Chapter 39: Entrapment

Chapter 39: Chapter 39: Entrapment

The city district.

A small patrol unit was making its way along the section of the city wall facing the abandoned district.

The strange, unnatural darkness spreading from the direction of the abandoned district outside the walls caught the patrol’s attention, and they wasted no time reporting it.

Inside the city, the Abnormality Incident Response Department occupied its own dedicated office building.

The duty officer hurried into the director’s office and found the deputy director standing there straightening his tie.

"Deputy Director, you’re still here this late?"

The deputy director’s tone was clipped. "Skip the small talk. What is it?"

The duty officer looked down at his personal terminal. "There’s a suspected Abnormality incident breaking out in the direction of the abandoned district."

"Threat level? Scale? Any signs of spread?"

"Level 1 threat, moderate scale, clear signs of spread — though the spread has stalled for now. It’s contained to the abandoned district perimeter."

"Right. Redirect a satellite and log the data."

The duty officer waited, but no further instructions came. "That’s... all?"

"That’s all. No intervention. I have somewhere important to be — I’m heading out. All external field operations are suspended until further notice. Nothing gets decided until I’m back."

"What about the Director—"

The deputy director gave a meaningful smile. "If you can get hold of the Director, then by all means, follow his orders."

"Right... understood."

Somewhere beyond Xiang Yi’s sight.

From the vantage point of a specialized satellite in orbital space.

The entire abandoned district was already engulfed in a churning cloud of grey-black dust.

Every corpse left behind in the abandoned district — buried deep underground, reduced to bare bones — had stirred with eerie life, clawing its way out of the earth and converging on the hospital, the only place in the entire district where the living still breathed.

And yet the unit tasked with handling Abnormality incidents within the city hadn’t moved an inch. They simply let whatever was happening in the abandoned district run its course.

Xiang Yi turned away from the window.

He couldn’t see the full picture outside, but it was clear things were getting worse by the minute. Whatever this Abnormality was, it was genuinely terrifying.

He couldn’t stay here any longer. He had to find a way out — out of the hospital, out of this abandoned district.

Of the three Scavengers in the room, Shi Tie was keeping watch on the closed door while the other two had their eyes fixed squarely on Xiang Yi.

The tall, skinny one suddenly had an idea. He leaned close to the short, skinny one and murmured, "You think we could drive him out? Get him to lure those things away, then slip out ourselves while we have the chance?"

His voice was barely above a whisper, but Xiang Yi’s senses were sharp. He caught just enough of it.

He raised a hand, giving the Scavengers a casual little gesture.

The three of them tensed, exchanging confused looks, trying to figure out what he was about to do.

Then Xiang Yi planted both hands on the windowsill and vaulted straight out.

He hung from the ledge for a moment, then used the momentum to slide down and land on the second-floor windowsill below.

One hand on the wall, and he could slip right into the room on the second floor.

But he didn’t rush. Instead, he dug a small chunk of rubble from his bag — picked up at some point, he couldn’t even remember when — and lobbed it back up through the third-floor window.

Thud—

The stone hit the floor with a sharp crack. An instant later, a frenzied commotion erupted just beyond the door.

Several Abnormalities had already started battering against it.

"You—!"

The tall, skinny one couldn’t help but cry out.

But Xiang Yi had already slipped into the second-floor room and was gone.

All three Scavengers rushed to the window. What they saw outside stopped them cold.

By the time the shock wore off and they tried to listen for where Xiang Yi had gone, any trace of him had already vanished from the surrounding area.

All that remained was the relentless pounding from the other side of the door...

Xiang Yi could have left without making a sound. That had been his plan, right up until the end.

But then he’d heard what those people were whispering about.

He put the three of them out of his mind almost immediately. Taking advantage of the confused scrambling above, he slipped out of the second-floor room and made his way toward the Scavengers’ campsite.

The fire they’d built earlier hadn’t fully died out. It still cast a warm glow over the surrounding area.

Xiang Yi could see a pot of meat broth simmering over the flames, and beside it, a tent packed with bulging backpacks.

But the firelight also revealed something else — the Abnormalities drifting through the camp.

The headless corpse of Xue Hong and the female doctor’s reanimated body were both there.

Two Abnormalities. Still within manageable range.

He crept toward the campsite, Mining Gun raised and switched back to output mode.

This was his first real face-to-face encounter with this kind of Abnormality, and he’d be lying if he said his nerves weren’t on edge.

He’d modified the Mining Gun using Blood Crystal Material, but he had no idea how effective those modifications would actually be against an Abnormality.

On top of that, the Mining Laser Gun’s effective kill range was only twenty meters. Beyond that, it couldn’t deliver the kind of searing, limb-severing power it had when Xiang Yi had clashed with Brother Long and his crew back in the mine tunnels.

That was a hard limitation baked into the civilian Mining Gun’s base design — nothing he could do about it.

Not unless he rebuilt the entire weapon from scratch, which wasn’t something he could manage right now.

Reinforcing the materials could push that range further, though.

By Xiang Yi’s estimate, the effective range was probably around thirty meters now — maybe thirty, but not much more.

The gun worked fine against people. Against Abnormalities, there were a lot of unknowns.

But no amount of uncertainty was going to change what he had to do.

Thirty meters was enough.

Besides, he didn’t necessarily have to go head-to-head with these things. He had other options.

Xiang Yi crouched behind the second-floor railing and eased his way toward the campsite. When he reached the farthest corner he could go without being spotted, he picked up a loose piece of debris and tossed it down toward the base of the stairwell below.

The familiar thud echoed up from downstairs.

The female doctor’s lurching corpse shambled off toward the sound. But the headless body didn’t react — it just kept drifting aimlessly in place.

It seemed losing physical organs did affect these Abnormalities, just not enough to matter much in most cases.

This one had no head. It couldn’t hear a thing.

So what could it still sense?

The female doctor’s corpse had already disappeared downstairs.

Xiang Yi moved toward the campsite, the question still turning over in his mind.

He was now fully exposed — right in the sightline the headless corpse should have had. It didn’t react. It just kept wandering.

He closed to about thirty meters. Still nothing.

He could fire now. The Mining Laser Gun had a clear shot. He considered it for a moment, then decided to keep moving.

At the same time, he reached into his bag and pulled out the Continuous Psychic Pulse Generator, dialing it up to the overload setting. A backup plan, ready to go.

Twenty-five meters. The headless corpse still hadn’t reacted. Without its head, its ability to sense the world around it was clearly diminished.

Twenty meters.

Honestly, Xiang Yi’s nerves were wound about as tight as they could go.

And still the corpse didn’t move. It just kept shambling around without any apparent purpose.

Xiang Yi took one more step forward.

The headless corpse — which had been facing away from him — spun around with sudden, violent force and came charging straight at him on all fours, its movements wrong in every way a body’s movements shouldn’t be.

Half a spearhead was still lodged between the bones of its leg, but it didn’t slow the thing down by even a fraction.