"Hello?"
"Hello, is this Captain Chen Muye?"
"It's me."
"We encountered a problem while cleaning up the battlefield at No. 2 Middle School."
"What's the problem?"
"When we were recovering the corpse of the Nanda serpent demon, we discovered that its head... was missing."
In the passenger seat of the van, Chen Muye's brows furrowed slightly.
"Gone?"
"Yes, we searched the entire scene but couldn't find its head."
"Are the students hiding?"
"That's unlikely. We've searched them and found nothing... We suspect that someone may have escaped the auditorium with its head before we arrived."
"The [Boundless Airspace] should still be covering the school; he can't escape," Chen Muye said calmly. "Play [Dream Whispers] throughout the entire campus to erase his memory. Without his memory, he'll walk right into our trap."
"Received."
After hanging up the phone, Hongying asked curiously:
"Captain, what happened?"
"The head of the Nanda snake demon is missing; someone probably stole it," Chen Muye said. "But it's not a big problem; we should be able to get it back."
Lin Qiye was taken aback at first, then frowned slightly and looked out the window.
Could it be him...?
...
Thump—!
An Qingyu, who was trying to climb over the wall, was slammed back to the ground by an invisible barrier. He gritted his teeth, got up, put his backpack on, and stared at the nothingness in front of him.
"That invisible barrier is still there. They may have already discovered that the snake demon's head is missing..." he muttered to himself.
His eyes gleamed, and after a moment's thought, he ran straight toward the playground.
Since he couldn't escape, he would hide. He didn't believe the barrier would stay open for long. As long as he hid until they left, he could escape!
An Qingyu sprinted to an open space at the very edge of the playground, turned over a manhole cover in the weeds, and forcefully lifted it open.
Immediately afterwards, a stench wafted out from the sewer!
An Qingyu suppressed the urge to vomit, forced herself to adjust his mindset, and jumped down with his schoolbag on his back to put the manhole cover back in place.
In the dark and damp sewer, the stench invaded An Qingyu's nostrils from all directions, almost suffocating him. He gritted his teeth, clutching his schoolbag, and endured it on his own.
Even in the darkness, his eyes remained as bright as stars.
Suddenly, a melodious tune drifted in from outside, and An Qingyu's pupils contracted sharply.
In a daze, he seemed to hear someone whispering in his ear, and he couldn't help but feel drowsy. In his daze, he was about to fall into a deep sleep...
Just then, a strange power surged from his heart, as if a clear spring had flowed into his brain, washing away all the dreams and whispers without a trace!
An Qingyu suddenly opened her eyes, the turbidity in them had disappeared, replaced by absolute clarity!
A barely perceptible layer of gray had settled over his eyes.
Now, he is clear-headed like never before!
He stared blankly ahead, then looked down at his palms.
In his eyes, his body seemed to have become an extremely precise machine. He could see the process of each part operating and clearly understand the principles of their operation.
He knew exactly how he did it with every blink and every breath; he was like an extremely experienced watchmaker, using a magnifying glass to examine the operation of every part of the clock...
He had never known his body so well before.
Suddenly, he thought of something, and he quickly unzipped his backpack and took out a head.
The head of the Nanda snake demon.
Under those eyes, this mythical creature, which was completely outside the scope of modern scientific research, seemed to be disassembled into gears, mechanisms, and screws...
But he can't see through it yet.
So, An Qingyu pulled a sharp fruit knife from a hidden compartment in her schoolbag.
He was like a surgeon with a scalpel, staring intently at the head before him, and then... plunged the scalpel into its head!
With great difficulty, they cut open its skull...
He was dissecting it; he wanted to see... what was inside the head.
He cut off the head faster and faster, his eyes grew more and more excited, and his body began to tremble with excitement!
In the dark, foul-smelling sewers, a thin boy, knife in hand, smiles as he slowly slices through a grotesque head... His voice echoes in the gloomy environment.
"So that's how it is..."
"So that's how it is!"
"I understand!"
"So that's how it works...interesting..."
"That's really interesting!!"
...
"Where...am I?"
In the dimly lit cell, Li Yifei slowly opened his eyes.
He looked around blankly, and just as he was about to stand up, fragmented memories flooded his mind like a tide.
He cried out in pain and staggered to the ground.
An Qingyu fired his gun, but was stunned by Lin Qiye's attack. The Nandaka snake demon lurking within her body emerged, leading to a fierce battle, before Lin Qiye severed her head...
He stared in astonishment at his hands, his voice beginning to tremble.
"I...I really am the Nanda snake demon...How could this happen...I killed them!"
Before his eyes, the students slaughtered by the snake demon's offspring seemed to reappear; the blood on the ground was etched into his mind like a brand, gradually becoming his nightmare...
"No, no..."
He knelt on the ground, his face contorted, groaning in pain.
The next moment, his eyes suddenly turned into eerie vertical pupils, as if he had become a different person, and he stood up expressionlessly.
"Cowardly piece of trash."
The snake demon Nanda grew scales on one of its arms and suddenly grabbed the fence in front of it, trying to twist it off.
Immediately afterwards, obscure runes emerged from the surface of the cell, and the terrifying repulsive force directly slammed the Nanda snake demon away. It crashed heavily into the wall on the other side of the cell and then fell to the ground.
The Nanda snake demon stared at the fence before it, its tongue flicking, its eyes icy cold.
The moment it touched the fence, fragmented information about the cell flooded its mind.
It didn't know where it was, but it knew... its life or death was in the hands of one person.
That person is the owner of this place.
Just as the Nanda snake demon was deep in thought, steady footsteps came from the other side of the corridor. Its vertical pupils contracted, and it quickly climbed to the railing and looked in that direction.
In the dimly lit corridor, two figures became increasingly clear.
"I never imagined this place was so vast!"
It was a young man wearing a white coat with his hands in his pockets. And the other figure was none other than Lin Xi Chen; she, too, was wearing a white shirt and running her hand along the surrounding wall. The moment the Nanda snake demon saw their faces, his body trembled!
"It was you?!"
Lin Qiye walked up to it expressionlessly and raised his eyebrows.
"Surprised? Unexpected?"