HBWnovel Chapter 202: Infection Outbreak, Abyssal Water Cave Crab!
Chapter 202: Infection Outbreak, Abyssal Water Cave Crab!
Nightfall arrived much earlier than expected.Just past seven-twenty, the last sliver of light on the horizon was completely swallowed up, and a thick, viscous darkness instantly descended.
Everything around them fell into dead silence, broken only by the whimpering howl of the wind blowing through the ruined walls. It felt as though an invisible, colossal beast was crouching in the Wilderness, quietly glaring in the direction of the camp.
Even though Little Flame had not given any warning of being watched, Cheng Ye could clearly feel waves of icy malice continuously washing over him.
During his previous excursion out of the city to scout Dabo Town, he had never experienced such a hair-raising premonition.
"Is this the threat that lurks in the Wilderness?"
As he walked, Cheng Ye constantly rolled his shoulders and shook out his arms, keeping his upper body muscles slightly warmed up and ready for action.
A wise man does not stand beneath a collapsing wall. Ever since he began practicing martial arts, his perception of danger had naturally heightened.
He absolutely refused to believe that this malice was just an illusion. In a world where Transcendent beings existed, there were bound to be things beyond human comprehension roaming the Wilderness.
Perhaps this malice was not directed at him personally, but rather enveloped everyone who stepped into the Wilderness equally. Yet, the sensation of being targeted felt like wearing a soaking wet shirt—utterly uncomfortable.
Holding his flashlight, Cheng Ye first patrolled the blocks surrounding the camp. After confirming there were no anomalies on the perimeter, he paused for a moment before turning down the street that led to the riverbank.
Almost the instant he stepped onto this path, that faint, lingering malice sharply intensified. It felt as though countless pairs of eyes were hiding behind the dark, ruined walls, glaring dead at his back. He couldn't stop the hairs on his arms from standing on end.
"Splash."
"Splash..."
The sound of the White Water River flowing was exceptionally clear in the night, and its current was noticeably faster than it had been during the day.
The intermittent sound of the water slapping against the embankment mingled with the wind whistling through the alleys. It sounded uncannily like the low whimpering of a woman, or an old crone singing a mournful opera in the dark—long, drawn-out, and eerily chilling.
Cheng Ye forcefully suppressed the apprehension welling in his chest. He strode briskly up the embankment and gazed into the distance under the moonlight.
Without the light pollution of modern society, the moonlight in the wasteland was exceptionally bright. Even with a few wisps of dark clouds drifting by, it still illuminated the river's surface with a shimmering silver glow.
It was visible to the naked eye that the water volume of both the White Water River and the Huangshui River had surged by thirty percent compared to the day, and the churning currents were much more violent.
"The weather forecast from Happiness City predicted light rain tomorrow evening. Could there have been a heavy downpour upstream?"
Since these two rivers were tributaries of the Linjiang River, their sudden swelling meant the water volume in the main channel would likely be even more ferocious.
This indicated a high probability that the upper reaches of the Linjiang River had been hit by torrential rain, causing a sudden spike in the water volume of its downstream tributaries.
While deep in thought, Cheng Ye raised his right hand, sweeping the flashlight's beam slowly along the edge of the embankment.
Wherever the beam landed, there was nothing but damp soil and thick clusters of weeds. Not a single trace of anything abnormal could be seen.
If he ignored Luo Kuke's daytime warning, the scene right now was strikingly similar to the night of his very first excursion out of the city.
It was peaceful, tranquil, and even possessed a certain degree of primal, natural beauty.
An abandoned town, a neglected embankment—far from the traces of human activity, everything here was slowly regressing back to a chaotic, primitive state.
Phew.
Cheng Ye stared at the water's surface for a moment. Having failed to spot anything unusual, he finally let out a long breath and turned back toward the camp.
Luo Kuke and Garcia weren't bold enough to investigate the river alone after dark, but having verified the situation with his own eyes, his inner apprehension had indeed lessened somewhat.
Thump.
Thump.
Crunch.
His armored boots stepped heavily onto the road, occasionally crushing weathered chunks of concrete and producing a crisp crunching sound.
In the distance, the Patrol Team from the Red Zone was marching past in formation. There were two groups of eight, and every person was holding a flashlight.
Separated by dozens of meters, both sides tacitly avoided shining their flashlights directly at each other. They merely flicked their beams toward the ground, offering the standard wasteland greeting of one long and one short flash.
Watching the patrol depart, Cheng Ye continued his trek back, his footsteps ringing out with exceptional clarity in the silent night.
Thump.
Thump.
Crunch.
Suddenly, his raised foot froze in midair. Operating almost entirely on instinct, he twisted his body and threw himself to the side. His armor slammed into a pile of abandoned rubble by the street with a loud clatter.
In one smooth motion, he drew the Red Blade from his waist with his left hand while his right hand instantly snapped the flashlight's beam behind him.
No one?
Cheng Ye's gaze immediately focused. In the spot where he had just stepped, there were only two chunks of badly weathered, cracked concrete, exposing the damp soil underneath.
But he had just heard a distinct crunching sound. Was something imitating his footsteps?
"What the hell is that?"
Cheng Ye cursed inwardly, cautiously scanning his surroundings as he subtly swapped the Red Blade into his right hand.
Advice from others often falls on deaf ears.
But a single harsh lesson etched itself directly into the soul.
Cold weapons certainly had their limitations, and when dealing with an Infected Body, they were far less practical than a handgun.
However, after leaving the buffer zone, leaving the quarantine area, and stepping into the true Wilderness...
Right now, the sense of security provided by a handgun, or even a Thunderclap 1, paled in comparison to the reassuring weight of the Red Blade gripped firmly in his hand.
One second, two seconds, five seconds passed. That crunching sound did not echo again.
It was as if it had been nothing more than an illusion, perhaps just the sound of the wind shifting a piece of broken brick.
Except...
Cheng Ye suddenly adjusted his breathing and lunged forward like a pouncing cheetah. He didn't flee toward the camp; instead, he bolted back toward the riverbank with massive strides.
In all of Dabo Town, only the riverside was wide open. Once he ducked into the town proper, the architectural ruins everywhere would make it effortless for an Infected Body or an Infection Source to hide.
By the time he sprinted back to the shore, the Red Zone Patrol Team hadn't gone far.
Hearing the rapid footsteps behind them, the team members subconsciously looked back, instantly sweeping over a dozen flashlight beams in his direction. Upon seeing that it was the armor-clad Cheng Ye, the patrol captain let out a collective sigh of relief.
But that sense of relief swiftly mutated into bone-chilling terror.
Cheng Ye didn't stop. He charged right up to them, halting just five meters away, and demanded in an icy tone, "How many people are in your Patrol Team?"
"Two assigned squads, sixteen people..." The patrol captain blinked, confused as to why Cheng Ye was suddenly asking this.
"Then count them right now. Tell me how many are left." Cheng Ye's gaze swept grimly over the patrol formation.
"Right now?" The patrol captain felt his chest tighten. He hastily shined his flashlight across his team members' faces one by one, counting out loud, "One, two, three... ten, eleven... fourteen???"
The further he counted, the more his voice trembled. His legs gave out, nearly sending him to his knees.
Sixteen people across two squads, and now there were only fourteen left!
Two men had vanished into thin air during the patrol.
Even more horrifying was the fact that none of them had noticed when those two disappeared. There hadn't been a single sound of struggle or a cry for help!
"When we crossed paths by the river a moment ago, there were still sixteen of you." Cheng Ye tightened his grip on the Red Blade, forcing his voice to remain steady, though a tidal wave of dread churned in his heart. For a fleeting second, he even entertained the thought of abandoning the mission and running for his life.
This job was simply not meant for human beings.
Facing the most primal fears within the human psyche was indeed a daunting ordeal.
At this moment, he would rather a whole horde of Infected Bodies charge at him than deal with a situation this profoundly bizarre.
Coupled with the mimicry of his footsteps just now, could those two missing men have already set their sights on him?
"Contact Luo Kuke immediately! Hurry!" Cheng Ye quickly processed the situation, no longer able to suppress the urgency in his voice. His explosive shout made the Red Zone patrol members jolt in shock.
The security captain snapped back to reality. He frantically fumbled for the radio at his waist and held down the transmission button.
"Inspector Luo! Something's happened! Our team... inexplicably lost two people!"
"What?" Luo Kuke's voice over the radio instantly lost its daytime composure, turning deathly cold. "Where are you right now?"
"By the riverbank. Inspector Cheng is right here with us..."
"Give him the communicator!"
Cheng Ye took the radio, and Luo Kuke's grim voice poured through. "Inspector Cheng, lead everyone back to the Red-Blue border immediately. Consider it a favor I owe you."
"Alright."
Cheng Ye agreed curtly and tossed the radio back. He spun around and addressed the patrol in a deep, authoritative voice. "You guys take point, I'll bring up the rear. Retreat directly to the border. No one looks back, no one strays from the group, and no one... speaks!"
"Yes, sir!"
They had just lost two comrades out of thin air—who gave a damn about patrol duties now!
The terror in this moment was far more suffocating than the surrounding darkness.
The squad fell into absolute panic. Without needing any further urging from Cheng Ye, they clutched their flashlights and firearms tightly and scrambled back the way they came.
Cheng Ye stayed at the back of the group, his eyes locked dead onto the backs of the fourteen men as a cold sweat inevitably dampened his palms.
Merely escorting these people back to the border shouldn't warrant owing someone a favor.
Luo Kuke clearly knew something, and it was highly likely connected to whatever he had been investigating during the day.
Sure enough, they had barely taken a dozen steps when the man at the very back of the formation suddenly convulsed. He staggered and listed to the side as if hopelessly drunk.
And despite the strict orders not to look back, his head twisted violently—as if wrenched by an invisible hand—rotating a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
In the blink of an eye, his face completely flipped around. On that originally honest, middle-aged visage now stretched an indescribably grotesque smile. Stiff and contorted, it was as if he were silently mouthing...
"Congratulations, you found me!"
Thrum.
In a flash, the malice of the Wilderness surged forward like a tidal wave, wrapping around them so tightly it was hard to breathe.
Everything happened with lightning speed. The teammates fleeing ahead were completely oblivious that the comrade behind them had silently entered the Outbreak Stage of the Infection Source and begun a bizarre mutation.
Cheng Ye's footsteps ground to a halt.
The two of them froze in place simultaneously. In the blink of an eye, a gap of three or four paces opened between them and the advancing squad.
The middle-aged man's mouth split wide open, dark green drool sliding down his chin. His eyes were clouded, yet they burned with unhinged madness.
Staring straight at Cheng Ye's face, only one thought remained in his decaying mind.
Purify.
Purify!
Purify this... garbage!!!
However.
To the mutated man's surprise, the "garbage" standing before him didn't seem terrified by his transformation in the slightest.
The face hidden beneath the helmet paused, and a sliver of a smile actually crept onto his lips.
In that very instant, blazing red streaks crawled up the sides of the young man's eyes, exuding a searing, overbearing aura of oppression.
And right in the center of his forehead, a blindingly brilliant golden flame sigil flared to life, shining with a radiance that the infected man could barely even look at.
'What is that thing?'
The middle-aged man stared blankly. Clinging to the last shreds of his consciousness, he forcibly narrowed his eyes, trying to get a closer look.
Yet.
Thump, thump.
The imposing figure before him seemed to outright defy the laws of physics. After taking two explosive steps forward, the man's feet seemed to tread on thin air, propelling him over half a meter off the ground in complete disregard of gravity.
The next second, his straightened right leg whipped out like a steel flail, crashing toward him with terrifying, monstrous force.
"Smile at this, motherfucker!!!"
In that instant, an immense force fully erupted, producing a sharp, whistling sonic boom. Compounded by the Iron Body equipment and the complete explosive power of his Transcendent Symbiotic State, the kick violently smashed into the man's temple.
Just how terrifying was the force behind this kick?
Boom!!!
Caught completely off guard, the middle-aged man didn't even have time to raise his right arm to block. The moment the blow connected, his entire head and neck spectacularly burst apart.
A torrent of dark green fluid, as thick as tar, spewed from the severed stump of his neck. Before the liquid could even hit the ground, his body was carried by the sheer momentum of the blow, crashing heavily into a low wall five or six meters away with a deafening thud.
What just happened?
The thunderous impact made the fleeing squad members abruptly slam on the brakes. Turning around reflexively, over a dozen flashlight beams immediately converged on the source of the noise.
Having delivered the kick, Cheng Ye had already landed, kicking up a small cloud of dust around his boots.
But the scene beneath the low wall...
...caused three members of the patrol to go weak at the knees and collapse straight onto their rear ends.
Their comrade, who had been perfectly fine just moments ago, was now covered head-to-toe in densely packed, red conical dots, looking like sharp spikes violently drilling their way out through his skin.
From the top of his headless neck, two stalks as thick as chopsticks jutted out. At the ends of these stalks were two bulging red eyeballs that rolled erratically, exactly like the compound eyes of a crab.
Even more horrifying, two massive gashes tore open on his back, giving way to a pair of spectral-green crab claws that snapped and clacked, glinting with a cold, metallic luster.
Even without a head, this Infected Body's mutation was... still continuing!!
"Open fire! What are you all waiting for?"
The moment Cheng Ye landed, he vaulted backward like a nimble ape, instantly putting four or five paces between himself and the corpse. His booming shout finally snapped the terrified squad out of their daze.
Gunfire suddenly erupted into the night, raining a dense hail of bullets into the "headless crab-man" on the ground.
Even with just the most standard Guardian Pistols, shooting from such close range provided more than enough lethal force.
Before the creature could even finish its mutation, its body was riddled into a bloody sieve.
One stray bullet managed to shatter one of the crab-man's eyeballs. An eerie blue liquid leaked out, sizzling furiously as it dripped onto the ground and emitting thick plumes of pungent white smoke.
"This is... an unseen Infection Source..."
Releasing his Symbiotic State, Cheng Ye stared at the corpse, his heart skipping a beat.
He rapidly combed through his memory for any Infection Sources related to crabs but failed to find a single matching entry.
Clearly, this was either a completely uncharted Infection Source that had never been documented, or an extremely rare, specialized variant.
"Everyone stand back! Don't touch any of those fluids, and keep moving toward the border!"
Cheng Ye barked another order, his voice laced with unquestionable, steely calm.
The three men who had fallen on their asses scrambled to their feet. Pale as ghosts and completely panic-stricken, all they could do was lower their heads and resume their desperate sprint toward the safe zone cleared earlier that day.
Taking advantage of the squad's retreat, Cheng Ye stepped forward briskly and gently tapped the remains of the "crab-man" with the tip of his Red Blade.
The moment his system panel flickered to life, displaying three glaring question marks ("???"), Cheng Ye's heart sank. Without wasting another second, he spun on his heel and sprinted toward the border.
The question marks meant that this Infection Source was not only beyond his own personal knowledge, but it also wasn't documented in the civilization data he had previously gathered through the Starfish Epidemic.
After all, even a Transcendent creature as unbelievably rare as the Vortex Turtle had triggered a corresponding encyclopedia entry.
The fact that this Infection Source yielded absolutely zero information was enough to prove that its rarity far surpassed even that of the Vortex Turtle!
Furthermore, God only knew where the two missing men were hiding right now.
Before he figured out exactly how this Infection Source parasitized its victims, any unnecessary movements could leave him vulnerable to infection.
Even with his newly elevated life tier, there was absolutely no reason to gamble with his life in a situation like this.
The short two-minute trek felt like half a century of agonizing suspense.
When the squad finally blasted past the Red-Blue border, Luo Kuke was indeed waiting with over twenty armed men on high alert, their flashlight beams linking together into a solid defensive wall.
"Halt! Submit to inspection!" Luo Kuke ordered the moment he saw people charging out of the dark. Over twenty muzzles instantly leveled at them.
Experiencing survival after a disaster, the patrol members immediately hit the brakes. Expressions of profound relief washed over their faces before they hurriedly threw their hands in the air and obediently stepped to the side.
Inspection?
Cheng Ye strode out from the shadows, his eyes locking directly with Luo Kuke's.
Luo Kuke immediately stepped forward, deliberately maintaining a distance of three meters. "What happened?"
"It's an unseen Infection Source."
Cheng Ye caught his breath and recounted every single detail without missing a beat—the middle-aged patrolman's grotesque head turn, that chilling smile, and the horrific mutation that sprouted crab claws and bulging eyeballs.
Luo Kuke's face instantly drained of color. He yanked the Kindling Terminal from his waist, his fingers flying across the screen in a blur.
Ten seconds later, he raised the device and turned the screen around. On it was a crystal-clear image.
The creature in the picture looked about seventy percent similar to the "crab-man" Cheng Ye had just encountered. The only difference was that the entity in the photo still had its head attached, albeit with violently protruding eyes. It was unlike the man whose skull Cheng Ye had punted into oblivion, leaving only two isolated stalks behind.
"Was it this?" Reading the reaction in Cheng Ye's eyes, Luo Kuke asked, a trace of frantic urgency leaking into his voice.
"Yes!" Cheng Ye nodded.
"So my daytime scouting was correct... Damn it, that river really is hiding a colossal threat!"
Receiving confirmation, Luo Kuke lost his composure—a truly rare sight. He began babbling nervously, "The assessment should be terminated. This is way beyond the scope of anything we can handle!"
"What?"
Cheng Ye frowned. What did he mean by 'beyond the scope of anything they could handle'?
Before he could press the issue, Luo Kuke backed out to the main page of his Kindling Terminal and swiped up on the screen, bringing up a highly conspicuous data entry:
[Code Name: Abyssal Water Cave Crab (Special Infection Source)]
[Classification: Freshwater Genus, Biological Type, Environmental Area of Effect Type]
[Threat Level: B-]
[Latest Sighting: Year 13 of the New Era, Bartlett State]
[Derivative Transcendent Creature: Abyssal Water Cave Crab]
[Method of Parasitism: Any body of water the infected entity passes through (strictly within a fifty-meter radius of activity) will slowly generate "Toxic Water Crystals". These crystals take the shape of semi-transparent rhombuses, roughly one to three millimeters in diameter, with a microscopic layer of viral protein enveloping their surface. Once in the water, they remain suspended ten to twenty centimeters beneath the surface, resembling miniature icicles.
If direct skin contact with a Toxic Water Crystal occurs, the human subject will be instantly infected by the virus, triggering parasitism and forcing them into the Outbreak Stage within a very short timeframe.
If no such contact occurs, the crystals will naturally dissolve after seventy-two hours. Lacking a host, the released virus will rapidly deactivate, and the contaminated water will revert to its original quality within twenty-four hours. However, if this contaminated water is directly ingested by a human during this window, the residual crystal shell will dissolve in their gastric acid, leading to a full-blown infection.]
His eyes rapidly skimmed all the way to the bottom. Once Cheng Ye fully digested every bit of the information...
...the encyclopedia interface that had merely recorded biological data just a moment ago began to flash, and the system panel automatically popped up before him.
[Detected that the Collector has logged relevant biological data. Actively supplementing missing information.]
[Supplementation complete. Logging new biological encyclopedia entry: Abyssal Water Cave Crab.]