The special agent stared blankly at the large screen filled with static noise and the interrupted signal.

"That last face... was it Feng Ju?!"

Although the surveillance footage abruptly stopped, that fleeting glimpse was clear enough.

"Seems I misunderstood him. He really did go into the sewers to pursue [Mask], and..."

The special agent squinted his eyes,

"And he’s about to catch up with [Mask]?!!"

Although he still had some doubts—how did Feng Ju even see [Mask] enter the underground tunnels?—the facts before him were enough to dispel his previous suspicions.

"Perhaps... I can give him another chance," the special agent mused silently.

At this point, chasing into the sewers himself was pointless.

Initially, he did not trust Feng Ju’s judgment and didn’t follow immediately, making any actions now clearly too late.

However, that no longer mattered.

[Mask]’s true identity had been exposed to the whole of Zone 9; even if he hid temporarily, how long could he evade capture?

The special agent’s lips curled into a confident smirk, but a hint of seriousness flickered in his eyes.

He thought to himself:

"However, [Mask]’s revealed strength is quite troublesome. No wonder he’s a host for the Evil Sacrifice. Such rapid, almost monstrous evolution is truly terrifying."

"In the next operation, relying solely on Feng Ju might be far from enough."

His gaze darkly scanned the campus, landing on Squad Three of the Arresting Bureau, who were currently battling the monster. His face showed a contemplative look.

The special agent absentmindedly rubbed the button on his collar, losing interest in the impending conclusion of the campus play, and quietly left.

...

The aftermath of the explosion was still buzzing in Deng Jiajia’s eardrums.

She struggled to open her eyes, her vision intermittently blacking out.

A warm sensation from the back of her head made her realize she was lying on Tang An’s back, he had become her human cushion.

His face was submerged in the murky sewage, his pale skin already turning a suffocated shade of cyan.

"Cough... splutter..."

She suddenly turned her head and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva, with pebbles trickling down from her hair.

As she attempted to prop herself up, she suddenly felt something cold and slick crawling down her collarbone.

It was a dazed, plump rat.

Deng Jiajia leapt up as if shocked by electricity, and the damp russet "splat" into the sewage.

This jolt brought her to full alertness, and her fingers instinctively reached into her clothes pocket.

"The storage card... Please, let it be safe..."

Her hand trembled as she reached for her front pocket, only relaxing slightly when her fingertips felt the hard metal piece.

Confirming the storage card was neither bent nor damaged, she breathed a long sigh of relief.

"Tang An! Wake up!" she knelt down and patted her companion’s pallid, blue-tinged face.

The moment Tang An awoke, he curled up like a shrimp, his right hand clutching his left rib, cold sweat mixed with sewage dripping from his chin.

"Ribs, ribs might be broken..." he uttered each word as though swallowing blades.

The two struggled to their feet to find Ren Xuan, stopping in shock when they found him.

A rusty iron pipe had pierced through Ren Xuan’s thigh, pinning him like a specimen to the collapsed pipe wall.

Smashed bones and ligaments were exposed to the murky air, with pitch-black blood streaming down the twisted metal pipe.

The most terrifying sight was that he was still twitching consciously, his fingers scraping ten bloody trails on the slippery ground.

"Help... help me..."

Ren Xuan’s pupils had already dilated, pinkish blood froth bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

Deng Jiajia and Tang An both grabbed the rusted iron pipe, but couldn’t budge it even slightly.

"Try again!" Tang An’s voice wavered.

Just as he exerted force again, a sudden scratching sound emerged around them.

At first, it sounded like raindrops hitting a tin roof, quickly morphing into a tide of rustling.

The rats dazed by the explosion were waking up one after another, poking their dust-covered noses frantically through the crevices.

The smell of blood acted as a dinner bell; the first rat squad had already skittered up Ren Xuan’s pant leg.

"Ah!!! Get away! Get—"

Ren Xuan’s screams echoed through the pipe as he slapped uselessly at the rats gnawing his thigh.

But he only succeeded in inviting more rats to climb up his arms, one particularly plump one hopping directly onto his face, its tail brushing across his open mouth.

Deng Jiajia stepped back: "The pipe’s lodged too deep, we can’t pull it out."

She paused, her voice trembling but rationally cruel:

"And even if we did pull it out, your leg’s broken, we can’t outrun the rats lugging you along."

Tang An’s face turned paler than a corpse’s.

The acrid taste of rat fur clung in his mouth, his stomach convulsing frantically.

Ren Xuan’s blood-smeared fingers suddenly grasped his ankle.

"Don’t... leave..."

Those dying eyes were wide open, pupils spread to the edges, yet still locked onto Tang An.

Tang An jerked his leg back, retreating faster than Deng Jiajia.

"The camera!" Deng Jiajia suddenly hissed, "We can’t lose the footage!"

This sentence seemed to press a switch; Tang An hurriedly bent down, yanking the camera wedged beside Ren Xuan out from a heap of rocks.

Despite being unable to pull out the pipe embedded in Ren Xuan’s thigh, the adrenaline surged, allowing him to easily yank out the camera half-buried by debris.

Breathless, he extracted the memory card and nodded at Deng Jiajia.

Their gazes simultaneously turned to the unconscious Feng Ju not far away.

Feng Ju’s nose was evidently crooked, with a camera wedged right under his jaw.

As Deng Jiajia touched the nylon strap, Feng Ju’s mechanical prosthesis suddenly clicked, the black fingers twitching once, instinctively grasping the camera by his face, his eyelids trembling slightly.

Both sprang back their hands, exchanging glances.

"Let’s go."

Deng Jiajia wiped the blood and dirt from her face, sternly saying:

"There’s no time, if we linger any longer, we’ll become rat droppings too."

Tang An, horrified, glanced back once before following Deng Jiajia without looking back.

The two staggered, one step deep, the other shallow, escaping. Behind them, Ren Xuan’s screams suddenly peaked and then cut off abruptly like a tape being stopped.

Replacing it was the tidal sound of gnawing, hundreds of incisors tearing at flesh, weaving together into a reluctant farewell’s end theme in the pipe.

Feng Ju’s eyelids felt weighted with lead, each twitch tugging at the grotesque wounds on his face. His right eye was completely caked in coagulated blood, while his left eye saw the world through a crimson filter.

"Cough..."

He spat out bloody sputum mingled with broken teeth, the mechanical arm joint releasing a hissing pressure.

As the metal palm braced against the ground, the blood pooled in the sewage rippled out in circles.

His left hand touched his deformed nose—it had crooked at a bizarre angle, with a slight touch inducing piercing pain.

Feng Ju staggered to his feet, his vision in the left eye blurred by blood half-closed, reaching up to feel the distinctly bent nasal bridge.

Feng Ju’s face was grim as he removed the splintered glass embedded in his brow bone, beads of blood following.

The glass shard still had a few eyelashes clinging to it, which he flicked into the sewage without regard.

He looked down at the broken camera with a shattered screen at his feet, then turned toward the nearby mound swarmed by rats—a pale hand jutted skyward, its five fingers twisted into a desperate grasp.

Feng Ju’s gaze lingered on that hand for less than a second, sweeping over it as if it were irrelevant trash.

He turned toward the blasted tunnel, twisted rebar jutting from concrete like his violent mood at the moment.

As he stepped forward, he abruptly stopped, inexplicably turning back, stooping to pick up the damaged camera and slung it over his shoulder.

The camera on his shoulder swayed gently with his steps, the cracked lens cap knocking against the metal arm, producing a rhythmic clicking...