Chapter Sixty: The Trigger Mechanism

The acrid scent of gunpowder and blood permeated the entire corridor. The special operations team swiftly replaced their emptied magazines, their nerves taut as they focused intently ahead.

Qi Chen stood at the forefront, gazing at the floor strewn with faceless corpses, lost in thought. He counted them, realizing their numbers matched the guests the innkeeper had mentioned earlier. These grotesque, inhuman creatures—could they all be the former tenants transformed?

His mind raced with the knowledge imparted by the Department of Strange Affairs: the most pressing task when confronted with the bizarre was to determine the mechanism by which their abilities were triggered. In this situation, he needed to understand how these faceless beings were born.

Suddenly, footsteps echoed behind them. Qi Chen spun and rushed to the team, discovering the sound came from the very room that had just swallowed Xiao Sun. The figure emerging wore the uniform of the special operations team.

"That's Xiao Sun!" someone shouted in surprise.

"That’s not him anymore," the squad leader quickly reassured his teammates, gripping his weapon tightly and looking to Qi Chen—the highest-ranking officer present.

In an instant, the Overlord appeared before Xiao Sun, who now lacked a face, and delivered a crushing blow to his newly split visage. Scarlet sprayed across the corridor walls.

"Forgive me..." Qi Chen murmured, his eyes resolute. He didn’t know whether those transformed into faceless ones could be restored, but he had to consider the safety of the remaining team.

"We keep moving downstairs. I’ll lead," Qi Chen said, addressing the now silent corridor and his teammates.

The elite squad, trained to obey without hesitation, maintained their formation and followed Qi Chen down the hall.

They passed several rooms, when Qi Chen suddenly sensed an icy, unnatural presence behind him. Before he could turn, the Overlord was already charging back.

A scream, raw and inhuman, tore from a team member’s throat. He was caught in the same fate as Xiao Sun—a door swung open, unleashing a powerful force that began to drag him inside.

Yet another invisible force pulled him the opposite way, and caught between two supernatural powers, he cried out in agony.

"Charge in!" Qi Chen commanded the Overlord mentally, who tugged at the suspended team member while Qi Chen himself darted into the room emitting the pull.

Strangely, he felt no force dragging him. As soon as he stepped inside, the team member dropped from midair, freed from the room’s grip.

"If you enter before the target is dragged in, you can break the pull?" Qi Chen immediately grasped this crucial fact, but remained cautious, thoroughly searching the room. Everything appeared ordinary.

Still not enough information...

"You four, surround me—we continue forward," Qi Chen ordered.

His command was executed without hesitation. The four team members formed a protective square around him, advancing toward the stairs at a measured pace.

He wanted to see if the phenomenon would repeat.

Indeed, the same events unfolded repeatedly: each of the four encountered rooms that tried to draw them in. Yet each time, with Qi Chen and the Overlord’s assistance, they averted the fate of becoming faceless.

When they finally reached the stairwell, everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Qi Chen noticed the way his team looked at him had changed—a sincerity he rarely encountered, honest and wordless.

"Officer Mask... Without you, we’d all have been lost here today. Thank you," the squad leader voiced what everyone felt.

They were elite, true, but who would complain about surviving longer?

Their gratitude was genuine. They’d worked with other teams handling strange incidents before, but those “strange walkers” always had odd personalities—though all were committed to the ideals of City Three, unlike those madmen beyond the city walls.

Yet only Qi Chen treated them as equals, as if he himself were just another ordinary man.

"Save your thanks for later. Let’s head down," Qi Chen replied with a reassuring smile, cautiously taking the first step.

Fortunately, nothing unusual occurred on the stairs. The group reached the first-floor lobby smoothly.

But when they found the lobby completely deserted, their hearts clenched.

"There are corpses in the corridor," the squad leader reported. The pungent scent of blood was strong here, too—the source being five bodies clad in special operations uniforms.

The team stationed on the first floor had already fallen.

"Warm Guy! Where are you?" Qi Chen shouted down the corridor. He refused to believe Warm Guy could have succumbed—the faceless corpses surely were his handiwork.

The shout echoed down the hall, and from the deepest room, a familiar figure emerged.

Qi Chen broke into a smile upon seeing the animated face.

"I give up. I was about to head upstairs to find you, but got blocked by a humanoid anomaly at the stairwell, then all these faceless creatures... Had to lure the anomaly to the back to finish it off," Warm Guy grumbled, then grew more serious as he looked at Qi Chen.

"You’re awfully careless. What if I was an anomaly in disguise?"

Qi Chen said nothing, but the gray-white Overlord appeared silently at his side.

"Relax. If you were fake, the Overlord would have torn you apart already."

Warm Guy smirked, glancing at the team behind Qi Chen. "You did well—only lost one."

Qi Chen didn’t respond to that, instead asking, "Did you figure out the anomaly’s trigger mechanism in this inn?"

He recounted the events on the second floor; Warm Guy combined them with his own experience. Together, they analyzed how the anomaly’s powers were activated.

"I noticed a pattern," Qi Chen’s eyes brightened. "The second-floor team who became faceless, and those on the first floor—did they all enter those rooms during the daytime search?"

The squad leader confirmed it, pointing out that each person’s assigned rooms matched the sequence of daytime searches.

"So this is the trigger mechanism.

"Anyone who entered a room during the day, when passing by at night, would be dragged inside and transformed into a faceless one..."

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