Chapter 101
Chapter 101
The fissure trembled.
A gaunt, pallid man squeezed his way out.
Compared to the Slit-Mouthed Woman who had emerged earlier, he was quicker and stronger. He slithered free like a snake crawling from a bog–cold, sinister, and venomous.
Within seconds, he had adjusted to the feel of his body. Then he drew a kitchen knife that gleamed with cold light.
The blood crusted over its blade had already turned black. There was no telling how many times it had been soaked.
The man swept his gaze across the Anomaly Hunters braced for battle. A vicious smile spread over his face, his eyes full of condescension.
“Wonderful. So many fresh ingredients!”
“If I turn all of you into–”
His hand froze around the knife.
His gaze had landed on someone who had left him with severe psychological trauma.
That young face. That look one reserved for an insect. He would never forget either for the rest of his life–not that “the rest of his life” meant much anymore. Still, the terror carved into his bones came surging back like a tide.
Qin Lan walked calmly toward him.
His steps were unhurried, but each one seemed to land on the man’s heart. His whole body shook. Even the kitchen knife quivered in his grip.
“Interesting. I remember killing you once already…”
Qin Lan stopped before the noodle shop owner and closed one hand around his throat. His fingers tightened. “But there’s no harm in doing it again.”
The flesh under his hand was icy, without the slightest trace of life. He could not even feel blood circulating.
That made sense. The thing was an anomaly, not a living creature. Grabbing its neck felt about the same as squeezing a slab of cold pork.
After leaving the Final Destination instance, Qin Lan had returned to the Road to the Netherworld and tracked down this noodle shop owner.
Then he had very kindly treated it to a passionate beating.
As Qin Lan recalled, he had handed the anomaly’s corpse over to the Anomaly Hunter Bureau so it could be used in his evaluation for 2-Star Anomaly Hunter.
Yet here it was again, and judging by its reaction, it remembered everything.
That successfully piqued Qin Lan’s interest.
He had always wanted to understand how anomalies came into existence, how the beings on the other side of the Abyss created instances, and how they manipulated curses.
This old acquaintance happened to be an excellent source of information.
“Ghk…”
The noodle shop owner dangled in midair from Qin Lan’s grip, its limbs flailing weakly. Every curse in its body was suppressed along with it, and its kitchen knife fell to the ground with a clang.
Before the Qin Lan of today, this 2-Star anomaly was as helpless as a chick.
Even its razor-sharp knife could no longer leave a mark on him.
Qin Lan’s gaze was as cold as a blade scraping bone. “Tell me why you can appear again, and I might give you a quick death.”
“Otherwise, I have plenty of ways to make you regret ever coming into this world.”
As he spoke, Qin Lan activated Verbal Condemnation.
He did not use its full power. He merely wanted the anomaly to sample what a mental attack felt like.
The noodle shop owner’s body instantly shook like a sieve. Under Verbal Condemnation’s effect, its mind filled with a prickling, numbing agony, as though someone were stirring its brains with a red-hot wire.
It tried to scream, but Qin Lan’s fingers were locked around its throat. All it could force out was an ugly series of clicks.
A mental attack struck straight at the frailest part of the consciousness. A mere 2-Star anomaly had no hope of enduring it.
Five seconds passed.
To the noodle shop owner, they felt like a year.
By the time Qin Lan loosened his grip slightly, its eyes had already lost focus.
“Would you like another round?”
Qin Lan gave it a gentle, cruel smile–the kind that could give anyone who saw it nightmares for days. “I can let you savor this delicacy all day. Several days, if you’d prefer.”
“Or is there some information you’d like to share with me?”
Qin Lan let go. The noodle shop owner crumpled to the ground, curled into a ball and gasping as weakly as someone just dragged from the water.
Beside him, Tang Qingqing’s bright eyes went round. She had never imagined a 2-Star anomaly could be this helpless.
From where she stood, Qin Lan had clearly done nothing. He had only said a few words, yet a lively 2-Star anomaly had gone limp as though every bone had been pulled from its body.
It was almost divine.
The Anomaly Hunters standing ready nearby looked as though their eyes might fall out.
They had worked themselves to the bone guarding the fissures and had to tread carefully even against a 1-Star anomaly. Then this man showed up and nearly scared a 2-Star anomaly into pissing itself.
Faced with Qin Lan’s threat, the noodle shop owner weighed its options.
Not that there was much to weigh. One choice was immediate death. The other was a life worse than death.
In the end, it gave up everything–right down to its underwear.
It had no choice. The mental pressure Qin Lan exerted was simply too intense.
Some people might not understand the feeling, so picture this:
It is two in the morning. Your summer vacation ends in six hours, and almost half your vacation homework remains unfinished. No problem. Confident in your own brilliance, you reckon you can copy eighty or ninety percent of it from the answers your friend sent you. You will definitely have something to hand in at morning study hall.
Then, while you are diligently copying the answers, the room suddenly feels deathly quiet.
You turn your head.
Your mother is standing behind you with a stormy expression. You have no idea how long she has been watching.
Beside her stands your father, gripping a copper-buckled belt.
Feeling the pressure yet?
That was not even a tenth of what the noodle shop owner felt.
“W-We don’t truly perish when we die inside an instance. What dies is only a projection…”
“We live in another dimension. One your kind cannot reach…”
Its voice came in broken wheezes, like air leaking from a ruined bellows. “After enough time passes, a new instance is born, and we appear again through new projections…”
“Sometimes in a different role. Sometimes unchanged.”
“But through these fissures, we can enter your world in our most fundamental forms. We are no longer mere projections…”
Qin Lan understood.
So that was it.
The scattered clues in his mind finally assembled into a complete picture.
No matter how many anomalies Anomaly Hunters killed inside instances, they could never wipe them all out.
It was not because the anomalies were hard to kill. They had simply never died at all.
All the things generations of Anomaly Hunters had crushed, burned, and blasted into slag were substitutes thrown into this world.
They were like weeds in a field.
Unless you pulled up the roots, they would return again and again, sprouting with every spring breeze.
Qin Lan smiled at the thought.
There was a dense chill in that smile.
“I see… The anomalies killed inside instances are only curse-filled shells.”
“And now, your roots have appeared.”
Qin Lan’s killing intent abruptly soared, making the air itself seem to congeal. “You’ve saved me quite a bit of trouble.”
The next second, Qin Lan stopped holding back.
An almost tangible mental shockwave crashed outward like an invisible sledgehammer, smashing the anomaly’s consciousness to pieces.
Its body remained outwardly intact. But its face was blank, its gaze vacant, and it stood as lifelessly as a marionette.
Even the last weak ripple of its curse vanished completely.
Qin Lan raised one foot and crushed the empty shell. Violent murderous energy rolled off him, making him resemble a god of slaughter fresh from a blood-soaked battlefield.
[You have drawn power from an enemy’s complete death.]
[Maximum Curse Energy permanently increased: 2]
[Current Curse Energy: 130 > 132]
The notification made Qin Lan pause.
At his current level, a feeble 2-Star anomaly like this should not have been enough to trigger the Backup Reaper’s growth-on-kill effect.
The gap in strength was too great.
Breathing alone did not make your pecs thicker. Same principle.
Yet this kill had directly raised his maximum Curse Energy by two points.
Qin Lan could also feel his Curse Core grow slightly stronger, as though a trickle of fresh water had flowed into a pond.
His gaze settled on the words “complete death” in the notification, thoughts racing.
“The wording changed… Complete death. Is it because I killed its true body instead of its projection inside the instance?”
After a moment’s thought, the pieces fell into place.
The fissures were not entirely bad.
They allowed anomalies to enter the Safe Zone, but they also delivered the anomalies’ true bodies right to his doorstep.
And based on what he had seen so far, the anomalies coming through first were those closest to the Safe Zone.
In other words, if they killed them all this time, the land beyond the Fallen Zone would finally enjoy genuine peace after a very long absence.
A smile tugged at Qin Lan’s lips.
It was the smile of a hunter who had been pent up for far too long and had finally spotted plump prey–part excitement, part sheer satisfaction.
“You come all this way and even treat me to an all-you-can-eat buffet. That’s almost too generous.”