Clown Game-Chapter 41 - 32 The Sticky Task Part 2

Chapter 41: Chapter 32 The Sticky Task Part 2

Chapter 41 -32 The Sticky Task Part 2

Pushing open the door of the villa, a strong stench of decay hit them, nearly knocking Li’s team over.

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath.

Although it was daytime, for some reason, all the curtains inside the house were drawn, so the interior was quite dark. Without hesitation, Li switched on the shoulder-mounted portable flashlight on his bomb suit, casting a broad and bright beam of light ahead. This special flashlight could supply uninterrupted illumination for up to several tens of hours, so it could be used almost without restraint.

He stepped into the house and found the floor to be sticky, his shoes pulling up long threads like glue.

“What the hell is this?” the bald, stocky man asked with a look of disgust.

“It should be some kind of secretion…” Li murmured as he led the way deeper into the house.

It was hard to say how many guns Mouse had on him, but he promptly pulled out another two from his back and followed cautiously.

“So, this mission is just about some kind of man-eating monster, right?”

As he spoke, he carefully surveyed the surroundings.

Truth be told, in the D-level missions, tasks involving mutated creatures were usually quite easy to handle because, in general, all you had to do was shoot them.

Next, the man wearing gloves also entered the room. He didn’t take out any weapon, nor did he seem to care about the sticky liquid on the floor, just boldly kept pace with the three men in front.

It wasn’t until then that Chen Xiao peeked cautiously into the room.

“Phew — this stench… it must have been rotting for at least a week, right? How come no one nearby smelled it, and it was only reported today?” Chen Xiao wondered, without entering the room. Instead, he squatted down and poked the sticky substance on the ground with his finger.

“Hmm… it’s thick, stickier than glue… and the smell is bad!” he whispered, rest assured, he didn’t taste it, just took a whiff, although it seemed he might as well have sucked it up and smacked his lips.

“Looking at the consistency, there’s no sign of it drying out. It must be freshly smeared here. We don’t know about its toxicity yet, but it’s not corrosive, which means if we have to come to blows with whatever made this, having a knife won’t be too much of a disadvantage,” Chen Xiao murmured to himself.

What was he thinking? If it could secrete such disgusting slime, who would want to fight it hand to hand?

After examining the secretion on the ground, he looked around for any strange footprints near the skirting boards, trying to gauge the weight and height of the creature, all the while deducing its muscle density and strength.

But due to the extensive coverage of the slime, it seemed no traces had been left behind.

At that moment, Mouse, who had moved some distance ahead, turned back and saw Chen Xiao still squatting by the entrance. Mouse shouted impatiently at him, “Hey, dummy, hurry up and follow!”

Chen Xiao didn’t seem to care, just chuckled, took a moment to inspect the walls and ceiling, and then bounded after the others.

“Don’t think about hiding in the back, hear me!” Mouse glared at Chen Xiao and said. By now, Chen Xiao had cemented his reputation in Mouse’s eyes as an idiot who came just to pad out the mission.

“Go, open those curtains over there!”

He yelled and pressed the light switch on the wall.

As expected, the light did not turn on.

Chen Xiao approached the window, first rubbing the fabric between his fingers, then sniffing it, before ripping the curtains open with one motion.

…

“Phew — it’s sealed up tight!” he exclaimed.

The entire window in front of him was covered with a thick layer of the same sticky substance on the floor, allowing only a small fraction of light to get through.

“Hmm?” He hesitated for a moment, as if he had discovered something strange, and quickly ran to another window to draw the curtains aside.

As expected, like the previous one, it too was covered with a thick layer of slime.

“Weird…” he muttered, frowning.

At that moment, Mouse glanced over.

“Damn it, why is it even on the windows!” he cursed, his facial expression filled with disgust.

Then, the other three also turned to look.

“Should we break it?” the bald man asked, lifting his gun readily.

Li patted his arm and shook his head.

“No use, the glass will stick together too. Unless we scrape off that whole clump, not much sunlight will come through. Plus, whatever that thing is, it hasn’t made a move yet. If we start shooting, it might get startled,” Li reasoned.

Li’s reasoning was solid, but Chen Xiao was paying no attention to their conversation. He was just pondering the curtains thoughtfully.

“Judging by the thickness of the slime and the pattern of its spread, it seems to have been layered on by something spraying it. Most of the substance on the window is dry,” he said while touching the slime on the window, “Considering the dust on it, these curtains were drawn just a few days ago. So that means the room was already full of corpse smell and secretions when someone drew the curtains. So could the person have stayed in the room? Or was it the creature that spreads the slime that drew the curtains? That would imply it has a fairly high level of intelligence.”

While he was thinking, the bald man’s voice carried over to him.

“Hey, what’s-his-name, don’t just stand there in a daze. Come over here!” he pointed to the center of the living room.

Right from the start, he had taken a dislike to Chen Xiao, especially that nauseating smile that was always on his face, which made people feel uncomfortable for no apparent reason.

“You just stand right here, don’t move, got it?” he said fiercely, “Keep an eye on the surroundings, and if you see anything strange, shoot it!”

Chen Xiao ignored him, still thinking about the curtains.

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The bald man saw his thoughtful and dazed expression and made a face of disdain. He cursed, “Useless!” and then turned to join the other three in starting to search the floor.

…

…

Although this was a villa, each floor wasn’t too large by itself, and it only took a few minutes to completely survey the ground floor, Chen Xiao hardly needed more than a glance to understand the basic situation.

Firstly, from the family portrait on the wall, he knew this was a family of three: the man was around 40 years old, worked in the medical field, and there was a book on the couch covered in mucus, with CT illustrations of the human brain on the cover, not something most people would casually read.

There weren’t many women’s shoes on the shoe rack at the entrance, but there were as many as three pairs of ladies’ slippers for home use, and two sets of folded aprons in the kitchen. The arrangement of the soy sauce, vinegar, and other condiments was logical, suggesting the lady of the house was either a housewife or engaged in some easygoing job.

And one could tell at a glance that the boy was at most a high school student.

A calendar was stuck onto the fridge door, with a circle drawn around the date 9 days back, and a note beside it that read ‘rainy’. Probably because the man had to go far away or had some important outdoor activities planned. Men’s leather shoes were placed at the entrance, which means since the man got back home, he hadn’t gone out again, so the body must be somewhere in this villa by the smell of things, dead two to three days after he returned home. So does that mean he brought some strange substance back home when he went out?

There were no signs of a struggle anywhere, so this “alien object” had killed the person quickly or quietly.

But what’s with this mucus?

Chen Xiao stood there bored out of his mind, but in reality, these thoughts had flashed through his mind in just a few seconds.

At that moment, the bald man had just opened one of the bedroom doors next to the living room.

“Ew~~~~” he grimaced as if he were about to throw up; “Found it!” he called out softly while holding his nose.

The moment he opened the door, Chen Xiao knew that there was a body in the room that had been decomposing for at least a week; the smell was hard to miss. He walked over excitedly, the first to do so.

“Wow~~~ Not a bit wasted, huh!” This was the second exclamation from Chen Xiao within five minutes, but thankfully, having seen the bizarre form of “Angel” earlier, he refrained from making more disparaging comments for the time being.

The body lying on the floor in front of him was, as Chen Xiao had remarked, not wasted at all; it was eaten very cleanly. No, to be more precise, it was sucked clean.

The body was shriveled up, only the skin hanging limply on the skeleton, the remaining flesh on the surface already decayed like blooming flowers, with yellow-white bones clearly visible between the rotten bits.

What caught his attention was that there was a hole on the side of the head, gaping empty when looked into.

Captain Li came into the bedroom with his gun ready.

“Dead for at least a week,” he said flatly, as he stepped on the dried-up belly of the corpse.

“Nothing left, probably dissolved then consumed dry!”

Rat frowned at the body’s head and the hole in it, “Sucked dry? Some kind of giant mosquito?”

As he spoke, he must have imagined the scene of having his brain pierced by a sharp proboscis and then slowly having his flesh drained away bit by bit. His whole body shivered uncomfortably at the thought.

“About that, and there are no signs of a struggle, the target might be very fast,” Captain Li said, “Let’s go, that’s it for the first floor, let’s head to the second floor and everyone stay alert, this thing might be dangerous!”

As he spoke, he looked up at Chen Xiao and hesitated for a moment.

…

“Stone! You take the lead!” he said.

Chen Xiao was startled; “Whoa there! You want me to take the lead and be a cannon fodder, huh?”

He could tell that Captain Li had initially wanted him to take the lead, but perhaps he felt it was somewhat unconscionable to let a newbie without any equipment lead, or maybe he thought having him in front could not only lead to certain death but also disrupt the operation. In the end, after much deliberation, he did not voice the order.

What surprised Chen Xiao next was that the man known as “Stone,” whose skin was a sallow grayish hue, nodded immediately as if fully accepting the arrangement.

Thinking about it, if Captain Li’s guess was correct, this “giant mosquito” secreting mucus all over the place must be very dangerous. To be informed upfront about the danger and still be assigned lead was something most people would be unhappy with, wondering what would happen if an attack came as soon as you opened a door.

But “Stone” obviously showed no emotion, as if he was meant to lead.

Chen Xiao squinted his eyes and took another long look at the man’s grayish skin, nodded with an “I see” expression.

…

…