In the spacious bedroom, a burly black driver was vigorously shoving a white sedan forward. The white car wailed a high-pitched siren, its rear in complete disarray, while its front drooped limply against the pavement.
Four other cars lay sprawled haphazardly, broken down by the roadside.
The instant the starlight rose, Beast Haas snapped to alert, shooting over a sharp glare. "A Starlord?"
Standing one point nine meters tall, he had glistening dark skin. When he remained silent, aside from the whites of his eyes, his entire body was a deep, unbroken black.
His physique was exceptionally muscular, rivaling a bodybuilder's, with every muscle packed with tremendous power. One could easily imagine the absurd speed and force he could muster when tensing his waist and hips.
"You're with Heaven's Punishment? Since when did the New York branch have a Starlord... Wait, I remember. You're from the Five Elements Alliance support team." Beast Haas tossed aside the woman before him. With a wet pop, the limp woman tumbled off the bed.
Zhang Yuanqing glanced at Beast Haas's groin and clicked his tongue. "Short, small, and limp. Pathetic!"
Beast Haas's heart thudded violently several times. His blood pressure skyrocketed from the intolerable, humiliating insult, rage surging along with his blood straight to his head and washing away his reason.
"You'll pay for that." He grinned savagely, snatched a jet-black wooden box from his inventory, and snapped it open with a click. Deep darkness surged out of the box, dimming the bright incandescent lights and draping everything in the room under a gloomy shroud.
The sounds and sights of the bedroom were masked by this dark veil.
"An item of the Eternal Night class?" Zhang Yuanqing looked at the black wooden box with a delighted smile.
Collecting spoils of war was one of his primary goals.
While waiting for his team to arrive earlier, Zhang Yuanqing had secretly been influencing Beast Haas's emotions. The man was a peak Level 6 combatant after all; seizing control of his emotional state required sufficient time.
First, he stimulated Beast Haas's lust, making him lose himself in desire. Among all emotions, lust was the easiest way to erode willpower.
Next, he began stoking Haas's arrogant and overbearing nature, which indeed proved much easier.
Earlier, with only the women he treated as playthings in the room, Haas had nowhere to vent his innate arrogance. Now that an enemy had appeared, his simmering emotions erupted instantly. Without a second thought, he sealed the room shut to trap and kill his prey.
"No matter who you are or what organization you belong to, anyone who dares cross me must die." Tiny craters opened across Beast Haas's dark, strapping body like miniature volcanic vents.
Plumes of thick, dark-purple smoke erupted from his body, filling the room.
"Hrrk... hrrk..."
The women on the bed and floor writhed in agony, involuntary growls tearing from their throats.
After inhaling the toxic fumes, terrifying mutations seized their naked bodies. Black scales sprouted over one woman's pale skin, slits tore along her neck to reveal fish gills, her eyes shrank to the size of mung beans, and fangs erupted across her mouth—transforming her into a fishman in an instant.
The other four prostitutes mutated just as horrifically: one turned into a canine creature, another into an insectoid being with backward-bending knees, and another grew three pairs of pale, two-meter-long arms, turning into a disheveled spider-woman.
With the dark-purple smoke blanketing the room, Zhang Yuanqing inevitably came into contact with the toxins. He felt his cells undergoing a strange mutation, constantly dividing and reorganizing.
Stunned, he looked down and saw fleshy webs growing between his fingers. His pant leg tore open as a small foot poked out from his knee.
'No wonder Beast Haas dared fight me in an enclosed space—he wants to mutate my body...' Zhang Yuanqing realized.
This was the core skill of an Aberrant: Aberration!
It could mutate the user to grant monstrous strength, or mutate a target. Once a target fully underwent aberration, they would lose their sanity and become completely subservient, obeying their master's every whim.
Before Zhang Yuanqing could react, Beast Haas's eyes turned an ashen white. Gaze locked on him from afar, Haas shot a grayish-white beam of light.
The beam traveled at bizarre speed, leaving almost no chance to react.
Crack, crack...
Zhang Yuanqing's waist rapidly petrified, the stone slowly spreading toward his chest and legs.
This was the Fatal Alchemist's signature hard crowd-control skill. When struck by the petrification beam, the lower one's level, the faster they turned to stone. An Extraordinary Walker struck by it would become a stone statue in an instant.
The petrification beam had no antidote and could not be cured by purification. The only way to reverse it was to kill the caster.
"Kill him!" Beast Haas barked.
The five eager beasts sprang forward like feral dogs breaking free of their leashes, lunging at Zhang Yuanqing with bared fangs, flailing claws, and raining spittle.
Crack, crack, crack...
Mid-leap, the five beasts had their heads wrenched a full one hundred and eighty degrees around at once. Losing balance, they crashed to the floor.
A shadowy figure in a red bridal gown stood before Zhang Yuanqing, cradling a chubby, cute infant in her arms.
Crack, crack, crack!
The beasts twisted their heads back into place and lunged at Zhang Yuanqing once more.
"You have subordinates? So do I!" Zhang Yuanqing produced Little Red Riding Hood and gave his wrist a light flick. Four figures tumbled out from the hat's storage space.
They were Commandery Princess Yinyao, Greed Divine General, Hundred-Man Slayer, and a yin corpse he had acquired back in the Ghost City.
Aside from the Extraordinary and Level 4 yin corpses used as cannon fodder, Zhang Yuanqing had left three Level 5 yin corpses with Zhao Chenghuang.
Instantly, dense yin energy filled every corner of the room.
Beast Haas's arrogant sneer froze as he stared blankly at the four yin corpses of the same tier as himself.
Commandery Princess Yinyao looked left and right. Taking in the scene in the room, she reached behind her without hesitation and tapped the waist pouch. Amid crackling static, the Elvis Presley speaker blared:
"Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck!"
Hearing the repeated curses, Beast Haas's fury and arrogance cooled down rapidly. Without thinking twice, he grabbed toward the wooden box on the nightstand—he needed to dispel the seal and flee the room.
Outside were all Biological Alchemy Society members, all his backup.
His hand grasped empty air, missing the nightstand entirely. In stunned bewilderment, he whipped around, only to see the wooden box floating a foot off the ground, rapidly drifting toward the Starlord opposite him.
"Fuck!" Beast Haas cursed. Seeing the four yin corpses lunging at him, he hurriedly opened his inventory, snatched out a crystal vial, and gulped down a mouthful.
Bang!
Commandery Princess Yinyao snapped off a high kick right into Beast Haas's wrist. The crystal vial flew from his grip, bouncing and clattering across the floor into a corner.
Furious, Beast Haas glared at Commandery Princess Yinyao, his eyeballs turning ashen white.
Behind Princess Yinyao, Greed Divine General vaulted forward, raising his blade in a vertical cleave.
Beast Haas rapidly retreated and threw his head back, blasting a grayish-white beam at Greed Divine General.
Crack, crack...
The beam struck Greed Divine General's face, turning it ashen stone in an instant. But as a yin corpse, petrification of the face did not hinder his movement in the slightest, nor did he rely on a living brain or eyesight.
The long saber cleaved straight down.
At that moment, having chugged the potion, a pair of sharp ram horns burst from Haas's head, burning with pale blue flames. Blackish-purple membranous wings sprouted from his back, his body swelled in size, and dark purple esoteric runes spread across his flesh.
A pungent stench of sulfur puffed from his mouth and nose.
His aura surged violently, overpowering the three Level 6 yin corpses. Beast Haas condensed a ghostly blue flame blade in his right hand and swept it upward!
Boom!
The ghostly blue flame blade burst apart, scattering embers across the curtains, bed, and floor, igniting intensely toxic fires.
The force of the strike sent Greed Divine General flying backward.
Meanwhile, Zhang Yuanqing ripped off the final beast's head and snapped his fingers, conjuring an illusion.
In Beast Haas's vision, Greed Divine General bounded back up the instant he was thrown back and slashed a blade at him. Haas reacted instantly, swinging his own flame blade in response.
Yet the anticipated clash never came. His strike sliced through thin air, and his enemy's silhouette vanished like a popping bubble.
Seizing the opening, the Ghost Bride slammed into Beast Haas, completing her possession.
Commandery Princess Yinyao ducked and circled behind him, locking Haas's neck in a chokehold and yanking his head backward. Her legs in light-colored jeans clamped tight around his waist, arching her body taut like a powerful bow.
Beast Haas thrashed desperately, firing beam after grayish-white beam from his eyes, riddling the ceiling.
Hundred-Man Slayer and Greed Divine General pinned Haas's arms and legs respectively, while the final yin corpse wrapped around his legs.
Three yin corpses and one spirit servant—combining the power of four Level 6 combatants—firmly pinned down the mutated Aberrant.
Zhang Yuanqing retrieved the Purple-Gold Pumpkin Hammer from his inventory, strode over to Beast Haas, and raised a palm over the man's face.
His palm blackened in an instant, sprouting hair-fine filaments that wriggled and burrowed into the glabella between Beast Haas's brows.
Beast Haas let out a roar of sheer agony.
Before long, a dark purple card painted with blue flame patterns was dragged out from his forehead, instantly swallowed by the pitch-black hand.
Having devoured Beast Haas's character card, Zhang Yuanqing swung the Purple-Gold Hammer and brought it smashing down with all his might.
Splat!
The head bearing sharp ram horns burst like a watermelon, brain matter and bone fragments splattering everywhere.
All struggle ceased at once.
The Ghost Bride drifted out of the corpse, scooped up Little Doubi—who was hugging his old father's calf—and returned into Zhang Yuanqing's body.
Commandery Princess Yinyao entered the bathroom to wash the blood and brains off her face and body, while the other three yin corpses stood quietly to the side, awaiting their master's next order.
'The character card didn't return to the Spirit Realm; it was absorbed by the black heart...' Sensing this, Zhang Yuanqing immediately understood why he could only inherit Spirit Realm IDs without being able to access inventories or skills.
Because the character card didn't belong to him—it had been swallowed by the black heart.
Next, he picked up the crystal vial and the black wooden box from the floor. The palm-sized crystal vial had a faceted, uneven surface like a cut diamond, reflecting dazzling light under the lamps.
The wooden box was twenty centimeters long, ten centimeters wide, and ten centimeters high. Its surface was an abyssal black that seemed to swallow light, casting no reflection whatsoever even directly under the illumination.
Holding the two items, their item profiles surfaced a few seconds later:
[Name: Demon Potion]
[Type: Potion]
[Function: Transformation]
[Description: This crystal vial once contained the blood of a powerful demon. Over the years, the blood seeped into the vial itself, mutating it into a demonic item. Every 24 hours, the vial automatically generates a dose of potion. Drinking the potion grants the consumer demonic power for a duration of fifteen minutes.]
[Remark 1: I'd call it Pandora's Vial.]
[Name: Box of Night]
[Type: Wooden Box]
[Function: Sealing]
[Description: The box contains sealing power that blocks out sound, visuals, and auras. The seal grows stronger over time.]
[Remark: When you notice your power beginning to wane, remember to leave, or you will sleep here forever.]
'Not bad. Both are top-quality items. Quite a haul!'
The crystal vial was a Fatal Alchemist class item meant for buffing, boosting combat strength for a short period. Once mutated into a demon, the user gained abilities such as toxic smoke, petrification, and hellfire.
The cost was that with repeated use, the body would gradually transform into a demon permanently.
Zhang Yuanqing had quite a few items of this sort. Little Red Riding Hood had the ability to turn the wearer into a werewolf, though Little Red Riding Hood likely didn't belong to the Fatal Alchemist class, but rather came from the yet-to-be-opened Third District.
To Zhang Yuanqing, the wooden box's function brought him even greater joy. He already possessed far too many combat items, but an item with a potent seal was something he urgently needed.
Furthermore, the sealing abilities of the Eternal Night class were exceptionally handy—far more effective than the restraining items of Wood Monsters or Earth Monsters, particularly when capturing targets alive.
Satisfied, he put the two items into his inventory and ordered the three yin corpses to stand guard. Darkness then pooled in his eye sockets as he summoned the residual spirit from Beast Haas's corpse and began devouring it.
This was his core purpose in hunting Beast Haas down: to find the mole inside Heaven's Punishment.
Chapter 693