Chapter 16: The Truth
"Scatter! Suppressing fire!!!"
The Captain roared, discarding his map and being the first to open fire on the monster before them. Li Xianfeng and the remaining five soldiers scrambled for cover, bracing their weapons against whatever they could find.
The deafening roar of gunfire shattered the silence of the street.
One, two, four... accompanied by a thick, animalistic stench, giant wolves the size of SUVs began to emerge one after another. They had bluish-gray fur, with strange black patterns etched across their faces and limbs. With a single snap of their jaws, they could swallow a grown man whole.
Li Xianfeng was certain: these were not creatures of the Earth. They looked like demonic beasts ripped straight out of a video game.
What terrified them even more was that, despite their massive size, none of the soldiers had sensed them earlier. Had they known the search party was coming? Was this a pre-planned ambush? Li didn't dare think further; his mind couldn't afford the distraction.
Seven giant beasts moved with unthinkable agility, darting across the street. With a single leap, they cleared SUVs effortlessly; some even defied gravity, sprinting vertically along the walls of the buildings. Even with four soldiers coordinating their fire, they couldn't graze a single tail.
Looking at the expressions on their faces... were they *playing* with them?
Suddenly, the wolf running on the wall threw its head back and howled. Blades of shimmering emerald light manifested in the air, flying toward the team at the speed of bullets. In the blink of an eye, three soldiers—and the cover they were hiding behind—were shredded into bloody fragments.
The Captain and Li Xianfeng, separated across the road, locked eyes for a split second. In the next moment, they flipped their rifles to full-auto, pouring out every ounce of firepower they had left.
Shell casings hit the ground; flesh and blood sprayed the air. This wasn't a battlefield. This was hell.
"Huff!"
Li Xianfeng's head snapped up, his skull thudding against a metal shelf. Two or three bags of potato chips tumbled down beside him. The light in the convenience store was much dimmer than before. Had he accidentally fallen asleep?
He looked out the window. The street was bathed in the orange hues of twilight. Evening was coming.
*Where is the Captain? Did anyone else make it out?*
"This is Bee-8. Captain, do you copy? Over."
Only silence greeted him. Li felt a throbbing headache. The Captain was the only one with the map; without him, returning to the station base was an impossible task. He could estimate his direction using the sun, but moving alone was suicide.
*Should I wait for rescue? No...* If command didn't even know his location, how could they save him? He had to move now. He remembered a nature documentary saying wolves were intelligent—they adapted their hunting schedules for maximum efficiency. If he had encountered them during the day, perhaps night was their rest period. He couldn't wait around to become their breakfast.
"Okay!"
Li Xianfeng gathered supplies, grabbing jerky, chips, and bottled water. He stuffed chocolate and two lighters from the counter into his pockets before heading to the door.
He peeked from behind a pillar. Across the way stood the Augustus Hotel. *I'll spend the night there.*
Miraculously, he reached the alley opposite the hotel without incident. Just one more dash across the street, and he'd be safe for the night. Before entering, he tried the radio one last time. To his shock, it worked.
"This is Nest. Report status. We've lost contact with all units! Bee-8, what is your location? How many survivors? What do you need?"
"I...!"
Li was about to answer in a rush of joy, but the sight before him turned his blood to ice.
From the open doors of the hotel, a giant wolf stepped out. The patterns on its fur were identical to the ones from the morning ambush. Then, a black vortex appeared before the beast. A pale green crystal dropped out. The wolf crushed the crystal with its paw, and instantly, its massive body became translucent, merging into the air until it was invisible.
Li Xianfeng clamped his hand over his mouth, his eyes wide with horror.
Everything clicked. The sudden appearance of the monsters... why the outpost fell... This wasn't a disaster; it was a calculated conspiracy. They weren't just giant beasts; they were thinking demons. And that towering hotel wasn't a sanctuary—it was a den.
**Whiz!**
A sharp whistling sound came from above. Li looked up.
It was a sun with wings. Radiating a heat capable of melting steel, it hurtled toward him with the speed of a meteorite.
*Am I... going to die?*
"Bee-8, Bee-8! Nest has your signal! Report your position... Bee-8, do you copy?!"
Li Xianfeng didn't answer. He watched the descending light with an eerie calm and pulled the earpiece from his ear.
The "sun" hit the ground. Carbon-based flesh could no longer resist, turning into literal charred remains. Silence returned to the city.
At the same time, two hundred kilometers away in Tianlong City, the capital of the Republic of Erind.
Inside a building converted into a Disaster Response Center, staff in suits, fatigues, and police uniforms worked feverishly under the glow of monitors.
"The temporary command at Xinshou Station reports all units sent today have gone dark..."
"The 4th Rescue Unit is on standby in the neighboring town. They move at dawn..."
"Any word from Dr. Jiang? Why isn't the radiation report here yet?"
"They're compiling the data. It'll be faxed in twenty minutes."
"The President ordered a reliable report tonight. The press conference is tomorrow morning to reveal the 'truth'..."
"PR has eight drafts ready. We won't let the opposition find a single flaw. We just need that testing report!"
Everyone was working desperately to save the face of the elite and manage public pressure. The cause was a headline currently gripping the entire world: **The Mass Disappearance of Xinshou City.**
On the second day of the event, commuters arriving at the city discovered a horrifying void. All 2.8 million residents had vanished without a trace.
The lights and air conditioners were still running. Food was still set neatly on dining tables. The sound of comedy shows on televisions echoed through empty living rooms. Everything was as it should be—except for the owners who were meant to enjoy it.
No one knew what had happened. No one knew where the vanished had gone.
The police department had been desperately scouring for clues.
They had checked everything: surveillance footage, door locks for signs of forced entry, road surfaces for accident marks—they had even conducted radiation tests and viral sampling. Yet, they found nothing. Not a single bank vault had been breached, nor had a single private residence been broken into.
There were no traces of natural disaster, no signs of man-made catastrophe, and absolutely no evidence of radiation or biological agents.
It was as if people had been watching TV and drinking beer one second, and then simply evaporated into thin air the next.
On the second day of the "Spirit Away" incident, the military cordoned off all roads leading to Xinshou City and dispatched specialized scientific teams to investigate. Although signals were poor in certain areas, electronic reception was stable enough near the train station, so the military established a temporary command center there without much concern.
Everything seemed fine at first. No accidents occurred.
Until three days ago, when a squad of soldiers suddenly lost contact.
Then, two days ago, five researchers and seven search-and-rescue teams failed to return at their scheduled time.
And as of today...
Except for the temporary command center at the train station, everyone who had ventured into the city center had vanished.
"How can this be... 2.8 million people gone without a single clue? Even an alien abduction sounds too ridiculous for this... I have a press conference tomorrow! How am I supposed to explain this to the higher-ups? How am I going to handle the netizens?!"
The Temporary Investigation Commander—National Police Commissioner Chen Jia-qing—did not look relieved as he finally received the full report. On the contrary, the wrinkles on his face seemed to multiply by the second.
Aside from the day his wife gave birth, today was the most nervous day of his life. He truly didn't know how to answer to the government or the people. With what? This stack of waste paper in his hand?
Chen Jia-qing hurled the report onto the floor and stared out the window. The papers scattered across the ground: reports on climate, structural damage, mass human-caused destruction, radiation, viruses, communications, immigration records... twelve categories in total.
While they were technically "reports," they were essentially blank pages. The contents could be summarized in three words: *No Abnormalities Found.*
"No abnormalities?" he muttered. "That *is* the biggest abnormality!"
Dammit! Where did they go? He had only been in office for three months. He hadn't even skimmed enough off the top yet, and now he was supposed to resign to "take responsibility"? You've got to be joking!
The only other person in the office picked up the papers, organized them neatly, and placed them back on the desk.
"Commissioner Chen, something is very strange..."
The speaker wore a well-fitted blue suit with a sophisticated academy badge pinned to his chest, looking every bit the university student. Under normal circumstances, Chen Jia-qing would have treated him to tea and chatted about family gossip. But today, the Commissioner couldn't suppress his temper.
"You think I don't know it's strange? It's beyond absurd! Even an alien invasion wouldn't be this exaggerated!" Chen interrupted him, exasperated.
The young man was Sato Shinji, a famous student detective from the Republic of Olin. His family had been masters of deduction for generations; his father, in particular, was a world-renowned detective who appeared frequently on television.
As a scion of a detective dynasty, Shinji possessed a singular talent. He had risen to fame at a young age, solving numerous major cases with his superior intellect and vast knowledge, becoming a "supernova" in Olin's investigative circles.
Shinji's most famous exploit involved witnessing a man in black conducting a suspicious transaction at an amusement park. To distract the man, he had thrown a bottle of Sherry; the moment the man turned around, Shinji struck him in a... *sensitive* area with a soccer ball, successfully neutralizing him. The media later dubbed it the "Ball-Buster Incident."
Given the gravity of this mass disappearance, the government had invited Shinji to assist. Even Chen Jia-qing relied heavily on the boy's abilities, granting him maximum investigative authority.
"No, Commissioner! Setting aside the private homes without cameras—logically, police officers at precincts or guards at banks should appear on 24-hour surveillance. But starting around 10:00 PM that night, those people simply disappeared from the frame. Do you understand? The next second... suddenly, instantly, immediately... they were *gone*."
Sato Shinji laid out the facts with a grim expression.
"...Are you suggesting this is a supernatural event?"
Making 2.8 million residents of Xinshou City vanish into thin air was a feat no individual, organization, or nation on Earth was capable of. That left only one possibility: the supernatural.
Even though it seemed like the only logical conclusion, Chen Jia-qing still felt a sense of disdain. After all, this was an era of science. Rockets had landed on the moon; the Metaverse was fully developed. And they were talking about "supernatural events"? Someone had watched too many movies.
"Commissioner, regardless of whether it's supernatural or not, this is no longer something our small police department can handle. We must inform the Presidential Office. Let the President tell *them*."
Shinji looked at Chen Jia-qing sternly.
"...You mean the GCP?" Chen asked hesitantly.
While Erind had once been a colony of the GCP, the two had established a functional government relationship after World War II, cooperating in economy, culture, and crime databases.
However, there was a hidden treaty: if a supernatural event occurred, the government *must* report it to the GCP. It was a mandatory requirement—no secrets allowed. Back then, the GCP's stance had been so dominant that it didn't feel like an exchange between equals; it felt like an order from a superior to a subordinate.
The high-ranking officials of Erind had no choice but to swallow their pride. Everyone knew international relations relied on the size of one's fist, not the "justice and kindness" depicted in movies for the masses.
*Fine... we'll endure it,* Chen thought. *Small nations are used to this.*
The mass disappearance was clearly beyond Erind's capabilities. Handing it over to the GCP, with their superior personnel and advanced equipment, wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Still, it rankled. No one liked another country meddling in their internal affairs.
"Fine... we're powerless anyway. As long as the incident is resolved..."
After a few seconds of deliberation, Chen Jia-qing gave up. He picked up the phone to report the findings to the Presidential Office.
"Mr. President, hello. This is Chen Jia-qing. Regarding the investigation..."