Chapter 297 - 286: Unknown Scarlet Conglomerate

Chapter 297: Chapter 286: Unknown Scarlet Conglomerate

"Honey, something feels a little off, doesn’t it?"

Behind him, Widow Cheng Ying clung tightly to Mengde’s waist.

From the feel of it, something had clearly... changed shape.

But Mengde was in no mood to savor the sensation.

Upon seeing the apocalyptic scene before him, he immediately released his Telekinesis Perception.

Ever since breaking through to the Star Map Level, the range of his Telekinesis Perception had grown even larger.

Now, even from his position in the West District, he could see the entirety of the city center with perfect clarity.

Compared to the sky over East Sea City’s North District, the sky above the city center was clearly much grayer.

It felt like dark clouds were pressing down on the city, threatening to crush it.

Like a heavy lead plate pressing down from above, it cast a pale and sickly light.

It was as if some unseen force had drained it of its life.

The air was thick with the smell of decay and dust, occasionally laced with a hint of blood.

The city center of East Sea City had once been the most prosperous part of the entire city:

towering skyscrapers that formed a steel jungle,

a place of flashing neon lights and bustling traffic.

Now, only crumbling ruins and shattered fragments remained.

Glass curtain walls had shattered into countless sharp shards that littered the streets, reflecting the faint light like the fangs of some monstrous beast.

On the streets, abandoned vehicles were piled up haphazardly.

Some were smashed beyond recognition, severely warped.

Others were burned down to their skeletal frames.

The pitch-black car shells resembled charred corpses, silently testifying to the chaos of the apocalypse’s arrival.

Several buses lay overturned in the middle of the road, their doors wide open, as if people had tried to escape at the last second, but ultimately failed.

Clearly, when the apocalypse began, some people had realized something was wrong and tried to flee, only to be discovered by zombies.

The once-bustling commercial street was now nothing but broken shop windows and toppled signs.

The wind swept up wastepaper and plastic bags from the ground, sending them spiraling through the air with a rustling sound.

Occasionally, a cold, gloomy gust of wind would blow past, causing an unlatched window to swing back and forth with a CREAK, like some kind of ominous portent.

A teetering residential building finally gave way and collapsed with a deafening ROAR.

It kicked up a cloud of dust and startled a few crows roosting in the ruins, which let out piercing caws as they flew off into the deeper darkness.

The glass of the luxury boutiques had long since been smashed, their merchandise scattered across the floor and covered in dust.

Countless zombies wandered about aimlessly.

Their skin had an unnatural, grayish-white pallor, their eyes were cloudy, and dried blood stained the corners of their mouths.

They would occasionally stop, sniffing the air with their rotting noses, as if searching for the scent of the living.

But they were destined to find nothing.

There was no longer any sign of human life.

This was what Mengde saw on the commercial streets of East Sea City’s downtown.

If this were all, it wouldn’t have been enough to shock Mengde so deeply.

After all, such sights were quite common in the apocalypse.

What truly shocked him was a former landmark in the city center—the East Sea Financial Mansion!

Although it still stood tall, its exterior walls were riddled with cracks, and exposed steel bars protruded like the skeletal remains of a dying behemoth.

The billboard on its roof had long since fallen, smashing onto the street and crushing several cars.

And from within the building, a faint, low-pitched vibration, like a heartbeat, could be heard, as if something was gestating inside.

This immediately piqued Mengde’s curiosity.

His SSS-Level Telekinesis surged toward it like a frantic tide.

"THUD—!"

The moment his Telekinesis touched the core of the mansion, Mengde’s back went rigid.

"Mmm~~~"

Aunt Cheng, who had at some point slipped into Mengde’s arms, let out a soft moan.

"Honestly, honey."

"How could you launch a sneak attack while you were supposed to be looking at the view?"

Engrossed in his observation, Mengde didn’t notice the blush on Cheng Ying’s face.

He just felt the woman in his arms squirming.

It was annoying him and seriously affecting his performance...

Because within his perception, a dark red, tumorous mass over twenty meters in diameter had appeared.

Like a living creature, it was attached to the load-bearing pillars in the mansion’s atrium.

The surface of the mass was covered in a dense network of bluish-purple veins. It constantly contracted and expanded with a rhythmic pulse, spewing corrosive mucus with every beat.

When the mucus dripped onto the rubble, it instantly ate honeycomb-like holes into the concrete.

Even the steel bars began to twist and warp like melting candles.

This was why the mansion Mengde was looking at appeared to be tilting slightly.

It gave off the feeling of that one building that snapped in half in that shemale country.

Even more horrifying was the scene around the tumorous mass: countless translucent tentacles extended from its base, spreading across the entire atrium like a spiderweb.

Adhering to the end of each tentacle was the desiccated husk of a zombie.

They hung in mid-air like dried specimens, swaying gently with the pulsation of the mass.

Mengde’s Telekinesis even "saw" the tentacles hunting—three zombies that had wandered nearby were suddenly impaled through the skull.

The zombies’ brain matter was siphoned through the tentacles’ tubes and into the main body of the mass.

And with that, the mass’s pulsation quickened slightly.

’This damn thing is evolving...’

Cold sweat beaded on Mengde’s temples.

His Telekinesis attempted to probe deeper, but the mass suddenly convulsed violently. Dozens of tentacles shot out, stabbing into the empty air as if they had sensed his prying gaze.

One of the tentacles even pierced his telekinetic barrier, leaving a blood-red afterimage on Mengde’s retina.

—It was clearly the DNA strand of some kind of biological tissue, reorganizing and mutating at a speed visible to the naked eye!

[Ding! An unknown crimson aggregate has been detected. Host, please be careful!!!]

[Ding! An unknown crimson aggregate has been detected. Host, please be careful!!!]

[Ding! An unknown crimson aggregate has been detected. Host, please be careful!!!]

Seeing the system’s triple warning, Mengde started the RV without a moment’s hesitation.

"Go!"

Before Aunt Cheng’s baffled gaze, Mengde spun the RV around, crushed the shattered glass littering the ground, and sped off into the distance.

But he didn’t retract his Telekinesis Perception just yet.

He saw that his Telekinesis Perception seemed to have startled it.

The entire financial mansion suddenly began to tremble, and the mass’s pulsation rate skyrocketed to three beats per second.

Tiles peeled from the outer walls and rained down onto the street below.

Then, the atrium’s glass dome shattered with a CRASH! A Crimson Tentacle as thick as a water bucket burst through the roof. Its tip split open into a five-petaled maw that spewed a sky-full of blood-red acid mist.

The street, now shrouded in the acid mist, instantly turned into a living Hell.

The shells of abandoned cars melted like butter.

Even the unfeeling zombies let out agonized roars from within it.

One zombie that couldn’t escape in time was doused by the acid, its upper body instantly vaporizing into acrid, black smoke.

Mengde urged Xiaoai to drive faster, because the mysterious, blood-red acid mist had actually begun to spread.

And its main direction of expansion was right toward his location in the West District!!!

...........