After drawing cards, the evil god became my source of吐槽 (tu cao, a form of humorous commentary/criti

Chapter 142 Black Sea Basin (7)

"Come here, behind me." An Jing's voice suddenly rang out, carrying an undeniable urgency.

She didn't turn around; her gaze remained fixed on the boundary between the sea and the beach, but her mental energy had already locked onto the several anomalies that were approaching.

066 and 034 had long since developed an almost instinctive response to An Jing's orders, especially after the recent terrifying experience at sea and the shock of 035's disappearance. The two reacted almost simultaneously, stumbling and scrambling towards An Jing.

However, just as 034 took two steps and was about to run to An Jing's side, his running suddenly stopped, as if he was tripped by an invisible rope, and he fell forward!
"what!"

He let out a short cry of surprise, feeling his ankle being gripped tightly by a cold, slippery hand with astonishing strength!
The force was immense; it pulled 034 backward violently, causing his upper body to slam onto the sand, while his lower body was dragged backward, carving a shallow furrow in the black sand.

He turned around in terror.

The hand gripping his ankle was an ominous bluish-gray hand covered with dark lividity and fine cracks.

The fingernails on his hand were long and sharp, black, digging deeply into the fabric of his trousers.

But what made his scalp tingle and his blood almost freeze was the owner of this hand.

That's not a living person.

It's hard to even call it a complete corpse.

It was a highly decayed husk, as if all its internal substances had been drained.

The skin clung loosely to the skeleton, giving it an eerie translucency. You could vaguely see that what lay beneath the skin was not flesh and bones, but some kind of bluish-purple, constantly wriggling creature that seemed to be composed of countless tiny segments or tentacles!

It is the wriggling of these living creatures beneath the skin that drives this terrifying husk to make grasping and dragging motions!

The face of the husk was even more horrifying, with its features twisted and deformed. Where the eyes were, there were only two collapsed black holes, and the mouth was wide open, filled with those bluish-purple worms.

Although completely unrecognizable, the style of the tattered clothes covered in black sand and slime, and the vaguely discernible outline of the body...

034's mind went blank for a moment, and extreme fear gripped his throat, preventing him from even screaming. All that remained were heavy, broken gasps for breath.

His stomach churned, he felt nauseous, yet fear held him back. He futilely kicked his other leg, trying to break free, but the cold, slippery grip was like an iron clamp, unmoving.

"Detective An... Detective An! Help me!!"

The instinct for survival finally broke through the blockade of fear, and 034 let out a shrill, distorted cry for help, tears and snot flowing uncontrollably.

An Jing turned around the instant he stopped moving. When she saw the body being driven by the strange creature, her brows furrowed, and a cold, knowing glint flashed in her eyes.

Indeed, these people who came ashore were not of a single type.

The mystery of how the remains of dead creatures are driven in some way is more troublesome than that of simply alienated animals, because they often do not rely on complex thought processes, but are closer to a conditioned reflex or instinctual drive.

For her ability, which relies mainly on sensing and predicting mental fluctuations, this kind of mysterious presence is extremely low, and her actions are even more abrupt.

"Don't move!"

She gave a low shout, stopping 034's pointless struggle to avoid provoking the thing into a more violent attack.

At the same time, with a thought, she precisely drew a card.

Without hesitation, the dark gold card vanished as a streak of light from her fingertips.

The next instant, ripples spread through the air beside An Jing, and a tall, ethereal figure draped in a tattered cloak appeared out of thin air. Death.

"Sever it." An Jing conveyed the command in his mind, concise and clear.

The towering phantom of death seemed to nod slightly, and the illusory scythe in its hand silently rose, drawing a cold arc, and precisely slashed at the blue dead hand that was grabbing 034's ankle!

There was no sound of metal clashing, only a dull, subtle tearing sound, like cloth being easily cut by a sharp blade.

The afterimage of the sickle swept past.

The grayish-blue dead hand was severed at the wrist!

There was no blood or bone at the cut.

Only a thick, pungent, dark green sludge suddenly spurted out, landing on the black sand with a slight hissing, corrosive sound and wisps of smoke.

The force gripping 034's ankle vanished instantly.

The severed hand lay on the sand, its five fingers still in a grasping posture, but the bluish-purple worms beneath the skin seemed to have lost their vitality, quickly becoming stiff and gray.

"what!!"

034 felt his ankle loosen and scrambled to break free, retreating backward on all fours until he bumped into 066's calf.

He clutched his ankle, still shaken, where several bluish-black finger marks and sticky residue remained, throbbing with a burning pain and a chill, but he paid no heed, only panting heavily, his whole body trembling like a leaf.

The skin with its severed arm seemed startled, and it recoiled sharply, its movements stiff yet swift, dragging the severed wrist as it quickly disappeared into the shadow of a large nearby rock.

Only a trail of slime and a lone severed hand remained on the beach.

The phantom of death completed its attack and hovered silently beside An Jing, like the most loyal guardian.

"Is he...dead?"

066 was also terrified, clutching her clothes tightly, her voice trembling as she asked. What she had just witnessed was far more horrifying and bizarre than she had imagined.

"He's not dead, he escaped."

An Jing spoke calmly, his gaze sweeping over the direction of the reef where the severed hand and the skin had disappeared.

"The thing that drives this husk is cunning; it disappears immediately if it misses its target. The terrain here is complex; it can burrow into crevices in the rocks or underground in the sand, making it very difficult to track."

She paused, then added, "And, there's usually more than one of these."

Her words made 034 and 066, who had just breathed a sigh of relief, tense up again, looking around in alarm at the jagged reefs and the depths of the sandy beach shrouded in gray fog.

An Jing ignored their fear and walked straight towards the severed hand lying on the beach, and the dark green slime slowly seeping into the sand beside it. She needed more samples and information.

Although 034 was filled with psychological trauma from that thing, when she saw An Jing walk over and looked at the potentially dangerous environment around her, she gritted her teeth and got up weakly, following closely behind her, as if she would be dragged away immediately if she left her by a meter.

066 also endured the discomfort and followed.

An Jing squatted beside the severed hand, not touching it directly with his hands, but carefully scanning it with his mental power.

The structure of the severed hand and the residual energy were peculiar. The bluish-purple worms under the skin seemed to be some kind of symbiotic or parasitic mysterious creatures. They appeared to use decaying biological tissue as a medium and driving force, and could secrete mucus with corrosive and nerve-paralyzing effects.