The withered woman’s limbs flailed wildly as she let out strange, garbled screeches.
With a grim expression, Ling Xun pinned her head down with his foot, rendering her immobile.
“She’s emitting mental contamination!” Ling Xun shouted.
Yue Shi suddenly recalled something. Back in Ling Xun’s office, he had seen a report: “Unknown mental contamination has appeared in certain areas. Those contaminated suffer from distorted cognition, becoming excessively charitable and kind...”
The symptoms of the withered woman before him were... somewhat consistent with that description.
If that were the case, it meant that this particular mental contamination had likely already spread to Amber City.
“Mental contamination?” The others looked at each other, not yet fully grasping the situation.
The withered woman continued to struggle. Losing his patience, Ling Xun simply kicked her unconscious.
The woman took the heavy blow, her limbs immediately going limp as she stopped moving.
“Check the rooms thoroughly!” Ling Xun commanded.
The surrounding Investigation Bureau members instinctively obeyed, dispersing to check the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom.
A moment later, everyone snapped out of their daze. Looking at the withered woman again, the reluctance and pity they had felt earlier were gone, replaced by lingering fear.
The unconscious woman was quickly carried away.
After a thorough inspection, they found nothing else.
At that moment, Yue Shi spoke up. “Supernatural mental contamination can be latent and insidious. Bai Qingyu has had the longest contact with her friend, so she might be a potential carrier. I suggest sending her to the isolation center immediately for observation.”
“What?!” Bai Qingyu’s face paled instantly at his words.
In the next second, several screams rang out. The withered woman, who should have been unconscious, suddenly erupted with violence, knocking the Investigation Bureau members escorting her to the floor.
In the dim hallway, her body convulsed violently, as if some unspeakable power was rapidly awakening within her.
Then, her bones twisted and deformed, and strange patterns surfaced beneath her skin. Her frame swelled, her limbs contorted into unnatural shapes, and her skin became transparent, emitting bursts of white light.
That white light was neither warm nor holy. Instead, it carried a suffocating sense of dread and pressure, like an alien gaze from another dimension.
As the white light washed over the surrounding crowd, their eyes instantly went hollow, and numb smiles appeared on their faces. Their cognition was rewritten, their reason and judgment replaced by an extreme, near-manic kindness.
They became willing to forgive all sins unconditionally, even ready to offer up their own flesh, lives, and souls for the sake of another’s depravity!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Ling Xun reacted quickly, firing several shots in succession. The enchanted bullets accurately struck the deformed monster the woman had become, tearing through her body. Glowing white fluid erupted from the wounds, splashing onto the floor like molten stars.
Those fluids also emitted a dizzying glow, each drop saturated with intense mental contamination.
The monster let out a piercing shriek. Wounded, she became even more berserk. Her limbs lashed out wildly, shattering the hallway windows as she jumped straight out. She then charged recklessly toward a crowded area, white light surging from her wounds like a tide.
Seeing this, cold sweat broke out on Ling Xun’s forehead, and his hands trembled slightly. “The situation is spiraling out of control. This contamination-spreading creature is trouble. I have to deal with it immediately!”
He looked at the contaminated Bureau members, then at Yue Shi, and gave a hurried instruction: “Stay here and look after them for a bit.”
Yue Shi nodded. “Understood.”
After Ling Xun left, only the contaminated individuals—praising extreme kindness and unconditional forgiveness—remained in the room. Yue Shi looked at Bai Qingyu, who was also acting crazy, and sneered, “Stop faking it.”
Bai Qingyu remained unmoved, acting like an ordinary person who had been affected by the burst of mental contamination.
A raven hopped out of the shadows, its sharp beak diving straight for Bai Qingyu’s eye.
This time, she couldn’t keep up the act. She stopped her nonsense, a compassionate smile appearing on her face as she walked slowly toward Yue Shi.
“How did you tell?” she asked.
Yue Shi didn’t respond.
She asked again, “Why aren’t you affected at all?”
Yue Shi took a step back. “Ling Xun wasn’t affected either. Perhaps transcendents have higher resistance.”
Bai Qingyu shook her head. “He was affected, just to a very minor degree. But you are different. You didn’t hear the call of the Holy Mother even for a second.”
Feeling his barrier slowly being consumed, Yue Shi asked, “Who is this ‘Holy Mother’?”
At the mention of the name, Bai Qingyu’s interest was piqued. “She is the supreme deity, the great existence that can liberate humanity from the sea of suffering. Everyone will find salvation under Her guidance and enter eternal bliss...”
As she rambled on with her praises, the drain on Yue Shi’s Demon Feather Barrier significantly accelerated. He interrupted her nonsense. “Do you have any other ‘best friends’ prepared?”
“No...” Bai Qingyu answered instinctively, her face then stiffening.
After a few seconds, her lips curled into a sweet smile. “I’m becoming more and more interested in you.”
Yue Shi tilted his chin up. “There are plenty of people interested in me.”
Bai Qingyu asked, “Are you sure?”
Yue Shi raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
Bai Qingyu’s gaze landed on his face. “Actually, your features are more refined than Zhong Mo’s, but most of the time, he is more charming and attractive than you.”
“That’s because Zhong Mo is the best at using sweet words to deceive people.” After saying that, Yue Shi felt rather annoyed. Why had the conversation suddenly turned to this?
Bai Qingyu smiled brightly. Back when she was still normal, she had been quite happy that the company had hired two handsome colleagues.
Simply looking at their faces provided enough emotional value to make going to work interesting.
However, although she internally preferred the cold and aloof type like Yue Shi, in practice, she enjoyed flirting with Zhong Mo more.
The reason... perhaps it was because Yue Shi’s face was too perfectly symmetrical, refined like a 3D model, which instead gave off a slight sense of inhumanity.
This barely perceptible non-human feel became more obvious the closer one got, enough to extinguish any romantic fantasies.
Thwack—
A raven slammed into Bai Qingyu’s forehead, interrupting her thoughts and leaving her a bit dazed.
“I felt like you were thinking something rude, so I decided to physically shut your brain down. You’re so kind, I’m sure you won’t mind, right?” Yue Shi said sarcastically.
“Of course not,” Bai Qingyu replied with a look of universal compassion.
As her words fell, the contaminated people in the room all went silent. Every pair of eyes fixed onto Yue Shi simultaneously, and the atmosphere instantly plunged to freezing point.
With a thud, Bai Qingyu, who had looked like she wanted to say more, suddenly clutched her chest and collapsed to the floor. Her fingers gripped her collar tightly as her breathing became rapid, and a low wheeze came from her throat, as if she were being strangled by something.
Rate on N.U.
