Chapter 18: The Execution Squad

Xia Shou held his breath and stood rooted to the spot, enveloped by overwhelming fear. He waited quietly for the arrival of some unknown horror, yet after a long while, nothing happened.

"Alice?" Xia Shou called out softly, but there was no response from Alice behind him.

Asleep again?

But what was going on? Why was he still fine even though he had crossed the 1,300-meter red line of deep diving?

"Forget it! Whatever, I need to eat something!"

Although there were no abnormalities despite crossing the 1,300-meter threshold, Xia Shou’s intuition told him that remaining at this depth was dangerous. Regardless, it would be better to ascend as much as possible and keep the deep-diving value to a minimum.

Xia Shou focused his mind, and the shadow at his feet spread smoothly across the ground like asphalt, covering the entire dome of the cathedral. The blood flowing wantonly within this cathedral should provide him with considerable buoyancy...

...

Control Bureau, Investigation Department Three office. Shangguan Yan, who was typing away at her keyboard, suddenly stopped. She froze for a moment as if sensing something, then a helpless smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

"Ugh!" Shangguan Yan let out a muffled groan.

The next second, countless hair-thin lacerations bloomed across her body. An invisible impact knocked her from her office chair, and a massive amount of blood—far exceeding what such small wounds should produce—gushed out, instantly staining her pristine white shirt a vivid crimson. She tumbled to the floor, bracing herself with her limbs to keep from collapsing entirely.

[Heh... paying the price for your generosity so soon?] The goat-headed demon’s laughter echoed in Shangguan Yan's ears, laced with mockery and derision.

Shangguan Yan’s bloodshot eyes stared fixedly at the floor, her lips curling into a mad, wild smile. She then plunged her hand into the spreading pool of blood and commanded coldly, "This is mine. Give it back!"

The blood seemed to understand this forceful order; it stopped flowing and, driven by a mysterious power, began to converge toward Shangguan Yan’s body, flowing backward to climb up her skin and seep slowly into her wounds.

[Oh~ how dashing. But even steel has a limit to its resilience. Don't go dying on me too early.]

...

The strange fluctuations in the space, which only Shangguan Yan could perceive, slowly dissipated. In the end, the office returned to its spotless state, with only the damp, blood-scented red shirt on Shangguan Yan serving as a witness to what had just occurred.

She pushed herself up from the floor using her knees. Her expression was as elegant and mysterious as ever, like an impeccably exquisite mask.

"It seems I must take a few days off."

...

In the empty woodland, outside the House of the Blood Demon, Zhang Zhengde stared in astonishment at the readings on the anomaly detector. The value, which had been over a thousand, had dropped below 1,000 and was still slowly decreasing!

Usually, this meant one of two things: either the anomaly had been erased, or it had achieved a more perfect state of camouflage. Given the current records of the House of the Blood Demon, the possibility of the Blood Demon being eliminated was infinitesimally close to zero. According to the latest intelligence, the probability of the intruder being parasitized by the Blood Demon was extremely high.

Therefore, the reason for the drop in the anomaly value was clear: the person inside had been parasitized by the Blood Demon!

Zhang Zhengde glanced at his watch. It had only been an hour since the Beast Tamer went inside.

At that moment, another transport vehicle arrived at the scene. The doors opened, and five people wearing gas masks and identical black trench coats jumped out. They were dressed entirely in black, the only mark of their identity being the minimalist guillotine emblem on their left chests, signifying they were the Execution Squad.

The Execution Squad was a specialized unit tasked with handling high-risk extraordinary individuals who had lost control. By entering into a series of nearly draconian constraints and paying a heavy price, they forcibly raised their own anomaly levels to a point where they could contend with powerful Finishers. It could be said that the Execution Squad was one of the few instances in the extraordinary society where the weak could sanction the strong. This was a crucial reason why the world was still governed primarily by collective interests rather than the will of individual powerhouses.

By having the stronger suppress the strong, they only practiced the laws of the strongest. Only by granting the weak the power to strike down the strong could the order of the collective exist.

"Who is in charge here? What is the current anomaly value?" a burly man asked in a booming voice.

Zhang Zhengde hurried forward to report, "It has dropped from over a thousand to five hundred."

"Then they have been parasitized," a female executioner remarked.

Zhang Zhengde asked hesitantly, full of trepidation, "Is this safe? I read the latest file; the Blood Demon's anomaly level is highly likely to be above level four. Can you handle it?"

He did not mean to look down on the Execution Squad, but reality was cruel. The comprehensive strength of the Execution Squad was generally around level three; through special means, they could break through to level four for a short time, but reaching level five was extremely difficult. If the Blood Demon was only level four, it would be fine, but if it were level five... he feared no one present could contain it.

"According to classified intelligence not released to you, the Blood Demon’s anomaly level is highly likely to decrease after parasitism. Furthermore, based on the fluctuations of the anomaly values observed over the past few days, the comprehensive anomaly level of the House of the Blood Demon is unlikely to reach the standard of five. Combined with the literature, it is most likely at a 'super-four, approaching five' level, so the pressure should not be great. Of course, to ensure nothing goes wrong, the Bureau has just reached a cooperation agreement with 53-678. That damn lizard is willing to cooperate with us."

Zhang Zhengde was very familiar with that serial number. It was the Calamity Crystal Dragon-Lizard captured in 1953. Back then, the Control Bureau had paid a staggering price to capture that behemoth. This anomaly was one of the core programs maintaining the Bureau's high-pressure operations, specifically responsible for processing various uncontrollable leaks of curse energy. The Dragon-Lizard’s own level-five anomaly allowed it to digest the vast majority of processed items. If the Dragon-Lizard were to deal with the Blood Demon, it should be able to suppress it!

"Wait, you aren't planning on transporting that monster here, are you?" Zhang Zhengde asked worriedly.

The female executioner shook her head. "Of course not. Let me briefly explain the plan: if it is confirmed that the person emerging is a Blood Demon host, we will first attempt negotiations. If negotiations break down, we will create an effective opening and then generate a dimensional wormhole about this big."

She spread her arms out, gesturing the size. Her companion immediately added, "This size is just enough for that damn lizard to poke its head through. It will be responsible for eating the Blood Demon host."

"Although the notes say the Blood Demon’s main body cannot be killed, if all goes well... the host will become the lizard’s excrement."