202: Cleaner

The crowd by the bonfire was still shaken and discussing the event animatedly. The villager who had scrambled back was slumped on the ground, being helped up by several people, still trembling uncontrollably and pointing into the darkness, repeating:

“It was really... so big! Pitch black... five or six meters long! It disappeared the moment the chicken cried out...”

Shen Mingyuan parted the crowd and walked forward, squatting down. His tone was as calm as if he were confirming a routine theft: “Tell me slowly, what was stealing the chicken? Did you see it clearly? Roughly how big was it?”

“Five or six meters! No less!” The villager gesticulated, his hand still shaking. “It was... just a mass of shadow, moving incredibly fast! It felt... it didn't feel like a living creature should!”

As soon as he said this, several villagers who had initially been tense started laughing instead. The combination of alcohol and released tension turned into an uproar of laughter.

“Old Four, I think you're genuinely drunk! Five or six meters? That would be like a small truck! If something like that existed, how did you manage to run back?” “Exactly, maybe the thief was wearing a weird raincoat and you, drunkard, ran into him and scared yourself!” “I agree, what kind of monster comes to our village just to steal two chickens? That wouldn't even fill its teeth!”

The villager called Old Four was flushed with anxiety, but he couldn't argue against the crowd's laughter and more “reasonable” speculations. Shen Mingyuan did not join the debate. He stood up, brushed the grass clippings from his clothes, and displayed a perfectly timed, slightly weary smile.

“Alright, alright, false alarm. Whatever it was, it seems to have run off.” He raised his voice and addressed the crowd, “I'm finished eating now. Thank you all for your hospitality. I have work tomorrow, so I need to head back.”

The villagers' attention was immediately diverted. They came forward, asking him to stay, thanking him, and seeing him off, enthusiastically escorting Shen Mingyuan to his car. Old Four was still muttering, but his voice was drowned out.

Shen Mingyuan got into the driver's seat, smiled and waved, and smoothly drove the car out of the bonfire's light and onto the road leading out of the village.

However, the car did not head toward the city. About two or three kilometers later, at a bend far from the village lights and heavily wooded along the roadside, he slowly pulled the car into the shadows beside a fork in the road. The engine was turned off, and silence descended inside the car, broken only by the faint sound of wind in the distance.

Shen Mingyuan quickly retrieved the “twin stars” from the secret compartment in the passenger seat. They felt heavy and cold in his hand.

Next, he raised his right hand and pressed his index finger firmly onto the crimson jewel in the center of the armband on his left wrist.

A subtle sensation of activation followed, and the matte black “shadow” armor was donned in an instant, smooth and silent.

Shen Mingyuan—now the “shadow”—pushed open the door and stepped out. His figure merged into the roadside woods like a true shadow, and he silently and swiftly doubled back along the way he came, moving much faster than the car.

Shen Mingyuan moved quickly along the wasteland outside the village. He avoided areas still illuminated and noisy, tracking precisely toward the direction where the giant creature had disappeared earlier.

Soon, he found the traces.

After switching his visor to thermal vision, even in the cold night wind, several patches of semi-dried mucus on the ground still retained an extremely faint thermal profile, distinct from the surrounding environment, pointing intermittently toward the depths of the wilderness.

He slowed down, steadily advancing along this slightly warm “path.”

The trail ended at a natural rock fissure hidden behind scattered rocks and dry vines. The pitch-black entrance was about two people high, emitting air colder than the outside, with a faint breeze flowing outward, carrying a strong smell of fish and the unique foul odor of a biological nest.

Shen Mingyuan paused briefly at the entrance, then adjusted his perception mode to focus on another aspect.

He closed his eyes slightly and concentrated. The armor's built-in bionic System responded, sending out subtle yet efficient sound waves from his chest area. These waves struck the rocks, ground, and cave walls ahead, returning the feedback information like a tide.

Instantly, a detailed three-dimensional structural map, “drawn” by sound, clearly constructed itself in his mind:

The narrowness of the entrance, the chamber that opened up suddenly after extending about ten meters inward, the scattered gravel on the ground, and the steady, faint echo of running water coming from deeper within.

He slid silently into the cave. Initially, the walls were rough and cold, and the ground beneath his feet was dry sand and stone. As he went deeper, the air quickly became humid, and reflective wet marks began appearing on the rock walls.

After advancing a bit further, a “plop” of water sounded beneath his feet. Cold, muddy water gradually rose past his ankles. The current was slow and flowed toward the depths of the cave.

He continued forward, making extremely gentle steps to avoid splashing water. The sonar's three-dimensional imaging continuously updated the environmental details ahead. The deep part of the cave was wider than expected, resembling an underground shallow pool.

Just then, in the sonar feedback map, a massive, solid outline, distinctly different from the surrounding rocks and water flow, appeared at the deeper end of the pool.

The thing was silently lying prone. Its outline was blunt yet full of power, and its length was estimated to be definitely over five meters.

Its overall shape vaguely retained the streamlined basis of a fish, but its middle section was unusually thick, and its sides featured protrusions resembling strong fleshy fins or structures specialized for support.

Under the delineation of more refined sound waves, its body surface appeared not to be smooth fish skin, but rather covered in rough, uneven plate structures, like armor.

In the shallow water beneath and around its body, the sonar returned feedback showing a large number of dense, oval objects, roughly the size of a fist, piled together and swaying slightly with the water ripples.

A gigantic, morphologically twisted fish that had undergone extreme evolution, along with an astonishing number of eggs.

The scene outlined by the sonar allowed Shen Mingyuan to quickly make an assessment.

The size of this behemoth, the location of its nest, and its demonstrated behavior of preying on domestic fowl all constituted a clear threat.

Leaving it alone was equivalent to planting a biological bomb next to the villagers, one that could detonate at any moment.

Furthermore, the massive number of eggs implied a potential population explosion—something that absolutely could not be allowed near a human settlement.

“Human life is paramount.” This simple principle clearly surfaced in his mind.

He might not need to immediately kill this creature, which had been twisted by pollution and evolution, but subduing it, controlling the situation, and eliminating the dangerous eggs were the minimum requirements that had to be met.

His mind made up, he retracted the sonar, switched his primary perception back to thermal and low-light vision, and simultaneously gripped the twin guns in his hands, keeping them ready to fire at any moment.

He began to advance slowly and steadily toward the shallow pool deep inside the cave. His deliberately heavier footsteps created rhythmic splashes on the water's surface, serving both as a test and a declaration.

His approach was instantly detected. The massive thermal outline in the pool visibly tensed, unfolding from its previous posture of coiling protectively around the eggs.

The water shook violently. The behemoth turned, aiming its head and thick forebody toward Shen Mingyuan. Even underwater, the eye regions on both sides of its head, which had stronger thermal signals, could be seen locking firmly onto the intruder.

The two sides faced off across the water in the dim light. As the distance closed to about ten meters, Shen Mingyuan, utilizing the enhanced vision of his visor, was able to make out more details of the creature:

The thick bone plates covering its head, the compound dental plate structures faintly visible in its mouth, used for grinding... This twisted form still vaguely showed its species prototype—a Scavenger magnified countless times and armed to the teeth.

The giant fish made no sound, merely adjusting its posture slightly. Its heavy body drove the water, creating a vortex around the cluster of eggs.

Shen Mingyuan also stopped, his gun barrels lowered but not relaxed, attempting to judge whether the creature possessed a higher level of intelligence or the possibility of communication.

However, the anticipated ferocious charge or threatening roar did not materialize.

The standoff lasted less than five seconds.

The giant fish's powerful caudal fin suddenly thrashed, not forward, but heavily against the underwater rock behind it. At the same time, it turned sideways, using its broad, plate-covered flank to rush, almost clumsily but extremely quickly, toward a darker water channel on the other side of the cave!

It didn't even glance back at the pile of eggs, fleeing with desperate resolve and haste. The turbulent water it stirred up instantly submerged more than half of the egg cluster.

Shen Mingyuan paused for a moment, then understood.

For this evolved Scavenger, the instinct for survival and reproduction held absolute priority.

Faced with an unknown threat capable of silently infiltrating its nest, the optimal solution derived by its likely uncomplicated brain was crystal clear: children can be produced again, but life is singular. Run!

“Trying to leave?” Shen Mingyuan's eyes narrowed. The danger posed by this behemoth had not decreased due to its attempt to flee. Once it burrowed into the complex underground waterways, tracking or controlling it would become difficult.

He pushed off with both feet. The powerful kinetic energy granted by the armor allowed him to burst through the water's surface and chase after it rapidly.