of an eye, the whistling receded toward the outskirts. With each whistle, craters appeared here and there in the ground and among the buildings. The member strained her eyes so hard they were nearly ruined before she finally caught a clear glimpse as another crater appeared. It was a Polluted with a pair of long, narrow, transparent wings and an eagle's talons, darting between the buildings and the ground at close to the speed of sound!

What was this thing?!

Her heart jolted. This thing looked even harder to handle than the fiercest B-Rank Polluted she had ever encountered!

She was just an ordinary ability user. This was not a class she could handle. Swallowing, she found her dropped phone on the ground, picked it up, and called for backup. "Hello... something nasty is heading toward the outskirts. I suspect it's B-plus..."

Ye Jiang stood in front of a car parked by the roadside, staring fixedly at the unattended vehicle's... four tires.

Why hadn't she grown four legs?

She stared at the car's four tires and gave very serious thought to the fact that she had only grown two poorly performing legs.

"Skree-skree, skree-"

The shrill whistle cut across the sky, interrupting Ye Jiang's thoughts. She looked up and saw someone flying overhead, traveling a great distance with a gentle flap of two wings.

A ripple suddenly spread through her stagnant-water eyes, and a glimmer sank into their inky depths.

The Polluted spotted a tender human below. Malice poured forth unchecked as it dove, its sharp eagle talons aimed at the human's neck!

"Skree!"

The sound wave arrived along with its talons. Fresh blood was about to warm its cold claws, and an excited red glow burned in its eyes!

"Skree... urk."

The whistle caught in its throat. The Polluted felt something grab one of its wings. Puzzled, it turned its head, but before it could see what was happening, an immense force yanked its wing. The force behind the high-speed charge it took such pride in was easily dissipated. It lost control of its body and flipped onto its back on the ground.

"Skree?"

The Polluted raised its head in confusion. A human figure was reflected in its eyes. She bent slightly at the waist, looking down at it quietly from above, and one of her hands was gripping its wing.

"..."

"..."

"Are you heading to the outskirts?" the human asked. "Can I come along?"

Although she was asking, perhaps she had been turned down too many times, because she gave it no time at all to answer. She briskly raised one foot... and planted it on its back. Once she had her footing, she released its wing and grabbed its long crest feathers instead.

Then she lowered her head and looked at it expectantly.

The Polluted: "..."

It flew into a rage.

With a piercing shriek, it abruptly took flight, swerving left and spinning right, trying to throw off this audacious human.

But the human seemed rooted to its back.

Furious, it charged toward the ground, intending to smash the human into pulp. Just then, bang-a fist landed on its head.

"Stop wasting time. Let's go," the human said softly.

That punch knocked the Polluted's mind blank.

But how could it give in so easily? It stubbornly flew and crashed about!

As a result, bang, bang, bang-one punch followed another, leaving its skull buzzing.

"..."

The stubborn, malicious Polluted was beaten into submission, carrying the human unsteadily toward the outskirts.

The night wind brushed past her ears as the city scenery receded behind her. Having successfully hitched a ride, Ye Jiang was in a very good mood.

Elsewhere, several ability users pursued it into the streets and were shocked by the Polluted lying along the way.

"Holy shit, why are there so many badly injured Polluted?"

"What powerhouse did this?"

"Where's that birdman? Where did it go?"

An ability user with enhanced vision looked up and tracked down the Polluted in the distance, pointing toward it. "Over there! It's almost at the manor! Wait! Hiss, did that birdman evolve? It looks like a lump's grown on its back!"

The lump, Ye Jiang, spotted the manor below and pressed her foot against the kind "driver's" back. "I'm here. You can let me off now."

Already flying unsteadily, the Polluted plunged headfirst under the press of her foot and crashed into the manor's backyard pool. Seeing that its landing posture was wrong, Ye Jiang jumped off its back ahead of time and landed beside the pool without getting a drop of water on her.

Splash. The Polluted fell into the pool and did not come up for a long time. It was not drowning. It did not want to come up. It was hiding.

Ye Jiang had prepared a whole host of kind words of thanks and waited beside the pool for it to emerge. When it still did not come up, she concluded that it did not want any thanks and left it behind.

She entered the manor through the back door.

Once she left, the Polluted quietly poked its head above the water. It looked furtive, without a trace of the arrogance befitting a B-plus-Rank Polluted.

After confirming that a certain savage human had gone, the Polluted shook the water off its head and leaped up.

Dense black contamination poured endlessly from the villa. The Polluted eagerly absorbed it, letting the contamination scour its flesh and blood. Its eyes turned crimson, filled with madness. Hard scales emerged from its flesh, and it felt itself growing stronger.

This was why the Polluted made their pilgrimage. Highly concentrated contamination could help them evolve!

More! It wanted more!

It gulped down the contamination, becoming enveloped in a pitch-black sphere that grew larger and larger...

"Skree!!!"

It burst out of the sphere, raised its head, and let out a high-frequency screech at the night sky.

It had transformed.

The aura of an A-Rank Polluted spilled from its body, its malice and murderous intent like icy blades. It soared into the sky and circled above the villa, searching for that hateful human.

Boom-

A bolt of lightning shot straight at it, nearly singeing its crest feathers.

It angrily lowered its head. On the ground, a human looked up at it. Dressed in a well-tailored suit, this human looked like an elite who had just walked out of an upscale office building. But on closer inspection, that suit was covered in fragments of Polluted.

Qin Daichuan remained calm after his first strike missed. He had been the first to fight his way here from the city. The moment he arrived, the intense malice assailed him. Looking up, he saw an A-Rank Polluted cruising through the sky.

"Hm? Wasn't it a water-controlling Polluted?"

Were there two?

Qin Daichuan rolled up his sleeves.

Then he would deal with them one at a time.

Boom!

Lightning exploded in the darkness.

Inside the villa, Ye Jiang shook the water off the soles of her feet and looked up at the thunder.

Was it going to rain?

She tilted her head. Then she had to get this settled quickly. She did not want to get rained on.

With that thought, she looked up at the spiral staircase before her. Contamination rolled down the white jade stairs like cold smoke laden with dust. At the top, the transparent figure had swollen to an abnormal size, its head alone filling the vast stairway opening. Of its two hollow eyes, one held boundless sorrow curled within it, while dense black evil churned in the other. It simply watched Ye Jiang as she arrived.