Chapter 20

The ability users couldn’t stay calm.

That was weird phenomena!

Everyone knew how hard it was to deal with weird phenomena that couldn’t be reasoned with!

A young ability user, fearing that the weird phenomena wouldn’t react and Lin Juan would slaughter it in a rage, cleared his throat lightly. “Um, Mr. Lin, weird phenomena can’t be communicated with…”

“No problem. If it won’t communicate, just beat it again.”

It was that brutal?

The young ability user felt dazed.

What made him even more dazed happened next. The 【Water Tower】, which had been squashed halfway flat under Lin Juan’s foot, wriggled slightly and emitted inaudible sound waves.

It was as if countless chainsaws buzzed to life in their minds. Everyone winced and clutched their ears, but even that didn’t help—the noise drilled into their heads from all directions.

It felt like an invisible mental attack.

Everyone’s faces instantly paled.

It hurt so much.

Who could make the noise stop?

Fortunately, the excruciating sound only lasted a moment—less than five seconds—before it stopped.

Some young ability users instinctively looked toward Lin Juan. He hadn’t changed his posture from start to finish, and his expression remained completely unchanged, as if the noise assault hadn’t affected him at all.

As expected of Mr. Lin.

A true powerhouse, terrifying as ever.

That was the only thought in the young ability user’s mind at that moment.

The biggest reaction came from Old Zhang.

He seemed unable to endure it any longer. He bent over, retched violently by the bedside, and hurled up countless transparent, colorful eggs, soon piling a heap on the floor.

For a moment, the only sound in the room was Old Zhang’s vomiting.

As the eggs on the floor increased, the bulge in Old Zhang’s abdomen shrank more and more. His belly, which had looked like it held triplets moments ago, flattened out considerably in the blink of an eye.

“This is…” The young ability user who spoke stared in disbelief. “Did the threat work?”

His expression went blank, his worldview shattered.

From their countless experiences battling weird phenomena, they knew these were mindless, super terrifying existences that defied normal logic. Their appearances revealed the unscientific side of the world.

When weird phenomena were first discovered, people had tried communicating with them. The painful costs of those repeated attempts warned everyone: don’t try to communicate with weird phenomena.

But what was happening now?

Everything that day upended their understanding.

Weird phenomena could feel fear, back down, obey under threats…

The only difference was that the person achieving this result was very strong—extremely strong.

The ability users’ gazes toward Lin Juan grew complicated.

Just how powerful did someone have to be to produce such an effect?

They didn’t have much time to stew in their complex emotions. Old Zhang vomited until the end, the eggs he brought up growing larger and darker in color, with higher and higher pollution values.

These must have been the original eggs placed in his stomach.

Zhuang Yufeng and several ability users, wearing gloves, collected the colorful eggs into specialized protective boxes. Low-threat weird phenomena products could be used by the research institute.

Many of the technologies they’d developed against weird phenomena incorporated such products.

“Urgh—” Old Zhang clutched his throat and retched hard a few times, his face turning red. Nothing came up.

“What’s wrong?” Lin Juan, who had been observing Old Zhang’s condition, dragged the 【Water Tower】 over.

The 【Water Tower】 had shrunk to half a person’s height and didn’t take up much space anymore.

Old Zhang’s wife had been curious at first about what the long-haired young man had dragged in, but she was more worried about Old Zhang’s condition then and had no time or mood to pay much attention to something irrelevant.

Everything that followed completely exceeded her understanding.

First, the long-haired youth threatened some unknown creature. Then Old Zhang started vomiting violently, his belly shrank, and the youth’s threat had worked.

“Old Zhang, Old Zhang, what’s wrong?” Old Zhang’s wife was at a loss. “Wasn’t he fine just now?”

“He seems to be choking.” Lin Juan walked to the bedside, observed for a moment, took aim, and slapped Old Zhang’s back.

“Urgh!”

Under the heavy blow, Old Zhang spat out a deep purple egg the size of a chicken egg.

Lin Juan stared at the deep purple transparent orb. “No wonder it was choking—this thing’s so big.”

With the last egg out, Old Zhang collapsed weakly.

Old Zhang’s wife hurried over and asked anxiously, “Old Zhang, are you okay?”

Old Zhang didn’t move.

Old Zhang’s wife panicked and turned pleading eyes to Lin Juan. “Old Zhang, he…”

Before she could finish, Old Zhang laboriously raised a hand and waved it. “I’m fine.”

He felt much better.

The churning pain in his abdomen that had come and gone at random was gone. It was just that he’d vomited so much his throat burned.

After resting a moment, he sat up slowly with his wife’s support. “I think I’m okay now.”

Zhuang Yufeng took a detector and scanned him again, then used his purification ability to cleanse the remaining pollution. “Yes, you’re fine now.”

Old Zhang and his wife thanked them profusely, insisting on catching some of their home-raised chickens for them to take and offering a basket of their saved soil chicken eggs.

After capturing the weird phenomena, Lin Juan and the others had important matters to attend to. They didn’t stay long and soon returned to the research institute.

“Little Uncle!” Seeing them return, Lu Mingxuan eagerly came out to greet them.

The 【Water Tower】 was placed in a containment box and carried by ability users to a treatment room.

To be safe, Lin Juan asked the opinions of several patients and decided to try on Su Min first.

Su Min had calmed down a lot. “No matter the result, I have no complaints.”

She was a very resilient girl; no matter how great the ordeals, they hadn’t broken her will.

In the sealed room, Lin Juan released the 【Water Tower】 from the containment box.

The 【Water Tower】 had shrunk even more, now fully transparent. You could see straight through it to the other side. The thick spines on its surface had retracted at some point, making it look more like an oversized water baby.

Lin Juan had played with those as a kid.

Aside from Lin Juan and Su Min, everyone else waited outside, ready to act at a moment’s notice.

The pollution value in the room began to rise.

Su Min faintly felt discomfort.

Her body felt like soil, and deep inside, seeds wanted to take root and sprout. They extended tendrils, pushing apart the soil, eager to absorb nutrients from outside.

It hurt so much.

Su Min’s brows furrowed tighter and tighter, sweat beading on her forehead. Faintly, grayish-blue vein-like streaks appeared on her pale skin.

Outside the door, Zhuang Yufeng watched the room’s monitors with intense focus.

The room had high-definition cameras installed ahead of time, shielded by the latest pollution shielding device to ensure clear footage at short range.

The abnormalities on Su Min’s body were perfectly visible.

“Mr. Lin’s method really works!”

Lin Juan stayed calm and still.

Time ticked by, everyone’s eyes fixed here. Success or failure depended on what happened next.

The grayish-blue lines on Su Min’s body grew more pronounced, gradually bulging above the surface and propping up her skin.

It hurt so much!

It felt like countless sharp knives stabbing outward from inside her body. Su Min clenched her teeth, swallowing the cries of pain that reached her mouth.

Under the immense agony, every second dragged on forever. Because of the pain, Su Min forgot her fear. Her mind held only one thought:

Even if she died, she’d take the thing inside her with her!

When that resolve rose, she could endure any suffering. Her vision blurred with dizziness—she knew this was her body reaching its pain limit.

She couldn’t pass out!

Su Min warned herself over and over.

She absolutely couldn’t faint before seeing the result!

Finally, after an indeterminable time, she heard a voice like heavenly music.

“It’s out.”

To Su Min, it felt like centuries had passed, but in reality, it had only been about ten minutes.

The weird phenomena lurking in Su Min’s body was greedy—greed was the nature of such things. Drawn by the threat-free yet sky-high pollution value of the 【Water Tower】, the entity that had been hiding and growing stealthily could no longer hold back and poked its head out.

A thin grayish-blue vine tip broke through her skin and wriggled out.

Lin Juan didn’t move.

He couldn’t spook it, or it would be harder to lure out next time.

The vine tip didn’t extend rashly. It straightened up, swiveled left and right to confirm no threats, then continued crawling out.

The 【Water Tower】 sat in a corner at some distance from Su Min, so the vine tip needed to stretch far enough to reach it.

As the vine tip extended, the pulling pain in her body intensified. Su Min gripped the chair arms, barely holding on.

The vine tip reached near the 【Water Tower】.

It remained cautious, probing in a circle. The 【Water Tower】 showed no reaction, like a massive cake emitting an irresistible aroma, tempting the vine tip to take a bite.

The vine tip couldn’t resist the temptation.

It climbed onto the 【Water Tower】 and feasted heartily.

“Why hasn’t Mr. Lin made a move yet?” Outside, an ability user watched the monitor, puzzled.

The room, set up specifically for the weird phenomena inside Su Min to feed, had minimal furniture and was very spacious for easy observation. Everything was in plain view.

They could clearly see the weird vine crawling out of Su Min grow thicker after feeding.

The grayish-blue vine, like withered branches, heaved and pulsed as if breathing, soon covering the entire floor. No one would have imagined such a massive monster vine could hide inside a single person.

The moment the monster vine fully emerged, Lin Juan moved.

No one saw exactly how he did it. By the time he stood still, he held the monster vine’s root in his hand, while Su Min had already fainted from the strain.

Lin Juan made a hand gesture.

The ability users on standby rushed in. One scooped up Su Min and raced to the emergency room at top speed, while the others quickly cleared the scene.

The monster vine struggled in Lin Juan’s grasp.

What he pinched was a seed-like core, fist-sized, with countless monster vines extending from it. As Lin Juan’s hand tightened, the monster vine gradually lost its vitality.

It stopped struggling.

Lin Juan handed the lifeless “seed” to Zhuang Yufeng, who had just entered, then went to the 【Water Tower】 wrapped in monster vines and tore them off.

The monster vines had pierced into the 【Water Tower】’s body. When pulled out, they left holes of varying depths on its surface.

Clear water gushed from the holes.

Confirming no danger, Lu Mingxuan poked his head out from behind an ability user and wondered, “Is it crying from the pain?”