Nightmare's Call

Behind the wheel was a man in his thirties with an army cut hairstyle. He wore a gray suit that looked like he had slept in it last night. On the inside was a blue shirt with a washed-out collar. His chin and above his lips were full of uneven stubble as if he had not shaved for days.

The man appeared calm with his hands on the steering wheel as if he was still driving. Lin Sheng would see it as a normal scene if it were elsewhere. A middle-aged man sitting behind the wheel was an everyday scene. But at this moment, Lin Sheng sensed something weird. The engine was off and the car was not moving.

The patrol chief took out his mobile phone and played back the video clip to Lin Sheng and explained, “This man was a member in my team. He was found three hours ago. Because we didn’t found him to be harmful, we didn’t give it a second thought. But we didn’t expect to see him still here after so long. So we suspect that he has some mental problem.”

“It seems so.” Lin Sheng nodded.

“But the problem is, he is not the only one behaving like this. We have found three more similar incidents in other locations,” said Tari.

“But we could still classify them as a mental disorder had we not seen two of them crawling out of a pile of corpses. It happened before the eyes of five of us. They came out and walked as if living persons and showed incomprehensible behaviors.”

Hearing what Tari said, Lin Sheng’s heart skipped a beat.

“Corpses?” Lin Sheng looked at Vers. “The same thing happened on your side?”

Vers had a beautiful mustache. He kept his hair neat with a lot of hair spray. This old gentleman, who still looked good at his age, looked grave on his face.

“It’s the same with me. Other than this one, I have encountered two cases, which I have put them in quarantine. And the problem with these people is that they just won’t die. After we shattered their bodies, they recovered after a while with no signs of injury.”

Lin Sheng was startled. “They won’t die?”

He might believe it had he heard it from the mouth of an ordinary transcendent. After mutation, some powerful Darksiders could develop extraordinary regenerative ability. But it was the Five-Wing chief of patrol he was talking about.

This was not normal. A Five-wing elite could not kill these normal-looking guys? What was more, the two chiefs of patrol had the advantage of holy power the ordinary Five Wingers. They had the Divine Word skill.

“Let’s take a closer look.” Lin Sheng strode closer to the vehicle.

The middle-aged man still maintained his driving position in the car. As Lin Sheng drew closer, the man slowly turned his head around and smiled at him. Lin Sheng slowed down and came before the window. Now their eyes met but neither of them spoke.

Lin Sheng smashed the window with his elbow and grabbed the man by his collar and pulled him closer. “Can you speak?” Lin Sheng asked.

The man still smiled. A hint of chilling and tingling sensation travelled up Lin Sheng’s hand.

“What the heck?” Lin Sheng instinctively let go of the man. As he whisked his hand out, a black gaseous substance was thrown out of his palm onto the ground before it disappeared altogether.

The middle-aged man’s face turned hideous. He lunged out from the broken window trying to grab Lin Sheng with half of his body outside the vehicle.

Lin Sheng snorted and punched the man on his chest with his right hand. His movement was quick like a bolt of lightning.

The punch punctured the man’s chest with a hole the size of a watermelon. As if the man had felt nothing, he was grabbing Lin Sheng with both hands with his mouth wide opened.

The man shrilled, but it was the voice of a woman. The ear-piercing shriek sounded like the scratching on glass surface, it got on the nerves of everyone in the surroundings.

Lin Sheng raised his hand and sent the man a second blow on his head, smashing his skull. As the man died and the shrill stopped, a human-shaped shadow lunged out from his body towards Lin Sheng.

As it approached, it made an even more harsh shriek. It then fled in the other directions.

“Where go!” Lin Sheng reached to grab the shadow. Propelled by his dark energy and holy power, his motion was as quick as lightning, his energy ferocious. In the blink of an eye, he had caught up with the shadow and grabbed it by his neck.

But Lin Sheng got the surprise of his life. It felt like he had grabbed nothing, as if the shadow was just a plume of smoke.

“Again!” Lin Sheng had a brainwave; he summoned his holy power. Holy flame rose from his body. Only when holy power came to a certain level of strength that holy flame occurred. The flame looked like fire, but it was not. It was a physical form of holy power.

With the holy flame in his hand, Lin Sheng reached to grab the shadow one more time. A familiar voice screamed. The white holy flame spread out along Lin Sheng’s arm as if it was a real flame and ignited the shadow.

The holy power burned and consumed the shadow, incinerating it into a pile of white ash on the ground. By then, Lin Sheng had exhausted one fifth of his holy power.

“This thing is tough.” Lin Sheng breathed a sigh of relief, looking at the white ash on the ground in thought.

If he had remembered it correctly, he had seen the such ghostly images in his vast memory bank. This thing was called the Parasite. It was an extremely nasty monster. With no physical form, just a shadow, it could possess a living being by sinking into its shadow. The scariest thing was, the Parasite was immune to physical attacks, even fire and lightning. But it was vulnerable to mental and soul damage.

“If this is a Parasite, then we will have problems.” Lin Sheng frowned. There was only so much the holy power could do. The Parasites had excellent camouflage ability. Once they blended in the crowd, it would be difficult to detect them even when bathed in the Holy Light. The only way to defeat them was attack them from the inside.

Lin Sheng wore a pair of disposable disinfected gloves. Using a collection tool, he picked up the white ash from the ground and seal it as a specimen. He then went to three other locations and checked the possessed corpses.

Every time Lin Sheng killed a Parasite, it wold consumed one fifth of his holy power. This was a terribly large figure.

At the limit of a Six Winger, his holy power had far surpassed any other transcendents. One-fifth of his holy power was more than the holy power of Tari and Vers combined. And this was also the reason the two failed to deal with the Parasite. Not to mention the Parasites were immune to physical attacks.