Chapter 41: Good Taste Fresh Meat Supply Factory
When Xu Huo returned to the city by taxi, he got stuck in a residential area.
The road was packed with people, car horns blaring incessantly, but the crowd gathering around was growing larger and larger. Many who had squeezed out from the front were vividly describing something to others.
Rolling down the window, he listened closely and caught words like "corpse" and "dismemberment."
"Times are really unstable now," the driver sighed. "You tell me, people just living their lives, not bothering anyone, and in the end they end up dead without even a complete corpse."
"Someone died inside?"
"Not just someone—several families," the driver said. "One night, five families, fourteen people. Killed silently without a sound. Adults and children—only their heads, hands, feet, and entrails were left. Everything else was gone!"
"What kind of twisted murderer could do something so insane? And the key thing is, it all happened in one night, and no one around noticed a thing. No one knows how the bodies were taken away either..."
The driver kept talking, but Xu Huo was thinking about something else bad.
Following the Evolvers and players, game instances were now projecting into the real world, and they were killing indiscriminately. This meant that from now on, ordinary people would have to bear the same risks as players.
"...I heard this isn't the only case like this," the driver lowered his voice instinctively. "Just in the southern part of the city, there have been three or four incidents. Even the big shots from above have come. The people in those neighborhoods have moved out completely, leaving them like ghost buildings."
Xu Huo had also spotted familiar uniforms in the crowd earlier—the same clothes worn by the special affairs personnel he'd seen with Nie Xuan outside the hotel.
"Driver, do you know which neighborhoods?"
The driver rattled off a few names and even gave approximate times.
Xu Huo estimated the map locations—there was no specific pattern, and the times weren't regular either.
He pulled out his phone and browsed local news and trending posts. Most of them were cursing Evolvers, because the time intervals and methods of the crimes exceeded human limits, making it highly likely that Evolvers were responsible. There were also constant questions and attacks on officials as a way to vent emotions.
There wasn't much useful information, so he logged into the forum.
As expected, the government was calling on players to come to Ting City to resolve this incident, and some case details had been released.
The victims included men and women, young and old. Aside from internal organs, most adults were left with only hands, feet, and heads, while children only had feet. All other body parts had vanished.
What made one's scalp crawl was that they had all been stuffed into bags and thrown back—wherever they disappeared from, they returned to.
The targets weren't necessarily players. There was no warning, no ticket required, and the locations were random. Moreover, it manifested in different ways across the country. The authorities called this game mode a Random Instance.
The government had done its utmost to search for the instance trigger locations but to no avail, which was why they were calling on players to act. In just these few days, the number of missing persons had reached a hundred. All disappearance sites had been investigated, leaving no trace at all.
Thus, they could only hope that if a player accidentally entered the instance, they could bring the missing people back.
Turning off his phone, Xu Huo shook his head. In this situation, not only would no players dare to come, but even local players would flee outward.
"Young man, we're here." The taxi stopped.
Xu Huo paid and got out. Yu Qingqing's agent was already waiting at the entrance of the building. Seeing him, he hurriedly came over, forcing a smile and saying, "Brother Xu, you're here. Please, come upstairs."
Xu Huo followed him into the elevator and got off on the twenty-eighth floor.
The secretary politely led him to the meeting room. "President Zheng is in a meeting. It'll be a little while longer. Mr. Xu, please sit and have some tea first."
Xu Huo glanced at the agent, who was sweating nervously. "I'll wait five minutes."
The secretary quickly left.
At that moment, in the room next door, the two Zheng brothers of the entertainment company were observing Xu Huo through a monitor, accompanied by special affairs personnel.
"Is this the person?" a young man with dyed red hair asked coldly and arrogantly.
"That's him!" President Zhu, whose neck was wrapped in bandages, immediately said. "He almost strangled me to death yesterday. He must be an Evolver, and he's definitely eaten people before. Arrest him now!"
The red-haired man looked down at the documents on the table and frowned. "He's killed three people?"
"Yes, but it was later found out that the three he killed were all Evolvers who had killed people themselves." Zhao Biao, who had dealt with Xu Huo before, quickly added, "And the bodies were intact..."
"The documents say that. I don't need you to tell me." The red-haired man cut him off without looking up. "No matter who he is, disrupting social order must be dealt with."
Then he said to the others behind him, "Be careful. This person is experienced, good at disguises, and has special items. When arresting him, be wary of him taking hostages to escape."
"He's standing up!" the company's vice president, Little Zheng, shouted.
"Move out!"
A dozen special affairs personnel, armed with electric nets and tranquilizer guns designed to deal with Evolvers, rushed into the meeting room. But the moment they pushed the door open, the leading officer vanished!
The team members were shocked and immediately raised their guns to aim at the person standing at the other end of the table. But before they could fire the tranquilizer darts, that officer also disappeared from the spot, as if erased from thin air. Only the gun clattered to the floor!
"What's going on!"
"The people just disappeared!"
Although the special affairs personnel had been trained beforehand and knew about the special abilities of players, they had never heard of an ability that could make people vanish at first sight!
How were they supposed to deal with this!
The group retreated in shock and anger, only to see Xu Huo, who should have had the upper hand, suddenly change expression and bolt toward the floor-to-ceiling window!
"Don't let him escape!" The red-haired man's shout was mixed with the sound of shattering glass. Everyone saw Xu Huo jump out of the window, but when they rushed over, there wasn't even half a shadow of him!
"He got away?!" President Zhu came in and saw that they had failed to catch him. "What the hell are you people good for? So many of you, with electric nets and tranquilizer guns, and you can't catch a single person!"
The red-haired man gave him a cold look and punched the solid wood long table, splitting it in half.
President Zhu shut his mouth. Only then did the red-haired man say, "Search floor by floor. This is the twenty-eighth floor. He can't jump all the way down. He must still be in the building."
"Smack!"
"Thump!"
No sooner had he finished speaking than the sound of heavy objects hitting the floor echoed in the meeting room. Two more special affairs personnel disappeared!
"This... what's going on..." Big Zheng recoiled in horror, but before he could finish his sentence, he vanished right before everyone's eyes!
"It's Xu Huo! It must be him! He's going to kill us all!" President Zhu frantically ran toward the door, but when he reached it, he met the same fate as Big Zheng.
"This isn't Xu Huo's ability—it's a Random Instance!" The red-haired man's face changed in alarm, and he immediately shouted, "Quick! Get out of this building!"
The people in the meeting room scrambled to escape, but they disappeared one after another—special affairs personnel, entertainment company staff, police officers assisting in the operation. Not a single one made it out of the twenty-eighth floor. The moment the red-haired man dialed the research institute's phone number, his phone also fell to the ground.