"Mayor..."

The young man with the mysterious illness stammered, clutching his abdomen with trembling hands.

He seemed to be in extreme pain, struggling even to speak clearly.

"What happened?"

Shen Donglin noticed the young man's distress and hurried forward to assist him.

"Is your body uncomfortable? Do you want to rest for a while?"

"..."

The young man's teeth chattered as he tried to speak, but he couldn't squeeze out a word.

The pain in his abdomen seemed to reach a bizarre "threshold," causing him endless agony yet preventing him from passing out completely.

"I...I..."

After a long while, he finally overcame the spasms in his throat and managed to utter a few broken syllables.

He dared not hesitate and immediately opened his mouth, attempting to reveal everything he knew to Shen Donglin.

Just as he was about to utter the third syllable, the young man suddenly froze in place, as if perceiving something inconceivable.

He stopped trembling and clutching his abdomen, abruptly tearing apart his thin clothing, and then... began desperately clawing at his stomach...

"Crunch... Crunch..."

He exerted all his strength without any reserve.

His mud-covered nails first broke the skin, then tore open blood vessels and fat layers, finally meeting resistance at the tough muscle, causing his fingernails to fly off...

But the young man showed no intention of stopping.

With fingernails gone, he used his bloody fingers to scrape; with fingers worn out, he used numbed finger bones to dig!

Within less than half a minute, the young man was drenched in blood, having gouged a bloody pit into his abdomen, twisting his fingers until the bones protruded.

Throughout it all, he never shouted; his face twisted with madness, frantically digging as though there was something vile inside him that he had to remove.

The sudden incident left Shen Donglin momentarily unable to react.

By the time he snapped out of his shock, the young man had already torn through his abdominal muscles, thrusting his wounded hands deep into his abdominal cavity.

"What are you doing?!!"

Shen Donglin's eyes widened as he tried to restrain the young man's hands, intending to stop him, but the latter's strength was inexplicably immense, effortlessly tossing the nearly two hundred-pound Shen Donglin aside!

Then, before Shen Donglin's terrified gaze, he forcibly pulled out his internal organs...

First the intestines, then the stomach, and afterward the liver...and the lungs.

It is hard to imagine a living person actually capable of extracting his own organs by hand.

Though organs themselves do not experience pain, the act of disembowelment is enough to make the toughest soldiers weep.

Yet the young man showed no reaction, letting his organs spill onto the ground, feeling the blood gush like a fountain without ever crying out in pain, even...his face filled with a nearly fanatical smile.

Finally, the young man forcibly tore out his last organ—the heart.

He gathered the chaotic organs from the ground, rearranging them into the pattern of a human abdomen, simultaneously holding the heart with both hands, raising it high overhead—

"Gag... Gag..."

The young man laughed maniacally, his lips slightly parted, as if intending to speak.

But with his lungs gone, he couldn't even breathe, so he compressed his trachea, uttering indistinct words.

However, relying on the young man's continuously shifting mouth shape, Shen Donglin could almost discern the words he wanted to say.

They were somewhat blurred words.

"Organs."

"Sacrifice."

"..."

"Tai Sui."

Organs and Sacrifice, Shen Donglin could understand.

In his memory, these two words seemed familiar, and he had even written related statements.

But the last, "Tai Sui," was a somewhat unfamiliar term.

In the records and archives of Yangshan Town, the words Tai Sui had never appeared.

Whether it was the former Hammer Vanguard, the first-generation worker squads...or the current Aurora and Yun You group, or even the culprit—the Biotechnology Doctor Xie Kang, none had seen or left any information about "Tai Sui."

It was a word that should not exist or perhaps a forgotten name.

Yet now, it appeared from the mouth of a "madman."

For some reason, at the moment these words flashed in his mind, Shen Donglin's expression froze.

He forgot his duty, disregarding the bleeding, died yet prostrate positioning young man; bizarre and strange images suddenly flashed through his mind.

Slowly, even this elder's body began to tremble.

As a former Heavy Hammer Vanguard Captain, his will was as strong as steel, and his spiritual power far greater than the average person.

But at this moment, he was horrified to find that he seemed unable to completely control his own body.

Skin, muscle, bone...gradually losing sensation, as if being frozen.

First the toes, then the lower legs and knees, and then it spread to the lower body and torso...

It was as if something were struggling for control of his body.

In a daze, Shen Donglin's pupils contracted, his cloudy eyes suddenly became brighter.

He seemingly recalled something, struggling to turn and look back at the Yangshan Town they abandoned.

Earlier, when evacuating the town, he felt that the darkness-shrouded town was like an indescribable monster.

It used cliffs as its upper jaws and the earth as its lower jaws, greedily staring at everything on it.

But that was only a feeling, not real...

Yet now looking again, Shen Donglin realized that the originally silent town seemed truly alive.

Bricks and tiles rustle audibly, remnants slowly writhing.

Broken tiles and mud gradually merged, forming black tendrils.

The still intact houses oozed crimson mucus, even growing thick flesh walls.

The town's perimeter gradually whitened and sharpened into sharp teeth... even the earth became more malleable.

And the source of all this was the young man's earlier actions.

His "ritual behavior" and blood soaking into the ground had awakened an unknown presence.

No, it's not right.

Strictly speaking, that "it" had always been there... the young man's blood merely accelerated its movements.

It used shadows as a medium, spilling from the town center, spreading outward.

At this moment, it had reached beneath Shen Donglin.

The Hammer Captain was completely immobilized.

An overwhelming sense of unease and terror instantly engulfed his mind.

At this moment, he remembered everything, his face quickly paling.

He wanted to rush into the mines immediately, to say something to Yun You's group...but the pervasive chill left him rigid.

Shen Donglin's hand uncontrollably reached out, then tore open his shirt, and began to tear at his soft abdomen...

Meanwhile, shadows began surging toward the mine.

Initially, its expansion speed wasn't fast, akin to a normal person's walking pace.

But as more people became enveloped, its pace accelerated, increasingly difficult to evade.

Pain, piercing pain, vividly appeared in Shen Donglin's mind.

The sensation of opening his belly with his own fingers made him want to die from pain.

But he couldn't.

You can only muster your last strength to face the mine, tearing and yelling...

"Everyone here is Tai Sui's..."

"Sacrifice...!"

"Quick...escape...!"

"Gurgle..."

The next moment, Shen Donglin's lungs and heart were completely torn out by him.

Amid the cold and shadows, the Heavy Hammer Vanguard Captain's life slowly ebbed away.

At the end of his life, the last spark shined in his dim eyes, a complex gaze.

There was no unwillingness, no pain and humiliation, even no anger.

Only the faint sadness as if saying...

Everything they did... fleeing, uncovering secrets, saving others... all meaningless.

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