Chapter 94: Voice
“Anomaly is not referring to a specific kind, but a category of supernatural creatures that humans cannot parse with modern scientific theories. Two years ago, after Mysterious Group Group Leader Wei Chengye first publicly revealed ‘Night of Collapse’, the World Government unified the institutional standards of anomaly event confrontation organizations in various regions to advance human cognition, prevention, and confrontation of anomalies.
For example, taking Mysterious Group as an example, Mysterious Group’s Mystic Investigator rank system is divided from high to low into ‘Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu’. Although Mysterious Group internally still habitually uses their traditional rank titles to address each other, in line with the era’s culture and to facilitate understanding by modern young people, the rank system has been changed to the World Government-set seven-level system ‘S, A, B, C, D, E, F’, where the first five of the seven levels correspond to the original traditional five levels, and ‘E, F’ are set for probationary agents.
And for the degree of harm of anomalies, a rank standard was similarly established. The World Government adopted Mysterious Group’s system in this regard, with anomaly event ranks having four levels, from high to low, named Heavenly grade, Earth-level, Mysterious level, and Yellow grade.
Heavenly anomaly event means the appearance of anomalies dangerous enough to easily destroy a city or more; relatively simply put, it’s the appearance of an Abnormal God entity or incarnation; Earth-level anomaly event indicates the appearance of anomalous power capable of destroying a modern city, most often corresponding to the appearance of an Abnormal God’s higher kin; Mysterious level anomaly event indicates the appearance of anomalous factors affecting a certain city area, which can correspond to the appearance of anomaly groups; while Yellow grade anomaly event indicates the appearance of anomalous factors with small-scale impact, corresponding to the appearance of a small number of anomalies…”
In the mysterious countermeasures studies class at Liuhua Port Comprehensive University, the teacher responsible for this lecture was burly in build with a stern face, exuding a powerful aura of authority without anger. The students present were all obediently listening to his lecture with proper expressions. Although the content of this class wasn’t particularly interesting, every student was listening attentively.
The students were so serious about the class partly because the teacher teaching them was a Yi-rank Mystic Investigator from the local Mysterious Group Branch Organization, equivalent to the current A-rank mysterious investigator. His status was quite high, and hearing a lecture from such an experienced and formidable Mystic Investigator was not just an honor but also a rare stroke of luck. Everyone wanted to seize the opportunity.
On the other hand, it was because the students at Liuhua Port Comprehensive University were all afraid and worried. Whether it was because anomalies were no longer hiding but being publicly revealed, more and more anomalies and phenomena were surfacing, and every anomaly event came with a high death rate where survival rate was almost zero. This naturally made it hard not to worry people, but until disaster struck, it was actually hard for anyone to truly feel nervous. What made the students anxious and panicked was actually the continuous mysterious disappearances of personnel in Liuhua Port in recent months.
A anomaly event that was about to change from Yellow grade to Mysterious level was happening right beside them. There had already been two related disappearance cases within the university, and Mysterious Group’s investigation into this event had been at a standstill, which made it hard not to feel uneasy.
No one knew if they would become Death’s lucky ones, turning into the next person to appear on the anomaly event death list.
If learning this class from a professional could gain even a bit of knowledge for surviving, they… would definitely study hard.
Strong will to survive ignited fierce determination in these lazy college students. Even the slackers in the group were listening intently in class, their eyes shining brightly.
Only when people get serious do they feel time passes so quickly. The two-hour class had a ten-minute break midway, but everyone still felt it ended too soon.
After finishing today’s lesson, Shang Wei, who was responsible for teaching the students today, did not leave immediately. Before the next class started, he still stood at the classroom lectern answering questions for students who came to inquire.
Until the bell for the next class rang, Shang Wei left the classroom under the reluctant gazes of the students and went to the third-floor conference room of Liuhua Port Comprehensive University Business Administration College to meet his leader.
Upon knocking and entering the conference room, the S-rank Mystic Investigator dispatched from Headquarters, Tiger Group’s current Group Leader Yu Lianyun, had not yet finished her conversation with a student.
The first feeling Shang Wei had upon first seeing Yu Lianyun was absurdity. This beautiful woman whose appearance was absolutely no more than thirty years old had actually become the captain of Headquarters Twelve Zodiacs main combat squad at such a young age.
Judging people by appearance was absolutely unacceptable. As someone who had climbed from the grassroots to his current position, Shang Wei had long seen the fates of those who “judged by appearance” in anomaly events. So he specially asked the branch organization’s sub-group leader about Yu Lianyun’s background, only to discover that this excessively young Tiger Group Group Leader had quite an exaggerated resume.
Yu Lianyun had actually only joined the organization two years ago, but she had already passed through three Heavenly anomaly events almost unscathed, had faced head-on at least three Abnormal God incarnations, and her mind and spirit had not collapsed to this day.
Regarding this, Shang Wei couldn’t help but feel respect. He, who had felt despair in an Earth-level anomaly event, simply couldn’t imagine what kind of powerful mind Yu Lianyun had.
“Captain Yu.” Shang Wei greeted, then entered the conference room.
Yu Lianyun glanced sideways slightly, nodded, then continued to gently ask the pale-faced girl in front of her: “Do you still remember what the voice you heard sounded like?”
“I… I don’t remember.” The girl kept her head down, her hands tightly clutching the fabric of her long skirt, her trembling teeth clattering audibly in the quiet conference room.
It turned out that this female student from Liuhua Port Comprehensive University was actually a survivor of the recent mysterious disappearance cases. Yu Lianyun had been dispatched from Headquarters this time precisely for her.
Hearing this, Yu Lianyun coaxed gently: “It’s very safe here, no one can hurt you. You can relax and recall slowly, don’t rush.”
Hearing Yu Lianyun’s gentle voice, the girl’s trembling body relaxed a bit. She kept her head down in silence for a long time before finally emitting a chilling strange sound.
It was an indescribable voice timbre, with no discernible gender or age, just using the deepest and strangest vocal tone to utter syllables no one could repeat. Imitating roughly with human pronunciation, it was probably “Hei”, “Da”, “Huan”, “Ke”.
After the girl finished this sound that was probably a name, she suddenly clutched her throat in pain, collapsed to the ground in agony, coughing up saliva and blood from her mouth uncontrollably.
There is one more update, coming a bit later.
