Anya bared her teeth at the group of brats, scaring them all away.
"Those kids..."
Xu Xiaoyou clenched her fists.
After a moment, she laughed at herself.
Why was she getting worked up over a group of children?
Staring at the pitch-black, ominous-looking pipe entrance, Xu Xiaoyou stepped inside.
A kerosene lamp appeared in her hand. She held it aloft, slowly moving deeper as she surveyed her surroundings.
This pipe had long since fallen into disrepair, with rust covering every inch of it.
Wriggling, bright-red sarcomas grew all over the rusted walls. They were bunched together in heaps, sprouting from every corner of the pipe, with similar red flesh squeezing through the cracks caused by corrosion.
It was enough to trigger anyone's trypophobia.
Upon sensing the young girl's presence, these fleshy lumps shriveled into the corners with a rustling sound, like climbing plants retreating from fire.
Large patches of red vanished in an instant.
Seeing this, Xu Xiaoyou became even more certain of her guess.
This pipe was the entrance to the dismantler's nest.
She had been closely following the news lately, especially reports regarding sewer maintenance workers.
In the span of two days, more than twenty maintenance workers had gone missing.
While city sewers were a favorite hiding spot for stray urban eldritch creatures, the frequency of these disappearances allowed Xu Xiaoyou to keenly detect an anomaly.
Sure enough, by following the clues and comparing the locations where the workers had vanished, she narrowed the range step by step.
Ultimately, she discovered that more than half of the sewer workers had disappeared in this particular suburban area.
Hardly anyone lived in this suburb. There was only a sewage treatment plant nearby that discharged treated waste directly through pipes into this area.
Following the trail, she had located this sewer pipe entrance just yesterday.
She aimed the kerosene lamp at a specific spot. Stimulated by the light, a wriggling sarcoma let out a shrill cry. Its volume shrank at a visible rate as it leaked red pus, which flowed into the pipe's wastewater.
Xu Xiaoyou slowly reached out a finger to brush against the sarcoma.
It felt slimy and disgusting, followed by a faint sensation of warmth. The lump still reacted to her touch, instinctively curling its body like an infant in swaddling clothes.
It had an outer membrane as thin as a cicada's wing. Through this layer, she could see fluid flowing in the blood vessels beneath, as if some form of life were gestating within, thumping rhythmically.
The expert's judgment hadn't been entirely wrong.
At least he was right about one thing.
Alley No. 5 was indeed in a weakened state after finishing its meal.
Digesting nearly ten thousand people would take a long time. It was currently in a dormant phase, which could be judged by the activity of these sarcomas.
They all looked wilted; their activity today was even lower than it had been yesterday.
Yesterday, these sarcomas would have shown strong aggression upon seeing her, but today they were all behaving, shrinking back submissively.
She estimated that the aura currently emitted by Alley No. 5 was less than one percent of what she had felt directly before.
This was the weakest period for Alley No. 5.
"Did you get a stomachache from eating so much?"
Xu Xiaoyou certainly wasn't going to pass up such a rare opportunity.
Strike while it’s down!
Delving alone into a dismantler's nest was a move that would seem utterly insane to the outside world.
But Xu Xiaoyou knew in her heart that she never did anything where the risk significantly outweighed the reward.
The events of two days ago had left a deep scar of fear in people's hearts. Alley No. 5 had become a taboo that made most agencies and fixers turn pale at the mere mention of it.
She didn't have much time. No matter how earnestly she tried to explain to the independent fixers in society how weak Alley No. 5 currently was or how great the opportunity before them was, it would be a waste of time.
Those people would only look at her like she was a lunatic, assuming she had drunk way too much sule joy.
Forming a fixer team in a short period was too difficult. Even if she managed to gather one, it was inevitable that everyone would have their own hidden agendas and might trip her up at a critical moment.
She only trusted herself.
Furthermore,
she still had a massive trump card.
Just as Xu Xiaoyou was thinking this, a sarcoma behind her suddenly began to vibrate violently.
Next, its surface split into four petals, and a crimson tentacle lunged toward her!
Xu Xiaoyou didn't even turn her head.
Anya pounced out, grabbing the tentacle in a firm grip. With a slight squeeze, she crushed it into countless blood clots that splattered everywhere.
More shrill cries rang out.
The wriggling tentacle on the ground gradually turned into red pus before finally dissipating like foam.
"Good job."
Anya wiped the blood from her face and licked the foam from the corner of her mouth.
A Substitute card appeared in Xu Xiaoyou's hand. After re-confirming the Substitute's current position, she nodded.
"Let's go, Anya."
The two of them pushed deeper, passing through a winding city drainage system that felt like a labyrinth. Before long, they entered the deep recesses of the sewer.
At a circular pipe opening, in front of a vertical row of iron bars, the dim yellow light illuminated two figures—one tall and one thin.
They were two dismantlers, seemingly in the middle of a conversation.
After a moment's thought, Xu Xiaoyou gestured for Anya to stand by.
She climbed up a rusty ladder to the upper level. Pressing herself against the corner of the pipe wall, she peeked toward them by the faint light.
"Heehee, cookies, yummy."
"I think so too, delicious."
"I love the way those cookies scream before they die. It sounds so good, like the harmonica my sister used to play."
"Folding those cookies' limbs into triangles and crawling through the middle is really fun."
"And jump rope. Rolling them into long strips and then jump roping, heehee."
Hearing these low-intelligence creatures speak in such a childlike tone about such dark and twisted things made Xu Xiaoyou frown slightly.
Not long after, the tall and the thin dismantlers began patrolling toward her direction. Their reflections shimmered in the bright red liquid flowing across the ground.
The sound of wet footsteps approached, and the ear-grating screech of metal scraping became clear.
"How much longer until Mother wakes up? I want to have another cookie buffet."
"Mother is still digesting food. The next time she wakes up, we can eat until we're full."
"Eat everything clean."
'Mother.'
This wasn't the first time Xu Xiaoyou had heard this term from the mouths of the dismantlers.
It seemed this group of dismantlers had a unified leading will. All dismantlers directly followed the orders of that Mother, unable to defy her will, much like an ant queen in a colony.
Is it the main body of Alley No. 5?
Xu Xiaoyou pondered, planning to slip past once they moved on.
As the two dismantlers drew closer, Xu Xiaoyou suppressed her breathing and leaned into the shadows of the wall.
Right then, she noticed a flash of red light in the darkness.
Was it a searchlight for illuminating the sewer?
Before Xu Xiaoyou could finish the thought, the red light suddenly moved, stepping out from the darkness.
Once she saw the silhouette of the figure, her heart skipped a beat.
A pale ghoul with crimson eyes was hunched over, its gaze filled with greed and a hunger for flesh as it stared directly at her...
Rate on N.U.
