“There’s not much time left! Yuki! If you want to save everyone, you have no choice but to do it!”
Such a passionate line probably shouldn’t come from a Bald Man who randomly selects people and devours lives.
He was shackled all over, writhing on the ground like a maggot, using all his strength to crawl toward Yuki Asahi.
“Me?”
“Yes, you! Right now, only you can stop it…”
“Explain clearly!”
The Bald Man gasped, caught his breath for a moment, then spoke:
“Your ‘Heart Worm’ is still in a parasitic state. There’s no time left. The Chantui must be completed within these few days.”
Who could understand a mouthful of technical terms like that!
Jiang Jian Yue lost interest and didn’t intend to figure it out—anyway, if you can’t understand it now, the anime will definitely explain it to the audience.
Actually, she wanted to ask about her current half-possessed state.
But now wasn’t the time.
“The time you’re talking about isn’t enough—what does that mean?”
Yuki Asahi also didn’t understand most of what he said, so he grabbed the only thing he understood and asked.
“Devouring Entity ‘G’—all you need to know is that he’ll hunt you down.”
Pain appeared on the Bald Man’s face.
“Your Runaway Energy is enough for it to evolve. When that happens, many people will die, so you must complete the Chantui before it breaches Containment.”
So this is the motive?
Jiang Jian Yue roughly understood.
Even though she didn’t know what the activation conditions for this so-called “Chantui” were.
But judging from the other party’s actions, it probably involved using abilities in battle.
“Is this your reason for harming lives?”
Yuki Asahi clenched his fist.
He wasn’t some hot-blooded youth full of justice.
But the two lost lives were indeed related to him, so it was hard not to feel guilty.
“I had no other way!”
Tears squeezed out of the Bald Man’s eyes as he gritted his teeth.
“If I had another option, I wouldn’t have done this.”
“I can’t say things like ‘necessary sacrifice’! But…but…someone has to stand up and do something, right?!”
“Hey! If you want the lives of those two people, then just watch hundreds or thousands die, huh?”
“What could I do? Hey! Answer me!”
The Bald Man collapsed, struggling and crying on the ground, screaming out the torment of his heart over the past few days.
He was as desperate as the person in the trolley problem, holding a plunger while passing by.
“Where is that thing now?”
Jiang Jian Yue, who had been silently watching, spoke after seeing Yuki Asahi fall silent.
“Underground in Fengzhou Market.”
The Bald Man forced himself to calm down, breathing heavily.
“Fengzhou Market? Isn’t that—”
A young man in a suit blurted out, then realized his rudeness and immediately fell silent.
Jiang Jian Yue nodded, signaling him to continue.
“Fengzhou Market collapsed a few days ago. The rescue still isn’t over, right?”
The two high school students weren’t the type to watch the news.
Even though it was a big deal, to them, it was just “someone else’s problem” happening in the same city.
Fengzhou Market was a seafood wholesale market, also open to the public as a food street, with decent foot traffic.
“My deduction is that in two days, ‘G’ will break through the original Underground Base. Before then, the Chantui must be completed to control the Runaway Energy…”
Jiang Jian Yue wiped her mouth with a napkin and suddenly asked:
“Did you account for the excavation from the rescue?”
The Bald Man was stunned.
“Ah.”
What does “ah” mean!
He rambled on for so long but got even the most basic estimate wrong?!
“The rescue team’s efficiency shouldn’t be that high—after all, this is Japan.”
The Bald Man was still holding onto hope.
***
But in the end, the Bald Man’s hopes were just hopes.
By today, several days past the golden seventy-two hours, the main rescue was complete.
The incident happened in the early hours, so the casualties weren’t as high as imagined.
All that was left was to clear collapse hazards and conduct final cleanup and investigation.
But this morning, the Self-Defense Force moved into the rescue site.
An investigation revealed traces of a Fuel-Air Bomb explosion in the underground cold storage at the center of the collapse.
Experts determined that beneath the underground cold storage, there was another underground space not included in the building plans—precisely where the Fuel-Air Bomb detonated.
Now things were serious.
Fengzhou Market had previously been a facility of the Tokyo Gas Corporation.
Representatives from the company also arrived at the scene, denying any illegal construction or unregistered underground spaces.
The Self-Defense Force was clearing the final obstacles, hoping to enter the mysterious underground space.
“I heard this is the fourth place where Fuel-Air Bomb explosions were found.”
Outside the hazard zone, two armed Self-Defense officers chatted quietly.
Ooi Katsuki felt uneasy and asked his well-informed colleague,
“Terrorist attack?”
“Hard to say. This time, things are really strange.”
His colleague hesitated, then continued,
“I have a friend who works in Media. She found that almost simultaneously, similar incidents appeared all over the world.”
“Is there really an organization that can launch attacks on this scale worldwide at the same time? Only a god could do that, right?”
The colleague shook his head, his face showing an unexplainable sense of mystery.
“Did you know? Seems they found something unbelievable over in Osaka.”
Ooi Katsuki was about to ask.
Bang—
The mechanical noise at the hazard site abruptly stopped.
After a thunderous boom, the ground trembled slightly beneath their feet.
“What happened?”
Ooi Katsuki grabbed the crane beside him to steady himself, looking at the pit in the hazard zone.
On the edge of the pit, several Self-Defense Force members from the Facility Unit staggered out, screaming in terror.
Before Ooi Katsuki could understand what they were saying, his gaze was drawn to the dark shadow suddenly appearing behind them. His pupils shrank.
It was a strange humanoid creature.
Its torso was over two meters, black and oily like a cockroach shell, with unnaturally swollen muscles like those of a drug abuser, and an insect-like deformed human head above, as if oversized insect mandibles had been crudely stitched onto a human face, where human eyes should have been, only emptiness remained.
“What is that…”
His colleague was terrified, almost dropping his Type 20 Rifle.
The humanoid creature casually swatted a nearby Self-Defense officer who hadn’t escaped, tossing him like a child.
The officer’s body struck a machine, twisting from the impact into a tangled mess in midair—dead beyond all doubt.
Fear crawled up from his spine, paralyzing his body, leaving him rooted to the spot despite his mind’s warning.
“Monster! Die!”
His colleague beside Ooi Katsuki shouted with a trembling voice, raised his rifle, and pulled the trigger.
Muzzle flash erupted, and the gunfire at close range jolted Ooi Katsuki back to his senses.
But he didn’t choose to fight the monster.
Instead, he abandoned his colleague and ran for his life.