Master of Kaidan

Chapter 12: Chapter 12 Ominous Sign

As those people were about to carry the bound woman away, Feng Xue's attention shifted to the surrounding onlookers. He contemplated blending in with the crowd to assess the situation if they decided to follow. If not, he would go to collect the Doctor's corpse to gather some elements.

Speaking of which, the Doctor's corpse contained far more elements than any he had encountered before. This was likely because the Doctor held a formal job and had accumulated quite a few labels. Unfortunately, his Golden Finger couldn't directly observe these labels, and the sensory ability bestowed by the labels didn't work on the dead, so he couldn't see just how many sidelines the Doctor had.

However, this thought didn't last long. Just as the woman was hoisted onto a bicycle, a weird atmosphere suddenly permeated the air.

It was an indescribable aura—a mixture of trembling, fear, and perhaps something else. In any case, at that moment, Feng Xue almost uncontrollably shivered.

Subsequently, nearly every living person within a hundred meters instinctively turned their gaze toward the Doctor's corpse. In Feng Xue's vision, a vortex reminiscent of the Golden Finger's rebuilding function began to emerge around the body.

This vortex seemed more like a metaphor than an actual scene. As it spun, the elements detected by the Golden Finger began to whirl and coalesce at high speed. Some were shattered in the violent rotation and collision, while the rest merged with a mess of garbled codes to form an abnormally twisted entity.

That "entity" seemed to be a twisted label, yet it was hard to decipher its precise meaning. Feng Xue even struggled to fully describe the irregular shape of this enigma, but there was no doubt that the corpse was undergoing some transformation under its influence.

The transformation was incredibly rapid. The screams of the crowd had barely started when the corpse got back to its feet. Its muscles contorted and swelled, the body sprouted countless suture lines, and twisted limbs protruded from gaping crimson wounds as though they were bloody maws, looking bloody and eerie.

It was only at this point that Feng Xue's Golden Finger's identification panel reactivated. However, above the twisted flesh monster's head in his vision was nothing but large patches of garbled code. Among them, a few recognizable phrases stood out to Feng Xue— n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

[Corpse]

[Suture]

[Death]

...

Watching the corpse turn into a monster, the gang members immediately exhibited the same fear and panic as the onlookers.

"Damn! It mutated into a Suture Monster! Ordinary corpses shouldn't..." muttered what seemed to be a gang lieutenant as he drew a machete. However, he suddenly seemed to recall something and turned to ask the tied-up woman,

"Did you give him something earlier?"

"Woo woo, woooo..."

The woman was already scared witless by the scene before her, and her mouth was sealed with tape, allowing only a series of nasal whimpers to escape. The lieutenant didn't actually expect to get any information from her and turned to his subordinates, saying,

"Those of you with weapons, stay behind to delay them, and the rest, get the people out of here! The boss should be here any moment!"

With those words, he took the lead, raising the watermelon knife in his hand and slashing at Suture, who was still in its "entrance animation" phase.

...

Feng Xue, along with the panic-stricken onlookers, fled the scene, but he didn't go too far away, instead watching from a distance as about a dozen gang members surrounded Suture.

The small-time leader did look cool charging forward with his knife, but when he struck Suture, it caused no damage. Instead, it allowed Suture, who was "adapting" to its new body, to react ahead of time. With a palm larger than an adult's head by two sizes, it casually swatted, and the brave leader was sent spinning into the sky. Before he even hit the ground, Feng Xue already saw the elements on his body appearing in his vision.

"He's dead just like that?"

Shocked, Feng Xue watched the battlefield from a distance as the monstrous figure, moving with a speed that didn't match its bulky body, suddenly darted to the corpse's side. Its stomach opened a huge rift, swallowing the leader's corpse whole, and in Feng Xue's vision, the elements of the leader's body were completely scattered, converging into the chaotic codes on Suture's body.

"So this is a Monster?"

Witnessing such a horrific scene, Feng Xue finally understood why Old Li had said being a Corpse Collector was a dangerous occupation. Just the thought of the corpses he handled possibly turning into something like this filled him with dread.

After considering the Monster's speed, Feng Xue inconspicuously retreated another few dozen meters. But to his surprise, the gang members didn't fall back because of the leader's death. Instead, they maintained a remarkable order, wielding their weapons to draw Suture's attention.

Fortunately, it seemed Suture lacked intelligence. After killing someone, it would usually start devouring their corpse, and before it finished eating, as long as you didn't provoke it, it wouldn't attack again. Although Feng Xue felt that letting it eat slowly was giving it the opportunity to enhance itself, in a situation where one slap was fatal, there seemed to be no further talk of enhancement.

From what Feng Xue had observed previously, the gang members in this World clearly possessed far greater martial strength than "ordinary" people. Against typical poor folks, they could generally take on ten at a time. At least, in the days that Feng Xue had been collecting corpses, none of the deceased were wearing uniforms.

But when faced with Suture, they were as fragile as if made of paper, and with just a gentle push, they would turn into an unsightly mosaic that would not be suitable for children to see.

This also made Feng Xue truly comprehend the weight of Old Li's words, "In a small neighborhood like ours, one Monster could cause total destruction."

"These gang members are more principled than I thought! Even though they're brutal and monopolize the ladder of progression, when there's a crisis, they truly step up!"

As he watched the gang members die one after another, yet still no sign of collapse, even maintaining an "organized march to death" to delay Suture's progress, Feng Xue gained a new appreciation for the local Manager organization. Of course, that didn't mean he started to feel good about the gang.

When it mattered, they did step up, but when it came to interests, they killed just as ruthlessly!

Seeing that only half of the twenty-some gang members who stayed behind remained, Feng Xue thought it was about time to leave. But before he got very far, a flash of silver caught his eye—

It was a silver... electric scooter?