[Searcher: Barrett]

[Current Cooperation Level: 57%]

[Current Searchable Range: Information, Items, Skills]

[Search Target Confirmed: Skills (Lv.1)]

[Searching...]

[Search Successful!]

[Barrett Stewart (Parasitic Entity)]

[Lv.1 Skills]: Corrupt Vine Life, Corrupt Vine Strength, Corrupt Vine Speed, Corrupt Vine Recovery, Corrupt Vine Digestion, Locked, Locked, Locked.

[Note]: The searcher is affected by a special force, causing skill mutation. The Collector has flagged this with an asterisk warning. Collectors, please take utmost caution: equipping these special skills will subject you to the same effects.

[Note]: Equipping Corrupt Vine will unlock detailed information about Locked.

[Note]: Equipping Corrupt Vine* will increase information progress; otherwise, it is ineffective.

"Why is everything Corrupt Vine?"

"Wait, is this an infected entity?"

When Cheng Ye first saw the panel information, he was puzzled, wondering what kind of old martial system this person practiced, with skill names so uniformly aligned.

Unlike Chu Yunfeng's skill tree, which branched in different directions, Barrett's panel bluntly listed attributes like life, strength, speed, recovery, and digestion, giving off the vibe of a stats-driven monster.

But in the next second, Cheng Ye suddenly realized.

This wasn't some old-school martial artist.

This guy was a bona fide infected entity!

Damn!

What was going on?

The Civilization Collector could search infected entities and even extract their mutated abilities post-infection?

This was practically equivalent to directly gaining transcendent-level special powers!

Unfortunately, before Cheng Ye could get excited, his gaze fell on the note below.

The four bold words "same effects" were like a bucket of ice water, instantly dousing all his enthusiasm.

If the side effects of an infected entity were also extracted equally, why bother using the Collector to search? Why not just let the infected entity parasitize him directly?

"No, this function..."

Cheng Ye raised an eyebrow, suddenly realizing another ingenious use of the search function: as long as the target's cooperation level exceeded 50%, couldn't he determine from the root whether they were infected through a search?

This was a divine skill!

In an instant, Cheng Ye thought of several scenarios where this function could be utilized.

For example, during external missions, if he couldn't confirm whether a teammate was infected, a quick search would do.

Or during inspections, if there was uncertainty about someone, a search could similarly provide answers.

[Please make a selection, Collector. If unable to choose, you may cancel the search. Canceling will not refund charge points and will be considered a failure, but you will gain double action points.]

The Collector panel lit up with a prompt.

Double action points!

Cheng Ye's eyes brightened. He hadn't expected that canceling a search could yield such an additional reward. Without hesitation, he decided, "Cancel search."

Since the note stated that equipping "Corrupt Vine" was necessary to gain some information progress, what was there to hesitate about?

This thing was too troublesome to even consider adding to his skill bar.

"Unless I find a way to completely expel infection sources one day, I absolutely can't touch these skills."

Cheng Ye silently warned himself.

Impulsiveness was a devil. In a life-or-death crisis, without the infected entity's abilities, he might still survive through calm judgment.

But once tainted by such mutated powers, who could guarantee he wouldn't develop a gambler's mentality of "trading life for life" at a critical moment?

At that point, it might seem like an extra path, but it would actually shackle him.

[Search canceled. Action points returned: 4 (Lv.1)]

The panel information flashed briefly before disappearing from Cheng Ye's view.

Although he wasted one search opportunity, he stumbled upon an alternative way to identify infected entities and gained action points.

Cheng Ye didn't feel disappointed. He stepped back a few paces, planning to make up for the loss from another angle.

"Sir..."

Barrett, leaning against the railing awaiting questioning, was confused.

In a daze, he heard a deafening roar, the shockwave causing his eardrums to throb painfully, as if his skull were about to be blown open by the sound.

Skull?

Instinctively, he reached for the painful spot on his forehead, but instead of blood or bone, he felt a viscous, dark green liquid oozing from a hole blasted by a bullet, carrying a nauseating stench of decay.

I...

This...

Is...

Chaotic thoughts exploded in his mind. At that moment, he suddenly realized his perspective had shifted from first-person to a third-person overhead view of his body.

Where his head should have been was nothing but emptiness. From the jagged half of his neck, clusters of green vines surged forth, like boiling asphalt, intertwining in the air to form a distorted human face outline.

I... I'm infected?

The moment he realized this, sealed memories flooded back like a tidal wave.

In the ruins of a city under the setting sun.

A battered Jinbei van sped wildly into a dead-end alley. The door was flung open, and eight people stumbled out, their terrified gazes fixed on the alley's entrance.

In the last rays of the setting sun, a green vine monster over ten meters tall slowly emerged. At the center of its massive form, a distorted human silhouette flickered, like a fly trapped in a spider's web, silently conveying a terror that struck at the core of human hearts!

Everyone fired frantically, the dense gunfire erupting suddenly. Bullets rained on the monster, but they only left black craters on its tough vine surface.

The monster writhed, its python-like branches whipping out, each strike precisely snatching a person from the crowd, tearing them apart in midair, blood and flesh raining down.

Seven people, six, five...

As his companions died horribly, fear overwhelmed Barrett like a tidal wave.

When he was the last one left, under the hollow, despairing gazes of his dead teammates, Barrett's legs gave out, and he collapsed to his knees.

He lacked the courage to pull the trigger in retaliation or to end his own life, only able to kowtow to the monster, his voice trembling as he begged for mercy.

The monster paused for a moment before a branch slithered into his body through his mouth and nose.

Those memories, until this moment, had been tightly sealed in the depths of his consciousness.

He only remembered escaping by chance, unaware that he had long become the monster's puppet.

So, I was already dead?

So, I haven't been human for a long time?

His gaze turned to Cheng Ye, who stood outside the isolation cell, firing relentlessly. The broken face, bound by vines in midair, suddenly twisted into a grim smile.

The scattered vines, as if receiving some command, surged wildly through the gaps in the isolation cell's bars.

The other three people in the same isolation cell as Barrett were terrified, but soon, they noticed green vines emerging from their own skin.

Then memories surfaced. During their days in isolation, they had already been infected by the Corrupt Vine within Barrett, but the painful memories of infection had been selectively sealed!

"Damn, why is this Corrupt Vine so hard to kill?"

The host, shot in the head, seemed completely unaffected as the vine roots continued to function.

Moreover, one infected entity had suddenly become four, with hundreds of vines squeezing through the narrow gaps of the cell bars, trying to break out.

Fortunately, the isolation cell was of excellent quality, and the bars didn't budge, or Cheng Ye would have turned and fled without hesitation.

"Still standing there? Go call for help! Watching a show?"

After emptying a magazine, Cheng Ye reloaded with one hand, noticing Raven and Owl still frozen in place.

Snapped out of their daze by his shout, the two sprang into action.

Raven scrambled to a nearby pillar, practically slamming into it as he pressed the alarm button.

Owl was more decisive, darting to the back of the corridor to grab a device resembling a fire extinguisher.

"Sir, let me handle this!"

With a shout, Owl twisted the valve, rushed forward with the nozzle, and slammed his thumb on the trigger.

Boom!

A tongue of flame, laced with the smell of sulfur, erupted, the orange-red fire licking at the green vines like a living thing. The roots, which had been frantically burrowing through the bar gaps, instantly curled into charred husks, with black droplets sizzling and carbonizing in the flames.

A strange burning sound arose, not the crackling of wood but a mix of brittle bone-cracking and the hissing of expanding gases within the vines, as if countless trapped souls were shrieking in the fire.

"It's not a water gun, it's a flamethrower?"

Cheng Ye stared, dumbfounded.

This operation completely defied expectations. Who in their right mind installs a flamethrower indoors?

"This is... the emergency incinerator for Plan Three."

Owl turned, grinning with a flash of teeth.

But in the moment he turned to explain, a thorn-covered vine suddenly shot through the bar gaps, weaving through the flames like a venomous snake.

By the time Owl noticed, the vine's tip was less than three meters from his chest!

Oh no!

This thing isn't afraid of fire?

"Get back!"

Without time to think, Cheng Ye lunged forward half a step, his leg sweeping out like an iron whip, knocking Owl to the ground.

At the same time, he grabbed the falling flamethrower nozzle, rolled on the ground, and sprang up, his arms exerting force as he slammed the trigger.

Whoosh.

A blazing tongue of fire shot out from the side, licking at the thorn-covered vine like a giant python.

To his surprise, the vine's fire resistance was absurd. It slithered to within two meters of Cheng Ye before its surface finally cracked with sparks, splitting from tip to root into blackened char.

It was pretending? Pretending to be weak to fire?

Cheng Ye's pupils contracted, the hairs on his neck standing on end, deepening his understanding of infected entities.

These damn things were far more terrifying than recorded in books.

And they were indeed evolving in ways humans couldn't predict. No wonder Big B said caution was far more important than knowing the rules for surviving longer.

Click, click, click.

The alarm blared, and over a dozen guards rushed in, the roar of their rifles instantly filling the corridor.

Seeing this, Cheng Ye stopped the flamethrower, its fuel nearly depleted and flame intensity waning, and dragged the petrified Owl back.

The moment the flames died, he glimpsed the vines "hit" by bullets healing at a visible rate, green liquid surging to mend wounds, even forming denser fibrous tissue around bullet holes.

Good grief, what was the deal with this Corrupt Vine? It was learning and evolving through contact, developing immunity to the physical impact of bullets.

But the farce ended here.

Against a sudden outbreak of infected entities, the guards might be slaughtered one-sidedly.

But dealing with an infected entity trapped in an isolation cell was almost too easy.

Cheng Ye turned to leave.

Behind him, continuous explosions echoed, and within a minute, silence returned.

"Reporting to Inspector, the 'Unknown' infected entity has been successfully eliminated!"

"The station has dispatched professional containment personnel, expected to arrive for cleanup in ten minutes."

Raven stepped out, reporting while glancing at Owl, who sat at the warehouse entrance, clearly scared out of his wits.

"Code Unknown?"

Cheng Ye mused silently. Not only was there no record of "Corrupt Vine" in the Survival Library's books on infected entities, but even Happiness City had never encountered this infection source.

Was this a newly evolved infection source, or had it migrated from elsewhere?

"Congratulations, sir. Unknown infection sources always come with hefty contribution point rewards. Based on the attack power of those green vines, you’ll get at least 40 points to start."

"Is that so?"

Cheng Ye nodded slightly.

For inspectors, killing infected entities was the most direct way to earn money, far more than exploiting rule loopholes.

And it was damn thrilling.

Hitting a stationary target like the Corrupt Vine was completely different from shooting a regular target.

Especially when he raised the flamethrower at the end, the adrenaline rush was something Cheng Ye couldn't help but savor, almost intoxicated by it.

"Sir, I'll handle the follow-up."

Raven respectfully withdrew, not questioning how Cheng Ye had determined Barrett was an infected entity with just a few words.

For low-level checkpoint staff like them, they only saw Cheng Ye step up at the critical moment, saving Owl.

Among the 150 inspectors at the station, few would do that.

Treating them as people, not cold tools, was enough to earn their loyalty!