Several kilometers away, Lu Yide collapsed to the ground, clutching his chest in agony. He saw that holy light, but he himself was drowning in despair. The Alien parasitizing his body had already begun to stir. He could clearly feel the thing making his heart twitch, sucking away his life and courage.
"No, I don't want to die, I don't want to die like this!" He'd already been rescued, so why did he still have to die? Why did he still have to get chest-bursted by an Alien? Lu Yide howled in agony: "Somebody help me! Can anyone—"
"Shut up!" he heard someone snap. In a daze, he looked up and saw a figure in front of him. Stunned, he muttered, "Are you... Jill Young?"
"Cut the crap! If you want to live, get over here!" The person yanked Lu Yide up and dragged him off, running for the distance.
Hearing the words "want to live," Lu Yide snapped back to his senses, realizing the newcomer couldn't possibly be Jill Young—just someone who looked a lot like her. It was actually Susan Morrow. But right now, Susan was decked out in a full rubber raincoat, sleeves tied off with string, looking every bit like a ninja out on a mission.
"What's with the outfit...?"
"Acid-proof, plus it masks your scent." Susan dashed forward, Lu Yide stumbling after her, and noticed more and more Facehuggers scurrying around. The Facehuggers, like sharks smelling blood, all crawled toward one spot, completely ignoring Susan. As for Lu Yide, being an 'expectant host,' wouldn't attract their attacks either. Nervous as he was, Lu Yide couldn't help but wonder what the Facehuggers were up to.
Three hundred meters later, he finally figured it out. There was a big pit in the ground, with a giant iron box inside. The box had an opening, and the Facehuggers were piling in like customers rushing into a brothel. Off in the distance, John Yang watched quietly, a rather dejected hamster perched on his shoulder.
"Alright, cheer up. I'll get you a big cup of that purified extract later." Turns out, John Yang had used Hammy's purified extract as bait to lure the Facehuggers.
"Old John!" Susan Morrow ran over with Lu Yide, excited. "Just like you said, the raincoat totally worked!"
John Yang nodded as if he'd expected this all along, smiling faintly. "These bugs have simple bodies and no eyes at all, so their main way of sensing the world is probably hearing and smell. If we block out all our scent, we cut off most of their senses. Alright, looks like that's all of them." With no more Facehuggers crawling over, John Yang walked up to the big iron box, which was now rattling and noisy inside.
He deftly closed the lid and screwed it tight, then hauled a barrel of gasoline from a nearby car and poured it into the pit. Lighting a match, John Yang looked down at the iron box with a cool, heroic air and said, "Go to hell, all of you." He flicked the match down in style—only for it to go out midair and land in the pit without so much as a fizzle.
For a moment, everything went quiet.
"Sigh..." John Yang let out an embarrassed sigh, then squatted down like a total amateur, carefully shielding a new match to finally light the gasoline.
With a whoosh, flames roared up, engulfing the entire iron box. "When alkali gets hot, its corrosiveness goes way up. There's enough alkali powder in there to send you all to the afterlife." As John Yang muttered, wild noises erupted from the box, then quickly began to fade.
Right then, Lu Yide's face twisted in pain as he clutched his chest, screaming and collapsing to the ground. "Quick! It's coming out!" Tears welled up in Lu Yide's eyes. "Please, save me, get me to a hospital, get this thing out of me!"
"There's no way you'll make it to a hospital in time." Lu Yide's chest was visibly bulging and twitching, a terrifying sight. Susan Morrow, however, stayed calm. She grabbed a case from the car, opened it, and revealed a set of medical knives, scissors, forceps, and even a saw. Twirling a scalpel with a wicked grin, she said, "But if it's about getting something small out of someone's body—I'm an expert."
"Huh?" Lu Yide didn't get her meaning, but John Yang was already grabbing a baseball bat and—wham!—knocked him out. John Yang shrugged: "This is just a quicker way to anesthetize him."
"Alright, here we go!" Susan Morrow's eyes flashed with a sharp glint, her hands moving in a blur as she cut open Lu Yide's chest. Blood spurted everywhere—no IV, no support, no sterile environment, but Susan worked with ruthless precision, slicing flesh and sawing bone. There was no time for proper medical standards; she grabbed the saw and went to work on Lu Yide's sternum, sawing with gusto, not holding back at all.
With a crack, the sternum split open. Susan grabbed the ends of the ribs and tore them apart—crunch! Lu Yide's whole body convulsed, and John Yang quickly gave him another whack to keep him "anesthetized."
Susan Morrow reached in and rummaged around, then yanked out a small creature—it was a nearly mature Alien. The thing squirmed desperately and let out sharp, weak cries. If Susan hadn't acted so quickly, this little monster would've turned Lu Yide's chest into mush and burst out within minutes.
Aliens—nightmare creatures, any one of them enough to spark mass panic. But this unlucky one had landed in Susan Morrow's hands. She stared at it blankly, then suddenly grabbed its head and, with a quick twist, snapped its neck like a lab mouse.
She tossed the bloody Alien larva into the air, and John Yang stepped up, swinging his baseball bat for a home run. Wham—the Alien's corpse flew into the blazing fire, its fragile shell popping and cracking in the heat until it was nothing but ashes.
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"What about him?" John Yang pointed at Lu Yide. "Cracking open someone's chest out here in the wild is pretty risky, isn't it?"
"I've taken out everything that doesn't belong to him. The rest is up to fate." Susan Morrow quickly bandaged Lu Yide and tossed him in the car. "Our girl and that guy both have the skills to save him. If they're fine, he'll live. But if something happens to them—then there's no point in him surviving, either." Susan shot Lu Yide a cold look. "If it wasn't for rescuing him, would we be risking our necks like this, running around all panicked?"
John Yang sighed and didn't argue. When Susan Morrow gets protective, there's no reasoning with her. Still, Lu Yide had to take some responsibility today. If he hadn't gone off on his own and gotten caught, there wouldn't have been such a mad rush to tangle with Aliens.
"Alright, that's sorted here—let's check out the other side!" John Yang grabbed Hammy and tossed him. "Go, little hamster!"
Hammy gave a shake and instantly transformed into his largest form, carrying the two of them as he sped toward the factory. If things got dire, Hammy was a major force to be reckoned with. In a pinch, he could seriously turn the tide. As the two humans and one hamster approached, they saw a wall come crashing down with a thunderous roar—a massive Alien Queen crawled out from inside.
And there was Jill Young, standing on its back, somehow having gotten hold of a thick iron chain and choking the Alien Queen with all her might. "Let's see if you die now!" Jill shouted, wrapping the chain tighter around the Alien's neck. At the same time, she stomped hard on the base of its neck, again and again, making the Alien Queen tremble non-stop.
The Alien Queen struggled to flee toward the lake, running on fumes now, but in the chaos of battle, she was almost at the water's edge. Suddenly, a massive figure swooped down with a shriek, slamming into the Queen and sending her staggering, forced to halt.
"Hammy? What are you doing here?!" Jill Young looked up in shock, spotting John Yang and Susan Morrow cheering from a hundred meters away. Both were pumping their fists and shouting, "Go! Finish it off!"
"Mom? Dad?" Jill blurted out, then burst into wild laughter. In that moment, she grabbed the iron chain, leapt high into the air, spun a huge arc, and drove both feet hard into the Alien's jaw. The creature howled and finally crashed to the ground. Jill landed, and seeing it still struggling, grabbed its chin and wrenched its mouth open.
"Bye-bye." A missile appeared in her right hand, and with a squelch, she stuffed it straight into the Alien's mouth. Jill raised her foot and brought it down hard, hammering the missile into the Alien's throat like driving a nail. Boom—a muffled explosion, flames shooting from its mouth. The Queen's screeches faded, and at last, it fell silent.
This was the first Alien to stow away inside a Chosen One's body and descend from another world to Earth—and now, it was dead.
John Yang and Susan Morrow ran over, their faces complicated as they looked at the Alien's remains. The scene in the factory had been horrific; it was hard to imagine their own kids fighting monsters like this. Hammy bounded off into the ruins, rummaged around, and came back happily with Jasper Xiao dangling from his mouth.
He was fine, just totally spent after casting his holy attack—couldn't even move a finger. "That kick of yours was brutal..." Jasper managed a wry smile, then eyed the Alien corpse. "Everything else is easy, but what do we do with this thing? Fire can't burn it, water can't rot it—how do we deal with it?"
"Leave it to me." Jill Young was exhausted too, but still moving. She went over to the Alien, placed her right hand on the corpse. A low hum sounded—the Dragon Elephant Extraction Technique sent ripples over the Alien's body. With six layers of Dragon Elephant power, plus the boost from the Golden Side Portrait, Jill could now absorb life essence straight through her hand.
Jill had noticed something long ago: any remains drained by the Dragon Elephant Extraction Technique—like the black wolves whose chests she'd carved in the underworld—would rot away quickly. Even in dry places, within days, bacteria would break them down to dust, bones and all.
As the saying goes, 'Even in death, the tiger's might remains.' Real tiger bones, even just a bit, if a dog catches the scent, it'll tuck its tail and run. And if a person grinds those bones and eats them, they'll get all sorts of benefits—that's the power of beast life energy. But once that energy's gone, the dried-out husk is useless, and when it decays, there's not even a whiff of corpse stench.
"Whew, that's that. Hammy, come on, let's dump this thing in the lake." Jill Young withdrew her hand, her exhaustion vanishing—she was suddenly full of energy. "Nothing beats a real beast! I'm off to hunt big monsters!"
Watching Jill, all fired up and ready for action, the other three exchanged glances—smiles on their faces, though it was hard to tell if they were bitter or sweet.
Afterward, everyone headed back to Jill's house to rest up. Cleanup was left to John Yang and Hammy. John was thorough—the old factory was a total loss, but as long as nothing linked back to them, it was fine. He searched every nook, picked up every suspicious scrap, erased every risky trace. No matter what people found later, there'd be no way to connect the scene to them.
With John Yang handling things, everyone felt at ease.
After some recovery, Jasper Xiao treated Lu Yide. Thanks to the battle, Jasper's holy light had grown stronger, showing real healing effects. Plus, Jill Young held Lu Yide's jaw and poured purified extract down his throat—he'd be fine, though probably gain weight. Maybe getting his figure back post-'delivery' would be the real challenge.
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But peace didn't last long. On August 2nd, the morning after the Alien fight, Jasper Xiao came running to find Jill Young, looking like it was a ten-alarm emergency. "Did you see the news?!" Jasper was both excited and dead serious, blurting it out.
Jill scratched her head, confused. "What news?"
Smack—Jasper slapped his forehead. "Right, forgot to tell you. Quick, find something with internet access!"
Jasper's weird excitement got Jill fired up too, and she dashed to the computer. Jasper typed in a URL and hit enter. John Yang and Susan Morrow were totally baffled—it was just a 404 error page. But to Jill, it looked completely different.
What she saw was a gorgeous, mysterious six-pointed magic circle, each point marked with a cryptic symbol. As the hexagram spun, it logged her into a new interface, the top emblazoned with five bold characters—World Observation Bureau!
"World Observation Bureau?" Jill finally remembered this badass department. "So this is the homepage for the World Observation Bureau?"
"Yep, this is it!" Jasper Xiao said excitedly. "Things like Chosen Ones and Realm Marks—all those terms come from here, that's how everyone knows about them. But the World Observation Bureau's biggest, most mind-blowing power is prediction!"
"Prediction?" Jill thought for a moment, then her expression changed. "You mean, it can predict crossing events?!" If that was true, this mysterious department totally deserved its name.
"Exactly!" Jasper nodded eagerly. "To be precise, it can predict when and where Time-Space Capsules will appear. It can't give much advance notice, but it's still amazing! Oh, the Bureau just posted a huge announcement—look below."
Jill scrolled down and saw a big exclamation mark on the simple page, with a few keywords written below. Clearly, making a magical page like this wasn't easy, so it couldn't be too fancy.
Date: August 4th.
Location: Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney.
Keywords: Near Future, Nine, Monster.
And then a line of explanatory text: Chosen Ones, on August 4th, the largest Time-Space Capsule event to date will occur. The dimensions of time and space will shift further, and the world will enter a new phase. The world on the other side remains unclear.
P.S.: The World Observation Bureau interface will soon launch a forum feature—stay tuned.
"Holy crap—!" Jill Young was floored. All sorts of mysterious, impressive terms flashed by: 'space-time dimensions,' 'the world on the other side,' and more—pretty epic stuff. And once the Bureau launches its forum, forget dimensional shifts, that alone could shake up the world.
When that happens, Chosen Ones—who used to fight solo in the crowd—will suddenly exist as a real class. Even John Yang and Susan Morrow, listening in the back, could imagine how much things would change.
Jasper Xiao looked at Jill, eyes shining. "We can't miss an event like this. I've decided to join in. You coming?"
Coming? Was that even a question? Just seeing the word 'monster' made Jill's eyes light up. Once she'd tasted real beast power—after devouring the Alien Queen—she knew nothing else compared, not even purified extract. The increasingly tough Dragon Elephant Technique needed real beasts to level up fast!
Besides, Jill had always felt her way of crossing worlds was different from Jasper's and the others. This was her chance to check it out.
And the biggest Time-Space Capsule event yet? That kind of hype—an epic adventure—was just irresistible!
"Of course I'm—" Jill started, but hesitated, glancing at John Yang and Susan Morrow, searching their faces. Jasper Xiao calmed down, realizing Jill was different. For some reason, he could go wherever he wanted, but she wasn't alone—her parents were watching.
Most parents worry even if their kids work abroad, or just in another city. Another world? And one with monsters? Ninety-nine out of a hundred would say no.
The room fell silent. Jasper Xiao awkwardly stepped back, leaving the family of three staring at each other.
After a moment, John Yang suddenly said, "Do you want to go?"
Jill hesitated, then nodded firmly. "I want to go."
"Then go." John Yang let out a barely audible sigh, then patted Jill's shoulder and smiled warmly. "A good man should roam far, and a good woman can too. If you've got that drive, that spirit, I'm at ease. Who knows what the world will become, but if you stand still and shrink back, you'll be left behind. So go—we support you! Face the hardships, weather the storms, and become a stronger you!"