Cave Refuge

When they learned that Mason Hart's entire family had died and had been devoured by that type of monster into human skins, the faces of everyone present became extremely awkward.

And when they were informed that Mason Hart had been determined to die and had developed the idea to perish together with those monsters, sympathy for Mason Hart appeared on their faces.

But as soon as they learned, through Zachary's observations, that monsters had exited from the nine households and entered Mason Hart's villa, everyone's complexions immediately turned pale.

They knew that there were only twenty or thirty households in the entire villa area. Including Mason Hart's family, the proportion of monsters in this community had already exceeded one-third. This meant that monsters had been lurking around them all along and, perhaps with more time, it could even be said that they were living among those monsters.

"Zachary, are you sure that the monsters that left those nine households didn't leave Mason Hart's villa during the explosion?" Even with a close relationship with Mason Hart, what Master Ye cared most about at this moment was whether any of the monsters that entered Mason Hart's villa had left before the explosion, whether they all perished together with Mason Hart.

The question Master Ye asked was also the one everyone in the courtyard was most concerned about. Seeing how concerned the others were, Zachary didn't tease them with suspense and directly said, "Those monsters didn't leave the villa before the explosion. If there were no accidents, those monsters would have been obliterated along with the villa."

It was only after receiving Zachary's affirmative reply that the tension in the faces of the people in the courtyard gradually relaxed. However, with a comment from Master Ye's daughter-in-law, the faces that had just relaxed immediately tensed up again.

"Do you think there are... other monsters in the villa area besides those few monster households?"

It took a while before Robinson William's wife realized that her unconscious inquiry had once again tightened the already somewhat eased atmosphere.

Just as she was about to say something to ease the atmosphere, she heard Zachary speak from the side, "The monsters in the villa area should have all been taken away by Mason Hart, alongside his villa, turned to ash."

The reason Zachary spoke with such certainty was that the bomb's detonation had led other survivors living in the villa area to emerge. At this point, it was actually quite easy to discern those monsters on a per-household basis.

Firstly, if it was confirmed that there were more than two survivors in each household and none of these survivors had their eyes closed for extended periods or had an eye condition that required covering their eyes, then it was highly likely that there were no monsters in those households.

Of course, this was only a preliminary method of judgment. Zachary used a far more accurate method, which was to employ Divine Sense to examine the throats of each survivor in the villa area.

Having had the experience of coming into close contact and using Divine Sense to check those monsters twice before, Zachary had become capable of precisely determining whether a target was a person or one of those monsters with a human appearance through the Divine Sense scanning of the target's throat.

Although he had the experience of two detailed close-up checks and had even captured a live sample by this time, no matter how Zachary used the Divine Sense to scan and check, aside from discovering a clear difference in the throats of the monsters compared to humans, all other parts were virtually the same as normal humans.

Actually, if those monsters were just a subhuman species or a species very similar to humans, Zachary wouldn't be too concerned, but the fact that those monsters' appearances were carved from the same mold as their loved ones, controlled by their Illusion Technique, caught Zachary's attention.

From the human skins left on Mason Hart's bedroom bed, it was evident that those monsters were different from the ghosts in supernatural tales that wore human skins. If one disregarded the abnormality in their throats, those monsters were, in their appearance and bodily structure, completely human.

But as Zachary had said, if there were only one or two monsters bearing some resemblance to the humans they devoured, it would still be understandable. However, as Zachary went through the villas the monsters had vacated, he found human skins in the villas that were very similar to the appearance of those monsters.

One or two could be considered coincidental, but the fact that monsters of similar appearance were emerging from every household directly piqued Zachary's curiosity.

What most intrigued Zachary was, when those monsters had not absorbed a human and transformed into human shape, what their original form would look like. Could it be like the aliens in movies and TV shows, where the original form is just a worm, which enters a human body, devours human flesh, and uses the human body as a cocoon to incubate until it matures and emerges?

However, apart from a small hole in the forehead, the intact state of the bodies in the rooms suggested that their growth process was clearly different from the aliens depicted in movies and TV shows.

Therefore, Zachary spent some time using his Divine Sense to meticulously scan every area of the villa district, seeking the juvenile form of those monsters. He wanted to confirm whether the monsters were brought by the Natural Disaster in such large numbers or if they proliferated to increase their population.

After a thorough search by Zachary that turned up no lifeforms resembling the young of the monsters in the villa district, a bold idea suddenly struck him.

Could the sunglasses worn by the controlled survivors be the juveniles of those humanoid monsters?

After this idea sprang to mind, Zachary could hardly resist the desire to attempt an experiment, a very simple method in theory. However, to verify the accuracy of Zachary's hypothesis, it was necessary to find either a test subject or a volunteer.

The reason Zachary came up with such a heretical idea was primarily due to his association with the ultimate fate of the survivors controlled and wearing sunglasses.

What could now be confirmed was that the feeding method of those humanoid monsters involved extending an appendage similar to a spider leg from their mouths and inserting it directly into the human forehead.

Perhaps they also possessed a toxin similar to that of spiders, one capable of dissolving flesh and bones into a liquid state. Injecting this toxin would liquefy the prey's flesh and bones, allowing the monsters to consume their victims until only the skin remained.

If humans were their food, then why would they go through the trouble of using Illusion Technique to control a human for a long time? Moreover, they all controlled just one human in an identical manner, and importantly, they would take that controlled human with them when they went out.

Perhaps some would say that they carried a controlled human with them because their true forms lacked combat strength, using the human as muscle.

But Zachary felt that those controlled humans were actually incubators for hatching their young, and the sunglasses on their faces were likely the monster's larvae.

Based on Zachary's unreliable conjecture, when the controlled humans who had been under the Illusion Technique for a long time had their sunglasses gradually merge into their eyes, it would mean the successful incubation of the monster's larvae.

As for whether the reality matched Zachary's guess, that would have to wait until Zachary captured a controller and conducted a thorough observational experiment to draw a concrete conclusion.

Although the people in the courtyard had received Zachary's affirmative response, their hearts were still filled with unease. Just as the atmosphere in the courtyard was growing heavy, groups of people returned, walking back from the direction of the explosion.

When they reached the outside of the courtyard and saw the figures of Mr. Thompson and Old Taylor inside, they immediately spoke up, "Old Five (Mr. Thompson's nickname), so it turns out you were at Old Taylor's house. No wonder when we passed by your place earlier, we called out for a long while, and no one responded."