Who said this card is outrageous?

“What’s even more terrifying right now…” the city guard commander’s voice was low, “is that we still have no idea how many superhumans and superhuman creatures have been controlled by the Heart-Eating Demon. Right now, the enemy is in the dark, and we are in the light. Every step we take could be a trap they have set.”

After he finished speaking, everyone present fell into an even deeper silence.

Such a formidable enemy and such bizarre methods sent a chill down their spines.

The people of Binhai City have been dealing with extraordinary creatures in the sea for many years, and this type of opponent is truly the first time they have encountered one, which is why the mayor did not hesitate to go out and seek help.

Considering all of the above, the meeting ultimately made several decisions: First, to immediately conduct a secret investigation of all superhumans in the city to confirm whether any individuals parasitized by the Heart-Eating Demon had infiltrated the city; second, to suspend the next large-scale extermination operation and reassess the enemy situation before making further deployments; and third, to establish a special research team to find effective means to combat the Heart-Eating Demon's mind control as soon as possible.

However, the investigation did not go smoothly.

Because of the limited understanding of the Heart-Eating Demon and the lack of mature detection methods, the investigation can only rely on a few rudimentary methods, resulting in low efficiency and slow progress.

After several days, the number of people screened was less than one-tenth of the total number of superhumans in the city. The only good news was that no cases of parasitism were found.

Even so, no one dared to let their guard down.

Meanwhile, operations on another front were also being carried out in secret.

The city guard commander and the adventurers' guild president personally led an elite squad of two fifth-tier powerhouses deep into the ocean to search for the Heart-Eating Demon's rift and the traces of the Fishman King.

They kept quiet and the team left the port quietly in the dead of night aboard a stealth ship that had undergone extraordinary modifications. Even the sailors on board were unaware of the true purpose of this voyage.

Three days later, they returned covered in injuries.

The news was strictly censored, but a few snippets still leaked out through several channels—

The good news is that two fifth-tier powerhouses led a team to find the exit of the rift where the Heart-Eating Demon's lair is located somewhere on the seabed, and they also found the Fishman King.

But they also discovered a shocking fact: there was never a new generation of Murloc King. This "Murloc Catastrophe" was actually manipulated by the Heart Eater!

The murloc army appeared to be disciplined because they were all manipulated puppets; the surge in murloc numbers was brought from other parts of the sea by the Heart Eater.

Chapter 106 The Ace is Actually a Sharp-Toothed Fish? (Six chapters complete, please subscribe!)

As for the "King of the Fishmen" who revealed his whereabouts and was regarded as a leader by humans, he was just a high-ranking fishman parasitized by the Heart-Eating Demon.

Its main purpose is to serve as a target to attract the attention of Binhai City, making it easier for the Heart-Eating Demon to continue to hide and cause trouble.

The team engaged in a fierce battle with the Heart-Eating Demon near the rift. Although they did not encounter any fifth-tier Heart-Eating Demons, the most powerful enemies they faced were only around the fourth tier.

Even so, faced with the mental interference of the Heart-Eating Demon and the advantage of the environment, the team ultimately returned empty-handed due to their inability to adapt to underwater combat.

During the retreat, the leader of the Adventurers' Guild shielded the team from the combined mental attack of three fourth-tier Heart-Eating Demons with his own body, causing severe damage to his mental sea and rendering him unconscious on the spot. He was eventually carried back by the Grand Commander.

He is currently lying in the medical room at the city garrison headquarters, still in critical condition.

The fact that two fifth-tier powerhouses joined forces to attack but failed made everyone who knew about it realize how terrifying the Heart-Eating Demon was.

They are not like fishmen, low-level superhuman creatures who only rely on numbers to rampage. Instead, they are intelligent, organized, and tactically capable of displaying an overwhelming advantage in their home field!

Of course, all of these things were done in secret, so on the surface, no one knew that the two fifth-tier experts had already gone to the sea. They only thought that they were still preparing for the battle, which kept the people in the city relatively calm.

……

After this battle, the main enemy to deal with in order to resolve the crisis in Binhai City has changed from the familiar fishmen to the Heart-Eating Demons that have never been seen before.

Fortunately, since the Heart-Eating Demon is weak and currently mostly parasitizes marine supernatural creatures such as fishmen, some of the prepared countermeasures can still be used, although their effectiveness may be somewhat weakened.

However, to completely defeat those mind-eating demons, we must find a way to counter their mind control.

Otherwise, if several of our troops are captured by the enemy as soon as the fighting starts, then the battle will be impossible to fight!

But in this regard, let alone Binhai City, even other places are finding it difficult to find a suitable solution in a short period of time—the mayor has arrived in the provincial capital, but no useful information has been sent back.

The only good news is that it can be confirmed that the Heart-Eating Demon race is not large, or rather, the number that has invaded Blue Star through the rift is not large. Otherwise, they would have no need to do all these fancy things and could have just swept through before the humans could react.

But nothing stays secret forever. Although the news wasn't made public, it began to spread in small circles through various channels.

Two days later, the city hall finally issued a cautiously worded situation report, acknowledging that a new supernatural creature had been discovered during the clearing operation, but the level of threat posed by this creature was "still under assessment," and asking citizens to "maintain normal life and not panic excessively."

After all, the enemy they encountered this time was too strange. If they concealed the information and the participants were not prepared in advance, the losses would only be more severe.

……

However, the most crucial factor in fighting the Heart-Eating Demon is having sufficiently high mental resistance.

Although Binhai City has no shortage of extraordinary individuals skilled in mental power, even those with extraordinary professions such as mages or card makers are no match for a Heart-Eating Demon of the same level in terms of sheer mental strength.

This is a difference in talent. Humans on Earth are ultimately just latecomers on the path to the extraordinary, and they can't compare to those born with extraordinary abilities.

It was at this moment that someone finally noticed something unusual—

Among the adventurer teams that successfully brought back the corpse of the Heart Eater, apart from a few with naturally high mental resistance, almost all of them had one thing in common: someone in the team possessed a [Sharp-Toothed Fish] card.

This discovery caught the attention of the research team, who conducted a comprehensive test on the [Sharp-Toothed Fish] card, and the results surprised everyone.

【Sharp-Toothed Fish】has extremely high resistance to the mind control of the Heart-Eating Demon. In a battle between fish of the same rank, the mental attacks of the Heart-Eating Demon are almost ineffective against the Sharp-Toothed Fish. Instead, the fish will expose its position and be torn to pieces by the latter's counterattack.

Further research revealed that the sharp-toothed fish seems to possess a special dark-type talent, naturally suppressing mental-type supernatural abilities.

Normally, this advantage might not seem like much. Whether it's human superhumans or marine superhumans, even those most skilled in mental power would never rely solely on mental power in combat.

However, they encountered the Heart Eater and its group of severely unbalanced creatures, and the appearance of the Sharp-Toothed Fish turned their original advantage into a huge disadvantage!

This discovery gave hope to the city hall and the city guard. They immediately contacted Zhang Che to order some [Sharp-Toothed Fish] cards and achieved a long-awaited major victory in the subsequent battle against the Heart-Eating Demon!

However, problems soon emerged – [Sharp-Toothed Fish] is ultimately only a second-tier blue card. It can still put up a fight against the same or even third-tier Heart Eaters, but against stronger enemies, such as those fourth-tier Heart Eaters, even if Sharp-Toothed Fish can resist the opponent's mental control, it will inevitably be crushed by the opponent's numerical strength.

Not to mention the many extraordinary creatures in the sea that are controlled and parasitized by the Heart Eater, which also pose a huge threat to the Sharp-Toothed Fish!

Most importantly, if the leading fourth-tier Heart-Eating Demons cannot be completely eliminated, even if we win this war, Binhai City will definitely suffer heavy losses.

Not to mention, if the Heart-Eating Demon reappears, are they going to keep using human lives to fight it out?

This time, the number of Heart-Eating Demons is not large. They are likely their vanguard, or scouts who went to explore, or a small group that got lucky and managed to sneak in. Binhai City still has the ability to deal with them.

But if they grow to a larger scale in the future, and if a way to deal with them is not found, the coastal city will never have a peaceful day.

Zhang Che heard this news from Shen Yan. When the latter spoke of these things, his tone was much more serious than usual, and even his usually calm face showed a hint of solemnity.

"Thanks to you, I've now caught the eye of those big shots." Shen Yan briefly explained his background, then put down his teacup. "Let's get down to business. Vice President Fang asked me to tell you that the orders for [Sharp-Toothed Fish] may increase, and someone wants to talk to you about some things in person."

As for the content of the discussion, it's easy to guess: it's simply about asking Zhang Che if he has the ability to develop an advanced card for the [Sharp-Toothed Fish].

With so much time having passed, the authorities have long since thoroughly investigated Zhang Che's information, learned of the existence of the [Six-Tails] and [Nine-Tails], and believe that he does indeed have the ability to create advanced cards.

Chapter 107 Special Meeting

The atmosphere in a meeting room at the city hall was somewhat somber.

A long table, large enough to seat thirty people, was almost completely filled on both sides.

On one side were representatives of the city guards and the adventurers' guild, and on the other side were representatives of the coastal university and independent superhumans without any affiliation.

Each person had a document in front of them, and their teacups were refilled again and again. Some people's cups were already empty, but no one bothered to refill them.

The main seat in the conference room was originally the seat of the city guard commander, but he felt that it didn't matter whether he attended or not, so he only sent a few representatives from the city guard to attend.

This was a meeting exclusively for production-type superhumans. Sitting at the front on the left and right sides were four mid-level superhumans: Mo Yuncheng, a fourth-tier card maker from the Adventurers' Guild; Xu Jing, the dean of the Card Master Academy at Binhai University; Lin Ruoxi, the dean of the Alchemy Academy; and Su Ran, the chief alchemist of the City Guard.

Su Ran, in his early forties, was wearing a fairly clean coat. He leaned back in his chair with his legs crossed, his fingers tapping absently on the table, looking utterly bored.

However, judging from the not-yet-dry reagent stains on his clothes, he looked more like he had just been dragged out of the laboratory.

Meanwhile, the speakers in the meeting room changed one after another, and the proposed solutions were all different, but they could not avoid the two fatal difficulties: excellent underwater combat capabilities and the ability to resist, or at least resist to some extent, the mental control of the mid-level transcendent Heart-Eating Demon.

However, existing solutions either only meet one of the conditions or are only partially effective, making them practically suicidal on the battlefield.

The atmosphere quickly became somber.

"This is really troublesome." Su Ran suddenly spoke, her voice not loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the conference room.

He put his legs down, leaned forward, and placed his hands on the table, his tone somewhat excited: "If you ask me, just throw a few of my specially made 'super-sized' bombs into the lair of those Heart-Eating Demons, and I guarantee they'll cure everything and all your troubles will be gone!"

As he spoke, Su Ran's eyes seemed to gleam, and his tone carried an undeniable confidence. After all, in his view, there was no problem in the world that an explosion couldn't solve.

If so, then let's try again!

However, before the words were finished, a voice suddenly rang out:

"No! The explosion radius will be affected in the water, so this method won't work."

The speaker was Wei Lan, the chief card maker of the city guards, who was sitting opposite him. He was about twenty-seven or twenty-eight years old and was wearing a dark blue uniform.

Su Ran's smile froze for a moment.

“It’s alright for dealing with those lower-level transcendents,” Wei Lan continued, speaking calmly as if stating a well-known fact, “but against mid-level transcendent enemies, they can easily dodge.”

Su Ran opened her mouth, wanting to refute, but swallowed the words back.

Most importantly, he knew that Wei Lan was right. Having reached the mid-level extraordinary level, his reaction speed and movement speed were incomparable to those of lower-level extraordinary beings.

Especially since the water is someone else's territory, unless you can detonate it right up to their face, those mid-level extraordinary enemies will be able to react in the instant before the explosion.

As long as they can't be blown up, it won't matter how many lower-level transcendents die.

Thinking of this, Su Ran leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, and muttered, "Hmph, what kind of hero hides in the sea? If they're so capable, come out on land and fight me. I'll show them my art of explosion."

Looking at his older brother, who was throwing a tantrum like a child, Wei Lan could only sigh helplessly in his heart.

This guy is one of the best in Binhai City in terms of both talent and ability, but it's just his personality...

Well, to describe him as "unreliable" would be an understatement!

Wei Lan sometimes suspected that Su Ran's high achievements in alchemy were due to his dedication of all his energy and enthusiasm to the question of "how to make the explosion more effective," leaving him no time to be distracted by other things.

Wei Lan glanced apologetically at everyone present, offering his apologies on behalf of his unreliable older brother, Su Ran.

However, almost everyone present knew Su Ran and was aware of his character, so no one really bothered with him.

In contrast, although Wei Lan is more than ten years younger than Su Ran, he is more like a leader.

Moreover, his talent is undeniable: although his card-making ability is relatively average, he awakened his own unique traits at the lower-level transcendent level, which makes him extremely efficient in creating cards of the same type.

The time it takes others to make one card is enough for him to make three, and he continues to improve his efficiency as his proficiency increases.

For a standardized force like the City Guard that requires large quantities of equipment, Wei Lan's qualities were practically tailor-made for him, so he was recruited into the City Guard's ranks early on by its commander.

He is widely recognized as a promising figure in the card maker circle of Binhai City, and with his promotion imminent, he will be able to awaken another trait. Therefore, even veteran fourth-level card makers like Mo Yuncheng and Xu Jing have long regarded him as an equal.

At this moment, another middle-aged man sitting next to Mo Yuncheng spoke up. He was an alchemist affiliated with the Adventurers' Guild, named Li Qingyan, a peak third-tier alchemist whose research focused on biological agents.

He stated that he would create a potion that could temporarily enhance mental resistance, allowing users to gain the ability to resist mid-level transcendental mental attacks for a short period of time after injection.