The Restless Lake (Fourth Guaranteed Update, Please Subscribe!!!)

When George and Joe arrived, the local precinct had already sealed off the entire slum apartment building.

Just after the two got out of the car, a young police officer came out of the apartment building, ran to a corner, and immediately began vomiting.

"Gory."

"Morbid."

"Ten bucks?"

"Deal."

After Group One leader George and Group One deputy leader Joe exchanged a few words and settled the bet, they showed their badges, entered the cordoned-off area, and put on their gloves.

A detective from the precinct came out of the apartment building and shook George’s hand.

George asked, "Which floor is the crime scene on?"

The precinct detective shook his head when he heard this, then said, "The entire building."

George and Joe exchanged a glance.

The entire building?

What kind of joke was that? If the whole building was involved, they should have been able to smell the stench of blood from the end of the street.

The precinct detective said nothing about George and Joe’s confusion. He merely told them they would understand once they went up themselves. In any case, he had no intention of going back up.

He figured he would need to schedule an appointment with the department’s psychologist for therapy.

Ding!

Just as George and Joe were about to leave the second-floor elevator, they saw desiccated corpses sprawled all over the corridor and froze.

A crime-scene recorder was enduring his nausea as he photographed the terrifying desiccated corpses.

"What happened?"

"Were they burned?"

Joe touched some black marks on the wall with his finger. After pulling his hand back, he examined his fingertip, then shook his head. "They aren’t charcoal marks. They weren’t burned."

A bald coroner crouching beside one of the corpses looked up at George and Joe. "These desiccated corpses remind me of a case I handled when I was a young coroner in Texas."

George and Joe looked at the coroner.

A serial killer?

The coroner smiled strangely as he looked at them. "That final case was classified as demonic retribution."

George and Joe looked at each other.

"Where’s our coroner?"

"On the way."

"Let’s check the third floor."

"Okay."

George and Joe were both modern men who believed in the existence of God but scoffed at things like demons. If demons had truly claimed these lives, why would they have left the corpses behind?

The third floor was not much different from the second. Desiccated corpses lay sprawled across the corridor, and the walls bore the same black marks that looked as if they had been burned, yet somehow had not.

Moreover.

Joe crouched down and examined the black marks where the third-floor corridor wall met the floor. Through a nearly invisible crack, it seemed that the black marks were connected to those on the second floor.

"Huh."

"What is it?"

George watched Joe stand and walk over. Joe pointed at a male desiccated corpse with a terrified expression on its face, then frowned as he examined the identification in the equally shriveled wallet. "I saw this guy last night."

Joe looked at the desiccated corpse, which should have taken at least three months to form. "No way."

George nodded. "I’m sure. I was on patrol last night and saw this guy loitering at the mouth of an alley. I questioned him."

Joe opened his mouth as he looked at the corpse before him, then glanced at several others. "Why do I feel like we might need to call that guy over?"

George glanced at Joe without saying anything.

The next day.

The NYPD sent the Department of Homeland Security a request for assistance regarding the case that had occurred in the slum apartment building.

After dropping Rachel off, Lake was on his way back to headquarters when he heard that George and Joe were handling the case. He immediately changed course and arrived at the scene ahead of schedule.

The slum apartment building was still under lockdown.

George watched Lake get out of the car, sighed, and took ten dollars from his pocket to hand to Joe.

Lake ignored George’s attempt to hug him. With a whoosh, he snatched the ten dollars from the smiling Joe’s hand, prompting Joe to grumble at him in displeasure.

Holding the ten-dollar bill, Lake looked at George and Joe with a smile. "What did you two bet on using me?"

George and Joe shook their heads in unison.

Lake rolled his eyes. "Don’t forget, I’m the one who popularized betting at the department. Out with it, or go play by yourselves."

George said, "Okay," explained the bet, then sighed and hugged Lake. "Can’t you act your rank? You’re an office man now. Why did you come here?"

Joe shrugged from the side. "See? I knew he wouldn’t be able to sit still."

Lake smiled.

Come to think of it, that did seem to be the case. He had clearly reached the stage where he could sit in an office, wait for his subordinates to bring him credit, and get promoted. Yet he still frequently went into the field.

Why?

Lake wondered about it. After thinking for a long time, he still could not figure out why. He simply shook his head and turned his attention to the slum apartment building before him, where CDC agents were still moving about inside.

George briefly explained the situation, then said, "There are a total of 132 people in this slum apartment building. After the headcount, not a single one was missing. Every one of them had become a desiccated corpse. Because of the strange condition of the bodies, we suspected that some kind of poisonous gas or unknown virus had spread, so the NYPD notified the Atlanta CDC."

Even George and Joe had undergone a thorough decontamination by the CDC after they arrived. They had nearly been unable to retrieve their own clothes.

As they spoke.

A fully armed CDC agent emerged from the apartment building and removed his thick mask. "It wasn’t a gas leak. It looks like these people simply suffered severe dehydration in an instant."

"Dehydration?"

"Yes."

"We suspect it may have been some kind of virus. We’ve finished collecting samples. Once the laboratory has results, we’ll send the information to the NYPD."

After the CDC agent finished speaking, a short while later, he left with the others in a massive group.

Now that they had confirmed it was not poisonous gas, found nothing unusual in the air, and collected samples, there was no reason for the CDC to stay. Their battlefield was the laboratory, not the crime scene.

Ding!

The elevator stopped on the second floor.

The moment the doors opened and the scene in the corridor came into view, Lake could not help raising his eyebrows at the corpses lying on the floor in all kinds of positions.

All the corpses had become desiccated corpses. That was not the important part.

The important part was…

The expressions on all the desiccated corpses’ faces were terrified, as if they had seen some indescribable horror before dying.

"Well, well. You two really hit the jackpot."

As Lake spoke, he sensed the boundless fear and wailing scattered throughout the area. The fear and wailing transformed into nourishment and converged in Lake’s sea of consciousness, where they were completely absorbed by the Force Seed that had already been buried in the ground, making yet another enormous contribution to its breakthrough.

Moreover…

Lake sensed an aura here that seemed to come from somewhere else, somewhat similar to the aura left behind by the Parasitic Demon that he had sensed in the ruins of the Stark estate.

But it seemed even more powerful.

The moment this remnant dark aura entered the Force Seed, Lake felt the seed stirring restlessly, as if it wanted to burst out of his body.

Lake’s eyes lit up, and he felt somewhat incredulous.

Was there really this much nourishment?

This was only what remained. If he had the entire thing, would it not be enough to completely hatch the Force Seed?

Hey.

New York Sanctum, Wizarding World of New York—are you going to handle this or not? If you are not, I’m going in.

Lake thought this as the restless Force Seed made him restless as well.

"Huh."

"What is it?"

Lake came back to himself and looked at Joe beside him.

Joe shook his head and looked at Lake and George. "It feels like it isn’t as cold here anymore. Don’t you feel it?"

Lake and George exchanged a glance, then shook their heads at Joe.

Joe shrugged. "Then it was probably my imagination."

Lake smiled inwardly. In the blink of an eye, the fear and wailing in the apartment building had been completely absorbed. However, the fear and wailing throughout the building amounted to less than one-tenth of the demonic aura he had just absorbed.

Strange.

Why could he absorb what was here, but not what was at the Stark estate?

Soon.

Jack arrived with his team as well.

After Lake, George, and Joe exited the apartment building again, Lake called to Jack as he got out of the car, "Get the imaging device."

Joe had just told Lake about the black marks she had discovered on the wall. Lake was curious as well and had taken a close look. The black marks on the walls of the apartment building did not seem man-made, nor did they seem naturally occurring. That left only one possibility: a demon had made them.

Photos of the apartment building available online showed that at the very least, the black marks had not existed the day before yesterday.

Soon.

Everyone gathered around a laptop. Displayed on its screen was a real-time three-dimensional image of the slum apartment building.

Following Lake’s orders, a Homeland Security agent removed every other object from the image of the apartment building. Once all irrelevant objects had been removed, a familiar pattern appeared before everyone’s eyes.

A pentagram.

According to legend, a pentagram could establish contact with Hell once drawn. A pentagram formed from the entire apartment building suddenly appeared before everyone’s eyes.

Lake thought of what Tony Stark had said when he came to his house in the middle of the night.

Just then.

Joe pointed at one spot in the pentagram that seemed to have been heavily thickened and asked, "What’s that?"

A Homeland Security agent was not omnipotent.

But the dozens of agents in the Homeland Security intelligence division were practically omnipotent when working together.

Before long.

A Homeland Security agent at the information center found the corresponding meaning by comparing the symbol displayed on the screen. "This is the symbol representing the wood element. It indicates that this pentagram formation belongs to the spirit element."

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