"You were at the scene of my child's death! " when the huge grey cat hissed and stared at Jason, Jason felt like the hair on the back of his neck all stood up, and the pressure on him just got worse.
"I was…?" Jason tried a bit and then immediately realized: "The cat in the garbage container - the half of cat's head..."
"Be careful where you go! Human!" the huge grey cat's body immediately grew bigger, towering over Jason, and its shiny yellow eyes locking onto him like it was about to strike at him any moment: "And you're about to pay the price for what you did!"
"He didn't do anything! He didn't do anything!" Caroline came to Jason's defence: "He found the body! And a hand! Near the garbage container outside!"
"LIAR!" the huge grey cat let out a tiger-like roar: "What kind of coincidence would it be, for you of all creatures, who happened to possess the power to do harm my children, to find my child's body!? "
"It was something else!" Jason raised his voice: "It was something dark, cold and horrible, not that unlike these shadows around us. If you can pick up my scent from the scene, you must have picked that up too. And I can show you the scent of my power - I bet you can easily tell the difference."
"I'll allow it. Any tricks and you will suffer the consequences."
Jason raised his hand, and conjured up a small ball of silver energy from his palm.
"This power...." the huge grey cat backed off a bit with its eyes narrowed: "You are wizards… No… wizards wield a different kind of power… Who are you?"
"Cultivators, this is our Xuanli, our power." Caroline held onto Jason and helped him not fall down: "But as you can see, we are not your enemies. And we are also looking for the thing that left these shadows behind."
"Tell me what you know." the huge grey cat lightened the pressure on them and asked, "Leave no detail behind. And don't you dare play any tricks. "
"Okay." Jason exhaled in relief and to a look around, Robert, Bethany, Madison and even Lady Manzene all seemed to have passed out on the ground, "We actually don't know much, all we know is that something possessed Dr. Nguyen, a forensic scientist of the SFPD. And then she disappeared. The next time we've heard anything about her was that time I found a human hand in the garbage container, right next to the body of… your child."
The huge grey cat blew its nose, showing its obvious anger.
"We don't know how yet, but this is not the first time I see these shadows." Jason continued: "The day I found the hand, I was following a shadow before I found it. The shadow was kinda similar to these around here. Some of which are already destroyed by your… children."
"You're not the one that cast this crude excuse of a revelation spell." the huge grey cat looked at the people who passed out on the ground: "Who cast it?"
"That���s Lady Manzene, but I doubt she knows what she's doing." Caroline answered.
Just when the huge grey cat was about to ask something, another cat jumped to its back and seemingly whispered something into its ears.
The huge grey cat immediately turned around and ran straight towards the direction behind it, without even considering the wall. In a loud bang, the grey cat busted through the walls and into the parking lot on the side of the set.
Caroline and Jason's eyes met, then they ran outside the set through the hole on the wall right behind the cats. But they left in such a hurry, that they left their backpacks behind on the ground near Lady Manzene's wooden board.
While they were on their way, they both sensed that they were running towards somewhere with more and more intense dark and grim energy.
"I feel like..." Jason said to Caroline while running: "We should call Boss."
"You got your phone?" Caroline searched her pockets and seemed like she couldn't find hers.
"God dammit! I think I left mine in the backpack. " Jason searched his pockets and was not able to find his either.
Just this moment, both of them went into the external perimeter of a still in construction 4-layer parking building. And when they went into this parking building itself, they found that more and more cats were coming into the building as well.
A loud, ear-piercing scream came from the underground layers, and Caroline and Jason both sort of noticed, the scream was definitely not from any of the cats. And when they went to the first underground layer, they saw that two figures were already fighting - it was the huge grey cat and and a human-shaped monster with rotten flesh and exposed bones and surrounded by black smoke. Around them were some pieces of cat bodies, stains of cat blood and a dozen of black shadows in human shape, just like the one Jason extinguished in his parent's house, fighting other cats that were apparently gifted.
One gifted cat with black, white and yellow fur was injured by the black shadow it was fighting and fell down on the ground near a pillar, and when the shadow was about to unleash another attack to finish the cat, a silver energy spear and a fire arrow pierced its chest.
The shadow let out a scream, then its body was consumed by the fiery and silver energy radiating from its chest.
"Here." Jason concentrated, and a rough looking silver axe appeared in his hand, and then he handed the Xuanli axe to Caroline: "Be careful. I think that's Dr. Nguyen."
"Yeah." Caroline tried the silver Xuanli axe a bit and said: "But if anything happens, we should go back and call Boss."