Chapter 364: Strange Happenings at the Construction Site

As the furnace fire died and the lingering steam within dissipated, a single vial of potion rested quietly upon the sampling rack, radiating a faint, opalescent white glow.

The light was soft and restrained, like a sliver of gentle luminescence sealed within the glass.

It was none other than a Rank-3 potion—the Sloughing Decoction!

But this was less a successful concoction than a successful reconstruction.

Because in this potion, at least half the ingredients were substitutes carved from the living Anomalies housed in the underground laboratory.

Those Anomalous materials that had once caused her to fail—she had finally found the correct way to use them.

This marked a milestone: the Anomalous living material substitution project had achieved a phased success!

After a full year!

She had not only overcome the challenge of incorporating Anomalous materials into Rank-3 potion-making but had long since mastered the several Rank-3 potions Poppy and Ophelia needed most desperately.

And today’s vial of Sloughing Decoction was the final item on the priority list!

With the potion successfully brewed, the next steps were to test its specific efficacy, confirm its stability, and measure the subtle gaps in its actual therapeutic effects.

It was afternoon now—the usual active hours for the cleanup squad. Finding someone to test it should not be difficult.

With that thought, Pandora pulled the Palmfiend from her potion pouch.

The little creature squirmed slightly in her hand, its touch warm and soft.

With practiced ease, she flipped it over to its palm, illuminating that small patch of fluorescent skin, which reflected rows of contact names.

Pandora’s finger slid to Poppy’s name and tapped it lightly.

She waited.

Waited for a long while.

No response.

Pandora’s brow furrowed slightly.

Knowing Poppy’s habits, unless she was at a critical juncture in a mission, it was impossible for her to go this long without responding.

Her gaze unconsciously swept over the other contacts listed beyond Poppy’s name, and unexpectedly caught sight of something—

“A distress signal?”

Distress signals differed subtly from other communications.

They were highlighted with a red background, making them distinguishable without entering the detailed interface, so the message could be conveyed at first glance.

That vivid scarlet backdrop was startlingly conspicuous amidst the fluorescence.

Like blood spattered across paper.

Had... the support squad run into trouble?

Or had Poppy’s mission become entangled in some kind of complication?

Pandora immediately switched targets, reaching out to “The Snow” instead.

Silence, once again.

No response.

Poppy did not answer. Ophelia Sterling did not answer either.

Strange. Neither of them could be reached?

Pandora’s finger hovered over the Palmfiend’s screen for a moment, then she tried a third time.

Still nothing.

What in the world was the cleanup squad doing?

Pandora’s gaze hardened, sinking into deep thought.

………………

Time rewound ten hours. Early morning, the first pale light of dawn.

The city was slowly stirring from deep slumber. The streets were sparsely populated, only the occasional early-shift vehicle passing by, the sound of tires grinding against the pavement echoing through the empty avenues.

On the other side of the city, the Orchard Outpost.

Inside the old, dilapidated academic building that served as their base, the atmosphere was heavier than usual.

A flickering incandescent bulb hung overhead, its light dim and jaundiced, casting wavering shadows across everyone’s faces.

Those shadows stretched and shrank with the bulb’s subtle swaying, like restless, living things.

The support squad leader, a young man with a commanding presence, stood beside the table, staring at the person before him.

His hands were braced against the tabletop, his knuckles whitening from the pressure.

The cleanup squad’s Rank-3 mainstay—Poppy—sat at the table. Her long, curly red hair hung down, veiling half her face. She rested her chin on one hand, her expression cold.

Only the occasional rustle of turning pages broke the silence.

That document was the support squad’s investigation report, recording a series of unsettling incidents that had occurred at a certain construction site.

The events had begun three months ago.

At first, they were nothing more than trivial anomalies.

Workers on night patrol occasionally heard unexplained knocking sounds coming from within the building.

The noise was muffled yet rhythmic—knock after knock, emanating from some unknown source, unhurried and steady.

When the day-shift workers changed over, they would discover water pipes that had clearly been properly installed the previous day now sprouting new leaks.

Those leak points did not look like normal aging or installation errors. They looked more as if something had gnawed at them from the inside.

The pipe walls were riddled with fine bite marks, the metal cross-sections curling in an unnatural manner.

Newly laid stone slabs would also inexplicably crack, fissures spreading outward from the center.

The workers suspected someone was deliberately sabotaging the site—after all, disputes on construction projects were not uncommon.

But the project supervisor paid no mind, dismissing these incidents as worker carelessness, inspection errors, and other trivial causes.

A few overtime shifts, a few harsh reprimands, and the matter was hastily closed.

But soon after, things took a definite turn for the worse.

The first victim was an electrician.

That day, he had worked overtime deep into the night, going alone to the third underground level to recheck the cable routes.

No one knew what he experienced down on that third underground level.

The next morning, his coworkers found his body shallowly buried under sand and gravel at a bend in the cable conduit.

The covering of sand and gravel was haphazard.

His head was intact. His pupils had not dilated. His expression even appeared somewhat serene.

That serenity did not suggest sudden death. It was more like... a deep slumber.

But his torso...

All his organs had been cruelly hollowed out.

His thoracic and abdominal cavities were utterly empty, leaving only the outer skin and a thin layer of muscle tissue.

And filling those hollowed cavities was filthy, tangled black fur.

The fur was coarse and stiff, matted into clumps, resembling the mane of some wild beast, or the accumulated filth of years within a sewer.

The coroner’s report concluded it was a “homicide” and added one spine-chilling detail...

The victim had died some time after his organs had been removed.

He was hollowed out first, and only then did death come.

This meant that, during the process of having his organs extracted one by one, the electrician was very likely still alive.

He endured inhuman torment.

And yet, his expression betrayed not a trace of it. Serene. Peaceful. Even bearing the faintest hint of a smile.

As if, while his internal organs were being scooped out, what he felt was not agony, but... something else entirely.

The black fur packed inside afterward added yet another layer of the bizarre to the incident.

The events did not stop there.

Over the following two weeks, five more workers died under bizarre circumstances, at different times and in different locations.

One was found dead in his own dormitory bed.

Not a single external wound marked his body. His skin was perfectly intact. His expression was just as serene as the first victim’s.

But every bone in his body had been extracted.

His entire form lay slumped limply beneath the blankets, his limbs bent at impossible angles, his head lolling to one side, his neck drooping soft and unsupported.

Another fell to his death. According to eyewitness accounts, this victim had appeared dazed from the moment he woke that day, his gaze vacant, his responses to others’ calls sluggish.

During work, he repeatedly failed to understand the foreman’s instructions. Not long after, the fatal fall occurred.