Chapter 4: Level One Spiritual Monster
Chapter 4: Level One Spiritual Monster
“Hisss…”
Seeing that Lu Xin had not fled, instead turning to confront him, the coffee shop attendant also grinned.
When the smile on his face twisted to a certain extreme, the skin and flesh abruptly split open, revealing a kind of black, muscular tissue. This tissue roiled, stretching outward, transforming into thick, twisting tentacles. Some of these tentacles bore huge, gaping mouths studded with sharp, short fangs. Others swiveled to reveal enormous, rolling eyeballs.
Then all the mouths abruptly gaped wide, spraying out viscous strands of fluid.
Lu Xin trembled all over. “Run!” he gasped.
Little Sister, however, only stared excitedly at the monstrous creature. “I won’t run. Look how cute it is…”
Her voice hadn’t even faded when the monster let out a furious roar and whipped its multitude of thick tentacles towards them.
Lu Xin, caught between terror and shock, couldn’t help but scream, “I…”
Yet, even as he cried out, Little Sister suddenly yanked him, charging headlong at the monster.
…
…
“The Mental Energy Fluctuation has reached the critical value…”
In the Observation Post, an operator frantically typed on their keyboard, shouting low, “The Level One Spiritual Monster has manifested!”
On the display monitors they could see, the entire, vacant Subway Station seemed to be experiencing an earthquake, trembling violently. Centered on the coffee shop attendant, giant fissures appeared in the surrounding ground, or deep pits as if gouged by tremendous force. People nearby, even many of the “customers” within the café itself, were torn apart.
It was as if an unseen force field was twisting, destroying, obliterating everything.
“A subway train enters the station in three minutes! There are at least thirty passengers on board!”
Another operator yelled, panicked, turning to look at the short-haired woman. “What should we do?”
The short-haired woman took a deep breath, momentarily unable to decide.
“Normally, a Spider-Type Mutant couldn’t deal with such a Psychic Entity without standard-issue weapons…”
“But…”
“…”
On the shaking video feed displayed before her, the subject they were monitoring was now flying directly towards the coffee shop attendant, within whose swirling force field reality twisted violently. His shape flickered, and a pit appeared beside him as if struck by invisible Telekinetic Power. He sharply recoiled, and instantly, a person seventy-eight meters behind him spontaneously sprouted a gaping hole.
Yet, amidst such extreme peril, he somehow closed the distance, reaching the coffee shop attendant.
Then he reached out and grabbed the attendant by the shoulder.
“Sssss…”
At that precise moment, the feed from the Subway Station monitor screens completely vanished.
All the cameras within the station had been utterly destroyed by the sheer, invisible Telekinetic Power.
The short-haired woman inhaled sharply, suddenly shouting, “Move it!”
Everyone sprang into tense action, including the little girl in the adjoining room.
…
…
“Hehehe…”
Meanwhile, inside the Subway Station, Lu Xin felt a surge of bitterness in his heart, yet his mouth curled into a mocking, triumphant laugh. His eyes shone with a fierce, excitable light. Before him, innumerable eerie and horrifying tentacles slithered towards him. Instinct screamed that contact with even a single tentacle, even a mere graze, would inflict irreversible and unimaginably gruesome consequences.
But within this vortex of endless danger, he seemed to feel only thrill.
He surged forward, twisting his body into bizarre, contorted postures, evading the flailing tentacles, and arrived beside the Monster.
“Riiip!”
He reached out, seized a chunk of flesh from the Monster’s form, and with a twist, tore it free. Viscous fluid spattered.
He had ripped away one of the creature’s tentacles.
The Monster howled in madness-infused agony, its countless mouths screaming simultaneously.
Lu Xin’s expression, however, grew even more exhilarated. He began circling the Monster.
His physical strength was clearly inferior to the Monster’s, and he could sense a single solid grasp from it would mean instant death. Yet, far from feeling fear, he felt as if this were incredibly fun. Like a cat teasing its prey, he danced around the Monster, darting daringly close only to flash away again. Each time he closed in, he wrenched and tore off another writhing tentacle.
He was taking the creature apart, piece by piece…
The Monster’s tentacles dwindled rapidly. Consumed by monstrous rage and bottomless Fear, its every violent thrash only delighted Lu Xin more. His form flickered around it like an apparition, tearing off gobbets of flesh with each fleeting touch…
The Monster’s roars dwindled into weak whimpers, its surroundings littered with severed limbs and splotches of foul gore.
However, whether limbs or gore, they gradually faded and dissolved, vanishing away into nothingness as time passed.
Finally, the creature, now limp with terror rather than rage, feebly tried to crawl towards the station exit.
But Lu Xin leapt onto the nearby wall, pursuing it from above, snatching a long, slender metal pipe from where it hung against the ceiling. Laughing wildly, he sprung down from the wall, aiming at the fleeing Monster, and drove the pipe downwards with tremendous force, plunging it into its back.
“Thuck!”
The Monster was pierced right through the skull, pinned brutally to the concrete ground.
The creature struggled desperately, flailing its few remaining tentacles unconsciously.
Lu Xin crouched not far away, watching its roars and struggles with intense vigilance and deep satisfaction.
The countless eyes on the monster’s tentacles collectively revealed terror. Suddenly, all the tentacles stiffened at once.
Then with a “splat,” they exploded into puddles of blood.
The moment this blood burst forth, it surged in all directions like a crimson mist.
Fortunately, Lu Xin was utterly alert. He dodged sideways instantly, evading a squirming mass of flesh.
But the surrounding “customers” who had chased out from the café were instantly engulfed by the flesh and abruptly startled awake.
During the earlier battle, these “customers” had suffered heavy casualties almost indiscriminately under the café worker’s assault, lying motionless as if impervious to pain or fear. Yet now, they suddenly awoke as if from a dream, fleeing wildly in every direction.
Some charged toward side exits, others even leaped into the subway tunnels.
Every one seemed crazed, showing no fear of being crushed by the approaching train…
“Trying to escape?”
Lu Xin’s eyes blazed with fervor and excitement. His pupils darted, and his figure lunged toward the nearest person—a limping, obese woman.
Her entire left leg had snapped at an unnatural angle after being struck by the café worker’s tentacle. Still, she scrambled desperately, though slowly. Sensing Lu Xin approaching from behind, she whirled around and her mouth gaped, stretching to her ears. Her greasy, yellow teeth seemed suddenly sharper.
At that moment, she appeared less like a human and more like a mindless beast.
“Swish!”
Lu Xin swerved aside, evading her bite. Then his arm shot out, grabbing and wrenching her neck with a sharp snap.
He bounded swiftly toward other fleeing figures.
His eyes shone with an abnormal frenzy; his movements were unnaturally swift and ghostlike. Within moments, four or five “customers” lay dead. But there were simply too many, fleeing with abandon. As he caught and dispatched these few, the others had vanished into various pathways, leaving the subway platform eerily empty.
“Click-clack…”
A faint noise suddenly echoed in the station.
Lu Xin spun sharply to face an old security guard within a security booth, staring at him in terror.
This old guard had been incredibly fortunate. Despite the entire subway station being wrecked by the battle, the booth remained intact—and he unscathed. Yet, just then, he had made a noise and drawn Lu Xin’s attention.
Lu Xin stared at him, his eyes dark and fathomless. A twisted, excited grin spread across his face.
The next instant, Lu Xin had flashed to the booth. His fingers stiffened like claws, lunging for the guard’s head.
Terrified, the old man clasped both hands over his head.
…
…
But the attack he feared never came.
“Enough!”
Lu Xin roared angrily, wrenching his sister back by the arm.
Her slender fingers had been mere inches from clawing the guard’s face. They halted just in time.
Though wild, she could be restrained by Lu Xin—
If he truly wished to stop her.
Earlier, during the battle, the slightest misstep would have let the creature seize them. So Lu Xin hadn’t dared to rein her in, not even when she wanted to return while he wanted to flee—dissent meant slower reactions and mortal danger. Besides, those “customers” were unnatural; killing them meant nothing.
But this old guard… he was undeniably a normal, ordinary person. Lu Xin absolutely couldn’t let his sister harm him.
“Alright, alright…”
Lu Xin forcibly pulled his sister back, prompting clear irritation. Yet as she turned and saw his face—contorted with rage—she suddenly softened. Slender arms hooked around his neck as she giggled, “Don’t be angry, Big Brother. I was only protecting us, wasn’t I? Those monsters were so fierce and scary…”
“And what do you do with scary things?”
Veins bulged on Lu Xin’s temples. He meant to argue, but his sister’s expression abruptly shifted.
“Oh no! They’re coming! We have to run!”
Startled, Lu Xin recoiled backward, landing against the wall and scrambling spider-like out of the station.
Only bloodstains and the trembling old guard remained in the hollow emptiness.
“RUMBLE!”
The subway thundered into the station, dislodging clouds of dust from the cracked ceiling.
Simultaneously, a flash of white flickered through the station—a porcelain-skinned girl resembling a doll appeared.
Held aloft in mid-air, she floated as though suspended by wires, clutching an open parasol.
Right behind her, the roar of a motorcycle cut through as a short-haired woman charged in on two wheels.
Both scanned the platform but found no trace of the Psychic Entity. No lingering Psychic Energy. Not even the previously observed figure. Only dismembered corpses, pools of blood, and the café worker—now reduced to pinned, pulpy waste upon the ground.
A flicker of shock washed over the short-haired woman’s face.
“How did he achieve this?”
She muttered, astonished.
A Spider-Type Mental Aberrant. No regulation weapons. No Armed Squad support.
How had he eliminated the Source of Contamination?
Baffled, she slowly turned her gaze toward the security booth and the terrified figure inside.
The Old Security Guard sat as if paralyzed, his eyes overflowing with raw Fear.
A relic clutched in his trembling hands:
A Digital Camera from an age before the Collapse.