Chapter 541: Chaos in the Shadows

At another location, Red Serpent gripped her gun tightly, standing alert by Group Leader’s side.

All around, the figure of that nose-ringed woman filled the scene. Some stood by cars, others blended into the crowd, some appeared behind second-floor windows, and still others lurked amid distant groups—all casting cold, appraising stares.

Red Serpent’s palms broke into a sweat as she realized that before her stood an Ability User from Heichao City.

Yet with so many opponents around, she simply couldn’t bring herself to fire.

With her ability, she could strike if she reached an opponent. But with so many adversaries, she had no way of knowing which one was the true main body, making it impossible to unleash her power.

Amid this eerie fear, the smiling woman made her move.

She slowly drew her gun and pointed it directly at Red Serpent.

When someone with high psychic power finds themselves under a gun, a strange intuition inevitably arises.

It’s as if even someone with their eyes closed could feel a gentle, spectral caress across the brow.

Often, relying on that dangerous gut feeling to locate an opponent is a common tactic among Ability Users. But now, with the gun fixed on her, Red Serpent suddenly sensed peril from every direction.

Every instinct felt painfully real.

It was a maddening impulse – despite her rigorous training, her heart raced with panic.

Her abilities made her unsuited for direct confrontation from the start.

“Ah Hong, be careful…”

At that moment, Group Leader caught sight of the illusion of the woman circling around, and his face drained of color in shock.

Especially when the woman raised her gun, he jumped in terror.

Without hesitation, he lunged forward, shouting as he threw himself around Red Serpent, using his body as a shield.

That sudden act nearly drove Red Serpent to the brink of madness.

Her mission had always been to protect Group Leader and ensure that the plan unfolded flawlessly.

Yet that heavy, paternal bond weighed on her.

At the same time, the woman’s face curled into a smug smile as she aimed at Group Leader’s back and gently pulled the trigger’s hammer.

Red Serpent felt herself nearly falling into despair…

But in that split second, a crisp ‘crack’ rang out.

It sounded like scissors slicing through paper.

In an instant, a sharp, buzzing pain exploded in her head.

Struggling to lift her gaze, she saw countless silhouettes of women, like fragile sheets of paper being neatly cut in half—bodies distorting and twisting like shattered reflections in water—before vanishing completely.

Only one woman remained not far away, still holding her gun and barely aiming at Group Leader’s vest, her trigger finger ready.

Before Red Serpent had time to think, she managed, with great difficulty, to lift her gun from beneath Group Leader’s body.

“Bang!”

After all, she had been trained in Qinggang’s undercover team—a lethal assassination unit of Ability Users.

Apart from her powers, she had also received rigorous firearms training.

Even in such an awkward position, the bullet flew with precision, striking the nose-ringed woman at the throat. The woman’s face contorted in terror as she looked down in disbelief, gasping and unable to catch her breath.

Watching her foe slowly collapse, Red Serpent, nearly drained, lowered her gun.

“Even if he were your boyfriend, he’d only ever be second in command…”

Just as the overwhelming strain threatened to submerge her, a sudden voice whispered in her ear.

She instantly snapped to alert and looked up sharply, only to find nothing around her.

From the spot where the nose-ringed woman had collapsed, amid a frenzied crowd that inexplicably parted, Red Serpent spotted a woman dressed with impeccable elegance, slowly turning her head and smiling at her.

The feverish mob, like a splitting tide, drifted aside, unaware as the refined woman walked by.

Recalling that ambiguous remark from moments before, her face paled with sudden terror.

……

……

At the Third Street Corner, Old K watched the unfolding chaos with a cold, disdainful gaze.

All those pinned by his nails had turned into frenzied beasts, attacking other erratic masses; those hit in turn descended into further madness, and the bloody scene spread rapidly.

Amid the pandemonium, Old K seemed to relish the atmosphere filled with panic and screams.

Until he suddenly noticed that the surrounding uproar was fading away, his heart sinking as he looked upward.

In a flash, his brows furrowed as he exclaimed in disbelief:

“Where are my nails?”

The beasts he had controlled had unknowingly turned into lifeless corpses.

Their forehead holes remained, but the nails had vanished. Without them, the creatures lost their wild, frenzied state, collapsing slowly like ordinary people, bleeding as they fell.

Not only them—the people injured by their bites also lost their madness, wandering in terrified confusion.

Old K suddenly sensed something amiss; he sprang to his feet and reached behind him.

At his lower back, concealed beneath his suit, was a waist pouch with rows of nails arranged on its surface.

But when he reached out, his eyes widened in shock.

The waist pouch was gone…

Had it been stolen?

When did it disappear?

Enraged, Old K spun around, his cold, piercing gaze sweeping the area.

Right beside him, the treetops shuddered with clusters of leaves trembling, as if someone high above was shivering in fear.

Old K scanned the vicinity, even glancing up at the tree.

But he saw nothing.

Fury surged in his mind as he suddenly stomped hard on the ground, clenching his teeth.

A ripple of distorted air burst outward from him, surging forward to envelop the already alarmed residents of Heichao City and lashing even at the nearby tree.

“Crackle…”

Just as it seemed the nails were about to fall because they could no longer be held, a cold laugh echoed around him.

Old K suddenly looked up to see that, before he knew it, everything around him had been swallowed by darkness.

Thick, oppressive darkness enveloped him completely—streetlights, the cityscape, and the terrified crowd all vanished into blackness…

“Who are you…?”

In the grip of overwhelming terror, Old K summoned every bit of strength and roared.

Yet as his roar echoed, from the depths of the darkness a cold, sneering face flashed by.

It was the face of someone in a raincoat, standing deep in a dark alley, the gleam of her knife illuminating her rugged features.

In an instant, Old K was overcome by boundless fear; he wanted to scream, but his voice was swallowed by the darkness.

He tried to run, but his feet felt trapped, as if sinking into quicksand.

He wanted to flail his arms wildly, yet they felt detached from his body.

In the end, he could only emit a series of muffled, disordered roars from deep within his throat as his body was slowly crushed like a can under immense pressure. Black, viscous blood sprayed into the darkness.

Only his head and spine remained intact, their terrified yet oddly relieved expressions illuminated in the gloom.

“Tsk, tsk…”

As the darkness began to recede, only a faint sound of smacking lips was left.

Nearby, leaves on a tree trembled—though it wasn’t raining, liquid trickled down the trunk.

……

……

“Come on, everyone, charge! That place is unmanned…”

“Wow, there are so many guns over there—and Black Grass too…”

“Quick, there are too many people there! Let’s all join in…”

The madness in Satellite City Three of Heichao City continued unabated.

Its momentum grew even fiercer as more and more crazed people joined the fray.

Some were hyperactive, others sported dark circles and drifted aimlessly like stray souls, lacking purpose or discipline—merely swept along by the ecstatic mob…

When the crowd reached a certain mass, it almost seemed to have developed a will of its own.

They roamed the streets and alleys, dragging more people along and asserting their dominance throughout the city.

This fervor had already alerted the Administration Hall of Heichao City; yet its response was excruciatingly slow as internal chaos and missing key figures prevented orders from above from being relayed.

Even the Security Hall and City Defense Department, initially countering the frenzied mob, crumbled quickly.

Under the strain of insomnia, chaos, and confusion, the entire city’s resolve had become tenuous.

Thus, this feverish state soon became the norm.

An operation led by Group Leader and orchestrated by the ordinary Han Bing swept through the city, somehow generating its own Pollution Ability that rapidly spread and assimilated everyone into its fold.

……

……

Of course, Heichao City eventually reacted.

Amid the overwhelming frenzy, whispers began to echo in its streets, as if hidden entities lurking behind windows were secretly watching the crowd.

For these unconscious revelers, the unseen things had a natural, irresistible allure.

Meanwhile, at a semi-militarized base in Satellite City Three,

Darkness fell—no light shone from the building, as if even its structure were drawn to the wild fervor outside.

Gradually, things invisible to ordinary eyes began chattering inside the building, desperately battering its windows, walls, and doors—as if a swarm of caged insects were ransacking their confines.

At the same time, amidst the chaotic crowd, people wearing neck collars began to appear.

Their expressions were markedly different from the others—not showing signs of insomnia or fatigue, but as if in a daze, ready to collapse at any moment; they looked like individuals forcibly awakened from a dream, filled with a surge of resentful energy.

But just as these people—or perhaps the hidden monsters among them—were about to influence the city,

three individuals emerged.

For them, the notion of a fixed position meant nothing.

Some scaled dark alleys, their eyes glinting as they pursued those furtive little creatures. In their wake were the agonized screams of the little monsters, and the scattered remnants of claws, legs, tails, and heads.

Others infiltrated the semi-militarized base, a cold smile on their faces, silently gliding through the shadows beside major buildings along the route once traveled by Lu Xin, until they reached the doorstep of Building Nine, where the chaos had reached its peak.

When the clamor inside Building Nine finally peaked and an unseen force shattered its windows with a deafening crash, the shadows surged upward like a tidal wave, quickly engulfing the entire building in darkness.

Building Nine had its lights off, and with no other source of light nearby, everything was hidden in blackness.

Thus, the black shadows, buoyed by the darkness, effortlessly enveloped the whole building.

Inside, the incessant clamor and sound of scraping scales reached a crescendo as they burst through the building and spilled into the outside world.

Countless large heads attached to snake-like bodies charged enthusiastically toward the all-pervasive frenzied mob—only to instantly transform into sheer terror and deep despair when the shadow silently struck.

“Pitter-patter…”

A series of crisp sounds, like objects hitting the ground, echoed around the building.

They fell like hail, yet nothing remained on the ground.

When someone from Tianhe Security—still lucid enough—finally sensed something was off and shone a searchlight on the building,

they were shocked to see the entire structure warped and skewed, as if twisted by a giant hand into the shape of a pretzel.

……

……

“Crackle, crackle, crackle…”

As chaos swept everywhere, an elegantly charming lady stepped among those wearing neck collars, her gaze silently sweeping over their eyes. She sighed without a word, neither striking at them nor drawing their attention.

Gracefully, she walked between the feverish crowd and the chaotic streets.

It seemed she was searching for something, yet everything she found filled her with deep disappointment.

Finally, she arrived at a dilapidated telephone booth; the phone had long been smashed beyond repair, leaving only a limp handset hanging.

She gently picked up the handset and murmured, “How dare you show yourself so openly?”

Only dead silence answered from the broken line.

But seemingly dissatisfied by the lack of response, she suppressed her anger and hissed, “He’s already seen you.”

Still, there was no reply on the other end.

In the end, the lady said no more; her gaze turned cold as she addressed the handset lightly:

“It seems you’ve made your decision.”

“Then I hope you understand that with his temper, you won’t even get a chance to repent…”