Chapter 17: The Carousel Incident (Part 2)

“Brigade Captain…” Captain Ye hesitated.

Pang Sen, however, continued to look calmly into the depths of the blood mist and said at the same time, “Prepare medical equipment. Stand by for support at any moment.”

As he spoke, the carousel’s rotational speed suddenly increased. As the lights flickered between bright and dark, the blood mist gradually thickened.

There was also singing, as though it had come from another world, suddenly speeding up. “Round and round little wooden horse carrying my head carrying my hands to find Papa and Mama, round and round little wooden horse…”

The aberration’s muttering song assaulted everyone there.

Some people had already bent over and were retching, while others held their heads as blood flowed from their noses.

The aberration’s contamination had reached its peak. Even looking at it from outside made people unable to bear it.

Captain Ye swiftly ordered all personnel to retreat a hundred meters.

He also had Vice-Captain Jiang escort Minister Tang Qirui away.

When he wanted to protect Brigade Captain Pang and escort him away, Brigade Captain Pang refused.

Even Tang Qirui only walked a little over thirty meters away before stopping and looking back this way.

“Brigade Captain!”

Captain Ye was anxious.

Being contaminated was not as simple as it looked. Once contamination became too severe, a person would go mad, lose their reason, become extremely bloodthirsty, and possess strong aggression.

Those team members who had gone mad still had not been cured.

Contamination was almost irreversible.

For the brigade captain to remain so close…

After being refused again by Pang Sen, Captain Ye had already begun considering whether he should forcibly take him away.

At this moment, the carousel changed again.

In an instant, the blood mist abruptly thickened until nothing could be seen.

Then, two seconds later, it suddenly expanded and dispersed as though blasted apart by a bomb.

After that.

All the abnormalities disappeared.

The lights were gone. The music was gone. The carousel stopped in place as if it had never moved at all.

The air also became instantly fresh, and the bloody stench could no longer be smelled.

Two figures appeared on the carousel.

They were Chen Yi and Wang Ping’an.

After Captain Ye’s eyes filled with shock, his shoulders gradually relaxed as well, and he murmured, “This consultant is impressive.”

He smiled in relief.

However, very soon, his expression became serious again as he stepped forward and took Wang Ping’an, who was almost entirely hanging off Chen Yi’s shoulder.

He looked deeply at the completely unharmed Chen Yi before his gaze finally fell on Wang Ping’an’s blood-streaked face. Just as he had thought, these were symptoms of severe contamination.

But when he lifted Wang Ping’an’s eyelids, the bloodshot whites of his eyes were better than expected, and his light response was also normal.

He hesitated for a moment, then carried Wang Ping’an on his back while ordering, “Prepare a stretcher, and a restraint jacket…”

“No restraint jacket.” Chen Yi, who had returned, spoke for the first time.

A restraint jacket was worn in psychiatric hospitals by patients with violent and self-harming tendencies. Wang Ping’an did not need to wear one.

“He won’t become a living ghost. He’ll be fine after a little rest.”

“A living ghost?”

“A living ghost.”

Hearing this unfamiliar term, those who knew the inside story all frowned slightly.

It was an extremely precise description, but it made people dislike it.

After all, those who had become living ghosts had all once been their comrades.

“I’m… fine…”

Even Wang Ping’an spoke. He forced himself to say, “I’m okay. Little Yi protected me. I just need to rest a bit…”

In past missions, team members who remained inside an aberration for more than a minute always came out bleeding from every orifice and unconscious. After they woke up, they would become violently frenzied, attacking everyone like revived malicious ghosts. Some would even bite into raw flesh.

But Wang Ping’an, with the same symptoms, could actually still speak?

Captain Ye placed Wang Ping’an on the stretcher and observed him carefully.

“I really am fine!” Wang Ping’an said. “Really, Captain Ye.”

Captain Ye blinked his sore, damp eyes and nodded. “Good. Good.”

At last, he believed the man was truly all right.

“Then rest well.”

After saying this extremely gently, Captain Ye raised his head again to look at Chen Yi, and a smile finally appeared on his stern face.

This was also the first time Chen Yi realized that this captain, with a face full of wrinkles and especially deep nasolabial folds and crow’s feet, actually had very upright features. If he were thirty years younger, he should have been an extremely handsome man.

Especially those eyes. They were pitch-black, as though the entire starry river had poured backward into them.

Captain Ye…

It seemed the book had mentioned that the first brigade captain of the Night Watchers had the surname Ye.

Chen Yi withdrew his gaze. Tang Qirui had already come to his side, and together with Pang Sen, he silently looked at Chen Yi.

Chen Yi thought for a moment, then talked about what he had experienced inside.

First, he did not mention the disgusting business of actively attacking deep into the foul stench and using a 1.5-meter greatsword to poke at the “cesspit.”

In truth, just the aberration contamination’s rules of “cannot be heard,” “cannot be smelled,” and “cannot be seen” did not work on Chen Yi.

He had an orthodox cultivation technique. Even if it could not be said that ten thousand arts could not touch him, filtering out some twisted spiritual energy was extremely simple.

Therefore, the distorted environment in other people’s eyes, as well as those uncanny phenomena that grew more terrifying the longer one remained, basically did not exist to Chen Yi.

He saw through the surface to the essence. What he saw was a five-year-old little-girl aberration with pigtails crawling out from under the carousel, trying to pounce on him.

He did not respect the old or care for the young at all, and cut it down with one slash.

It was that simple.

As for Wang Ping’an’s contamination, Chen Yi solved it with Light Technique.

Light Technique was a good thing. It could provide illumination in the dark, and it also restrained yin-attribute aberrations of this type.

The moment Light Technique came out, the blood mist rapidly dispersed like snow beneath warm sunlight, and Wang Ping’an managed to hold on until Chen Yi eliminated the aberration.

The delay had mainly been because Chen Yi had been treating Wang Ping’an and taking the initiative to search for the aberration within the blood mist.

The entire process was unbelievably easy, as simple as helping someone up after they had fallen at home and then pouring a cup of water.

But looking at the entire Special Action Team as though they were facing a great enemy, along with Pang Sen and Tang Qirui’s faces full of expectation, Chen Yi still described it in a slightly more complicated way, adding a bit of difficulty for himself.

Just… consider it leaving himself some room to retreat, so as not to fail the name of The Lurker Sect.

But very soon, Chen Yi would be glad for the decision he made today.

It turned out that even if everyone cultivated, differences in aptitude meant differences in cultivation speed, and also differences in strength when facing enemies. Someone like him, who could eliminate aberrations as easily as chopping melons and slicing vegetables, was not common.

In the early days of Spiritual Energy Revival, there was not even one person like him.

What the system idled was definitely the optimal cultivation route, and with a clear path, one would directly become godlike.

When other people cultivated techniques on their own, it would be very hard to define what counted as proficient or mastered, what counted as Lesser Mastery or Greater Mastery, and as for the highest level, the Transformation Realm, many people would probably have to spend their whole lives pursuing it.

Chen Yi had added a little difficulty for himself, but it still shocked the two people listening to him.

Whether it was Pang Sen or Tang Qirui, even without personal experience, their understanding of aberrations was no less than that of the Special Action Team.

A mission where every time there might be casualties, or even total annihilation, had become this simple once it reached Chen Yi?

“So, has it been completely eliminated?”

On this point, Chen Yi became serious. What he spoke of was knowledge that only a transmigrator would know. “It can only be said to have been eliminated for the short term.

“As long as human fantasy does not cease, as long as desire continues, even fear can become a miraculous elixir for aberrations to revive. That is why not spreading or discussing aberrations and making incidents fade from attention is an extremely correct way to handle them.”

Pang Sen’s expression turned grave. So an aberration they had painstakingly eliminated still had the possibility of flaring back to life?

Chen Yi said, “Aberrations cannot be eliminated, but they can disappear. When fewer and fewer people remember them, they will cease to exist.

“Conversely, that is what makes an urban legend. Once one is embedded into a nation’s history, or becomes deeply connected to a certain location, that kind of aberration is truly undying and indestructible.”

The file contained the details of the Carousel Murder Incident.

There were four large amusement parks in the provincial capital. Two were brand-name parks that had moved in during the past few years, while the other two were provincial-level amusement parks built years earlier through the province’s investment-attraction efforts.

The investment-attraction amusement parks were also divided into a new one and an old one, located in the west and northwest of the city respectively.

One had been built twenty-six years ago, and the other eleven years ago.

Chen Yi had taken Qianqian and Linlin to the latter at the beginning of this year. It was the new park in the city’s northwest.

The one where the incident happened was the old park in the city’s west, which had been completed twenty-six years ago.

The equipment there was outdated. Some high-risk rides had long since stopped operating and been dismantled, leaving only a few rotating rides meant for small children.

After high-rises gradually went up around it, this old amusement park became more like a park beside a residential district.

The accident happened half a month ago.

A family of three rode the carousel in the park. Aside from the child, both parents died on the carousel in an extremely horrifying scene.

After the incident occurred, the Guard Team investigated first, followed by the Criminal Protection Team. In the end, the case was classified as a special case and handed over to what was still called the Special Action Team at the time, the embryonic form of the Night Watchers organization.

Uncanny incidents had only begun appearing one after another during the last two months, and had only recently been recognized by the relevant agencies.

The Special Action Team was formed by transferring people from various departments. Through repeated contact with aberrations, someone finally “awakened” and perceived the three major principles by which aberrations killed: “time, location, and behavior.”

So far, most aberrations could not leave the place where they had been born. They did not even have clear self-awareness, but they had rules.

Once a human accidentally satisfied all of their “killing rules,” they would enter the aberration’s “aberrant domain.”

Aberrations did not eat people. They were merely hunting energy on instinct.

After countless tests and after using lives to clear the way, the Special Action Team found some of the killing rules for certain aberrations. By artificially creating the conditions to enter an aberrant domain, they could then achieve the goal of eliminating the aberration.

The reason Chen Yi had been targeted by the human-head balloon aberration now seemed to be that the three rules he met were “night,” “Yingchi Hotel,” and “checking out.”

As for the human-head balloon aberration chasing him all the way to Lishui Village, for one thing, Chen Yi was undoubtedly a carrier of spiritual energy.

There was no doubt about this. After all, from the moment he transmigrated into this world, he had possessed an extremely clear understanding of aberrations and spiritual energy.

He belonged to the type of person who could stand in place, do nothing, and still absorb spiritual energy.

In the eyes of an aberration, he was a heavenly-level feast.

The kind that could make it faint from happiness just by smelling him.

In addition, the human-head balloon aberration had another identity. It should be called “urban legend: ghost call.”

As everyone knew, “ghost calls” possessed the ability to kill from a distance. Through phone numbers, curse-killing, signal tracking, or even traveling a thousand li in a single day, they could still kill people.

This was an entry that had been given to this type of uncanny monster at the very beginning of its birth. Explaining it in detail would probably take a long time.

In short, even though the human-head balloon aberration Chen Yi encountered was still far from the level of an “urban legend,” it was evolving in that direction. Naturally, it therefore possessed the ability common to that kind of aberration: the ability to leave its own domain.

Being targeted by that type of aberration was terrifying. There was no way to escape. Death was certain.

Devouring could make it evolve and grow stronger. If Chen Yi had not destroyed it, then fifteen years later, that human-head balloon aberration would definitely have grown into an S-rank disaster-level aberration, powerful enough to destroy a small country.

However, this future urban legend, which would have become extremely terrifying, was mostly wiped out by Chen Yi. The last remaining human-head balloon was then taken by Zhao Gang to verify his own strength and was smashed apart with ease.

Having an inheritance was just that awesome!

Back to the matter at hand.

The Carousel Murder Incident posed almost no threat to Chen Yi. It was only out of respect for the two people before him that Chen Yi read it from beginning to end, while also reminding himself that “careful sailing lasts ten thousand years.” What if he happened to run into a tough opponent?

In truth, an aberration that had already “eaten” people was still very vicious.

He had to be careful, cautious, and even more cautious.

Chen Yi split off part of his attention to glance at his idling system.

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