Chapter 90
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Chapter 90: Reconnaissance and Anomalies
A seasoned agent always has their own unique information channels.
For members of the Purge Team, cultivating informants with questionable backgrounds is not uncommon.
As a new member, Zhuang Mian needed her own network of informants if she wanted to gather as much information as possible.
Fortunately, her recent experiences led her to someone with considerable knowledge of the outer city.
So, a while ago, Zhuang Mian gave a one-way communicator to that person and promised to reward them handsomely for vital information.
She walked alone through the dense night of the outer city, tapping on the communicator a few times.
Half an hour later, she met her informant in a secluded alley—an escaped fugitive known as the "Heart Snatcher" from the outer city, who had joined the Fire Thief organization even before her—El.
The two didn’t exchange too many pleasantries in the Dark Alley; Zhuang Mian quickly voiced her concerns, and El easily provided answers.
A gang that had already been captured to do labor could not possibly help distribute goods for the production line’s managers.
If everything progressed smoothly, familiar faces might soon appear on the production line under Wen Zhengcheng’s jurisdiction.
But timing often plays tricks, and just as those captured were getting familiar with the production process, Wen Zhengcheng’s home had already been raided.
Although this answer surprised Zhuang Mian, it was not beyond acceptance.
From the beginning, all she wanted was the truth, and the specifics would be determined by her superiors.
She only needed to slightly disguise El’s identity to complete her account.
Seeing that she had no further questions, El inquired whether Zhuang Mian was aware of the elimination plan for the unemployed.
Zhuang Mian had only heard a little about this plan; she knew that the decision-makers wanted to reduce some of the instability in the outer city manually, but she wasn’t deeply informed about the execution methods.
Observing her reaction, El shared what information he had with Zhuang Mian, and seeing her visibly shocked expression, the boy showed a harmless smile.
“You’re… the leader of the ashes?”
Although Zhuang Mian had been shocked by this boy more than once before, she still felt a wave of astonishment at the implication in his words this time.
El shook his head, speaking with a nearly theatrical sincerity:
“I’m just one of the deputies; the leader is someone else.”
Who would believe you!
Zhuang Mian silently scoffed and then moved on to the next matter: the whereabouts of the last shipment.
When he heard her question, El scratched his head and replied:
“Wasn’t the shipment nutritional paste? Where else could it go?”
Saying this, he took out a sealed tube of gooey substance from his pocket, opened it, and took a couple of bites.
“Of course, I’m keeping it for myself; it’s expensive to feed so many followers.”
“……”
Zhuang Mian was momentarily at a loss for words, but thinking it over, she found nothing particularly wrong with his response.
She was unaware of the full extent of the mission and did not realize that the nutritional paste El was consuming at that moment was part of the problematic batch. She simply followed El to retrieve the accounts of the nutritional paste distributed by the gangs and then returned to her team to prepare for her subsequent report.
Meanwhile, El’s subordinates had already consumed one-tenth of the batch with great relish.
—
Research Institute.
Ji Yongxing had already left the laboratory, and in an unnoticed corner, a white coat hanging on a rack quietly transformed into a swirling mass of chaos.
The grayish mass moved toward an empty large beaker, revealing jagged, shadowy teeth.
"Crunch, crunch."
A researcher, busy extracting mycelium, lifted his head and glanced curiously at the empty experiment table, but saw nothing.
It felt as though something had clearly broken…
He shook his head in confusion, doubting his own senses.
Perhaps it was due to working too much overtime.
With this thought, he slowly stood up, walked over to the laboratory bench, and pushed a precariously placed large beaker further inward.
As he did this, his mind wandered to his cat.
That disobedient creature loved to knock everything in sight to the floor and then act as if to say, "What are you going to do about it?"
"Why am I thinking about a cat?"
He shook his head and returned to his seat in front of the microscope.
The large beaker began to silently observe everything within the laboratory.
Two laboratory benches away, a small white mouse was twitching inside a transparent incubator.
This state had persisted for some time.
To confirm the actual harm caused by the mycelium, all the extracted active mycelium had been collected and introduced into the small white mouse’s body.
Countless eyes were closely observing the anomalies occurring in the small white mouse.
Yes, anomalies.
The poor creature was twitching while undergoing a form of growth that humans could not comprehend.
Along its spine, patches of fur were rapidly turning gray and white, their texture hardening as they stood on end, resembling the quills of an enraged porcupine.
The mouse’s twitching ceased, and its once-contorted body returned to a crouched position, now covered in sharp, bristling fur, its eyes tinged with a faint blood-red hue.
In her beaker form, Fulan watched this scene from a distance, her formless stomach seeming to churn:
“Companions, new companions…
“Companions smell so good!”
The mycelium on the small white mouse represented the entirety of what the researchers had been able to extract.
After confirming that the human digestive system could not truly harm these entities, the researchers began the biological experiment.
When they placed the still-active mycelium on the small white mouse, the mycelium seemed to instantly regain vitality.
It seeped into the host’s skin through its pores, finding its place with precision.
Once fused with the nerves at their original locations, the mycelium began to control the small white mouse’s body.
It was as if a supreme consciousness had emerged within it.
That power was immense, calm, yet radiated an unmistakable killing intent and a scent of death.
Like a mountain or an ocean, this presence seemed to use the small white mouse’s eyes to observe the surrounding world, locking gazes with each white-coated researcher adjusting their glasses.
In that moment, those nearby were seemingly overwhelmed by the killing intent, many unconsciously taking a step back.
Then, under the watchful eyes of all, the small white mouse descended into complete madness.
It attacked the acrylic incubator with reckless abandon, its two noticeably overgrown front teeth leaving deep scratches across the surface.
