597: Chapter 597 Violent Instinct, Giant Sealed Artifact

Tick, tick.

The night was dark and hazy, and the autumn rain was pattering down.

Raindrops constantly battered against the glass, winding and flowing to trace muddy water trails.

Even the pot of morning glories outside the windowsill was beaten until its head drooped listlessly.

Fang Cheng stared at the foul-smelling ball of black paper in his hand, his heartbeat involuntarily speeding up a bit.

But at this moment, a sharp stabbing pain suddenly came from the back of his hand that had just been wiped clean.

He suddenly opened his eyes wide and looked closely.

He saw that on the surface of his originally fair skin, a dark red hard bump had swollen up at some unknown time.

The surrounding capillaries bulged one by one, presenting spider-web-like purplish-black patterns.

A piercing burning sensation drilled straight into his flesh and blood along his pores.

That hard bump even squirmed slightly under the skin.

"Hiss——"

Fang Cheng gasped, immediately throwing the blackened tissue paper into the trash can by his feet.

Then he walked quickly out of his bedroom, headed straight for the bathroom on the same floor, and violently turned on the faucet.

Splish, splash, the icy tap water washed down.

He picked up the remaining half bar of soap on the sink and rubbed the back of his hand repeatedly three times.

Until the pungent putrid stench faded slightly, the piercing stabbing pain was barely alleviated.

Fang Cheng turned off the faucet and shook off the water stains on his hands.

Looking down, that dark red swelling lump was still bulging high.

It was just like being bitten hard by a poisonous mosquito, red, swollen, and shining, exuding an unspeakable eeriness.

To explain this extraordinary phenomenon with ordinary rainwater pollution was obviously too far-fetched.

"What on earth is going on... Could it be that something happened in Pingjiang County recently, and some chemical plant exploded to form acid rain?"

Fang Cheng frowned tightly and gently pressed the hard bump with his thumb.

A swelling pain instantly came over, definitely not an ordinary allergic reaction.

He took a few deep breaths of cold air, turned around, walked back to the bedroom, and sat down in front of the desk again.

Looking up at the alarm clock on the desk, the second hand jumped, and the time was approaching nine o'clock in the evening.

Forcibly suppressing those cluttered thoughts, he picked up his pen, preparing to finish the two sets of test papers in front of him first.

Shasha sha, shasha sha...

The room was silent, and the pen tip slid quickly across the paper, making a monotonous rubbing sound.

Just as he finished half a test paper, Fang Cheng put down his pen and prepared to stretch.

The action of stretching his arms suddenly stopped in mid-air.

He realized a problem.

The house seemed too quiet.

The sound of his parents watching TV and arguing downstairs just now had completely disappeared at some unknown time.

Even his younger brother, who usually loved running around in the living room, had no movement at all.

In the entire two-story self-built house, only the continuous sound of rain outside the window echoed monotonically.

Fang Cheng clenched the pen shaft and twitched his nose slightly.

A putrid stench even thicker than before drifted over from nowhere.

That smell was like dead fish and rotten meat soaked for half a month during the dog days of summer, thrown into a sealed room, continuously exuding a nauseating stench.

At this time, the twisted black shadow seen in the morning inexplicably flashed through Fang Cheng's mind again.

Then he lowered his head and glanced at the dark red hard bump bulging high on the back of his hand.

A chill couldn't help crawling up the back of his head along his spine.

Fang Cheng's back felt cold, and he immediately stood up, his gaze sweeping quickly through the bedroom to find the source following the smell.

After a moment, he finally noticed the abnormality.

That sticky foul odor seemed to be drilling inward thread by thread along the tightly closed bedroom door crack.

His eyes flickered slightly, so he walked lightly to the edge of the bedroom door and pressed his ear against the wooden door to listen for a few seconds.

There were no footsteps outside, only the muffled sound of rainwater hitting the ground along the eaves.

Fang Cheng grasped the door handle and twisted it slowly.

"Click."

The crisp sound of the latch springing sounded exceptionally harsh in the corridor.

The door axis turned, and no lights were on in the corridor, plunging it into dimness.

Fang Cheng reached out his left hand, felt for the familiar plastic switch on the wall, and pressed it hard.

"Snap."

The switch was pressed all the way down, but the incandescent lamp overhead did not respond at all.

A power outage? But the desk lamp on the bedroom desk was clearly still emitting a warm yellow light.

Fang Cheng's brows knitted deeper, and his fingers repeatedly pressed the switch a few times.

There was still no movement, and the sense of unease in his heart grew stronger.

The temperature in the corridor seemed much lower than in the bedroom.

Fang Cheng held his breath and once again identified the source of the smell.

That nauseating putrid stench permeated more thoroughly in the air.

It seemed to surge up from downstairs along the stairway.

He lightened his steps, pressed against the icy wall, and moved down the wooden stairs step by step.

The main light was not turned on in the first-floor living room.

The only pale light source came from the old-fashioned cathode-ray tube television.

The screen that originally played a TV series was now full of jumping black-and-white snow dots, making a "shasha sha" current sound.

The sofa was empty, and both his parents and younger brother were nowhere to be found.

Fang Cheng's gaze swept over the toys scattered all over the floor and finally stopped in front of the passageway leading to the yard.

Through the faintly flickering light and shadow of the television, he saw a hunchbacked back standing quietly in front of the drawn curtains.

That person was wearing a familiar dark grey sweater, and judging by the body contour, it was grandpa who usually always sat there coughing.

As the distance gradually closed, the stench became more and more intense.

Fang Cheng's eyes lit up, and he finally found the source of the abnormality.

That dead fish and rotten meat smell was continuously emanating from the fibers of that dark grey sweater, making his eyes sting from the stench.

"Grandpa?"

Fang Cheng opened his mouth and shouted tentatively.

The black shadow did not respond, still standing rigidly in place like a dead wood.

Fang Cheng swallowed his saliva, forcibly suppressing the wildly beating sense of unease in his heart.

He strode forward, bypassed the toys on the ground, and approached that corner step by step.

Five meters.

Three meters.

One meter.

When Fang Cheng finally walked behind the black shadow and reached out his right hand to pat the other party's shoulder.

That hunchbacked black shadow suddenly twisted its head 180 degrees backward at a bizarre angle that a living person's cervical spine could never achieve.

The moment he saw that face clearly, Fang Cheng's pupils shrank abruptly, his scalp exploded, and all the hair on his body stood straight up.

That couldn't be considered a human face at all.

The loose old skin was soaked white and bloated by some kind of liquid, and his eyes were completely turned up, leaving only the whites of the eyes covered in bloodshots.

The corners of his mouth split upward into an exaggerated arc, and dark brown mucus was dripping onto the sweater drop by drop along the gaps in his teeth.

Without waiting for Fang Cheng to retreat, a leaky roar came from the monster's throat, and its two withered arms rushed straight toward Fang Cheng like iron pliers.

Whoosh——

A fishy wind hit his face.

Fang Cheng's body was already weak, and being hit hard by this huge force, he fell flat on his back to the ground directly.

The back of his head heavily knocked against the terrazzo floor, making his vision turn black in waves.

The foul-smelling mucus dripped onto his face, and those cold, stiff hands tightly locked his throat.

Oxygen was rapidly deprived, and his lungs hurt burning hot as if they were about to explode.

The disparity in strength was too great, and he simply couldn't break free.

His vision began to blur.

But under the pressure of near-death, a string deep in Fang Cheng's mind suddenly snapped.

A violent instinct that did not belong to this thin and weak body suddenly surged up.

He gave up trying to pry open the arms on his neck, groped around with his right hand, and grabbed a hard plastic toy car that had fallen nearby.

Fang Cheng's five fingers tightened, and the dark red swelling lump on the back of his hand instantly bulged with purple veins.

He poured all the remaining strength in his whole body into his right arm.

"Get lost!"

Fang Cheng squeezed a hoarse roar from his throat.

Then he grabbed the toy car and smashed it hard toward the temple position of the monster's twisted face.

"Bang!"

A muffled impact sounded, and the monster's movements paused for half a second.

Taking advantage of this gap, Fang Cheng bent his knees, pressed his feet heavily against its chest, and exerted force abruptly.

"Clatter!"

The black shadow was kicked flying like a broken sack, smashing heavily beside the coffee table.

The glass water cup on the coffee table was knocked to the ground and shattered into pieces.

Just as Fang Cheng was about to turn over and climb up, grab the broken glass shards, and continue attacking endlessly.

"Snap!"

The incandescent lamp overhead suddenly lit up, and the dazzling light instantly filled the entire living room.

The snow dots on the television screen flickered twice and immediately returned to the normal TV series picture.

"What's wrong? What's wrong? Has a thief broken in?!"

The door of the bedroom at the end of the first floor was pushed open violently.

His father came rushing out wearing large shorts and holding a broom in his hand.

His mother followed closely behind with a pale face.

"Wa—"

His younger brother poked his head out from the stairs in his pajamas, and upon seeing the messy scene all over the living room, he was immediately scared to tears.

Fang Cheng panted heavily, his chest rising and falling violently.

He sat slumped on the ground, following his parents' terrified gazes, and turned his head to look beside the coffee table.

The figure he had kicked flying was curled up in the shards of broken glass.

There were no upturned whites of eyes, nor split corners of the mouth.

Lying there was just an emaciated old man wearing a dark grey sweater.

Grandpa's eyes were tightly closed, and his face was slightly distorted due to the pain of being beaten.

Dark red blood was continuously overflowing from his nostrils, gathering into a small puddle on the floor.

"Dad!"

His father threw away the broom, rushed over to hug the old man, and turned his head to roar at his mother:

"What are you still standing there for, hurry up and call an ambulance!"

His mother rushed over trembling and grabbed the landline on the coffee table.

Fang Cheng sat stiffly in place, his clothes on his chest completely soaked in cold sweat.

He lowered his head to look at his hands that were still trembling slightly, and then looked at grandpa lying in a pool of blood with life or death unknown, his brain falling into extreme confusion.

What was going on?

Where had that incredibly powerful and terrifying-looking monster just now gone?

Could it be that from beginning to end, what he attacked... was just an ordinary hemiplegic old man?

The light in front of him was still bright, and his family's anxious shouts were also incomparably real.

But Fang Cheng felt that an invisible giant net was tightly enveloping him.

That disordered and bizarre sense of unease climbed up his spine like a bone-gnawing maggot.

Inside the interrogation room on the third basement level of the Special Investigation Team headquarters, which served as the interview examination room.

Fang Cheng leaned quietly on the metal chair in the center of the room.

At this moment, his eyes were tightly closed, his chest rose and fell smoothly, and the whole person seemed to have fallen into an extremely deep sleep.

He wore that black metal helmet on his head, and thick black cables extended from the back of the helmet, winding and connecting to the interrogation table a few meters away.

The young examiner stared closely at the jumping data indicators on the laptop screen, holding the mouse with his right hand and scrolling the wheel from time to time.

"Officer Chen."

He turned his head and lowered his voice to report:

"Candidate 263's brainwaves just had an instantaneous peak. The electrical signals in the amygdala area were abnormally active, as if he had encountered some kind of sudden danger in the illusion."

"However, the amplitudes of his Alpha waves and Beta waves completed self-regulation very quickly. Currently, his brainwave frequency still maintains a stable range of 8 to 12 hertz, and there are no fluctuating turbulences symbolizing extreme panic."

Chen Bingzhong's major part of the body was hidden in the shadow of the chair back, and his gaze always fell on that silent ancient bronze bell.

He picked up the thermos cup at his hand, unscrewed the lid, took a sip of strong tea, and said in a calm tone:

"Normal phenomenon, this kid has practiced martial arts for many years, his Qi and blood are vigorous, and his will is naturally tenacious."

"Even if his strength is suppressed by the Law inside, his instinctive intuition is far sharper than ordinary people's, and he won't be easily kicked out casually."

Hearing this, the young examiner nodded slightly and looked back at the fluorescent computer screen.

Chen Bingzhong swallowed the warm tea, his deep gaze sweeping across the dim and enclosed room.

The design of this circular basement of the Special Investigation Team was by no means out of any architectural aesthetics, but had unavoidable hardships.

Deep underground in the exact center of the entire building, a special Seal that was extremely dangerous and highly polluting was suppressed.

The ancient bronze bell on the desk used as an examination prop merely extracted a trace of aura emitted by that Seal, and as its derivative, it had unimaginable power.

Speaking of which, the original site of this Special Investigation Team headquarters was once an underground sacrificial pit of the ancient Yue State thousands of years ago.

Thirty years ago, Dongdu carried out urban expansion.

When an architectural engineering team was excavating the foundation, they accidentally dug through the top layer of the sacrificial pit and touched that behemoth buried deep in history.

That night, hundreds of workers in the entire engineering team fell into collective madness.

They bit and killed each other, and finally all died violently in extreme frenzy.

Because that strange object was simply too huge, the technology and transcendental power at that time simply could not safely relocate it.

In the end, it was personally decided by Director Li, the highest authority of the Special Investigation Team at that time, who mobilized the core combat power of the entire team to suppress it at the risk of death.

Then, right at the original site of the incident, a nuclear-reactor-grade concrete wall tens of meters thick was poured throughout.

To completely Seal off the polluted area, and build the Special Investigation Team building above it.

Until these past few years, the research department of the Special Investigation Team slowly figured out some Laws of that Seal and cautiously utilized it.

The "illusion" used to test candidates before him was one of them.

Chen Bingzhong glanced at the young examiner staring closely at the screen next to him, a flash of complexity crossing the depths of his eyes.

Some top-secret information, even Advanced cadres within the Special Investigation Team had no right to know.

For instance, what this bronze bell chime constructed was actually not a false "illusion" at all.

But through mental resonance of a specific frequency, it forcibly pulled and projected the subject's consciousness into a fragmented world evolved by that Seal itself.