Chapter 1 The Seventh Victim

The seventh victim of the 719 major serial murder and dismemberment case in Hongcheng has been discovered.

Beside the latest crime scene at Chigu Beach, the mangled corpse was loaded onto an ambulance, while the patrol officers who rushed to the scene took control and cordoned off the surrounding area.

Zhang Fucheng anxiously surveyed the busy scene of forensic personnel.

"The crowd is too large, disrupting the spiritual energy trails… The spiritual energy trails at the previous crime scenes are already so faint that it's impossible to tell where they lead."

He understood that he couldn't prevent the patrol officers from investigating the scene, nor could he stop daytime pedestrians from passing by… In general, Professor Zhang knew that this was mainly because his skills were lacking, and coupled with the fact that spiritual energy had not yet recovered, it was indeed difficult for him to use his Daoist arts and techniques.

Through previous examinations of the victims' remains and traces at the scene, Zhang Fucheng could roughly determine that the demon beast did not feed on flesh and blood, was of the wood element, could travel through water, and was probably quite large – because patrol officers from the investigation team had found huge climbing marks on the concrete guardrail by the river. Ignoring its height, its body width was at least more than half a meter, at least much wider than a person's shoulders.

A water ghost? A demonized water spider? A fish-man?

Moreover, none of the victims showed any signs of resistance, making it impossible to rule out the possibility that the creature possessed some kind of extraordinary supernatural power.

To be honest, Zhang Fucheng had a very uneasy suspicion in his heart, which was that the unknown demon had actually existed for a long time, but it had been living in a hidden place until recently, either to advance in cultivation, or to raise offspring, and was therefore hunting everywhere, preying on the spiritual **guan (apertures/orifices)** within potential humans to replenish its consumption, or to accumulate reserves for preparation.

"If we are one step slow, then what we will have to face may be a demon advancing in cultivation, or a great demon accompanied by who-knows-how-many small demons."

And none of these were laughable possibilities.

The situation was not optimistic, and there was no time to delay. When the investigating patrol officers had almost finished their work and left the scene, no longer interfering with the surrounding spiritual energy, Zhang Fucheng began to cast his spell.

Similarly, he held a talisman, igniting it in the air with a thunderous crack. Professor Zhang closed his eyes, then opened them, using the flickering power of the talisman to activate his Yin-Yang Vision, surveying the surrounding spirits.

Due to the insufficient concentration of spiritual energy in the surrounding area, the effectiveness of this talisman technique was not high, and his spiritual vision was very blurred. After a period of careful observation, Zhang Fucheng finally discovered a faint, blurry brown trail on the ground, carrying a sweet, bloody, and dangerous aura.

If it were an era of abundant spiritual energy, there would be no need for talismans at all, and any trained transcendent could use spiritual vision, but after all, heaven and earth had not yet opened, alas…

"A spirit of the wood element, leading to the Gan River… A wood-spirit water ghost? Some other monster skilled in water? Or just a demon that simply doesn't drown?"

The situation was complex and difficult to analyze, but no matter what, the opponent's strength, this dangerous feeling…

Professor Zhang frowned and pondered for a while, then turned to the patrol officers behind him and said, "We need boats and speedboats – the demon is using the water to conceal itself. We can follow its trail and perhaps find its lair!"

"Remember to equip yourselves with weapons. I can't find the origin of this demon, and its movements are extremely swift, its strength may be beyond imagination… Yes, heavy weapons, request armed patrol support, just treat it as hunting a dinosaur."

While the relevant professional professors from the Zheng Yi Academy and a group of patrol officers were laboriously searching for the demon's trail on the Gan River, searching for its lair,

Su Zhou had already followed the unusually obvious guidance of the spiritual energy trail to a sewer.

Hongcheng's sewer system has always been criticized. In the past hundreds of years, whenever it rained, various parts of the city were like floods. It was only in recent years that the country carried out a large-scale renovation of the urban waterway system, repairing the underground systems of all state-level capital cities in Zheng Country, that the phenomenon of commuting by boat in the city, which was complained about every year, came to an end.

The trail pursued by Su Zhou led all the way into a sewage interception culvert deep in the Fu River – through the river water, one could see that a large hole had appeared in this section of the sewage interception culvert. It seemed that the fiend was entering and exiting the sewer and the water area from here.

"This is not the time to worry about dirt." Holding a gun-杆(gan - pole), Su Zhou discerned the distribution of the surrounding sewers, and then cautiously selected a section of unmanned street, directly opening the manhole cover and entering it.

The sewer was cold and damp – at least colder than the ground in Hongcheng. Jumping straight down the shaft, Su Zhou landed at the bottom of the shaft, making contact with the solid cement floor.

There was no light underground. Although Su Zhou had brought a small flashlight, he didn't want to startle the enemy, so he concentrated slightly and activated infrared vision. After a period of delay, what appeared before his eyes was a thermal vision image processed by the brain.

"Hmm, I can see the spiritual energy trail."

Obviously, the surrounding sewer was undoubtedly the fiend's lair. With just a slight scan, Su Zhou could see dense brown spiritual energy trails, entangled together, even accumulating into团团 (tuan tuan - clumps) like knots, as obvious as road signs.

The darker and more obvious the color, the more the fiend had been active in that area.

Following these spiritual energy clumps, Su Zhou walked silently along the cement paths on both sides of the sewer. Soon, he reached a fork in the road, where sewage and filth from three directions converged and then flowed into the distant sewage discharge pipes.

"Strange, why is it unexpectedly not dirty or smelly here?"

Since entering the sewer, Su Zhou had been subconsciously holding his breath, but even a perfect body couldn't completely avoid breathing. Just now, he took a breath with a stinky face, but was surprised not to feel the usual stench of sewage.

Afterwards, Su Zhou carefully concentrated and saw that the water flowing in the waterway was unexpectedly not very dirty, and even fish and shrimp were swimming in it.

"Something's not right."

Things were abnormal, and coupled with the fact that there was already a fiend lurking about, Su Zhou became vigilant about this abnormality.

After thinking about it, he temporarily ignored whether he would alarm the distant demon and directly took out his miniature flashlight to illuminate the surrounding area.

Then, he saw that the edges and cracks of the sewer, as well as the sides and bottom of the water pipes, were actually covered with a strange growth.

It looked like black moss, but when Su Zhou picked off a small piece, he was stunned to find that it had woody roots – and this rooted 'moss' seemed to be the source of purifying the sewage and filth. Although it had no light in spiritual vision, its essence should be a special product of the spiritual energy revival, different from normal moss, which could rapidly decompose and purify filth and propagate itself.

The moss was very thick, averaging about three to four centimeters thick, and there were large patches of the moss that had been gnawed away, as if it were food for some kind of creature.

Among them, there were many small insects scurrying around, these insects were larger than their counterparts on the ground, and they fled rapidly when Su Zhou approached.

Looking at the surrounding environment, he immediately had some guesses in his mind.

"The humid environment of the sewer… Could it be that the unknown fiend is essentially a large lizard? Or some kind of insect?"

Su Zhou grabbed a small insect and smelled the scent on it – it was a sweet, bloody smell similar to that of the fiend. But this was even more puzzling.

"But why is its aura like that of a plant?"

With this doubt, Su Zhou continued forward – soon, he reached a sewer railing, where the black moss was extremely dense, even blocking most of the railing, forming an arched black sac. It seemed to be alive, rising and falling, and he could even hear a 'huffing' breathing sound.

And it was here that Su Zhou could smell an abnormal stench… And this stench was not unfamiliar to him, who came from a family of patrol officers and doctors.

His brow furrowed, and with a bad premonition in his heart, he still had to take action. Su Zhou picked up the gun-pole and directly pierced the sac, and after it released a large amount of toxic gas, he pried open the moss on the surface.

"As expected."

Seeing the contents, Su Zhou's expression became serious, and he subconsciously clenched his fingers, a trace of anger flashing across his face. But in the end, he withdrew his spear and sighed softly, "Rest in peace, innocent ones."

Because what appeared before the youth's eyes was several piles of corpses, long swollen and rotten.

Black centipedes crawled out of the corpses' empty eye sockets in a panic, falling into the water.

Like tears.

These corpses should be some of the people who had recently gone missing. They seemed to have been used as a culture medium for the black moss.

It could be seen that there were many insects squirming in the corpses, and the gas produced by their movement and the rotting of the corpses caused the sac to rise and fall like it was alive.

Around the black moss团(tuan - cluster), insects, moss, and various strange molds and fungi had formed a small, bizarre ecosystem, and the surrounding area was covered with abnormal strange plants and viscous attachments like snot.

This attachment seemed to be corrosive, and it could be seen that the sewer railing had been corroded by a layer. If this continued, it would be completely rotten in a matter of weeks.

"There is a spirit plant that is transforming into a spiritual object."

Yala spoke for the first time, and its tail pointed to a string of deep purple fungi growing next to the remains of the corpse. It said leisurely, "If this fungus continues to absorb resentment and filth and grows, it will be called 'Bone-Eating Black Ganoderma,' which can extract extraordinary strong acids that can corrode bones and rust iron in an instant and contain deadly poisons that seal the throat upon seeing blood, and also contains a very large amount of Yin wood energy."

"Speaking of which, this black moss absorbs filth and spiritual energy and converts it into nutrients for spiritual plants. I didn't expect the demon to be quite good at growing vegetables and eating."

"Hmm…"

Su Zhou glanced at it roughly, but didn't care about these. He hummed, just frowning and staring at the decaying bones and the insects that were moving away from him.

After a moment, he stretched out his hand and moved the tangled, rotting corpses that were soaking in the water to the cement road on the side of the sewer.

Su Zhou gently separated the remains, trying not to damage the bones. He placed them down one by one, and then tried to remove the black moss from the corpses as much as possible, so as to avoid the attachments corroding them.

——Although the feeling was slippery and disgusting, although it exuded a rotten stench, although the flesh and blood of the corpses had decayed into mud, falling and separating from the bones bit by bit, secreting toxic gases.

But they were all people when they were alive.

Innocent victims.

Their souls were gone, and their bones needed the last respect.

After doing all this, Su Zhou responded softly to Yala, "There's actually spiritual energy in the sewer? I looked on the ground for so long, but I didn't find a single spiritual plant."

"Haha, Su Zhou, do you think the sewer is closer to the earth's veins, or the ground is closer?"

At this moment, Yala was laughing softly. The snake spirit surveyed the surroundings, its eyes seemingly able to see through the entire city's underground water system. It said calmly, "Your country seems to have started planning a long time ago – look, this entire sewer system, the city's power supply system, as well as the network cables, signal base stations, and subway tunnels."

"So much electricity, so much water, so much flowing energy and momentum, and the information constrained in the light, the nodes composed of spiritual clusters propagating in electromagnetism… This is an artificial earth vein, an artificial spiritual vein!"

"I see!"

Hearing this, Su Zhou was somewhat enlightened. He finally understood why Hongcheng's underground system, which had been under construction for more than ten years without being completed, was actually completed properly within two years after the central government issued instructions: "So, the demon was born because of this special environment?"

After saying this, the youth suddenly froze. He turned his head, his eyes rotating with cyan-purple light, looking into the distance.

He stared at the huge spiritual light that was changing erratically in the distant tunnel, approaching rapidly with a rumbling echo.

——It's coming, so fast!

"No, you've got the cause and effect wrong – it's because the demon wanted to be born that it chose this suitable spiritual vein to manifest."

At this time, Yala's voice sounded. While answering Su Zhou's question, it also carried a meaningful smile: "Su Zhou, you see it? Then prepare to fight, my contractor… Speaking of which, this is your first encounter with a 'monster' other than 'humans'."

"This first hasty and sudden 'desperate battle', will you fight and win, or will you flee in panic?"

"Is there even a need to say it, Yala."

What responded was the erected gun-杆(gan - pole)!

Su Zhou gripped the seven-尺(chi - approximately foot-long) spear in his hand, the tip leveled and pointed forward. His tone was calm, but contained hidden anger: "Whether it's a human or a monster."

"I will kill anyone who does evil!"