Yue Shi talked with Ling Xun for a long time. By the time he left the Investigation Bureau, it was already past eleven at night.
Now that he held the status of an official transcendent, many pieces of information were no longer kept secret from him, such as the specific reason behind the sudden outbreak of the Bee Woman incident yesterday.
The initial intelligence was similar to what Tulip Security Company had discovered—
A high school girl named Xiao Rui, who had been bullied due to her appearance, came into contact with the supernatural through unknown channels and was contaminated into a Bee Woman.
Initially, Xiao Rui was in a transitional stage from human to supernatural; her reason was still intact, and she didn't actively spread the contamination. However, the bullies didn't let her go just because she had become beautiful; instead, they intensified their harassment.
Some people also wanted to become beautiful, while others coveted her beauty and committed lewd and filthy acts, causing Xiao Rui to rapidly lose her humanity.
The Bee Woman type of supernatural is very complex, with strict social hierarchies. At the top is the true source, the Queen Bee, and below are various types of Worker Bees.
These include "Architects" who can summon swarms and spit beeswax to build hives, "Soldiers" with top-tier melee capabilities, and... "Nannies" responsible for raising offspring.
As a "Nanny" Bee Woman, Xiao Rui could produce a substance called "Honey," which would contaminate ordinary people if accidentally consumed.
A few people who wanted to become beautiful ate the Honey directly and became new Bee Women.
A large amount of Honey was also dumped into the water pipes, causing most of the teachers and students in the school to suffer from diluted, indirect contamination. Their mutation was slow, but they were still affected by the Bee Woman. Later, when Xiao Rui went on a rampage and lost control, they were interfered with and turned into mindless lunatics.
This inside information was all gathered by the official transcendent Zhu Qunqing after he went deep into Amber City First Middle School to investigate.
He did have some skill, as he managed to briefly pacify Xiao Rui and cleverly extracted so much useful intelligence.
Everything was originally progressing smoothly, and the situation was gradually stabilizing. But according to Zhu Qunqing's own account, he simply made a mistake that any man in the world would make—while "pacifying" Xiao Rui, he also "pacified" the other beautiful Bee Women in the school and even urged them to live in peace and bury the hatchet with a smile.
Those Bee Women were the very people who had once bullied Xiao Rui.
The situation collapsed right then and there.
When Ling Xun spoke of this, he was practically gnashing his teeth.
Yue Shi's evaluation of the matter was... it was hard to put into words.
It was truly melodramatic and bizarre.
Yue Shi also asked Ling Xun for one million in activity funds, but Ling Xun didn't give it, saying he had to write a report and apply to his superiors first.
Returning home and pushing open the door, Yue Shi immediately logged into the Supernatural Forum.
He opened the URL, entered a string of random characters as his nickname, and didn't upload an avatar. After clicking confirm, the page redirected to a minimalist, pale homepage. It looked somewhat like a bulletin board system, with many different sections.
Each section had even more detailed categories, and new posts were constantly being bumped to the top, replacing the old ones.
Yue Shi's gaze quickly swept over various exaggerated titles—bounties, requests for help, things that looked like scams, and simple rants or shares of strange tales...
“Doesn't seem much different from a regular online platform?”
After wasting a lot of time browsing through a mountain of junk information, Yue Shi listlessly clicked on several long-term pinned posts.
Since they were posted by official accounts, the content was packed with substance.
There were various basic common-sense facts, definitions of rank divisions, and introductions to concepts like supernatural items and supernatural domains.
Yue Shi spent the entire night cramming this information.
According to the degree of harm to human society, supernatural entities could be divided into five ranks: S, A, B, C, and D.
Usually, the higher the rank of a supernatural entity, the stronger its actual power.
However, there were special cases. Some entities were physically weak but possessed extreme stealth or infectivity, thus earning a higher rating.
The lowest, D-rank, and the highest, S-rank, were both uncommon.
D-rank: “Can have a negative impact on human life but almost never causes casualties.”
S-rank: “Carries the risk of destroying the world.”
According to the official data, the supernatural didn't originally exist in this world. One day, many years ago, it appeared without warning. The apocalypse arrived, and national governments quickly collapsed.
There was a period of vague history, followed by humanity re-establishing order on the wasteland, which led to the birth of the Blue Star Federation.
To combat the supernatural, the technology tree had to deviate severely, birth rates plummeted, and human civilization almost ground to a halt.
To this day, human survival still faces challenges.
This brings up another concept—supernatural domains.
As the name implies, a “supernatural domain” is the territory of a supernatural entity. Certain powerful entities can form an independent space within a certain range. In this space, the supernatural entity is the ruler, and all rules are controlled by it.
Cities are human settlements protected under federal jurisdiction. Outside the cities are Chaos Zones, where ineradicable contamination, numerous criminals, and wandering supernatural entities exist. In the face of even more terrifying crises, the Federation lacks the energy to govern the Chaos Zones and can only let them be for the time being.
Yet even in the Chaos Zones, a large population still survives.
However, a significant portion of the land in this world has been completely seized by the supernatural, becoming “human forbidden zones”!
These human forbidden zones are sometimes super-massive supernatural domains formed by S-rank entities, and sometimes composite domains formed by many entities gathering together.
Despite the Federation's best efforts to contain them, the forbidden zones continue to expand.
Currently known forbidden zones include the 【Phantom Sea】, 【Supernatural Game Show】, 【Land of Equality】, 【Fairytale Town】, 【Mysterious Garden】, 【Samsara City】, 【Mother Hive】...
Looking at this long list of forbidden zones, Yue Shi couldn't help but click his tongue. The humans of this world... truly lived a difficult life.
His gaze paused for a moment on the entry for the 【Mysterious Garden】. The distance between this forbidden zone and Amber City... was quite close.
He continued scrolling down nonchalantly.
Supernatural entities have different ranks, and transcendents also have divisions in their cultivation realms.
But Yue Shi only found descriptive definitions for Rank 1 and Rank 2, which were similar to what Zhong Mo had said before. There was absolutely no information on transcendents above Rank 3!
At least in these few posts released by the authorities, there was no mention of information regarding transcendents above Rank 3.
Some personal posts did touch on topics of Rank 3, Rank 4, or even Rank 5, but... everyone had a different story, none of them matched, and they were all obviously garbage clickbait.
“Is there some kind of unspeakable secret above Rank 3?”
Yue Shi thought for a moment and then tossed the question to the back of his mind. Why waste brain cells on knowledge that wouldn't be useful in the short term?
Besides, his supernatural power had a unique source; the usual rank divisions might not necessarily apply to him.
Rate on N.U.
