Chapter 115: Abnormality Incident Countermeasure Department

Chapter 115: Chapter 115: Abnormality Incident Countermeasure Department

When Xiang Yi glanced over, he caught sight of a Type-A Flesh Beast running down one of Lu Qi’s men.

Its locomotion tendrils punched straight through the protective suit and into the body beneath, killing the man instantly, then slowly began absorbing him into its mass.

The sniper who had taken potshots at Shi Tie earlier was already dead on a rooftop somewhere.

He’d had a device capable of firing Spiritual Energy Fluctuation Absorbers, but with two Type-A Flesh Beasts on his trail at once, he hadn’t stood a chance — it was over clean and fast.

His corpse had already sprouted several new arms and was slowly dragging itself toward the Type-C Flesh Beast on its own.

Xiang Yi hadn’t spotted the bodies of the others yet.

Not that their fates were hard to guess.

The Type-C Flesh Beast — that writhing mass of fused corpses — seemed perfectly happy to take in anything with flesh to offer.

Rats, insects — wherever there was something living, it would amble over and feed. It had clearly decided the sheet-metal building complex was its new territory.

Xiang Yi had just finished asking Ning Ye for intel on Flesh Beasts.

Like the Dead Spirit Dust Shuffling Monster, this type of Abnormality tended to emerge in areas where large numbers of corpses had accumulated.

Conventional firearms and weapons were largely ineffective against it — one look at its size made that obvious.

Flame Weapons were the most effective option, but Xiang Yi didn’t have anything like that on hand.

The Flesh Beast itself wasn’t particularly mobile, but the Type-A Flesh Beasts it spawned were extremely aggressive toward humans, and in a complex, cluttered environment like this, they became even more of a nightmare to deal with.

On top of that, if a Type-C Flesh Beast was pushed to the brink of death, the remaining body would rupture and explode, and the scattered chunks would give birth to a substantial number of Type-B Flesh Beasts — nastier than the Type-A by a fair margin.

Its sheer size also made containment an enormous headache.

Ning Ye hadn’t even bothered suggesting Xiang Yi try to contain it and bring it back to the institute — which said everything about how much trouble the thing would be to handle.

A textbook Level 2 Abnormality, through and through.

The robot had just mentioned that Spiritual Ability Users from the Strategy Department would be arriving shortly to deal with it.

Still, leaving it completely unchecked wasn’t an option. He needed to find a way to at least contain it — at the very minimum, keep it from drifting into the city or crawling toward any other populated area.

He’d dropped the Blood Crystal earlier out of necessity, as a cover for his identity, but when he actually had the means to do something, there was no way he’d sit back and let innocent people get hurt.

Besides, in a way, this mess was partially his doing.

And on top of everything else, there was a chance the Abnormality might carry materials he could use... well... probably not, given it was essentially just a clump of fused corpses, but still — what if?

Xiang Yi nudged the hovercar lower, unclipped the Laser Rifle from the robot, and leveled it at the Type-C Flesh Beast’s bulk.

The Blood Crystal Laser swept from one end of the Flesh Beast to the other in an instant.

True to form, faint black crystals flickered into existence wherever the beam touched.

But just like back when he’d gone up against Shi Tie before applying any Spiritual Enhancement to the Blood Crystal Laser Gun, the crystals lasted only a fraction of a second before shattering.

All it left behind was a long, narrow scorch mark across the Flesh Beast’s body — no real damage to speak of.

What it did do was prompt the mass of flesh to react: a knotted lump of muscle began squirming and bulging out of the mound.

Inside the muscle cluster, a snapped arm bone was coiled up like a spring.

The muscle contracted to an almost grotesque degree, then released in one violent burst, launching the broken half-bone like a projectile into the air.

Xiang Yi didn’t dodge this time the way he had with the RPG — he just ducked back inside the car.

It was just a bone, after all...

CLANG——

The sound of metal being punched through.

The bone spike had drilled straight through the underside of the hovercar. A faint bulge was just barely visible in the floor beneath the passenger seat. That was the raw power of a Level 2 Abnormality.

More muscle clusters were already swelling across the mound, and several more bone spikes were building up force.

Stay put any longer and he’d get turned into a pincushion.

Xiang Yi threw the hovercar into motion immediately.

At the same time, he flicked the Laser Rifle off Blood Crystal mode and back to standard laser.

Blood Crystal Laser was built from Level 1 Abnormality materials, after all — it made sense that it’d underperform against a Level 2.

And this particular Flesh Beast had absorbed somewhere close to thirty or forty corpses. The sheer volume of the thing was absurd.

But a standard laser beam should do the job well enough against it.

Xiang Yi leaned out of the driver’s seat again, barely needing to aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The scorching orange-red laser beam connected with the Type-C Flesh Beast immediately, slicing a massive chunk of flesh clean off the mound.

Under sustained fire, that chunk charred completely — reduced to nothing the Flesh Beast could ever reabsorb.

It was working.

Slowly, though. Painfully slowly.

He had no idea if the tritium fuel he’d brought would hold out.

Xiang Yi was gearing up to keep whittling the thing down when a flicker in his peripheral vision caught his attention — another hovercar approaching in the distance.

A communication signal forced its way into his hovercar: "This is the Abnormality Strategy Department. All non-essential personnel, please vacate the area and maintain a safe distance."

Xiang Yi could have cut the signal with his Spiritual Energy, but if it was the Abnormality Strategy Department, there wasn’t much point.

The Abnormality Strategy Department answered to a friend of Master Chang’s — no reason to avoid them.

When the other hovercar realized Xiang Yi had no intention of leaving, it repeated: "This is the Abnormality Strategy Department. All non-essential personnel, please vacate the area and maintain a safe distance. Interference with Strategy Department operations will be treated as — wait, that license plate..."

"Xiang Yi, is that you?"

"It is."

"It really is you! Hey, hi — I’m Le Nianzhou, from the Abnormality Strategy Department."

"Hi."

Xiang Yi returned a polite greeting, but Le Nianzhou was already launching into conversation with obvious enthusiasm: "Word about what you’ve been up to these past couple of days has gotten around."

"Have to say, you handled it beautifully — didn’t leave a trace, and saved us no end of trouble in the process."

"That’s the way to do it. Hit Iron Shell Company right where it hurts."

The other hovercar had pulled up alongside Xiang Yi’s, carrying three people — two men and a woman.

The man in the passenger seat was bundled in a thick coat, but you could still tell he was solidly built, with a square, determined face.

The woman in the back had her hair pulled back in a sharp, efficient ponytail. She was staring at the lean young man in the driver’s seat like she was watching someone do something spectacularly stupid.

The occasional glance she flicked toward Xiang Yi carried what seemed like a faint trace of... contempt? He wasn’t entirely sure he was reading it right.

The lean young man — presumably Le Nianzhou — had clearly already spotted Xiang Yi and Shi Tie through the window, and clocked Lu Qi stretched out in the backseat.

He gave no indication of having registered any of it, and gave Xiang Yi a cheerful wave as if everything were perfectly ordinary.

Xiang Yi nodded back, then spoke up: "So how did you know there was an Abnormality here?"

"Most of the city has detectors installed."

"Got it."

The woman’s voice came through the comm channel, impatient: "Alright, alright, we’re on a job — save the small talk."

Le Nianzhou looked faintly disappointed.

"Right, we’ll cut it there — we need to go deal with the Abnormality down below. A Level 2 Type-C Flesh Beast, still a bit of a handful."

"Need any help?"

"No, we’re — ah... not at the moment."

Le Nianzhou took a longer look and only then realized just how enormous the Flesh Beast actually was.

He’d never seen a Type-C Flesh Beast built from thirty or forty corpses before.

Forty human bodies crammed together under normal circumstances would amount to maybe three or four cubic meters — but a Flesh Beast wasn’t something you could apply normal logic to.

The biggest one he’d handled before had been assembled from three or four bodies, tops.

He had two teammates with him this time, sure, but he couldn’t afford to make any rash promises.

Le Nianzhou brought the hovercar to a stop nearby, and the three of them climbed out together.

They sorted through their gear from the trunk, pulled on protective suits that likely had Silent Alloy woven in, strapped on lightweight Exoskeleton Equipment, and each picked up what looked like a Flamethrower.

The three exchanged a few words, then spread out and began to close in on the Type-C Flesh Beast from different angles.

Xiang Yi kept the hovercar circling overhead, drawing the Flesh Beast’s attention.

It also gave him a chance to scan the area for any Type-A Flesh Beasts that might have split off, or any of Lu Qi’s men who’d somehow managed to stay alive.

But his gaze kept drifting back to Le Nianzhou’s group.

All three of them had dried bloodstains on their suits — the kind that said they’d been in a fight not long ago and hadn’t had a spare moment to clean up before being called straight to the next scene.