From Abyssal Invasion to Bursting Stars with a Single Sword-Chapter 213 - 175: Really Hungry

"Last night, a demon attack occurred in the Gaseous District, where a demon devoured four alien life forms and destroyed more than twenty Mechanical Guards. The nature of the incident is extremely malicious…"

Upon seeing the morning news the next day, Lu Heng and his two companions were dumbfounded.

The incident that happened last night in the Gaseous District of City 3 was clearly a battle with Hasegawa Tom.

How could the news report describe it as a demon attack?

Soon, the three of them saw the reason in the news video.

The battle last night had resulted in four deaths: a black man, two people from Fusang, and Hasegawa Tom.

When Lu Heng made his move, his technique was clean and sharp, usually killing with a single stroke, leaving a very smooth cut.

However, the four corpses shown in the news video looked as if they had been gnawed on by wild dogs, with not a single piece of flesh intact.

Even the contents of their skulls had been eaten clean, creating a scene that was extremely bloody and gruesome.

Lin Zeyu's eyes widened as he said, "We didn't do this!"

Clearly, they hadn't.

Even if they had wanted to do so, they couldn't have produced so many jagged tooth marks.

There was only one possibility—after the three of them had left, something had completely devoured the four bodies.

"How could this be so terrible?" Su Muyu said, feeling nauseated upon seeing the bloody images in the video.

"It must be because there's so little food, this thing must have been starving," Lu Heng quipped, making a hellish joke.

But he wasn't entirely joking.

The Sikes Civilization was already a semi-Mechanical Civilization, with every Sikes citizen in the city being mechanical.

Being mechanical beings, they only required charging and did not need food, so there was very little food in the city, and organisms were scarce—wasn't that enough to starve?

Just as the three of them were amazed by the news content,

Su Muyu raised her eyebrows, alerting, "Yeliana has brought a squad of guards here."

Before she had finished speaking, the door was pushed open from the outside.

Yeliana Sikes entered with a squad of Mechanical Guards and loudly demanded, "Which demon are you exactly?"

Hearing this accusation, Lu Heng remained composed and retorted, "Are you referring to this news report?"

"What else? Don't tell me that you weren't the ones who killed those people," Yeliana Sikes said with deep suspicion in her eyes.

Lu Heng spread his hands and stated, "We did kill them, but we didn't eat them."

If he had said this to other humans, it would have been relatively easy to believe.

After all, a human seeing such a bloody scene would not think it was done by humans.

However, Yeliana Sikes didn't think so.

To her, humans were alien life forms.

If one day an alien life form arrived on Blue Star and devoured humans this way, humans wouldn't find it too strange.

Lu Heng beckoned the Mechanical Tiger Anka over and said, "You can ask Anka, if you don't trust us, you should at least trust Anka, right?"

In the Mechanical Tiger's binding information, Yeliana Sikes was second in line.

She didn't ask verbally but instead directly interfaced with the Mechanical Tiger to exchange information, then nodded and said, "The bodies surely weren't eaten by you, but the people were killed by you, so the incident is still related to you."

Due to her mechanical transformation, Yeliana Sikes's thinking leaned towards mechanical reasoning.

For mechanical thinking, the judgment of a matter only has two states, "0" and "1."

The information provided by the Mechanical Tiger Anka completely convinced her of Lu Heng and his companions.

Lu Heng pondered and then said, "I suspect that this matter is related to the demon. Our purpose here is to find the demon. I hope to obtain a visa to go to the scene for investigation. Perhaps we can find that fearsome thing."

The computational thinking speed is determined by the processing power, and Yeliana Sikes's processing power was strong.

Thus, on whether to grant Lu Heng and his companions a visa, she only needed 0.01 seconds to decide.

Then, she took three bracelets from the Mechanical Guards and said, "These are visa bracelets that will allow you to move in the planet's areas below Level B."

The planet areas of Sikes Civilization are divided into A, B, and C levels.

Usually, A-level areas include military and scientific buildings, which cannot be accessed with a B-level visa.

Lu Heng took the bracelets and asked, "Can we go to the scene to check it out? We were there last night, revisiting the scene now could help us find more clues."

Yeliana Sikes thought briefly and answered, "You can. I'll send a squad of Mechanical Guards to escort you there, but I need to know about any clues you find right away."

…

In the afternoon.

Lu Heng and his companions, dressed in metal-shelled clothing, arrived at Gaseous Street.

The scene had been sealed off, needing the escort of Mechanical Guards to cross the barrier and enter the street where the battle had occurred the previous night.

The three traced their steps from the night before, walking the route from start to finish.

The spots where Lu Heng killed the black man and the two from Fusang showed few traces of battle because they had been quick kills.

The three bodies had not been dragged; they lay where they were devoured into fragments.

The bones also bore marks of sharp teeth.

Su Muyu repeatedly covered her mouth with her hand, suppressing the acid reflux in her stomach.

"This has been eaten quite cleanly, he must have been very hungry," Lin Zeyu squatted in front of several pieces of broken bones and made a very objective evaluation.

Lu Heng picked up a steel bar, turned over a bone, and saw a strange trace.

From the bite marks on the bone, it was clearly bitten by sharp teeth, but some traces did not look like tooth marks; rather, they seemed to be made by something made of metal.

This skeleton was wider and belonged to the black man; Lu Heng had dealt with him with one stroke of his sword.

Therefore, the marks on these bones were not made by the Aurora Blade.

"Strange."

"What's wrong?"

"There are traces here made by a metallic Sharp Blade, but the other parts are bitten by sharp teeth. If there were only biting marks, it wouldn't be strange—any demon with sharp teeth could do it. But, the presence of metallic marks, too, is a bit peculiar," Lu Heng shared his doubts.

"Is it possible that these corpses were gnawed by two things, one being a demon with sharp teeth and the other some sort of metallic object?" Lin Zeyu speculated.

Su Muyu shook her head and said, "That shouldn't be the case. Although this isn't the center of City No. 3, such commotion brought the mechanical guards here. There wouldn't have been enough time for two separate gnawing episodes.

"So, I think there's another possibility. Do you all remember the laboratory we destroyed on Orion λ838?

"In that underground lab, they were conducting mechanical modification experiments on demons. If similar experiments are being conducted here, that would make sense."

Lu Heng also considered this possibility, which seemed more likely than Lin Zeyu's speculation.

"If that's the case, following this clue might lead us to find the Abyss Pollution Source."

Among the tasks in this challenge was to find the source of the Abyss pollution.

[2. Find the root of the Abyss pollution and eliminate it.]

They had been clueless initially, but having found this clue, it seemed hopeful to find the source.

Afterwards, Lu Heng went to see the remains of Hasegawa Tom and noticed several missing mechanical modification modules.

He distinctly remembered using the supersonic Cloud Piercing Style last night, stabbing through Hasegawa Tom's mechanical mods.

The massive kinetic energy tore these modules apart, then burst with the Power of Thunder and Lightning, destroying all the mechanical elements.

When the modules exploded, they shattered into pieces on the ground.

Due to the severe damage to these modules and lack of time to collect them, they were left here.

However, now it was evident that one-third of the scattered mechanical module fragments had been taken away.

If it was officials from the Sikes Civilization who had cleaned up, they would have taken everything, not just part of it.

Now, only one-third missing indicated that there was definitely some secret hidden within these taken mechanical pieces.

…

After spending half an hour on site, suddenly a mechanical police officer arrived.

This mechanical officer first interrogated Lu Heng and the others, scanning their Visa Bracelets before letting them go.

After leaving the site, Lu Heng went to meet Yeliana Sikes.

There were still some questions that he needed answers to from her.

Lu Heng pointed at the photos on the holographic screen and asked, "Can you identify what these mechanical module fragments are?"

Using her access privileges, Yeliana Sikes consulted the site inspection report and replied, "The identification report just came out; the main functions of these module fragments are anti-gravity systems, miniature missile launch systems, and evasion radar systems."

Lu Heng continued, "Anything else? Are there other modules?"

He had recognized these modification modules on Hasegawa Tom the previous night.

Yeliana Sikes shook her head and replied, "The fragments are very fragmented, so we can only identify the module functions through primary components, thus the report only mentioned these three types of fragments."

Lu Heng pondered and then asked further, "Is there a module that enhances spiritual power?"

Last night when battling with Hasegawa Tom, he had distinctly felt that his Spiritual Field was stronger than when they first met.

Thus, he had inferred that his spiritual power had risen above 70 points.

In such a short time, his spiritual power couldn't have increased so significantly without some enhancements.

So, at that time, Lu Heng suspected that Hasegawa Tom had installed a Spiritual Power Enhancement Module.

Yeliana Sikes said surprisingly, "There's no such module you're talking about."

"Are you sure?"

"It's not that the fragments don't have it; it's that our Sikes technology doesn't have a module to boost spiritual power."

Lu Heng raised an eyebrow and said in surprise, "Are you sure?"

"Of course, we only need computing power, not spiritual power," Yeliana Sikes responded very crisply.

Lu Heng paused for a moment because her response was indeed correct.

Sikes Civilization was already in the final stages of a semi-mechanical civilization, and robots don't possess something like spiritual power.

Because of this trait, robots are completely immune to Spirit Control Skills.

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Following this line of thought, it made sense that the Sikes Civilization's mechanical modification technology wouldn't include modules that enhance spiritual power.

However, in his previous life, when Lu Heng had entered Queen Star of Sikes, he had seen a Spiritual Power Enhancement Module.

If his memory was accurate, it meant that Sikes Civilization did not yet have this technology but would have it a year later.