Chapter 109: Unseen
Chapter 109: Unseen
“Something’s wrong…”
High atop a building outside the Satellite City, the Man in the Red Suit suddenly opened his eyes, his brow deeply furrowed.
The big-headed boy beside him immediately grew nervous and asked, “What happened?”
The Man in the Red Suit looked pale, his expression carrying a kind of unexplainable bewilderment.
He raised his left hand, gently wiggled his little finger, then wiggled his index finger, before curling all five fingers into a fist.
He clenched his fist tightly. The confusion on his face deepened, bordering on disorientation.
After a pause, he spoke softly, “I can no longer connect with the puppets I left there…”
“It’s as if… the connection between me and them has been completely severed.”
“…”
The big-headed boy was momentarily stunned, his face full of astonishment.
Qin Ran asked calmly, “Which one?”
The Man in the Red Suit’s voice was hoarse. After a moment of silence, he replied, “Every one.”
Qin Ran fell silent, lost in thought as he looked towards the direction of Qinggang City.
In his hand, the lines on the meter jerked violently, tracing sharp peaks.
The big-headed boy tilted his head as he examined the Man in the Red Suit, asking in surprise, “That sounds strange. Can puppets just get lost? Maybe they’re too far away, beyond your control range?”
“No!”
The Man in the Red Suit shook his head. “Ten kilometers is the limit I confirmed through multiple tests.”
Qin Ran remained expressionless and asked softly, “Did you see anything before the connection was cut?”
The Man in the Red Suit thought silently for a while. “Right before I take over a puppet, because each puppet’s brain structure is different and the degree of modification varies, I experience a period of… chaos before I gain full control. So, before my vision clears, there’s static, illusions, large flickering blank spots…”
He paused slightly before adding, “I don’t know if it was a hallucination.”
“This time, when I opened my eyes… it seemed like I saw a woman. She was smiling at me…”
“…”
The big-headed boy looked startled for a second, then muttered, “Too desperate for women?”
The Man in the Red Suit ignored the jibe, simply looking quietly at Qin Ran.
“Then we cannot afford to wait any longer!”
Qin Ran gazed steadily toward Qinggang City, seemingly deep in thought.
After a long moment, he suddenly looked down at the electronic screen remote in his hand, specifically at a red button on it. “Prepare to evacuate!”
The big-headed boy was shocked. “Boss, the data collected at this level might not be enough to get paid…”
“The mission to record experimental data on the spiritual contamination bomb is deemed a failure.”
Qin Ran spoke with utter calmness. Simultaneously, he turned around and signaled the guards to retreat.
However, his decision surprised both the big-headed boy and the Man in the Red Suit.
Neither had expected their leader to abandon the mission so readily.
“Do you know why I’ve lived this long?”
Qin Ran seemed to read their thoughts, glancing at them with a faint smile. “It’s because even though I have abilities, I still maintain the caution of an ordinary person. When it’s time to retreat, I never indulge my greed.”
As he spoke, he pressed the button without the slightest hesitation.
…
…
“What happened?”
As the sound of scissors snipping echoed, panic erupted in several locations.
Beneath the High Wall, hidden behind a secret door, a man holding a camera carefully aimed his lens at the young man standing atop a vaguely shimmering Distortion Field. At a glance, it looked like the man was floating mid-air.
He was a veteran Investigator. Knowing that Psychic Entities couldn’t be recorded, he focused solely on capturing the young man’s every move. The subject’s wildly contorting posture, extreme speed, and even the excited, scornful expression he wore while facing the Psychic Entity sent chills down the Investigator’s spine.
He didn’t fully understand what he was filming, but he knew it was valuable.
Holding his breath in tension, he recorded silently.
But suddenly, the direction his lens was aimed at seemed to blur. The image on the viewfinder lost its clarity.
Thinking something had affected the lens, he jolted in surprise and instinctively looked up.
Then he realized he could see nothing.
Terror seized him. He tried to scream, but his throat only produced a rattling sound. No words emerged.
It was as if his vocal cords had been severed.
He strained, reaching out to touch the camera beside him. But before his fingertips could reach it, he saw the camera body itself begin to twist, warp, and crack, as if being slowly crushed into shards by an invisible force.
…
…
On a high-rise a thousand meters away, a woman observing the battlefield through a high-powered telescope crouched low the instant the snipping sound reached her. In a swift motion, she drew a black Dagger and scanned the direction of the sound with razor-sharp focus. Yet, she found… nothing. Emptiness. As if it had all been an Illusion.
Even the psychic anomaly detector alarm at her waist remained silent.
“Am I… too tense?”
She remained crouched for a long while before slowly rising. A draft from the open window swept in, making her shiver.
Glancing down reflexively, she was stunned to see that the front of her shirt had been cleanly sliced open, parted perfectly down the middle.
Startled, she leaped backwards, drawing her Handgun and pointing it frantically ahead and then behind her.
Still, nothing…
Only then did she look down again at the bloodless seam where the fabric parted.
Following the split fabric down revealed a thin, unbroken line of blood – tracing a path from her throat all the way down to her lower abdomen.
She suddenly understood. More than just her clothes had been cut.
…
…
Inside a sealed room, a man sitting calmly on a sofa was reporting to an encrypted channel: “I see the Lone Soldier engaging with a Psychic Entity. The Entity’s power level is significant; I dare not get too close. However, what puzzles me is this: the Lone Soldier himself no longer seems… purely human. Around him, there seems to be a zone of distorted psychic power…”
His voice abruptly cut off.
The voice in the channel prompted lightly, “Continue. Distorted what?”
But no matter how many times they called out, no sound came from his end. Realizing something was wrong, the person on the other end swiftly terminated the connection.
In the deathly silence that followed, the man on the sofa remained absolutely still.
His head, however, now rested gently against his shoulder.