Freeze the entire population, activate my Superman system?

Ling Shuang frowned.

A gap of less than three square meters?

The Night Demon Mother's eight tentacles, when spread out, were nearly ten meters wide, and her torso was thicker than a human's. How could she possibly squeeze in?

"Lin Yue, go back into the water to confirm the size of the breach."

"Hold on......"

Lin Yue put the walkie-talkie back into the waterproof bag and dived down again.

Soon, a voice came from the other end of the walkie-talkie.

"I couldn't reach my hand out because it was blocked by the barrier, but judging from the outline, it was definitely less than two meters long and wide."

Lin Yue paused for a moment.

"However, the soil at the edge of the gap was compacted and showed signs of repeated friction."

Zhang Mu, standing to the side, spoke thoughtfully.

"Because it has the biological characteristics of an octopus?"

Ling Shuang and Guo Yueshan exchanged a glance.

Octopuses can squeeze through gaps much smaller than their bodies, as long as the gap is wider than their beaks.

Guo Yueshan began to speak.

"Xiaolin, go back quickly and wait for us to discuss a plan."

No one knows if the Night Demon will suddenly return.

Lin Yue has obtained the information they wanted.

Sure enough, the problem occurred at the boundary of the safe zone!

An hour later, the five people were summoned to the management office.

One of the old men was Zheng Jing, a contractor who had worked on water conservancy projects.

Grandpa Zheng squatted on the ground and used chalk to draw a simple diagram of the artificial lake on the floor tiles.

"Can it be blocked?" Guo Yueshan couldn't help but ask.

Zheng Jing squatted next to the chalk drawing, stared at it for a long time, and then shook his head.

"Director Guo, I'm telling you the truth."

To properly seal such an underwater breach, a cofferdam would be needed.

Drain the water around the gap and then seal it with concrete.

We don't have a water pump, nor clay or cement, so it's impossible to do it.

"Then there's no other way?"

Just as the atmosphere became tense, Shen Yuan's slightly excited voice came from behind.

"Director Guo, I have a solution."

He was holding a tablet computer.

That was something he brought from home; it contained a list of buildings from the lord system.

He placed the tablet on the table and pointed to an entry on the screen.

"Protective fence. The system description does not specify that it can only be placed on land."

I just tried it with achievement points, and it works underwater, but it consumes extra achievement points.

He looked up at Grandpa Zheng and asked, "If we place the protective fence directly at the gap, will it temporarily stop the water flow?"

Grandpa Zheng paused for a moment, then his eyes lit up: "Yes, I've touched that wall before, water can't get through it."

But pumping water is also difficult, as it requires manual labor and could take an unknown number of people and a considerable amount of time.

Although it seems that external water flow shouldn't be able to get in right now, otherwise the temperature of the artificial lake would have dropped long ago.

"If there's no way to block it, then don't build a cofferdam; just build a barrier and protection system."

Shen Yuan put away the tablet. "The widest part of the gap is less than two meters. It can be covered by a vertical protective fence."

Outside the fence, add more physical barriers—sandbags, mattresses, whatever you can throw in.

Guo Yueshan immediately made the decision: "The lord of the Achievement Point Management Office will be in charge. Shen Yuan, you will coordinate."

Grandpa Zheng, you're in charge of overall command.

Before dark, block the breach.

By evening, the perimeter barrier around the artificial lake had been erected.

Shen Yuan exchanged for the fence, confirmed with the system that it was split and placed vertically, and the semi-transparent light blue light wall was attached to the outside of the stone crack in a triangular shape.

Afterwards, Wang Can started the property's large cleaning boat and took more than a dozen young men back and forth several times.

They threw more than forty flood control sandbags, three Simmons mattresses, two dismantled security doors, and a pile of bricks and concrete blocks into the cracks in the rocks.

The final step is the interception net.

Zhao Tiejun contributed a bundle of steel wire rope that he had treasured, and Shen Yuan led his men to weave it into a large net with meshes only the size of a fist.

Su Wan and several women used wire to fix the bone spikes and claws of the mutated animals to the net.

Each bone spur points outwards, its tip sharpened to a fine point.

The entire net was lowered above the gap. Lin Yue, along with two other swimmers, dived down and nailed the lower two corners of the protective net to the lake bottom with steel bars.

Guo Yueshan stood on the shore, looking at the lake surface that had returned to calm, and let out a long breath. "I've done everything I could."

If that thing tries to squeeze through the cracks in the rocks again, it will first have a layer of its skin scraped off by the interception net, and then crash into multiple lines of defense.

Even if it manages to squeeze in, the noise would be enough for us to spot it.

Ling Shuang had originally been crouching on the shore to guard against the reappearance of the Night Demon Mother.

Seeing this orderly scene now, I can't help but feel a sense of awe.

The limits of what humans can achieve when they work together are truly high.

......

By the time Ling Shuang returned to the row house, it was already completely dark.

The eerie blue flames of the heater flickered in the living room as Zhang Mu crouched in the corner, counting the white crystals of the ten Night Demon larvae.

Seeing Ling Shuang come in, he closed his notebook and handed her a bottle of water.

"The corpses of ten Night Demon infants have all been delivered."

The torso lay in the corner of the yard, and the white crystal was in my hand.

When do you plan to start absorbing it?

"Let's do it now."

Ling Shuang sat cross-legged next to the heating stove and picked up the first perfect white crystal.

He placed the crystal on the skin of his left leg, and silver-black scales automatically appeared, their edges opening to swallow the crystal bit by bit.

A chilling sensation spread through my left leg.

One, two, three.

When the fifth white crystal was completely absorbed, Ling Shuang frowned.

Sure enough, after using five white crystals, the enhancement progress of the left leg was only halfway done.

He absorbed four more. With nine perfect white crystals, the enhancement progress of his left leg was finally approaching its maximum, but it was still one step away from being fully upgraded.

Ling Shuang picked up the tenth white crystal.

This time, the chill slowly seeped into my left leg, from my toes to my hip joint, every bone and muscle emitting a faint hum.

Then, the buzzing suddenly stopped.

Instead, it gave me a feeling I had never experienced before.

The body itself is releasing something outward.

The scales on his left leg began to spread automatically, climbing up from his calf to his waist and abdomen.

The color of the scales changed, gradually deepening from the original silver-black to a dark gray that resembled the skin of a night demon larva.

Ling Shuang opened her eyes.

His legs were completely covered in dark gray scales, arranged in the same way as those on the Night Demon larva.

Immediately afterwards, a surge of unfamiliar information flooded into his consciousness.

It's not language, not images, but an instinct.

Just as a baby is born knowing how to suckle, he suddenly knew how to use this new body.

He focused his attention on his legs.

The dark gray scales began to spread upwards, engulfing the torso, arms, and neck.

The body's outline changes where the scales cover it.

His spine made a cracking sound, and he grew nearly twenty centimeters taller.

Within seconds, the person standing in the living room was no longer Ling Shuang.

It is a humanoid creature with a height of nearly two meters, covered in dark gray scales.

Its head was larger than normal, and its face was completely covered by scales, with only a pair of dark red eyes showing.

Zhang Mu dropped the water glass in his hand.

"Holy crap—"

The eerie figure turned around, its dark red eyes staring at Zhang Mu.

Then, the scales began to peel away from her head and face, revealing Ling Shuang's true face.

Ling Shuang's voice was lower than usual, with a rustling sound like scales rubbing together, "It's me."

Zhang Mu's mouth remained open for a long time.

"Damn, he's cheating again!"

Ling Shuang looked down at her body.

He tried moving his fingers.

Its joints are incredibly flexible; its five fingers can bend in any direction, and the black hooks at its fingertips can easily pierce steel plates.

He tried taking two more steps, his stride almost twice as long as normal, but the sound of his feet landing was very soft. It seemed that there was a fleshy pad-like structure at the bottom of his scales that could absorb the sound of his footsteps.

The way the person moved was exactly like that of a Night Demon larva.

With a low center of gravity and limbs ready to exert force at any time, it resembles a wild beast poised to pounce.

"This is..." Zhang Mu was completely stunned. "How could you turn into a night ghost?"

"That means I can now activate three forms of the scales."

"The first method is localized scaling: covering the left hand, right hand, and left leg separately, which consumes the least amount of energy."

Then comes the transformation into full-body scales: silver-black scales cover the entire body, speed and strength are comprehensively enhanced, and energy consumption is moderate.

Ling Shuang paused for a moment, pulling her attention away from that "night ghost state".

The dark gray scales began to peel away from the face, then the torso and limbs.

The scales receded like the tide, revealing the intact human skin underneath.

"The third type, I call it Night Demon Mimicry."

This is probably because the absorbed white crystals are primarily obtained from the cranial cavity of the Night Demon larvae.

The appearance and abilities gained through this mimicry are highly similar to those of the Night Demon larva.

Ling Shuang sat down again by the heating stove.

"By entering mimicry mode, I can gain the perception abilities of a night demon."

It is extremely sensitive to vibrations and energy flow.

Zhang Mu was silent for a few seconds: "Then that means you're a night ghost too. Can you fool them?"

Ling Shuang shook her head and said uncertainly,

"That depends on whether we have the chance to encounter those ghostly things again."

"Also, there's a gap at the junction of the artificial lake and the protective shield, which is how the Night Demon managed to sneak in."

Although this gap is strangely peculiar, allowing only entry and no exit, it has indeed broken the rules of the safe zone.

Ling Shuang's eyes sharpened, and she continued,

"So I've been thinking about a question just now."

Is there some way to leave the safe zone earlier?