Starting as dockworkers, they swept through Chongqing.

Kemi turned around, rubbing her sore neck, and looked at Xilen with a complicated expression.

"you……"

Kemi hesitated for a moment, but couldn't help asking, "Did you practice the 'Flesh and Blood Weakness Technique' of the church's ascetics? How come your skin and flesh are so tough? It feels like I'm hitting a steel plate."

The surrounding students also perked up their ears.

They had clearly seen the sparring session just now. Xiren had taken several heavy punches from Kemi and was completely unharmed, which was simply illogical.

Kemi seemed to realize something, her expression changed, and she quickly waved her hand and shook her head: "Never mind, I shouldn't have asked, I'm sorry."

Raine stood to the side and gave Xiren a deep look.

As a second-tier extraordinary individual, his insight was naturally far more discerning than that of these students.

He could tell that Xilun hadn't used any special power-generating techniques.

That feeling of skin instantly tightening, like a layer of scales...

"Could it be a natural 'stone skin' constitution?" Renn wondered to himself. "Or perhaps some kind of latent ancestral bloodline atonement?"

"Or perhaps, you did indeed practice the art of weakness and suffering?"

......

By the time I stepped out of the Iron Cross Club, it was completely dark.

Xiren tightened his thin coat.

After the intense sparring session that afternoon, coupled with the drain from the passive activation of his "Black Scale Texture" talent, his muscles were now radiating a strange soreness.

The feeling wasn't painful; rather, it was like countless tiny ants crawling inside the blood vessels, repairing the torn fibers and making the membrane more resilient.

He touched his right arm.

The black, net-like texture beneath the skin has disappeared, but the steel-like hardness still lingers in the nerve endings.

The mere act of stealing a mutated creature's traits gave him the upper hand when facing an opponent with the physique of Kemi.

What would it be like to be promoted to a true "baptist"?

The gas lamps on the street were dim, and their glass covers were covered with a thick layer of grease.

At this time of year, the streets of the dock area are usually chaotic, but at least they are full of people.

The place would be packed with off-duty laborers, prostitutes, and bootlegging vendors.

But today, the streets were unusually quiet.

Xilun quickened his pace, his body instinctively tensing up.

Several hurried passersby walked along the wall, their eyes filled with fear, like frightened stray dogs.

At the alleyway ahead, a pool of dark red liquid spread out in the puddles.

Xilun took a few steps closer and saw that they were two corpses.

A man and a woman were stripped naked, their bodies bearing obvious knife wounds. These weren't clean cuts, but rather wounds resembling those caused by a blunt object smashing their heads open; red and white splattered onto the brick wall, already dried and blackened.

No one came to collect the body.

Here, death is as common as rain.

Siren stepped across the blood on the ground without expression.

As a transmigrator with memories of Earth, he originally thought that Saint Laurent City in the Victorian era would be a beacon of civilization, but reality gave him a resounding slap in the face.

The Lower City follows the most primitive law of the jungle. Although there are police and laws on the surface, gangs, heretics, and human traffickers are the real rulers in the shadows.

Those gentlemen and ladies living in the Upper Town, enjoying steam heating and exquisite afternoon tea, will never know that the foundation supporting the prosperity of this city is the countless corpses that died like mud in the gutter.

The closer you get to the dock and warehouse area, the stronger the smell of blood becomes in the air.

The smell wasn't just blood; it was a mixture of rotting entrails and the pungent odor of chemicals.

Xiren frowned and quickened his pace.

When I got back to the entrance of the warehouse dormitory compound, there was already a crowd gathered there.

A dim lantern hung on a wooden stake, illuminating a tattered straw mat in the middle of the crowd.

A person was wrapped up in a straw mat.

Or rather, it is an empty shell.

"Make way."

Xilun pushed through the crowd, using his imposing physique to get to the front.

His pupils contracted slightly the moment he saw the corpse.

The deceased was a thin man with a deathly pale complexion due to excessive blood loss. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was wide open, as if he had experienced extreme fear before his death.

The most horrifying part was his chest and abdomen.

From the collarbone to the navel, it was neatly cut open with a sharp blade, and the heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys inside were all nowhere to be found.

His chest cavity was empty, with only a few broken ribs and congealed black blood remaining, like an animal that had been processed by a butcher.

"It's Jamie the Mouse."

Someone nearby whispered, "Bill's old henchman."

Xilun's heart skipped a beat.

Ever since he killed Wild Dog Bill in the alley, Bill's gang of thugs scattered like leaves in the wind.

He remembered Jamie; he was a coward who bullied the weak and feared the strong, and he often sided with Bill, using his position to intimidate others.

"This is too tragic..."

"I heard they ran into the Black Death Cult."

An elderly laborer puffed on his pipe, his cloudy eyes filled with terror. "These lunatics have started up again. They kidnap people, rip out their hearts and livers, saying they're doing some kind of 'human transmutation,' putting other people's organs into their own bodies, like growing crops..."

"Stop talking!"

A young coworker nearby turned pale and nearly vomited. "Isn't the Brotherhood going to help? We've paid safety taxes!"

"Brotherhood?"

The old coolie sneered, tapping his pipe. "Besides, the Black Death is a mad dog that even the police wouldn't dare mess with. The Brotherhood, those cowardly bullies, would avoid us like the plague. Would they risk their lives for us coolies?"

A deathly silence fell over the surroundings.

In this era where people are treated like consumables, the lives of people in the lower city are worth less than coal ash.

Xilun watched silently for a while, then turned and walked into the dormitory building.

Although Bill died at his hands, Jamie's death was clearly unrelated to him. The Black Death Cult...

He had seen this name a few times in scraps of the Saint Laurent newspaper; it was officially defined as an "extreme cult" and a key target of the Inquisition.

Unexpectedly, this undercurrent has already reached the dock area.

I pushed open the creaking wooden door of the dormitory.

Cage was huddled under the covers in the corner of the bed, trembling like a leaf.

Seeing Xilen enter, he jumped out of bed as if grasping at a lifeline, his voice trembling with tears: "Xilen! You're finally back!"

"You saw the body outside too?"

Xilun took off his coat and hung it on the nails by the bedside, his voice calm yet somewhat cold.

Cage nodded frantically, his face looking worse than a dead man.

"I...I saw Jamie this afternoon!"

Cage gestured incoherently towards the name, "Right at the alley entrance, he even asked me for a light. He said Boss Bill had disappeared and he was thinking of going to join the 'Peakies' gang in the next block... and then... and then I came back just now and saw him lying there!"

"It looks like Gray Rat Street..."

Cage swallowed hard, his eyes glazed over. "Shillon, do you think... we might be next? Bill's dead, Jamie's dead, it's like a curse..."

Xilun walked to the table, poured himself a glass of cold water, and drank it all in one gulp.

The cool liquid slid down his esophagus into his stomach, cooling down his previously feverish body.

Cage is an honest man whose biggest dream is to save up money to become a typist at a newspaper and stay away from all this fighting and killing.

"Lock the door and go to sleep!"

Xilun said calmly, "The sun will rise as usual tomorrow. If you don't want to starve, you'll have to keep working. Things will get better once you get into the newspaper."

After saying that, he ignored Cage and climbed onto the bed, sitting cross-legged.

The chaos and death outside only strengthened his resolve to become stronger.

The Metropolitan Police Department's police force is mostly concentrated in the upper and middle urban areas and commercial districts. For them, they only care about tax revenue and maintaining order on the surface.

As for the few laborers who died or the few organs that were missing, no one cared unless a large-scale riot broke out.

Two years ago, a gunfight even broke out in the dock area, when the Brotherhood and a group called the Iron Fist Gang were fighting for territory.