Forgotten Photo Studio

Chapter 92 Possession with the Drill Arm (Bonus Chapter)
The air was thick and sticky, like glue. In the distance, the silhouette of the drilling arm was slightly distorted in the rain, like a television screen with a poor signal.

Xu Yan leaned against the damp, cold corner of the wall, the shadows engulfing him completely.

Without the slightest hesitation, he reached into his robes and pulled out not a weapon, but an old-fashioned camera that weighed more heavily than his life.

The moment his fingertips touched the "Mirror of Shared Life" ring, a chill that seemed to suck away his soul flowed upwards along the meridians of his arm, causing his temples to throb slightly.

Instead of rejecting it, he actively guided a wisp of soul power into the lens, like inserting a key into a lock, making a silent "click".

Then, he picked up the strand of hair that had been carefully preserved in a transparent evidence bag—the only trace left by the drill arm at the photo studio last time. The hair gleamed faintly with a biological sheen in the pale moonlight.

He pressed it precisely into the metal threaded gap where the lens and the camera body connect.

The instant the hair touched the spiral, the lingering gray mist deep within the lens suddenly boiled, like a hungry beast smelling blood.

The hair dried and faded at a visible speed, eventually turning into a tiny speck of dust, which was completely "swallowed" by the camera lens.

The medium is in place.

Xu Yan picked up the camera and pressed his right eye against the cold viewfinder.

The world was deconstructed in his eyes.

The dense raindrops transformed into vertically falling gray energy lines, the streetscape faded into a black and white negative, and the living people became individual orbs of soul light of varying brightness.

He slightly turned the focus ring, his vision sweeping over several dim and blurry points of light, before finally locking onto the most glaring and stereotypical target.

In the viewfinder, the drill arm is no longer a specific human figure, but a pale, burning ball of fire tightly bound by countless silver chains that are transformed from rules and regulations.

At the heart of the fireball was his unwavering yet rigid will, while his suppressed anxiety and exhaustion emanated from the gaps in the chains.

This is his soul form.

A powerful container that has been completely assimilated by order, yet is also full of "gaps".

Xu Yan's breathing became extremely slow and deep, and his body's metabolism seemed to drop to freezing point at this moment.

He condensed all his consciousness into an invisible, barbed needle, and through the viewfinder, silently pierced the "causal line" left after the hair was swallowed.

Click.

Press the shutter to complete the final ritual of soul projection.

The instant he exerted force with his fingers, he felt his core senses of sight, hearing, and thought being abruptly pulled from his body, transforming into a stream of cold data along that invisible line, and crashing into that pale ball of fire!
The dizzying, detaching sensation lasted only a fraction of a second.

This was followed by a huge "compatibility" shock.

Xu Yan's "consciousness" is like an overly advanced operating system, forcibly crammed into a "machine" with outdated hardware but a robust structure.

The sound of the rain, which was originally a gentle patter, turned into a high-frequency crackling noise as it hit the waterproof combat suit.

The humid air was filled with gun oil, sweat acid, and a pungent smell similar to ozone.

The tension brought on by the muscle memory of his body, and the instinctive reliance on the weight and angle of the gun at his waist, surged like a tide, trying to overwhelm his original habits.

He tried moving "his" right index finger.

The feedback was a feeling of stiffness and delay when touching precision parts through thick rubber gloves.

The original soul of this body was not asleep, but rather forcibly hibernating. Its vast muscle memory and conditioned reflexes, like undercurrents in deep water, constantly tugged at his control. As Xu Yan cautiously invoked the body's tactical programs like a hacker, a primal and violent power also awakened in his left arm.

It was a mechanical arm made entirely of dark alloy and engraved with rough energy guide patterns. Its front end was not a hand, but a composite drill bit that could rotate at high speed and was covered with ferocious demon-slaying spikes.

At this moment, seemingly sensing the slight fluctuations of the soul within the drill bit, this cold, murderous creation spontaneously began to preheat. The drill bit slowly accelerated, emitting a piercing shriek that rose from a low to a high pitch, as if from the depths of hell, which sounded particularly eerie in the rainy night.

This is the most iconic weapon in their line of work, and the bloody and direct origin of the code name "Drill Arm".

Just as he completely took control of his body, a strange fragment of memory suddenly broke through his defenses.

The scent of blood and steel, and the face he had personally drilled through, flashed and faded in his mind.

Xu Yan forcibly suppressed the noise and subtle vibrations from the robotic arm that were almost tearing his eardrums, and his consciousness quickly flipped through the fragments of memories about "work" in this body.

He "saw":

Their "ghost-catching" was less a matter of technique and more a matter of violent demolition.

There were no complex talisman arrays, no sophisticated soul analysis, and none of Xu Yan's bizarre operations of using a camera to "overwrite memories" or "devour existence."

Their process is ridiculously simple:

Locate the location, and then—go up and do it!

Among these, the most representative is the "drill arm" combat method.

His specially designed robotic arm's core function is to convert the user's own power into an extremely unstable and destructive high-frequency oscillating energy through a conversion core within the arm, and then concentrate it at the tip of the drill bit.

How to deal with vengeful spirits?

—The drill plunges forward, directly shattering its core soul structure, and the dissipated energy is recovered by the absorber.

How to deal with a possessing ghost?
— Drill through the body of the possessed person, along with the body itself! The goal is to destroy the medium of possession in the shortest possible time.

How to deal with distorted spatial nodes?
— Forcefully drill through the spatial barrier and annihilate it with a pure energy storm!
Their exorcism is not about delivering the spirit or sealing it away, but about purifying it.

The drill bit is the command, and energy is the law.

No matter how many souls you harbor resentment, I will pierce through them with a single drill.

This is their belief.

In the fragments of memory, the roar of the drill and the image of the ghost being forcibly torn into shards of light amidst a piercing shriek made Xu Yan's consciousness feel uneasy.

This is completely different from, and even contrary to, the approach he and his master have inherited, which focuses more on "understanding," "guidance," and "preservation."

"Truly...barbaric," Xu Yan thought coldly to himself.

However, it is precisely this style of relying purely on violence and overwhelming energy that perfectly masks the slight incoordination in his control of his body at this moment.

To his teammates, the unusual booming of the "boss's" arms and his slightly heavy steps were just the usual way this violent expert gathered his anger and adjusted his state before locking onto a target.

He successfully disguised himself, like a ghost, piloting the "Drill Arm," a war machine built for destruction, towards the dangerous and ingenious game he had set for himself.

(End of this chapter)