Chapter 109: First Collaboration to Handle Anomalies, Abyss Scouts Reveal Their True Form

When Sister Chen visited again, Lin Ye was on the third-floor balcony of his studio, repotting a money tree that was on the verge of withering.

He had overwatered it last time, and half the leaves had turned yellow. He used a chopstick to loosen the compacted old soil piece by piece, his movements even more patient than the day he dealt with the president of the Dingsheng Group.

Fatty Wang led Sister Chen up to the third floor.

This time, she was wearing a dark blue combat uniform with tight cuffs and anti-stab boots, looking like a completely different person compared to her previous outfit of a simple jacket.

Behind her followed two young people, a man and a woman, both in the same combat attire, with the silver badge of the Guardian Alliance pinned to their chests, engraved with a shield and a circle of seal script characters.

Sister Chen did not sit down for tea as she had last time; she stood her ground and went straight to the point.

"Mr. Lin Ye, an anomaly has occurred at the Nancheng Wanda Mall."

"Half an hour ago, objects in the waiting area of the fourth-floor cinema suddenly began to float for no reason. Over a dozen metal seats lifted off the ground to a height of over two meters before crashing down simultaneously."

"Immediately after, the lighting system on the entire fourth floor went out of control, flickering for nearly five minutes."

"Customers fled in panic, some were trampled and injured, and the mall has now been emergency evacuated."

"Our team arrived on-site and detected strong Abyss energy fluctuations, the characteristics of which are almost identical to the energy spectrum released when you soloed the Abyss Dungeon in the game previously."

Lin Ye stuck the small shovel in his hand into the side of the flowerpot, brushed the soil off his hands, stood up, and asked, "Is it an Abyss Scout?"

Sister Chen nodded slightly.

"Based on the energy characteristics, it should be a low-level reconnaissance unit dispatched by the Abyss Council to reality. Its size is close to an adult male, but the concentration of Abyss energy within its body is over a hundred times that of an ordinary human, making it immune to conventional police weapons."

"We sent three assault teams up, but they were blocked at the fourth-floor escalator entrance by the energy shockwaves it released and couldn't get close at all."

Lin Ye picked up the jacket draped over the back of his chair, put it on, and said to Ghost, "Pull up the data of the Abyss Scout I fought in the Abyss Dungeon in the game and send it to Sister Chen and her team for reference. Switch the skill template to Energy Decay and set the target type to Abyss-type biological units."

He then turned to look at Su Qinghan. "Have Fatty Wang check the seal status of the Abyss Dungeon in the game. If an Abyss Scout has appeared in reality, the corresponding dungeon in the game might also have some activity."

When the car drove to the entrance of Nancheng Wanda, the entire mall had already been cordoned off with police tape.

Over a dozen police cars were parked in the square, their red and blue lights flashing in a blur, while armed SWAT officers guarded the entrances and exits. A large crowd of onlookers gathered outside, holding up their phones to film.

Sister Chen led Lin Ye through a dedicated passage in the underground parking lot, taking the elevator directly to the fourth-floor staff area. Pushing open the fire door led directly to the side entrance of the cinema waiting area.

A blast of cold air carrying the smell of burnt metal rushed to meet them, the temperature at least ten degrees lower than the rest of the mall.

The members of the three assault teams were guarding behind the cover at the escalator entrance, their riot shields covered in a thick layer of frost.

The ceiling light strips in the fourth-floor waiting area were still flickering uncontrollably; with every flash, one could see a tall figure standing in the center of the empty hall.

It was nearly two meters tall, its entire body covered in a dark purple, translucent energy shell, with two fluorescent tentacles trailing behind it. With every step it took, the floor cracked with a circle of fine, icy patterns.

Lin Ye stared at the thing for a few seconds before saying to Sister Chen, "The basic attribute of the Abyss Scout in the game is 90% physical damage reduction; conventional bullets cause negligible damage as long as its energy shell is intact."

"However, it has a weakness: the regeneration cycle of the energy shell is about four to five seconds. As long as you maintain continuous suppression so it doesn't have time to regenerate, once the shell is broken, its body is even more fragile than an ordinary human's bones."

After listening, Sister Chen immediately used her headset to redeploy, ordering all assault teams to switch to high-frequency rapid-fire mode, telling them to follow up immediately after emptying a magazine and not to give it any breathing room.

After giving the order, she turned to look at Lin Ye. "We will create a window of fire suppression for you. What else do you need?"

Lin Ye did not answer; he had already closed his eyes.

The cross-dimensional Decay energy within his body began to spread outward from his core. That invisible wave of energy passed through the fourth-floor floor and spread along the steel structure of the mall.

The air in the entire waiting area felt as if its surface had been pressed down by an invisible hand, and the Abyss energy fluctuations that had been running wild began to shrink visibly under the coverage of this power.

When the Talent he brought out from the game unfolded in reality, he didn't need to raise his hands or recite any incantations; with just a thought, the energy went out.

The Abyss Scout sensed it immediately and whipped its head around to stare at the side entrance where Lin Ye was.

Under the continuous erosion of the Decay Domain, its energy shell began to peel off layer by layer, and with each layer peeled away, its coverage area shrank.

It roared and charged toward Lin Ye, the fourth-floor floor shattering and sending debris flying with every step it took.

The gunfire from the assault teams erupted at the same instant.

The high-frequency rapid fire of dozens of automatic rifles formed an airtight barrage of bullets, which struck the peeling energy shell, splashing large sparks of dark purple.

The regeneration speed of its shell was suppressed by Lin Ye's Decay Domain to less than a quarter of its original speed. After a few rounds of bombardment, a clear crack appeared in the shell.

Sensing the threat, the Abyss Scout turned and lashed out with the two tentacles behind it toward the assault team's cover.

Lin Ye pressed his right hand forward into the air; the tentacles seemed to crash into a mass of invisible glue in mid-air, their speed plummeting to less than twenty percent of what it was.

The assault team members easily dodged to the side, and the tentacles only smashed a few tiles off the wall.

Sister Chen stared at this scene, her brows twitching slightly.

Lin Ye took a step forward, compressing the Decay energy in his right hand into an extremely thin, black-gold beam of light, which he flicked out from the tip of his index finger.

The beam of light passed through the center of the fourth-floor hall and struck precisely at the center of the crack in the energy shell on the Abyss Scout's chest.

The dark purple energy shell shattered simultaneously from the center outward, turning into a burst of light spots with ice crystals that dissipated into the air.

Once the energy shell was broken, the Abyss Scout's true form was completely exposed.

The assault teams concentrated their fire, the bullets making dull tearing sounds as they struck its flesh.

It swayed in place twice, the tentacles behind it hanging limply to the ground, before its tall body crashed heavily onto the floor.

Dark purple blood flowed from its wounds, evaporating into pungent white smoke as soon as it touched the air.

The anomalous temperature on the entire fourth floor began to rise the moment it fell; the ceiling light strips stopped flickering, and the layer of frost on the ground quickly melted into water.

Lin Ye walked to where it had fallen, squatted down, and touched the evaporating dark purple blood with one finger.

The moment his fingertip touched the surface of the residual liquid, the passive sensing of his Decay Talent triggered automatically, and a clear energy feedback popped up in his mind—in the split second before the Scout was killed, a tiny organ within its body had suddenly activated autonomously, sending an ultra-shortwave pulse signal to a specific spatial coordinate.

That signal passed through the reinforced concrete structure of the mall, passed through the atmosphere, and disappeared into some extremely distant place.

It was not sent to other Scouts, but to something much deeper.

Lin Ye stood up, brushed the dust off his hands, and said to Sister Chen, "It sent out a signal right before it died."

"It wasn't a plea for help; it was more like marking coordinates, like some kind of verification. I intercepted part of the signal's frequency characteristics, and the match with the energy fluctuation characteristics monitored by Ghost in the game before the opening of the Abyss Rift is over 80%."

Sister Chen holstered her gun and looked at the corpse of the Abyss Scout, which was rapidly decomposing on the floor. "Do you mean that its appearance here was not accidental? It was using itself to test your reaction."

Lin Ye took the wet wipe handed to him by Su Qinghan and wiped his fingers. "I'm not sure if it was a test, but one thing is certain. The Abyss Council now knows one thing—there is someone on Earth who can use energy in reality that suppresses them."

"They were just probing before; it's hard to say what will happen next."

He finished speaking and waved the dirty wipe he hadn't thrown away yet at Sister Chen. "But don't worry too much. No matter how many they dare to send, I'll take them all down. In the game, they're just materials for me to farm; it's the same in reality."