“Wow!”

“It’s huge! How did this bug grow so big?”

“Amazing, how does such a large bug get oxygen? Wait, is this a bug? I think its exoskeleton is kind of woody.”

When the wood centipede, its spiritual nexus shattered by a chivalrous young man and its entire body locked down with Zheng Yi Professor Zhang Fucheng’s secret Seven-Star Nail ritual, was delivered to the First Affiliated Hospital of Hongcheng Academy, it was met with a cruel and inhumane spectacle.

“It’s a rare living specimen! Good heavens, we’ve finally got our hands on a living one!”

“To be precise, it’s not quite dead yet… Never mind, not quite dead is still not dead.”

Except for the physician who was invited to participate in this extraordinary creature research for the first time, most of the middle-aged and elderly professors who had dissected some lower-level extraordinary creatures before were not surprised. They even joked, even though this giant, strange centipede far exceeded any creature they had previously dissected.

“Shiyu, what do you think about this kind of creature?”

A white-haired female professor stood on the high platform on both sides of the sterile chamber. She looked at the huge monster in front of her with a smile, then turned her head to look at Ning Shiyu, who was frowning slightly, seemingly thinking about something, and said in a low voice, “It’s okay, just say it, make bold assumptions, and verify them carefully.”

“…It feels a bit like the monsters in myths and legends.”

Ning Shiyu’s personality was quite straightforward and decisive, otherwise she wouldn’t have raised a son like Su Zhou. She glanced at the wood centipede being soaked in ice water in the central groove of the super-large sterile chamber and said softly, “I’m not an entomology major, but I can tell that this thing shouldn’t be a normal creature… How should I put it, Professor Li, I think this is a kind of strange plant wearing the skin of a bug.”

This was also the view of most of the doctors present.

“That’s right, this is indeed a demon, and it is also the object of our dissection later.”

Professor Li, who seemed to have received the news in advance, smiled slightly. Her face was full of wrinkles, but it was also obvious that she had the excitement of a researcher: “Later, other professors of entomology and botany from Hongzhou and even all over the country will fly in to study this rare research material together.”

“[Extraordinary Biology] is a research direction that the national medical system will focus on in the future.”

“Professor Li, this… thank you so much!” At this time, Ning Shiyu finally understood the meaning of the other party bringing her to join this research, and couldn’t help being moved. This was equivalent to taking her out of the original ‘general surgery system’ and directly entering a promising new system as a pioneer!

“No need to say thank you, it is what we old folks should do to support the younger generation.”

Waving her hand gently, the old Professor Li squinted her eyes and stared at the wood centipede whose limbs were still twitching from time to time. She said lightly, “What’s more, wouldn’t hiding our skills and delaying progress at this time harm ourselves? Look at this amazing vitality, if it can be used by humans… this is enough power to drive countless people around the world crazy!”

“Spiritual energy is reviving… hey, there are too many things reviving.”

Dissection is not just a matter of choosing a place and making a cut, even amputation is not done this way. If you want to ensure the integrity of all parts while conducting research tissue dissociation, you need to scan and understand the structure of this huge monster first, and then plan the dissection plan, striving to be like a master chef dissecting an ox, separating the various layers of tissues, organs, and special structures of the giant centipede bit by bit.

Only in this way can we clearly understand what kind of physiological structure the so-called ‘demon’ has and figure out what kind of creature it is.

“So demons really exist…”

But at this moment, professional physician Ning Shiyu was not completely immersed in the shock of witnessing the birth of a new system. She just sighed softly in her heart, “I wonder how happy… or scared… my silly son at home will be when he finds out?”

——Haha, no way, there’s no way he’d be scared.

At the same time, in a police car not far from the hospital, Zhang Fucheng, who had spent a lot of effort to maintain the corpse of the wood centipede in a ‘dying but not dead’ state with a secret method, was now closing his eyes and contemplating, recalling the analysis of the detectives and patrol officers in the police department.

“According to the information on their bodies, the five corpses found in the sewer correspond to the five missing persons on the missing list for the last three months. They should have been located in the black moss sacs, but were taken out by an ‘unknown extraordinary person’… And after the unknown extraordinary person placed the corpses, he or she engaged in a battle with the wood centipede.”

This was the result of the analysis by a patrol officer surnamed Su. After carefully studying the list of all missing persons in Hongcheng in the past three months, he put forward a bold guess: “Professor, the earliest victim in the 719 major serial murder case committed by the wood centipede appeared on June 11, which is also one of the missing persons.”

“But after testing, we found that one of the victims originally identified as a victim of this case, that is, the male victim who appeared on the ‘edge of Fuhe North Road’ and died due to the loss of his head, does not seem to have been killed by the wood centipede—all the victims killed by the wood centipede are missing their liver and gallbladder, while the body of this victim is intact except for the missing head.”

In that case, the conclusion is obvious.

——The murderer is someone else.

Originally, Patrol Officer Su just wanted to try to see if Zhang Fucheng could use magic to trace the identity of the murderer, at least find some clues, and Professor Zhang himself didn’t mind doing so—they were all brother units under the official banner of Zheng Guo, there was no need to be so rigid, not to mention that the academy originally wanted him to demonstrate his magic and gradually publicize the relevant extraordinary information.

But strangely, the tracing failed again.

“Alas, my talisman magic has been recognized by the Celestial Master… I am really the best senior brother in this generation!”

To be honest, Zhang Fucheng, who was frowning, didn’t really want to recall the awkward feeling he had at the time, but failure also has its meaning. At least, he knew that in addition to the wood centipede, there were other powerful demons lurking in Hongcheng.

In addition to continuing to hunt down this new demon, there was also the ‘unnamed extraordinary person’ to be found. In particular, the senior management of Zheng Yi Academy issued a special instruction, and several professors believed that it might be a part of the inheritance lost by the academy in the past, and was obtained by a lucky person.

This guess is very reasonable, after all, if ordinary people do not have inheritance, the means to advance from scratch to extraordinary are too dangerous and primitive, and their combat power is not high. Since the ‘unnamed extraordinary person’ can kill the wood centipede, then he must have inherited secret methods.

——New evil, unknown extraordinary people, doubts about his own magic.

Several things piled up in Professor Zhang’s heart, causing him to sigh in the police car.

“Suppressing demons and evil is a long and arduous task…”

And Su Zhou, who had just finished cooking another pot of centipede egg soup, did not know the thoughts of his parents and a certain Daoist.

He took a sip of the soup and, after confirming that the heat was sufficient, he turned off the heat with satisfaction and took out four large thermal pots.

“Alas, in order to avoid being seen that this thing is a centipede egg, I specially chopped the eggs and added Chinese yam and pork ribs… Although the medicinal properties will not be reduced, the taste is not so pure, it’s just purely delicious.”

Dividing the soup into four portions, leaving two portions for his parents, and preparing to bring two portions to Shao Qiming’s family, Su Zhou muttered to himself with some regret: “My cooking skills are still not proficient.”

“No, the fact that you can cook so well is surprising enough to me.”

Yala, who had already woken up, was looking at Su Zhou skillfully putting on an apron, cleaning the kitchen, washing dishes and bowls, and felt like she was watching a Tyrannosaurus rex sing a lullaby, and a great sense of incongruity appeared in her heart: “You must have had a hard time living alone for so many years… you have actually honed so many extra life skills.”

“What nonsense are you talking about.” Su Zhou turned his head to look at the snake spirit with a puzzled look on his face. He complained, “Of course it was hard——if your parents only come home one day every ten and a half months, and the most normal thing is to come home at nine o’clock in the middle of the night, how can you not learn to cook and clean?”

“Alright, it’s almost time to go.”

After tidying up everything in the house, Su Zhou left two pots of soup on the table and left a note, and also left a message on WeChat for his parents, telling them to remember to come back and get the soup. He picked up his phone again and started dialing.

“My friend, are you ready?”

While speaking, Su Zhou put on all the prepared materials, and then hummed a little tune and went out: “I am completely ready!”

“I’ve been ready for a long time.”

On the other end of the phone, Shao Qiming’s voice carried a gentle smile: “We can start at any time.”

July 28, 2014, 4:15 PM.

The fifth day since Su Zhou encountered the mysterious organization and made a contract with Yala.

His perfect advancement ceremony is about to begin!