Just two hours ago, this clothing store in the central area had still been one of the busiest, most prosperous places on the entire street.

They had just held a promotion. When the crisis descended, there were still many customers gathered inside the store because of that sale.

And in the end, none of those people managed to escape.

Broken flesh and limbs began at the storefront. The farther inside one went, the more mangled corpses there were.

Blood pooled across the floor. One could still see the bloody handprints those people had left behind as they collapsed to the ground and struggled.

Mottled and chaotic.

Together with the flickering lights overhead, the scene looked like something out of a bloody horror movie.

Wen Yuzhi carefully avoided the pieces of bodies and walked inside.

Whether because he had forgotten, or because he was too tense, his hand was still linked with Xi Heyan’s.

Xi Heyan had noticed.

He felt a little conflicted. He wanted to remind the young man, but when he saw the chaotic scene around them, Xi Heyan felt it was better to keep holding on.

This way, if danger suddenly occurred, he could also pull Wen Yuzhi behind him in time.

Little did he know, Wen Yuzhi was thinking the same thing.

Wen Yuzhi felt that Xi Heyan was the only human among them. In a certain sense, the other party seemed to be the one who needed protection more.

After all, compared to the Saint Clan’s absurdly powerful physique, humans, who could only rely on piloting mechs to fight, were still a little too squishy.

Wen Yuzhi kept him beside him because he wanted to look after this good friend of his.

And so, under the circumstances where both of them felt the other needed protection, the hands they had been holding from the very beginning never let go the entire way.

Neither of them mentioned letting go, either, as if they had forgotten all about it.

The Saint Clan royal guards following beside Wen Yuzhi vaguely felt that something seemed a little off, but the two people holding hands both looked perfectly calm, as if the two of them were only very close friends.

Wen Yuzhi truly did not think there was anything wrong with it. As for Xi Heyan... the more nervous he was, the less expression showed on his face.

The several Saint Clan royal guards looked back and forth, but they could not make anything out. For the moment, they could only set aside the doubts in their hearts, though the gazes they occasionally cast toward Xi Heyan were faintly unfriendly, carrying a kind of parental wariness and scrutiny.

After they entered the clothing store, the smell of blood grew even stronger inside. There was also the creak, creak sound of something being chewed.

Wen Yuzhi and the others followed the fresh drops of blood deeper in.

Suddenly, Wen Yuzhi raised a hand to signal everyone to stop, while he carefully released his mental energy.

A butterfly that seemed completely out of place with the surrounding environment appeared here.

Xi Heyan could not help looking curiously at the butterfly.

Wen Yuzhi lightly scratched the center of his palm with his fingertip.

Wen Yuzhi’s original intention was actually to tell Xi Heyan that when there was time, he would explain these things to him.

But the moment that tingling, numbing sensation traveled from his palm to his brain, what Xi Heyan cared about was no longer that butterfly at all.

Even though he clearly knew the current situation did not allow any slackness, Xi Heyan still lost focus for an instant.

His eyelashes trembled almost imperceptibly.

Yet the young man who had done it seemed not to have taken the matter to heart at all.

Wen Yuzhi’s attention was already on the butterfly now. He did not notice in the slightest that, right beside him, someone’s mind had been thrown into disorder because of him.

The butterfly flew farther inside. That side was the VIP room the clothing store usually used to receive VIP customers.

At this moment, however, large amounts of mucus were spread through the room, and within that mucus were some human-shaped outlines.

The butterfly moved closer to take a look.

Those people no longer had any signs of life.

The mucus had wrapped the corpses up and piled them in the corner. Clearly, that stray beast had turned this place into its nest, and those uneaten bodies were undoubtedly the food it had stored for itself.

Wen Yuzhi also noticed that the closer to the door, the more mucus there was.

As for that stray beast, it was using the mucus to cling to the ceiling. Though it was chewing flesh in its mouth, both of its eyes were staring straight in the direction of the door.

It was waiting for them to come in!

Wen Yuzhi instantly realized what this stray beast intended.

It was hunting them.

It was not prey that could only flee in panic after being chased by them. On the contrary, it had long since carefully laid a trap inside its own nest.

This stray beast was very intelligent. It kept making chewing sounds precisely because it wanted to lure them inside.

Once they chose to follow the sound in here, with the lights inside already destroyed, it would be very difficult for them to notice the mucus on the ground in the dim environment.

Then, when they were trapped by the mucus, the stray beast hiding on the ceiling would launch a surprise attack from overhead.

It was like a spider.

Spiders were also extremely intelligent predators. In nature, when spiders hunted prey, they would use the visual signals of fireflies to lure even more fireflies onto their webs.

The stray beasts appearing here were clearly much smarter than the ones on Blackrock Star.

They possessed intelligence. Not only did they have the awareness to store food, they also knew how to set traps.

If the ones drawn here had not been Wen Yuzhi and the others, if Wen Yuzhi had not been cautious enough to use his mental energy to scout the path in advance, then if it had been anyone else, and their vigilance had been even slightly worse, this stray beast’s scheme might truly have succeeded.

This could be seen from the corner piled full of corpses. Before Wen Yuzhi and the others, quite a few survivors had already fallen for its trick.

Of course, it was not necessarily that they had been unwary. But this was its den, and when one side was deliberately plotting, as long as they entered...

So Wen Yuzhi did not choose to go in.

They had already discovered there was a problem. Wouldn’t running over to someone else’s home ground to fight be stupid?

Wen Yuzhi only used the simplest and most primitive method.

He poured fuel found in a restaurant next door all around the area, then lit it on fire.

In any case, there were no living people left inside, so Wen Yuzhi was not afraid of hurting anyone else.

With the fuel, plus the large number of flammable materials already inside the clothing store, the flames rose almost at once.

Under the scorching heat, the stray beast inside soon could not bear it and ran out.

And the instant it came out, it was killed by the Saint Clan royal guards waiting at the door.

Wen Yuzhi’s sharp eyes spotted something faintly glowing in its head.

He found a hanger on the ground and was about to verify whether there was actually something in the stray beast’s brain.

However, Xi Heyan stopped him.

“I’ll do it.”

As he spoke, he took the hanger from Wen Yuzhi’s hand and, without changing expression, rummaged through the white, slushy brain matter to retrieve something only the size of a grain of rice.

Xi Heyan wrapped the thing in a handkerchief and reluctantly wiped away the filth stuck to it before bringing it to Wen Yuzhi.

After the dirt was removed, Wen Yuzhi finally discovered that it was a chip.

Aside from that, a string of letters and numbers had also been carved into the back of the stray beast’s neck.

“...DT-1582?” Wen Yuzhi read out the characters on it.

It looked like a serial number.

The chip, plus this serial number, immediately made Wen Yuzhi think of those stray beasts on Blackrock Star.

“Looks like the stray beasts appearing here are being controlled by someone too...”

Why say “too”?

Because the stray beasts on Blackrock Star had been artificially created.

“With such a large number of stray beasts, and released specifically in a densely populated place, the person behind the scenes has probably turned the area we’re currently in into a test site for extracting data.”

Xi Heyan had experienced what had happened on Blackrock Star.

He was very familiar with those people’s methods.

It was nothing more than sealing off a selected area, then releasing large numbers of experimental subjects inside. The living people locked inside would then be treated as lab rats for testing the data of those experimental subjects.

What was happening now on Blue Luster Star was a replication of what Blackrock Star had experienced back then.

The difference was that the stray beasts released on Blue Luster Star were stronger and even more difficult to deal with.

And just as Xi Heyan finished saying this, inside a certain building, a group of people in white lab coats were busily working in full swing.

In front of them, the images on screen after screen kept flickering.

On one screen, a woman in a long dress was running down the street in panic. Behind her, a stray beast dripping yellow saliva followed unhurriedly, playing with the prey in front of it like a cat catching a mouse.

On another, several survivors were hiding in a supermarket storage room. They covered their mouths, not daring to make the slightest sound. Yet when the camera angle shifted, a stray beast had somehow climbed onto the ventilation window.

It had already seen the living people inside.

There was almost no suspense left as to what would happen next. That screen was soon covered in blood.

In still other images, survivors chose to fight the stray beasts with their lives on the line. Some were lucky enough to successfully kill them in return, while others were devoured on the spot.

Countless images formed a whole. What they displayed was exactly what was happening at the square and the nearby streets at this very moment.

These people in white lab coats were also constantly recording the information transmitted back from the images.

“DT-2964 is dead.”

“DT-3679 is dead.”

“DT-1582 is dead.”

“......”

Almost every once in a while, news of a stray beast’s death would come in.

However, this number of deaths was only a tiny, insignificant handful compared to the stray beasts still present in the field. It was not enough to affect the progress of the experiment.

Therefore, these white coats merely recorded the list of deaths very calmly. They even joked and complained that the stray beasts they had favored had died so early.

“I thought Number 1582 could survive. After all, it was very smart. It had already started nesting, and it even knew how to use terrain and mucus to set an ambush. It also caught the most food. What a pity...”

“My Number 2964 is a pity too. It was quite good-looking. I remember this experimental subject seemed to be a pretty little girl before. I still remember those eyes of hers even now. What a shame I didn’t preserve them first back then.”

“Then remember next time. Don’t forget again. Anyway, losing one or two parts from these experimental subjects doesn’t matter. If that really won’t work, aren’t there still other experimental subjects? Just find a few at random and transplant them over.”

Not far from these white coats, Se’an and Spider Woman were leaning against the wall, listening to their conversation.

When she heard those people wantonly mocking the experimental subjects, Spider Woman lit a cigarette with a cold face. Her expression was icy. When she looked at those researchers, there was intense killing intent in her eyes.

If she could, she truly wanted to kill all of these people.

Seeing these people, hearing these words, always made her remember those things from the past—

Those humiliating, despairing things.

Some people were not worthy of being called human at all.

Sometimes Spider Woman truly could not understand how human nature could be disgusting to such an extent.

What irritated her even more was that she still had to be responsible for protecting this pack of idiotic, nauseating researchers.

Se’an was still carrying that instrument case on his back. Compared to Spider Woman, whose emotions were fluctuating violently enough that even the suppressor around her neck was giving off beeping warning sounds, he was clearly much calmer.

Everything in this world seemed so filthy to him. The only difference was the degree of filth in each person.

And these researchers were merely another group of rotten meat he had seen, draped in a passable layer of skin while reeking of decay inside.

All of a sudden, Se’an thought of the young man he had seen in the square.

The aura on the other person was the purest he had ever felt.

The instant he saw the other party, Se’an had thought of the piece he had just played.

When that elf composed this piece, the elf had been lying inside a flower bud, pillowed on moonlight filling the sky, smelling only the rich fragrance of flowers and the freshness of trees.

And from that young man, what Se’an felt was precisely such a peaceful and pure aura.

Elves liked beautiful things, and they liked all pure and lovely things even more.

As it happened, Wen Yuzhi fit both of these points.

Perhaps it was precisely because he had seen an existence with such a pure aura that even when Se’an saw this rotten meat again, he was not as irritable as usual.

............

At this moment, in the outside world, inside the Alliance office.

Raymond An looked at the silver-haired sovereign walking toward him, feeling as if one head had become larger than two.

He hurriedly asked, “Why have you come?”

Although Raymond An did not say it outright, the extremely forced smile on his face made it clear that he was only one step away from saying directly to the Saint Clan: What are you people coming here to get involved in?

Mansendis did not speak. The one who replied to Raymond An was Alvin.

Raymond An only saw the Saint Clan adjutant standing behind him give a soft laugh, though that smile carried a chill.

“My apologies. Our King’s mood may not be very good right now. After all, our Saint Clan’s little highness went out to play today and still has not returned.”

As he spoke, Alvin glanced at the merfolk queen sitting on the sofa. He smiled politely at her, then borrowed the words she had just said.

“Our King also has only little highness as his one child. Little highness is still only a cub, and our entire clan regards him as a treasure. I believe you should be able to understand, at this moment, how we feel as guardians who are waiting for a child who has not come home.”

Alvin’s words were light and airy, but they were like a bolt of lightning smashing into the surface of a calm lake.

Everyone who heard these words, including the representatives of various races who had arrived afterward, was shocked until their minds buzzed.

At this very moment, the same doubt appeared in all of their minds at once.

That was—

The King of the Saint Clan actually had a child??!!

This news was simply even more shocking to them than the explosion of the universe. Even Haisena, who had been sitting calmly to the side, froze.

For a while, the vast meeting hall was especially quiet.

Everyone was digesting this explosive piece of news.

Some races had even already begun thinking about what kind of changes the addition of another royal-blood to the Saint Clan would bring to them, and to the interstellar order.

Only Raymond An was still diligently remembering his own duty.

Holding on to the last thread of hope, he asked Alvin, “May I ask where your little highness is...?”

Alvin smiled as he looked at him.

“Precisely inside that energy barrier.”

As expected!

The last thread of hope... snapped with a crack.

Raymond An nearly failed to catch his breath and almost rolled his eyes back and fainted on the spot. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

First there was a merfolk princess, then the Saint Clan’s little highness. In other words, there were now two noble heirs trapped inside!