When he happened to be nearby, he received their emergency call.
Just when he needed to detonate the material power in his spiritual world, they happened to have explosives.
It was as if it were a script arranged by fate.
Ye Lan thought so in his mind.
And in front of him, Xin Nan felt the wind from the material world outside the door, and as he looked up, he saw Ye Lan, with black hair, wearing a grey suit, looking decadent, tired, and a bit lazy.
And what surprised Xin Nan the most was the background painting behind him.
It was a flow of water as deep and profound as the sea, but at every crest of the waves, a shriveled, hungry eyeball grew.
They rotated slowly and stiffly, with blue pupils like seawater.
Each eye whispered, and countless whispers converged into a dense clamor, spreading pollution invisibly.
Blue.
A colored background painting.
The transcendent he pursued!
Xin Nan immediately breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn't utter those three words. Instead, he said directly, "Save them, those two police officers, save them!"
A hint of surprise appeared on Ye Lan's face.
He hadn't expected that Xin Nan's first words in such a situation would be this.
But after looking at Old Li and Xiao Wang in the hot pot restaurant, who had already gotten back up and were forcing a toothy smile like the diners, Ye Lan shook his head with regret.
A trace of sadness appeared in Xin Nan's eyes. Can't save them anymore?
"It's a pity, but that's how it is."
Ye Lan said, stepping past him and raising his leg.
He kicked out with his excessively long right leg, sending more than a dozen strong diners back into the hot pot restaurant. As he retracted his leg, Ye Lan took out a black pistol from his bosom, pulled the trigger, fired two shots at the ground, and then said:
"Leave, it's going to get dangerous here next."
Xin Nan nodded, pulled Yan Yu, who was dizzy and rolling her eyes from the explosion, past Ye Lan, and quickly walked out of the hot pot restaurant's great door.
During this process, Yan Yu, who had already endured too much burden for her age, had been experiencing tinnitus and dizziness since the explosion. At this moment, she could no longer hold on, foamed at the mouth, and fainted.
After walking out of the hot pot restaurant, the sense of crisis that had been lingering around him disappeared.
Hearing the sound of police cars approaching from a distance, Xin Nan placed Yan Yu in the elevator, pressed the button for the first floor, and quickly returned to the hot pot restaurant.
He was indeed hesitant. After the unknown youth's warning, he returned here, wanting to face their battle directly. It seemed like a foolish thing to do.
But because he was too curious about the domain of the transcendent, because his life had been too oppressive with these eyes, and because the sense of crisis from himself had faded at this moment.
He had convinced himself.
He wanted, he yearned, to personally witness the great power of the transcendent!
He was willing to bear this risk.
Xin Nan's return did not attract the attention of Ye Lan, who was already fully focused.
He was facing a Fourth Order that was undergoing sublimation.
It was a terrifying existence that surpassed his status.
Although this sudden accident interrupted her advancement ritual and even caused her severe trauma, it only brought her down to a level he could reach.
This battle would risk his life.
Even if he won, it would have a huge, even irreversible, impact on him.
If the battle dragged on too long, it was even possible that two monsters would be born in this hot pot restaurant tonight.
Light, like substance, began to emanate from the sea waves behind Ye Lan.
Amidst the surging sounds of reality, the eyes with pale white pupils slowly closed one by one.
As they closed, Ye Lan's breathing became lighter and lighter, more and more ethereal, until it finally stopped completely!
Something else was breathing for him.
His body, imbued with indescribable, mysterious power, moved forward continuously in the hot pot restaurant.
He saw the diners and waiters, who had been parasitized by red worms, freeze on the spot, veins bulging on their foreheads, as if something was constantly fighting for ownership of their bodies.
But Ye Lan was not the one fighting for control; it was merely the ripples from the surging sea waves behind him sweeping over those who were parasitized.
It was just radiation, or rather, pollution, that naturally occurred after activating some kind of power!
Ethereal red light also permeated the air. In the world visible only to Xin Nan, blue and red lights were clashing with each other.
At this moment, on the kitchen counter, the Boss Lady, whose skin had been peeled off from the head down, finally made her first move. She opened her tightly closed eyes.
Her brown pupils, belonging to an East Asian, had somehow turned scarlet like a rabbit's eyes.
She glanced at Ye Lan, who had entered the hot pot restaurant, then raised her arm, whose snow-white skin was rapidly wrapping itself, and pushed upwards with cruel strength.
The hooks that were attached to her flesh tore open her skin, creating two terrifying wounds.
The broken clavicle inexplicably brought to mind a flower.
A flower that had been bitten by a vicious mouth.
It had just bloomed when it began to heal, and by the time the Boss Lady landed, it had already disappeared.
At this moment, the Boss Lady looked no different from a normal person, well, except for not wearing any clothes.
She took a deep breath, then looked at Ye Lan and smiled, her voice emitting a timbre that was absolutely not human:
"I want to eat."
A hoarse and low voice came from beneath the skin, as if someone were pulling on the vocal cords with muscles, forcing air through and squeezing out this sound.
Ye Lan could clearly see that her mouth was not moving, and his gaze became more solemn.
An Aberration, or a more unsolvable Weirdness?
She must have ingested the elements required for advancement. If it were "wild," the other party wouldn't be able to control such a ritual.
This thing was placed here by someone!
Ye Lan's thoughts raced.
Then, glossy black hair grew from the top of her head, quickly reaching her waist, covering her body.
The Boss Lady stuck out her tongue, licked her lips, and looked at Ye Lan with greedy eyes, muttering to herself:
"I really want to."
"I really want to let you eat my flesh too!"
"Then I'm truly sorry, I'm not interested in your flesh. I can smell that disgusting stench from afar."
Ye Lan glanced coldly at the Boss Lady.
As he called out, the blue ocean that should have been hidden in Xin Nan's "field of vision," the background painting that only he could see, was now slowly solidifying into reality in the void, descending into this material world.
In contrast, red worms continuously fell from the ground, from the waiters and diners, from the walls and ceiling of the hot pot restaurant, forming a continuous sheet. They converged into a woven tapestry of worm threads, coiling towards Ye Lan.
The sea waves crushed every worm that attempted to reach the shore, and as more and more worms were crushed, the blue ocean gradually began to be stained red by the filth of the red worms.
But this pollution was not only on Ye Lan.
On the red threads behind the Boss Lady, who was controlling the red worms from afar, blue spots were also constantly appearing.
Since stepping into the hot pot restaurant, these two transcendent beings had already been polluting and eroding each other, and resisting the pollution!
However, such a confrontation could not solve everything; it was merely a deterrent, like roaring at each other before fighting a fierce beast.
Thus, after a brief exchange, the confrontation between the two sides escalated.
The Boss Lady's body suddenly swelled, transforming into a colossal being like a giant, while Ye Lan stomped hard on the ground and charged forward at a speed almost imperceptible to Xin Nan's eyes.
Bang bang bang bang!
Dense bullets rained down.
Thump!
In a collision that Xin Nan had not yet witnessed, the light tubes on the hot pot restaurant's ceiling were simultaneously destroyed by the power of the two.
Shattered light tubes rained down like raindrops, followed only by the Boss Lady's harsh screams, the grating sound of tables and chairs moving, and the sound of heavy objects falling.
However, none of this mattered to Xin Nan anymore.
Standing at the doorway, his entire mind had already been occupied by something else, to the point that he clenched his fists, unaware that his fingernails were digging into his palms.
In his entire life, he had probably never been as excited and shocked as he was at this moment.
Really!
The background paintings he saw were real!
At this instant, he couldn't help but exhale deeply.
The pain, struggle, and final despair of the past decade or so had finally found a small answer here.
So, it wasn't that I was wrong, or that I had gone crazy.
What I saw truly exists!
✦✦✦