Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Tianfu City, Star City Garden, Building Thirteen.

This residential building has a total of twenty-six floors, counting the rooftop terrace, that makes twenty-seven. The two girls tightly clenched their weapons, watching the numbers on the elevator display jump upward.

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty...

Just as the number was about to jump to twenty-one, the elevator car suddenly shook violently and came to a halt.

Immediately after, the lights and the display screen went out simultaneously.

"The elevator has stopped!" Yang Lian immediately took out her phone, the light from the screen casting a pale glow on their faces.

"It's probably the building's power lines that have been cut." Ye Xuan whispered, "Don't panic, the elevator has an emergency power supply. It will restart within a dozen seconds after detecting the power outage failure and take us to the nearest floor, then we can take the emergency stairs up."

"Okay." Yang Lian nodded.

But at this moment, a rustling sound came from underneath the car, as if something was quickly climbing up the cables.

The two held their breath instantly.

Yang Lian glanced at Ye Xuan and asked in a whisper, "What should we do?"

Ye Xuan placed her finger on her lips, signaling "silence," then took a step back, pressing against the wall of the car, motioning for Yang Lian to do the same.

Yang Lian stepped back into the corner of the car, where blood was already half congealed. The next second, a sharp spike pierced through the bottom of the car.

Yang Lian's body instantly tensed, her thumb lightly flicking the safety off her gun.

But the spike quickly retracted, leaving only a fist-sized, pitch-black hole.

"Don't move, that thing is still underneath." Ye Xuan mouthed to Yang Lian.

"I know." Yang Lian mouthed back.

"Pshh."

The spike once again punctured a hole in the floor of the car. The car, welded with alloy plates, seemed as fragile as paper against the spike.

This time, the puncture point was less than five centimeters from the big toe of Yang Lian's right foot. She instinctively wanted to take a deep breath, but immediately bit her lip hard, afraid that the entity beneath the car would hear her breathing.

Her ten toes curled tightly against the ground, one hand covering her mouth and nose, the other pressing down on her chest. The cold sweat from her back had drenched her nightgown, and even the lining of her down jacket clung to her back.

"Pshh."

The entity seemed unable to determine their positions, randomly stabbing around like a lottery. Soon, there were more than a dozen holes at the bottom of the car, and the half-corpse inside was pierced to a pulp.

Yang Lian and Ye Xuan both stood on tiptoe, resting their weight against the car wall to minimize the chances of being struck by the spike.

Finally, with a soft "ding," the darkness in the car was once again illuminated as the motor resumed work and the cables started pulling the car upward again.

"Once we level out, I'll count to three, two, one, and we'll rush out immediately, don't hesitate." Ye Xuan said to Yang Lian with mouthed words.

Yang Lian nodded slightly, her forehead drenched with sweat.

The number on the display jumped to "twenty-one," the safety warning light turned on, and the elevator doors slowly opened to the sides.

"Three, two, one!"

The two girls leapt out of the elevator simultaneously—fortunately, both had slim builds; if it had been two stout men, they might have collided by now.

At the instant they fell to the ground, with a teeth-grinding noise, the floor of the car, almost riddled with holes, was torn apart, and a head emerged from the crack.

It was a woman's head—or rather, a head barely retaining some female characteristics... Its appearance was extremely bizarre, with cheeks so swollen as if stung by a swarm of wasps, distorting the features. Disheveled, filthy hair hung behind, matted with blood and dust.

"What kind of entity is this?!" Yang Lian shot her gun but perhaps due to nerves, and maybe because of her lack of firearm experience, she missed three times at such a close range, hitting only the car's inner wall, spark-flying, but causing no substantial harm to the entity.

"I don't know, never seen one before!" Ye Xuan replied, firing a burst from her PDW into the car. Growing up within the military, her marksmanship was far superior to Yang Lian's. This volley mostly hit the protruding head, which now appeared a bloody mess.

"Run!" Ye Xuan discarded the empty magazine and ran toward the fire stairs without a backward glance.

She saw clearly that neither regular bullets nor the 'Li Fire' rounds developed by Dubhe Tower could penetrate the head—the bullets were encased in a mass of rapidly proliferating flesh upon impact... It seemed battered, but those changes were entirely the entity's self-defense mechanism.