Chapter 145: [Not Human] (Bonus for 600 Monthly Votes)

Various curses and shouts rose and fell, echoing endlessly.

A crowd blocked the main entrance, arguing noisily, their voices carrying far into the distance.

Seeing this, Gu Bo simply parked the car and sat back to wait for the outcome.

Since the people from the power plant were in no hurry, he was even less in a hurry.

Su Jingxing did the same, leaning against the window to listen for a while until he figured out the cause of the commotion.

A young employee named Yan Xiyu had suddenly died.

The cause of death was a heavy impact to his chest, causing his entire thoracic cavity to collapse.

Yet, the killer was nowhere to be found.

Regarding the corpse, the power plant management naturally wanted it removed and cremated as soon as possible.

Compensation and other matters could be settled slowly afterward.

However, Yan Xiyu was well-liked. In particular, he had taken over his late father’s position at the power plant, and many of the employees were his father's old friends.

These people had looked after Yan Xiyu in every way after his father passed away.

Now that Yan Xiyu had suddenly died, they were determined to pursue the matter to the end, uniting to force the power plant to find the killer.

As for the group arguing with them, their relationship with Yan Xiyu was merely ordinary.

Compared to finding the killer, they were far more afraid that Yan Xiyu's corpse might suddenly turn into a corpse puppet.

For this reason, they pushed hard, siding with the power plant to dispose of the body as quickly as possible.

The two factions argued endlessly, and the person in charge shouted until his voice grew hoarse, to no avail.

Meanwhile, garbage transport trucks arrived one after another, parking right behind the hearse.

A pungent, foul odor emanated from the garbage trucks, spreading in all directions.

Su Jingxing simply held his breath and stopped inhaling.

Gu Bo took out a mask to put on, so angry that he kept leaning on the horn.

The transport trucks behind them began honking their horns continuously as well.

There was no help for it; the drivers themselves smelled terrible too!

Urged on by the loud blaring of horns, the two arguing factions finally stopped and cleared a path.

Of course, Su Jingxing preferred to believe that they simply couldn't stand the increasingly pungent stench anymore and were forced to call a truce.

A waste-to-energy power plant already had a heavy enough smell on its own, let alone a whole line of transport trucks loaded with garbage parked closely together.

To put it bluntly, that stench was out of this world.

...

With the obstruction gone, the hearse and transport trucks quickly passed through the gates.

Once inside, they went their separate ways.

The hearse drove straight to the body storage area, a secluded corner outside a warehouse.

When Yan Xiyu's corpse was first discovered, it had been collapsed in that corner, his back pressed tightly against the wall, leaving a dent surrounded by countless cracks on the concrete surface.

Su Jingxing stepped out of the vehicle and quickly scanned the scene, discovering quite a bit of mucus on the ground.

The corners of the wall, the turns, the concrete floor—all had residual mucus left behind.

Although there wasn't much, and it wasn't particularly conspicuous, Su Jingxing recognized at a glance that there was something wrong with this mucus.

"The killer isn't human?"

Su Jingxing's heart skipped a beat.

This thought arose because the mucus left at the scene strongly resembled the secretions of some kind of animal.

Although this secretion didn't smell particularly foul—or rather, its odor had been completely masked by the overwhelming stench of the garbage power plant!

"What is it, Little Su?"

Gu Bo's voice sounded nearby. Su Jingxing snapped back to reality, shook his head, and said, "Nothing. I just feel that this victim died rather miserably."

"It is somewhat miserable." Gu Bo maintained his composure and said indifferently, "I've seen plenty of things much worse than this."

Su Jingxing, "..."

Fine, Captain Gu had a point.

As body haulers, the various gruesome states of corpses they had witnessed were indeed countless.

While Su Jingxing was feeling these emotions, he put on his gloves and, cooperating with Gu Bo, placed Yan Xiyu's corpse into a body bag, then loaded it onto the back of the truck.

With the doors closed, they prepared to leave.

"Boom!!"

A loud explosion suddenly erupted from the factory zone to their front right at that exact moment.

Accompanied by this came the terrified screams of the power plant employees, as well as...

The roar of a ferocious beast!

"Ah~ There's a monster!"

"Run! Run for your lives!"

"Get out of the way! Get the hell out of my way!"

"Roar!~"

The low, piercing roar, the moment it broke out, released a terrifying circle of sonic ripples that swept across all directions with the factory zone as its center.

Wherever it passed, running personnel screamed, collapsing onto the ground while clutching their heads and covering their ears, howling in agony.

Furthermore, electronic devices went "pop, pop, pop" in a series of explosions, bursting into sparks and scattering electric arcs.

The operating generator sets stopped spinning on the spot, shooting out countless electric currents.

"Sizzle~" "Sizzle~"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

"Bang!——"

Muffled explosions rang out incessantly, even escalating into a violent thunderous bombardment.

This kicked up a terrifying shockwave that swept across the greater part of the power plant.

Gu Bo, who was half-kneeling on the ground with his hands covering his ears, was lifted right off his feet by the shockwave under Su Jingxing's very eyes, crashed heavily into the hearse, and passed out cold on the spot.

People suffering the same fate as him were everywhere.

In the massive power plant, Su Jingxing was the only one unaffected for the moment.

His true qi circulated outward, forming a protective barrier of true qi in front of him.

Glancing at the shattered surveillance camera, Su Jingxing decisively sprinted, flashed into a corner, took out his mask and cloak, and put them on rapidly. Then, drawing his treasured weapon and flying daggers, he soared straight up into the sky, tracing the direction from which the beast's roar had come.

"Crackle, pop!"

"Bang~ Bang~ Bang~"

"Rumble!"

Sparks flew in all directions, electric arcs shot out, and loud noises rang out from time to time.

Leaping into the air, Su Jingxing's first sight was the various factory buildings of the power plant collapsing one after another.

A bucket-thick, silvery-white giant snake was rapidly weaving through the ruins, spitting out electric arcs.

No, not a snake—it was an earth dragon, an earthworm!

A silvery-white earthworm, dozens of meters long and as thick as a water bucket, opened its toothless mouthparts, frantically devouring and swallowing the electric arcs lingering in every corner and floating in the air.

An earthworm that ate electricity—an earthworm fierce beast!

Earthworms were invertebrates; transforming into a fierce beast was not the result of infection by demonic beast spirits.

Instead, it was a natural evolution, a sudden mutation!

The first time Su Jingxing laid eyes on this giant creature, to be honest, he felt a pleasant surprise.

An earthworm fierce beast that devoured electric arcs—did this mean its body had stored a massive amount of electricity?

His newly revived spiritual weapon, "Thunder," was precisely lacking a power supplement right now.

With this earthworm fierce beast popping out before his eyes, wasn't it simply delivering a giant "battery" right to his doorstep?

That's right, in Su Jingxing's eyes at this moment, the earthworm fierce beast roaming everywhere on the ground was simply a mobile "battery"!

Regardless of how it had mutated into a fierce beast, why it had burst out of the ground, wrecked the power plant, or swallowed electricity—

Su Jingxing was determined to claim it!

"Whoosh!" "Whoosh!" "Whoosh!"

The treasured flying daggers pierced through the air, hurtling at extreme speed toward the earthworm fierce beast and striking its massive, arc-flashing body.

The result—

Bang, bang, bang!

Amidst muffled impacts, the three flying daggers were bounced away, dragging a string of sparks behind them, which then triggered a series of explosions under the stimulation of the electric arcs.

"Boom!" "Boom!" "Boom~"

"Interesting."

High in the air, seeing this scene, Su Jingxing decisively switched to fist techniques.

Mobilizing sixty years of true qi cultivation, he locked onto the earthworm fierce beast, which had stopped moving and was raising its head with its ugly mouthpart, and smashed down with a single punch!

......

(PS: New month, begging for guaranteed monthly votes.)