Strange game designer.

Chapter 864 Xue Se's Choice
The living room door opened. Time didn't pursue the matter of the old people, nor did it waste its energy making things difficult for Xue Se. Time knew they weren't enemies, and fighting each other would only benefit the real mastermind.

The only thing that displeased Time was that it hoped the other Blood City Lords would be the first to find it, not Crimson. In fact, it had been waiting for an opportunity.

Time was no time to waste talking, and Xue Se, being quite sensible, grabbed Lao Ma and Li Zhi and headed outside. As he stepped outside, a force suddenly emanated from inside the house, and someone grabbed Li Zhi and Lao Ma.

Caught off guard, Xue Se had to pull with all his might to barely get the old man out.

The door closed the next moment, and Li Zhi's screams echoed from the cannibalistic room.

Gritting his teeth, Xue Se stared at the door lock, gripped his gun tightly, and finally decided not to force his way in: "Let's go, downstairs."

Old Ma was still shaken. Xue Se was pulling his shoulder, and he could barely keep his balance while running.

He ran downstairs in one breath, left the Death Time residential area, and got into his car before Old Ma calmed down: "Damn it! They ate Li Zhi! I can understand people eating horse meat, but people eating people is really rare!"

"That's because you're inexperienced." Xue Se started the car and drove towards the police station. It was already bright outside, but the Death Time neighborhood behind them still looked eerie. "The illnesses in this city are getting more and more troublesome. If Death Time neighborhood isn't handled properly, it could very well turn into another mass syndrome, like a forest where countless people die."

Not far from where they were driving, Xue Se's phone suddenly rang. It was a call from someone whose contact name was "Da Tou".

Before Xue Se could even speak after pressing the answer button, an impatient man's voice came from the other end of the phone: "Brother Xue! Where are you! The brothers are all missing, and I can't get through to your phone!"

"Where have all the brothers gone?" Xue Se had a very bad feeling. Before entering the cannibalistic room, he had called for his men and informants to come and help, but he couldn't contact them afterward. He thought those people hadn't come.

"Brother Xue! Which floor are you on? I'm a little disoriented, I think I'm lost in the building!"

"Big Head! Stay calm and don't make a sound! Find a corner to hide! I'm coming right away!" Xue Se slammed on the brakes, preparing to turn the car around. His men were all people he had rescued from the social disorder supervision center. Their violent tendencies in their genes meant they were discriminated against from birth and treated as bad people and trash by the public. Only Xue Se was willing to understand them.

"Someone's coming, it's those vengeful ghosts, and there's one in red..."

"Please, lend me a way out, please, lend me a way out..."

"Go away!"

"Please, lend me a way to survive!"

The phone seemed to have fallen to the ground, from which came the chilling sound of flesh and bones being torn apart. Da Tou's struggles quickly faded away.

With anger in his eyes, Xue Se drove to the entrance of the Death Time residential area. He gripped the steering wheel with both hands and looked at the massive tower from inside the car.

Behind a window, a wrinkled face seemed to be staring at him. The phone that Da Tou had just hung up on was dialed again, and the voice of time came through: "We don't have much time left. Even if you don't believe me, you have to believe the images in your own mind."

"Damn scum!" It wasn't that his men hadn't come; they had been eaten up by time. Xue Se wanted to tear time apart, but it was difficult for him to do so on his own.

Xue Se started the car and headed straight for the police station. Old Ma, unusually, didn't make any sarcastic remarks.

Pushing aside the reporters blocking the police station entrance, Xue Se didn't even bother with the most basic decorum and rudely entered the station. Everyone was busy cleaning up the mess in the forest, and no one cared about his burning anger.

Upon entering the office, Xue Se immediately stopped his subordinates from their work: "Go and investigate the neighborhoods near the time of death right now."

"Captain Xue, the chief just issued an order: all officers must cooperate with the Human Rights Committee to clean up the aftermath of the forest fire. Too many people died last night, and there are signs that Xinhu is being torn apart."

"Yes, Captain, if we treat the people infected with the syndrome in the deep forest as plants, then it's a huge fire; but if we count them as people, then it's the biggest, most cruel, and most serious death event that has occurred since the establishment of Shanghai. The whole city is watching us."

"Shut up, all of you!" Xue Se slammed his fist on the table. "Who set the fire? Was it the police station? Was it the Human Rights Committee? Bullshit! It was those citizens! Since everyone is a murderer, then what everyone wants is for the forest to be full of trees! This matter is settled now. What I need you to investigate now is no less dangerous than the forest!"

Seeing that his subordinates still looked troubled, Xue Se took out his phone and played Da Tou's screams: "Several of my informants have gone missing, and I almost got killed too! Do you understand now?!"

Upon hearing that Xue Se had almost been killed, his subordinates became tense and, despite their exhaustion, began to investigate, not daring to relax for a moment.

"You stay here and behave yourself." Xue Se locked Lao Ma in the office and went into the archives to look up information.

Emergency notices and news were scrolling across the electronic display screens in the police station lobby. Seven hours after dawn, the Human Rights Commission, the Ethics Watch Group, and the judiciary jointly announced the results of their investigation.

A total of seventeen arsonists and more than sixty accomplices, as well as several rioters who looted shops during the chaos, were arrested. The lessons learned from this heinous incident will be forever remembered. There is still a long way to go in building human rights and establishing moral standards. As a result, the judiciary has added several related laws.

The news broadcasts continued without stopping. The Human Rights Commission, which had been urging citizens to remain calm and do its utmost to protect the forest from disease before the disaster, was willing to take responsibility for the incident. Several core members of the Commission were dismissed, and some members involved in forest protection and construction were even arrested.

The three organizations reflected on their actions and vowed to ensure that a similar situation never happens again.

The citizens are "striving" to heal from their grief and rebuild the burned streets and the severely damaged First Rehabilitation Hospital. But none of this concerns Xue Se in the archives, who is listening to his subordinates' reports with a dark expression.

After conducting on-site investigations, the police officers brought Xue Se one piece of bad news after another.

In many residential communities, the phenomenon of "life-borrowing" has emerged. Strange patterns and markings have been seen at the doors of some residents' homes, suggesting they have been targeted by those seeking to borrow life. The most critical issue is that some of the residents have elderly members who are both the ones seeking to borrow life and the ones being borrowed from, so they are not cooperating with the investigation.

"It's not just on Autopsy Avenue; other districts also have the concept of 'borrowing lifespan,' where time and youth are treated as currency. However, they are very low-key, so they don't attract as much attention as the forest." After the investigation, the police officers had even more respect for Xue Se. If it weren't for Captain Xue's keen insight, they probably wouldn't have paid attention to these things at this stage.

"It is another highly contagious form of mass hysteria."

(End of this chapter)