Chen Ke slid the gun back into its holster and turned to look at the bodies on the ground.
The three bodies were torn and shattered, yet not a drop of blood flowed from them, as if they had none. On one of the bodies, a white light slowly formed.
"Holy Relics?"
Unlike the white sphere formed by the body of the human-faced dog, the light points condensed by these three monsters weren't as large; they were literally just dots of light.
Chen Ke reached out to grasp the light dot in the palm of his hand; then, several visual fragments suddenly flashed before his eyes...
Chen Ke's consciousness seemed to attach itself to another man.
In front of Chen Ke, a 4-year-old boy wearing a tattered blue sweater was held by a middle-aged woman, sitting in a makeshift shelter made of corrugated boxes.
The woman looked worn and haggard, her eyes lifeless, her hands like dry twigs. The child in her arms was very thin, yet still slightly stronger than his mother.
"Daddy, I'm hungry..."
The child was speaking to himself, his voice faint as if he lacked strength.
"Daddy will find some food... You stay here with mommy and keep our sleeping spot..."
The sky was overcast, and Chen Ke saw himself rubbing his hands together, his hands thin and bony.
"I beg you... I beg you..."
Squatting on the street corner, he extended his hands towards the empty street as if pleading with the divine. In Opportunity City, there were no opportunities. After the wave of factory closures, everyone in the Lower District was left to fend for themselves.
...
In front of a bakery, the man stared at the bread in the display window, hesitating for a long time before mustering the courage to go inside.
"Welcome... Sir, please leave."
The female clerk, expecting a customer, instead showed a look of disgust upon seeing him and issued him to leave.
"Give me a... no, half a loaf of bread... My child is very hungry," the man pleaded.
"Please leave, sir... Or I'll have to call the police," the female clerk said.
"Please... Even the expired bread will do... My child hasn't eaten in so long..."
"Hey! You are so annoying!" The female clerk became impatient; at that moment, a tall Black person emerged from the door.
"What's going on?"
"The manager, it's a homeless man."
The Black person took a large piece of bread from the display and handed it to the man.
"Thank you! Thank you so much! I will definitely repay you..." the man took the bread, crying tears of joy, and then ran out of the bakery.
...
The man clutched the bread tightly and kept running towards "home," his heart pounding fiercely.
As he dashed through the alleyways between the buildings, gasping heavily, he suddenly fell to the ground.
Too hungry... He hadn't eaten for many days either, compounded by the intense running...
"I can't... I need to rest a bit..."
His eyes slowly closed, and his hand dropped...
...
"I overslept... I have to go back!"
The man bolted upright, it was already night. He didn't realize that the bread in his hand had already molded.
He suddenly found himself walking briskly, as if he had an endless supply of energy. The feeling was exhilarating.
"I'm not hungry, I'm not hungry!" the man exclaimed with surprise and awe.
He dashed into the street, facing many pedestrians. Their expressions turned ghostly as they saw him.
"Fuck! What is this thing! Oh my God!" a pedestrian screamed in horror and turned to run.
Other pedestrians, attracted by the shout, looked his way. Suddenly, the street erupted into chaos as everyone screamed and ran in different directions.
"What's wrong with these people? Am I too filthy?" the man wondered.
Regardless, he continued sprinting towards "home," dashing past vehicles and newsstands, running swiftly along walls, and leaping over roads effortlessly. He was fast, and his body felt light, as if the whole world was weightless.
"George! Adela! I'm back!"
The man raced back to where he slept rough, where his wife and son were huddled together in a cardboard box.
"George, dad brought you some bread. Rona, you and the son split it."
He joyfully approached his wife and child.
"Don't sleep now, Rona, George, wake up…"
He nudged the two bodies, pulling out moldy, blackened bread and stuffing it into the boy's mouth.
"Eat quickly, eat and you'll survive, eat quickly…"
"Why are you sleeping so deeply…"
"Who exactly are you…"
…
Under the night sky, the man wandered alone in the dark, cold alley, continually asking himself one question.
"Who am I... Who am I...?"
…
A burst of white, glaring light snapped Chen Ke back to reality. Though it lasted only five or six seconds, Chen Ke felt as if a long time had passed, realizing that these monsters were transformed from people who had starved to death...
It seemed that things were not simple, and those mutated Diners couldn't possibly turn into such monsters.
Through the memory flecks, Chen Ke also roughly understood some things. He guessed that the humanoid dogs and skeletal beings were two completely different kinds of monsters, and the Holy Relics could only be obtained from the creatures within the Spirit Explosion Space...
He stood up, and there, a faint red outline stumbled and ran not more than sixty meters away from him; that female Diner hadn't gotten far.
Running over sixty meters in five or six seconds was pretty fast for a woman. Following her might reveal the truth.
Chen Ke tracked her with the help of the Killing Aura Radar. He could move parallel to the female Diner, behind a building, and was almost impossible to lose sight of her.
The female Diner deliberately zigzagged through various alleys, turning seven times and eight bends, glancing back once without noticing Chen Ke, letting her guard down, unaware that Chen Ke was just across one building, standing in line with her.
Although she thought she had shaken off Chen Ke, the female Diner remained cautious. She intentionally took remote routes, avoiding crowds and main roads, eventually arriving at a dilapidated apartment building.
The female Diner observed the surroundings for a while before opening the front door and going inside.
Chen Ke emerged from a small store at the street corner, looked up at the apartment building the female Diner had entered—a large, half-demolished six-story building. The decaying walls were cracked, with a large section on the right side torn down, but for some reason, the demolition had halted.
It seemed this was also a piece of waste land bought by the Spiritual Ability Enterprise.
There seemed to be some kind of understanding between the Enterprise and the Administration Bureau, with the enterprise's actions directly squeezing the development space of other industries. Companies capable of providing many job opportunities were unable to buy land in the Lower District of Opportunity City, causing masses of local residents to be jobless.
More and more abandoned buildings would also provide nests for mutated monsters influenced by Spiritual Energy. The Lower District of Opportunity City would become increasingly uninhabitable, and eventually, the entire Lower District might be filled with black boxes, turning into a hunting ground for investigators.
Perhaps, this was what those with Spiritual Energy capital wanted and what the Administration Bureau tacitly allowed.
The windows on the first and second floors were nailed shut with wooden boards, and the double apartment doors were tightly closed. Chen Ke pushed them; they were locked. It seemed he needed to find another way in.
He circled the building and eventually found a less sturdy boarded-up window on the backside of the apartment building. Using his bloodletting dagger, he pried open the boards, leapt in with one bound, and crawled inside.