Chapter 170 - 132: Case Established! [The ’He Comes From Hell’ Case!]

Xu Huo’s eyes narrowed.

He sniffed.

The next second, his nose caught several foul-smelling... human scents.

’Is this... Are there other people here?’

Xu Huo paused for a moment, then walked toward the sewer.

But before he could dash over, the child lying on the ground suddenly moved.

He lunged forward and grabbed onto Xu Huo’s legs.

Then, from within the manhole...

a swarm of children crawled out.

A look of astonishment crossed Xu Huo’s face. He watched as two, three, four, five kids poured out of the sewer, his brain short-circuiting for a moment.

’It’s like a game of whack-a-mole, but I didn’t even hit anything...’

The children were fast, disappearing in the blink of an eye.

Wang Chao tried to grab them, but the child holding onto Xu Huo also let go and ran off.

"Hey, you little brats!"

Wang Chao was so angry he was seeing red. He grabbed left and right, but they skillfully slipped past him.

In the end, he didn’t catch a single one.

"Seriously, where are their parents!?" Wang Chao cursed under his breath.

"Brother, let’s go after them!"

"No rush."

Xu Huo smiled, not having moved an inch.

He turned his head and continued to look into the sewer.

"Those kids are clever. They ran off on purpose."

"Down here..."

"There are two more."

"Two more!?" Wang Chao was stunned.

Then, he saw Xu Huo slowly turn and descend the rebar rungs into the opening.

There was no standing water inside the sewer. The walkway was recessed, and the space was large enough for a six-foot-tall man to stand up straight.

However, in the recessed areas, there was flowing sludge, though it wasn’t deep, just a thin trickle.

CLICK!

Xu Huo turned on his phone’s flashlight.

In the next instant, the scene before them came into sharp focus.

Wang Chao, stepping in the sludge, saw a little girl crouching in a corner with her head buried and her rear facing him. After a moment’s thought, he plucked her up like a turnip.

"Stop hiding."

"Huh? You can’t see?"

Wang Chao said in surprise, looking at the eyes of the child he’d just picked up.

"For you, for, for..."

Suddenly, Xu Huo felt a tug on his pant leg. He looked down.

It was another little girl.

She was wearing thin clothes covered in foul-smelling sludge, a stark contrast to the freezing weather.

She wasn’t even as tall as Xu Huo’s leg, only reaching his knee.

She had no legs... no healthy legs.

Xu Huo glanced over and saw a pair of tiny legs, like the forelimbs of a T-Rex, fixed to a piece of tire rubber to prevent scraping the skin.

She walked with her hands.

Looking to be about seven or eight years old, she was in the sewer, dragging her body with her hands, crawling toward Xu Huo with a desperate look on her face. In her other hand, she held something.

It was a fried chicken box. Not from one of those foreign brands, but a domestic imitation that had appeared in recent years.

Inside the box were several pieces of fried meat, long since gone cold.

"For, for, for..."

The child hugged Xu Huo’s leg, looking up with a pleading expression, and pointed at Wang Chao, who was poking the other little girl’s cheek for fun.

Xu Huo roughly understood what she meant.

She wanted to trade the box of fried chicken.

He was about to speak, but his nose suddenly caught a scent.

The next second, Xu Huo froze. He took the fried chicken box from her, his expression turning grim.

Xu Huo picked out a few pieces of fried chicken from inside, his eyes narrowing as he stared at them seriously.

"You guys..."

Wang Chao paused, looking at the modified tunnels in the distance and the household trash inside.

"Live here?"

"WAAAH..." the little girl cried.

"I’m not being mean to you."

Wang Chao was perplexed. He poked her cheek. "Why do you live here?"

"Why live in a sewer?"

"Where are the adults?"

Deeper inside, there were signs of an adult living there, which meant these kids had a guardian.

"Where did the adult go?" Wang Chao poked her cheek again.

"SOB SOB SOB..." The little girl just stood there crying, wiping her tears with her sleeve. She didn’t run, she just cried.

Worried she’d get something from her sleeve in her eye, Wang Chao grabbed both of her small hands and poked her cheek with his other hand, which made her cry even louder.

Wang Chao was even more baffled.

Every time he poked her, she’d let out a cry. Poke, cry. Poke, cry...

Until...

THWACK!

A few small pebbles suddenly fell from above, hitting Wang Chao.

He looked up and saw several anxious children standing at the manhole opening, throwing pebbles down at him.

"Hey, you little punks!"

Wang Chao cursed, but thankfully the pebbles didn’t hurt.

He didn’t go up. Every time they hit him with a pebble, Wang Chao would poke the little girl’s face. Every time he poked her, she would cry. Every time the kids above heard her cry, they would throw another stone. And every time Wang Chao got hit, he’d poke her again...

"Brother Huo, go up there and teach them a lesson!"

Wang Chao urged Xu Huo to go up and bully the children.

Xu Huo didn’t say a word. He held the pieces of fried chicken, examining them silently under the moonlight with a strange look in his eyes.

Until...

"Let’s call the police."

"Call Wang Hu—Captain Wang, Director Zhang from the city bureau, Captain Qian, and Captain Li."

Xu Huo said quietly.

Wang Chao faltered. His tone softened as he gently rubbed the little girl’s face.

"Isn’t that a bit much? It’s just a little food."

"They’re pitiful..."

"No. It’s not about the kids."

Xu Huo paused, his eyes fixed on the chicken pieces in his hand.

"Something... has happened."

The moment those words were spoken.

A voice...

quietly emerged in his mind.

[Congratulations, Host, you have triggered a mission: Compose a Storyline...]

[The rewards are divided into four tiers: 25% Immersion, 50% Immersion, 75% Immersion, and 100% Immersion]

[Composition Time: Twenty days.]

It was the System’s voice, which hadn’t sounded for a whole month.

Xu Huo ignored it. He reached out and peeled the crust off a tiny piece of chicken.

And then.

Something the size of a pinky fingernail, now stripped of its crispy coating, appeared before his eyes.

It was...

a tooth.

A human tooth!

Xu Huo remained silent and searched for another moment.

He found another thumb-sized piece and peeled it open...

A phalanx, looking like a bone from a chicken foot, came into view.

It was a human finger bone.

Finally, he found a spherical piece.

Inside was an eye.

A human eye!

An eyeball, gouged from its socket, coated in egg wash and breadcrumbs, and then deep-fried in hot oil... a human eyeball.

Under the moonlight, Xu Huo held the eyeball, which exuded a tempting aroma.

Someone in Linlan City had been dismembered...

The body had been chopped into pieces. Each piece was coated in egg wash and breadcrumbs, deep-fried, and finally... ended up in a food shop, and then in the stomachs of customers.

Wang Chao was stunned, his eyes vacant.

"This is... a case of... cooking a corpse..."

"Call the police."

[The title of this storyline is: ...]

[’He Who Comes from Hell’!]

[Composition Time: Twenty days.]

(Case established!)

Someone...

is eating people!