Chapter 224: The Blood-Stained Street
At present, she didn’t yet have enough extraordinary energy to create a clone. However, leaving a record didn’t require much energy. Xu Zhi tried to place one at her current location.
A faint, pale-gold glow rose from beneath her feet, as if a complex and exquisitely precise circuit were being branded into the ground.
Soon after, an inconspicuous golden dot appeared within her extraordinary circuit. When Xu Zhi “touched” it, she could immediately sense the exact location that the record corresponded to.
There was, however, one drawback. Although creating a record consumed very little extraordinary energy, it had to be done at the user’s current location. Moreover, once a record point was used, it had to be “refreshed”; otherwise, the old record would disappear.
The good news was that while there was a limit to how many record points one could have, Xu Zhi’s extraordinary energy might be scarce, but her extraordinary rank was not low. For the time being, it seemed unlikely she would hit that limit anytime soon.
She couldn’t wait for her extraordinary energy to recover enough to experiment and see how a truly new spirit body differed from the previous one. Unfortunately, judging by the current recovery speed of her circuit, it would still take some time before enough extraordinary energy could accumulate in her body to support the construction of a spirit body.
Xu Zhi waited quietly for several days.
On the ninth day, the fog shrouding the lower levels finally dispersed.
For Xu Zhi, the first “fog season” she experienced in this new world had been more surprise than danger—if anything, an unexpectedly pleasant kind of shock.
Although it stirred up countless questions about the fog, now was clearly not the time to investigate them. Xu Zhi did nothing unnecessary.
But when the broadcast rang out, notifying citizens that the fog had cleared, and people cheered as they opened their doors to look outside—
The joyful atmosphere froze in an instant.
Large swaths of blood were splattered across the ground. Scattered among them were dismembered human limbs—some that looked like they had been dead for a week, others that seemed to have died only a day or two ago.
Scavengers were not afraid of corpses, but such a horrifying scene—appearing right outside their own homes—still sent a chill down the spine.
The moment Qi Yanxin opened the door, she saw everything. She immediately raised a hand to cover her mouth. It wasn’t because she was afraid she might scream—no scavenger’s mental fortitude was that weak—but because she feared the overpowering stench of blood in the air would make her retch, and that Xu Zhi might hear it.
She didn’t want Xu Zhi to see the street.
What should have been the most lively, celebratory day in the slums instead became unusually heavy from the early morning.
Doors and windows of the crowded shanty houses were thrown open one after another. People stared at the blood-red street with varying expressions, glancing around to see which homes remained shut. In their minds, they were already estimating that whoever lived there was probably dead.
Normally, this wouldn’t have been all that strange. People in the slums came and went all the time—some disappeared, others moved in. But this kind of situation had never happened before.
“…What happened?”
“Did monsters appear in the fog?”
“How is that possible? There haven’t been monsters in the fog for decades! Maybe someone pretended to be one?”
“The wounds don’t look like they were made by monsters. They look more like knife wounds.”
“…That’s true.”
Whispered discussions rippled through the crowd. The wary expressions on people’s faces slowly shaped into the same image in everyone’s mind: a dark figure holding a knife, moving through the night and the fog, silently slipping into homes where doors or windows hadn’t been properly shut. After killing the occupants with brutal efficiency, he dragged the bodies out onto the street, dismembered them, and left this long, narrow road soaked in blood.
“What should we do?”
“What can we do? Just be more careful ourselves!”
There were no guards in the slums.
“What about other areas? Is it the same there?”
Someone asked. After exchanging glances, someone quickly replied, “Haven’t you noticed? There’s no noise from anywhere else either.”
“If they were fine, wouldn’t they already be making a fuss and celebrating?”
After every fog season passed safely, the scavengers of the slums always celebrated their “survival.” It was one of the rare bright moments in their bleak lives.
But this morning, not just this street—nearly the entire slum was deathly silent.
It was as if something had stunned everyone into stillness.
Despite such a vicious incident, no one even thought of “seeking help from the government.”
Order and law were things reserved for the upper levels. In places like the lower tiers, people lived by unspoken rules and tacit understandings—or simply by whoever held the most power and strength.
As for maintaining public order?
That was a concept that didn’t exist here.
Monsters hadn’t appeared in the fog for decades, and the wounds were clearly inflicted by blades. As a result, most people had already reached a consensus: this was probably the work of someone who had gone mad after going out during the fog season.
Xu Zhi noticed that Qi Yanxin had suddenly gone silent after opening the door. More importantly, she smelled blood.
It was almost her least favorite scent now.
Because it immediately reminded her of that thing—and of the black sun that seemed to be formed almost entirely from blood.
Something must have happened.
The moment the thought surfaced, Xu Zhi maneuvered her wheelchair toward the door.
Hearing the movement, Qi Yanxin turned around and saw Xu Zhi approaching. She took a step back, trying to close the door to block the bloody scene outside. But under Xu Zhi’s disapproving gaze, her movement paused.
“Xiao Zhi… it doesn’t look very nice out there,” Qi Yanxin explained awkwardly.
“I know. Something happened, didn’t it? I can smell the blood.”
Seeing that the woman still didn’t want her to look, Xu Zhi said helplessly, “I’m not a child anymore. I won’t be scared.”
That was true.
Qi Yanxin suddenly realized that Xu Zhi was now an extraordinary. She couldn’t keep treating her like the fragile glass doll she used to be.
With the weight of that identity—extraordinary—behind her, Xu Zhi’s words carried real authority. After only a brief hesitation, Qi Yanxin stepped aside.
As Xu Zhi guided her wheelchair to the doorway and saw the street, she felt a sense of familiarity almost instantly.
The subtle feeling evoked by the scene before her was extremely—extremely—similar to [Cup].
Simply put, it looked like the kind of thing a [Cup]-attribute madman would do.
Xu Zhi’s expression didn’t change. She carefully examined the bloodstains and scattered remains on the street, trying to find concrete evidence to confirm that her intuition wasn’t mistaken—that this had indeed been caused by a [Cup]-attribute extraordinary.
She didn’t care whether her unnaturally calm reaction to such a horrifying sight would draw Qi Yanxin’s attention. Or rather, she was deliberately not pretending to be afraid or uncomfortable, choosing instead to reveal a more genuine side of herself.
