Chapter 362 A Mutant Parasite in Human Skin

"Cheers! To our brothers on the front lines, getting hurt!"

Hongxing Open-air Food Stall in Xiacheng District, Donghai City.

Dozens of shirtless men, beer mugs in hand, let the pure white beer rain pelt their faces, letting out wild, excited roars. The aroma of beer mingled with the rich, fresh scent of grass and trees in the air, plunging the entire neighborhood into a near-frenzied celebration.

"Awesome! I've been stuck at this bottleneck for half a year, but after being rained on for ten minutes today, my Qi Sea actually feels swollen!" A burly man with a face full of scars crushed the glass in his hand, letting the blood and beer mix together, but the wound healed at a speed visible to the naked eye under the nourishment of the spiritual rain.

No one noticed the edge of this revelry.

In the dark alley behind the food stall, a homeless man, completely drunk, was leaning against a moss-covered brick wall, vomiting profusely with his head down.

"Ugh—this is fucking...heavy rain..."

The homeless man mumbled incoherently, wiping the filth from the corner of his mouth.

A cold night wind blew by.

A grayish-black spore, almost indistinguishable to the naked eye, drifted lightly down onto the greasy nape of the homeless man, mixed in with the white rain.

There was no burning sensation or stinging.

The moment the spore came into contact with the warm human skin, it was like a drop of ink falling into a sponge, instantly melting and penetrating it.

The homeless man hiccuped, scratched the back of his neck a couple of times, and said, "This damn weather... and there are mosquitoes..."

Before he could finish speaking...

His body suddenly froze.

"Giggle...giggle..."

A faint, grating sound, like a rat gnawing on a bone, emanated from his body. The homeless man's eyes bulged instantly, filled with terrifyingly dark red blood vessels. He opened his mouth to scream, but only a hissing sound, like a bellows leaking air, came from his throat.

His vocal cords were shredded by an extremely domineering black fiber within two seconds!

The homeless man knelt in agony in the mud, his hands gripping the cracks in the bricks of the ground so tightly that his fingernails broke off at the roots.

Even more terrifying, as the pure spiritual rain continued to fall from the sky, this energy, which was originally meant to nourish all things, was instantly intercepted and contaminated by the "parasite" at the back of his neck after entering his body!

As spiritual energy flowed in, the homeless man's spine emitted a sickening crack, growing an astonishing thirty centimeters taller. His jawbone dislocated with a "crack," splitting open all the way to his earlobe, and countless black tendrils resembling blood vessels surged out of his mouth.

"Clatter".

The vagrant—or rather, this parasitic beast in human skin—slowly rose from the mud. Its joints were twisted at an extremely inhuman angle, and the once cloudy whites of its eyes had turned completely black, radiating an aura of extreme yin.

It tilted its head slightly, listening to the bustling noise coming from the food stalls outside the alley, and a string of thick, black saliva dripped from the corner of its split mouth.

……

Two streets away.

A tactical armored vehicle belonging to the 7th Patrol Squad of the Donghai City Defense Force is parked on the side of the road.

"Captain, this rain is really weird. I just checked the tactical terminal, and the spiritual pressure index in our area is almost off the charts."

In the co-pilot's seat, recruit Chen Yu wiped the water droplets off his tactical helmet visor while excitedly staring out the window.

Captain Zheng Jianguo leaned back in the driver's seat, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth, while meticulously wiping a standard-issue psionic burst gun with a coarse cloth soaked in engine oil.

"Don't be silly. When good things fall from the sky, it's usually because the sky is slaughtering pigs." Old Zheng slammed the cleaned gun onto the dial with a "click," his brow furrowed. "It's a good thing the formation drained the poisonous rain, but my right eyelid has been twitching since earlier. Put the safety on your chainsaw sword; tonight doesn't look like it'll be peaceful."

"Captain, you're just too nervous. What danger could there be..."

"Beep—beep—beep!"

Before Chen Yu could finish speaking, the life detector on the center console of the armored vehicle suddenly emitted an extremely sharp red alarm.

"Holy crap!" Chen Yu jumped in fright, staring sharply at the screen. "Back alley of Red Star Food Stall! Unregistered high-energy biological reaction detected! Wait... wait, the numbers are jumping wildly! Qi Refining Level 5... Foundation Establishment Early Stage... and it's still rising!"

"Shut up! Get out of the vehicle! Battle formation!"

Old Zheng ripped the cigarette out of his mouth, kicked open the car door, grabbed his explosive pistol, and rushed into the rain. Chen Yu hurriedly grabbed his chainsaw sword and stumbled after him.

The two waded through the puddles and rushed into the back alley of the Hongxing food stall, one after the other.

The alley was deathly silent, with only the sound of raindrops hitting the trash cans.

An extremely strong smell of blood, mixed with the stench of the sewer, assaulted my nostrils.

Old Zheng gave a tactical hand signal, and Chen Yu immediately leaned against the wall, gripping the hilt of the chainsaw sword tightly with both hands. Due to the tension, the hydraulic joints of the mecha made a slight "clicking" sound.

"alert."

Old Zheng turned on the powerful flashlight under the gun barrel, and the snow-white beam instantly tore through the darkness.

"vomit……"

The moment Chen Yu saw the scene at the end of the beam of light, his stomach churned, and he almost vomited right into his helmet.

At the end of the beam of light, a burly man who had just been drinking at a roadside stall now lay like a rag doll in a pile of garbage. His chest had been brutally ripped open, and his heart was gone.

Squatting next to the corpse was a "person" who was nearly 2.5 meters tall and had extremely long and twisted limbs.

No, that can't even be called a human being.

The monster was dressed in the tattered clothes of a homeless man, but its jawbone was completely torn apart, and countless black tentacles were stuck in the strong man's chest cavity, greedily sucking the fresh blood and the essence contained in the flesh.

"Damn! A void creature? How could it possibly get into the formation!"

Old Zheng roared and, without a word, pulled the trigger without hesitation.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two explosive bullets, engraved with the Extreme Yang Array pattern, were fired instantly, leaving orange-red trails of flame, and struck the monster's back with perfect accuracy.

"boom!"

Flames exploded, blasting two large, bowl-sized holes into the monster's back, with black fluid splattering everywhere.

"squeak--!"

The monster let out an extremely piercing shriek and abruptly turned its head. Its pair of pitch-black eyes were fixed on Old Zheng. It didn't even glance at the wound on its back. With a powerful push off the wall, it pounced on Old Zheng like a cannonball!

"So fast!"

Chen Yu only felt a blur before his eyes, and the monster had already crossed a distance of more than ten meters. Its black tentacles lashed towards Lao Zheng's face like steel whips.

"Get the hell out of my way!"

Old Zheng reacted extremely quickly, parrying upwards with the butt of his gun.

"clang!"

A dull thud rang out, and Old Zheng felt an extremely terrifying force strike him. He was thrown backward and slid three or four meters before crashing heavily into the brick wall, leaving a deep dent in his bulletproof chest armor.

"Chen Yu! Move! Cut through the middle lane!" Old Zheng spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva and roared.

"Go to hell!"

Chen Yu gritted his teeth and slammed the power valve of the chainsaw sword down. "Buzz—" The high-frequency rotating star iron saw teeth emitted an extremely violent roar. He charged towards the monster and slashed the monster's waist and abdomen with the sword.

"Pfft!"

The chainsaw sword sliced ​​open the monster's side with remarkable ease, and black sap gushed out.

But before Chen Yu could even feel happy, an extremely terrifying scene unfolded.

Pure white spiritual rain fell from the sky onto the monster's wounds. The spiritual energy, originally meant to purify the void, now seemed to be recharging the monster!

Nourished by the spiritual rain, those black buds wriggled and grew wildly at a terrifying speed, and in just two seconds, they managed to stitch up the wound that Chen Yu had cut open!

Moreover, the muscle tissue became thicker and stronger after the wound healed, and even grew a layer of fine black scales!

"It...it's consuming the spiritual energy of the great formation! It's using the spiritual rain to recover!" Chen Yu shouted in despair.

The monster suddenly turned around, and one of its tentacles tightly wrapped around the blade of the chainsaw sword. The high-frequency rotating serrations cut into the tentacles, producing blinding sparks and a piercing metallic scraping sound.

"Bang!"

The monster's other hand slapped Chen Yu hard across the chest. Chen Yu was sent flying as if hit by a speeding truck, crashing into a row of trash cans and unable to get up for a long time.

"What the hell is this thing?!"

Old Zheng's eyes turned red. He finally understood: this monster wasn't a void entity that formed outside the barrier; it was a mutated creature parasitizing a human!

It disguised itself as an Earth creature, thereby perfectly circumventing the array's defensive mechanisms. This is like a wolf in sheep's clothing, not only infiltrating the sheepfold but also brazenly eating the sheep's fodder to grow stronger!

"I'll fight you to the death!"

Old Zheng tossed aside the emptied magazine of his explosive rifle and pulled a tactical knife, about half a meter long, from his thigh. A ghostly blue flame instantly ignited on the blade.

Instead of backing down, he used the recoil from the wall to pounce on the monster like a cheetah.

The monster swung its tentacles at you. Old Zheng executed an extremely precise slide tackle, dodging the powerful gust of wind overhead, and with deadly precision, plunged his military knife from bottom to top, directly into the gap in the monster's jawbone!

"Break it for me!"

Old Zheng roared, frantically channeling his true energy into the military blade.

"boom!"

The eerie blue flames erupted directly inside the monster's skull!

"Squeak—gurgle..."

The monster's head exploded like a rotten watermelon, spraying black fluid mixed with brain tissue all over Old Zheng. The massive mutated body convulsed violently a few times before finally collapsing with a crash. After twitching a few more times in the muddy water, it completely turned into a puddle of foul-smelling black water.

This time, after it lost its "human" disguise, the refining mechanism of the grand formation finally began to operate.

A faint white array of light instantly appeared in the cracks between the bricks on the ground. With two "sizzling" sounds, the pool of black water was instantly refined on the spot, turning into a wisp of green smoke and dissipating into the rain.

"Cough cough...cough..."

Old Zheng slumped down in the rain, panting heavily, his military knife trembling uncontrollably.

"Captain... Captain..." Chen Yu, clutching his broken ribs, staggered over, looking at the pool of black water on the ground where not even bones remained. His voice held a hint of hesitation, "This great formation... has a flaw in it?"

Old Zheng did not answer.

With trembling hands, he pulled out the tactical communicator and pressed the emergency channel.

"Calling headquarters. This is the 7th Patrol Team of Donghai City, Lao Zheng."

Old Zheng swallowed a mouthful of saliva mixed with the taste of blood, looked up at the pure rain that was still falling from the sky and nourishing the city, and a trace of solemnity flashed in his eyes.

"Report to the Supreme Command in Kyoto."

"The barrier has been breached. You know how the Void Scum managed to get through the barrier to Earth. They attached themselves to humans and became mutated parasites."

"What's worse, they can also absorb and utilize the spiritual energy converted by the grand formation!"