Chapter 135: Accelerated Deterioration

The willpower and spirit of the special operations team members are undoubtedly extremely exceptional among ordinary people, yet at best they can only reach the upper limit of human capability.

However, even when compared to newly awakened Weird Walkers who have not undergone any willpower training whatsoever, a massive gap still exists in the spiritual strength of the team members.

Right now, ominous signs were appearing on yet another team member.

Qi Chen and Warm Man, who had been planning to split up and take action, were forced to halt their original plan. They approached the team member whose skin color was visibly shifting, both of their expressions turning grave.

"Do you have any unusual feelings?" Warm Man asked with a knitted brow, staring intently at the team member. He noticed that it was not merely a change in skin color; rather, the very texture of his body tissue seemed to be altering.

Skin color was merely a manifestation of this changing texture.

"No, nothing strange..." The team member's face no longer retained its normal complexion, having transformed to resemble cheap plastic toys.

Faced with Warm Man's gaze, a profound sense of anxiety welled up within the team member's heart. The lack of weapons, the alienation of his teammates, and the increasingly obvious changes upon his own body were chipping away at his psychological defenses bit by bit.

If Qi Chen and Warm Man, two Weird Walkers, had not been present to serve as their backbone, the team member's psychological defenses might have collapsed long ago.

"Facial Mask Officer! A group of adults is surrounding us!" The special operations squad leader suddenly drew his tactical dagger, striking a vigilant posture. His eyes trembled as he stared fixedly in the direction of the inflatable playground.

Naturally, everyone present had their attention instantly drawn by his words, casting their gazes toward the interior of the inflatable playground.

In the eyes of all the team members, a dozen or so adults with stiff, eerie smiles on their faces were indeed approaching them.

Yet in the eyes of Qi Chen and Warm Man, those were merely a group of children.

The spiritual distortion of the rule-type anomaly had already manifested in every single team member!

Trapped inside the Minsheng Shopping Mall, everyone was suffering from the erosion of that invisible force every single second... At this moment, the situation had reached an extremely critical juncture.

"Ah!!!"

A team member suddenly let out a desperate cry, hurling the only tactical dagger in his hand forcefully toward the "adults" closing in on them.

His movement was exceptionally swift, and this action was entirely unexpected by both Qi Chen and Warm Man.

By the time the two of them reacted, the glittering blade had pierced with a dull thud into the body of one of the figures.

Black liquid gushed instantly from the wound, causing the targeted figure to merely pause slightly before a spine-chilling smile spread across its face.

"Toys! New toys!"

Childish young voices echoed in the air. These children, who had battered and bruised themselves while playing with one another, burst into loud cheers as if they had suddenly discovered some incredible new plaything. They bolted forward amidst the ocean of spiked balls, sprinting wildly toward Qi Chen and the others!

"Overlord!" "Warm-hearted!"

Two Weirds materialized in a flash, their angry roars bursting forth in unison.

Facing these entities shaped like children, neither Qi Chen nor Warm Man felt a shred of pity.

Both of them knew very well in their hearts that these creatures must never be allowed to get close to them!

Yet just like the pig-headed men in the dining area, these children covered in thorn-balls were able to see the figures of the Weirds, uttering harsh, cackling laughter and displaying agility far surpassing ordinary humans.

Several children were knocked to the ground by Overlord and Warm-hearted, but even more Weird children used all fours, scrambling up the bodies of Overlord and Warm-hearted in the span of a few short breaths just like spiders!

Suddenly, both Qi Chen and Warm Man felt a deeply unnatural sensation welling up in their hearts.

Weird Walkers maintained a high degree of spiritual connection with their Weirds; the spiritual shock suffered by Overlord and Warm-hearted would undoubtedly be fed back into the two men.

Especially for Warm Man, whose spiritual strength was slightly inferior, his vision blurred for a moment, and those children vaguely transformed into the shapes of adults.

"Roar!"

With a rough, savage roar, Overlord erupted with unmatched, peerless strength, shaking everything clinging to its body off to the side.

Then, under Qi Chen's mental command, it reached out with powerful hands and ripped all the children clinging to Warm-hearted completely off.

However, during the brief moments that the Weird Walkers were entangled by these children, the team members who had lost the protection of Qi Chen and the two met with a desperate crisis.

Innocent and carefree smiles beamed across the children's blood-stained red faces, yet their hands reached out like demonic claws stretching from the abyss. Each pair of hands grasping at the team members exerted a force far stronger than that of these robust soldiers.

Plop! Plop!

In the blink of an eye, including the squad leader, all five surviving members of the special operations team were dragged into the playground filled with spiked ocean balls, among whom was undoubtedly Xiao Li, who had almost entirely transformed into a small puppy.

"Help! Save me!"

"Officer, save me!"

The instant the team members were dragged into the inflatable playground, these individuals whose minds had been stretched to their absolute limits could ultimately no longer resist the pressure and terror emanating from the anomaly.

Once the string maintaining their sanity snapped, all that remained was boundless madness and panic.

"Don't go in there!" Warm Man glanced over sharply to see Qi Chen actually charging toward the inflatable playground, seemingly intending to step personally into that ocean composed of spiked balls.

Yet right now, they could clearly see that the team members dragged into it had their bodies covered with spiked balls in just a short span of time. Torrents of blood gushed from the punctured wounds, staining the black ocean balls red and adding an even more sinister vibe.

And the entire ocean of balls now seemed to exude an intense, eerie aura.

Warm Man was still shouting at the top of his lungs, but a resolute gleam flashed in Qi Chen's eyes. In the fleeting clash just moments ago, he had already made up his mind to experience firsthand what the anomaly within the Minsheng Shopping Mall truly was.

Due to his exceptionally powerful spiritual strength, he was by far the only person in the entire team who had not yet been affected by the rule-type anomaly.

Yet precisely because of that, Qi Chen similarly lacked the most direct and intuitive understanding of this rule-type anomaly.

Just then, an inexplicable impulse began to brew within his mind. This sensation, which made him extremely uncomfortable, bore a striking resemblance to the state just before Overlord's awakening when he first encountered a Weird event!

He could only sense that this new wave of impact originated from the immensely mysterious facial mask room deep within his mind.

It was precisely this sudden impulse that seemed to break open a barrier in Qi Chen's train of thought, making him realize a profound truth.

To resolve this immensely tricky rule-type anomaly, aside from slowly figuring out the rules within its framework, there was another path entirely.

And that was to face Him—the conceptual existence within the rule-type anomaly—directly!

"Grab my hand!"

Leaping into the inflatable playground, the thorn-balls instantly pierced Qi Chen's skin, sending a piercing, agonizing pain straight to his heart. Yet, with absolute resolve, he reached his hand out toward the nearest team member.

Now, he wanted to see whether this rule-type anomaly could affect him as it desired.

And then... using the method he excelled at the most, he would communicate with it alongside Overlord.