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Ji Mo sensed signs of life in several areas. Following the principle of proximity, he followed the faint aura to the underground prison.

A damp, chilly air, carrying the stench of decay and blood, rushed towards him, causing him to frown.

The dungeon was narrow and winding, made up of several long corridors pieced together. Most of the cells on both sides of the first corridor were empty, with rusted shackles scattered all over the floor.

In a corner at the end of the corridor, a ragged man was huddled up. His exposed skin was covered with old and new scars. Hearing footsteps, he numbly raised his head.

Ji Mo does not possess the ability to observe qi, and thus cannot discern at a glance whether someone is from the mortal realm like Jiu Chonglou.

But he was at least certain that this was someone who had been mysteriously abducted. Since that was the case, he felt no qualms about letting him go, so he simply unscrewed the iron bars and disregarded their rules.

"You..." The man was so shocked by this scene that he couldn't speak.

"Do you know where the mortals are imprisoned?" Ji Mo asked first.

He caught a familiar change in the other person's eyes: from astonishment to relief, and then to a hint of unconcealed envy... Almost all the otherworldly people who were casually rescued by the mortal realm would show such emotions.

Who doesn't yearn for a powerful world behind them that cares about the lives and deaths of ordinary people?

"...A few days ago, I saw a strange creature escorting an unconscious person, carefully heading towards the deepest part of the place."

Thank you.

Ji Mo did not stop the man from following, but walked deeper into the area, dismantling the cages along the way.

What started as a solitary group gradually grew into a team of more than a dozen people.

Even prisoners from closed little worlds had heard about the ways of the mortal realm from others and joined the ever-expanding escape team without hesitation.

The deeper one goes, the cleaner and tidier the environment of the cage becomes.

Until the last room, apart from the lack of freedom, it was almost no different from an ordinary guesthouse.

Two people were imprisoned in the dungeon at the end of the dungeon, one of whom was an acquaintance of Ji Mo.

"...Professor Jiang?"

Jiang Weimin did not respond to him; the power of the rules had put him into a deep sleep.

Huang Quan didn't know how to take care of humans, nor did he dare to keep the people of the mortal realm awake, so he simply adopted a one-size-fits-all approach.

Except for the veteran cadre with special status, everyone else was forced into a coma.

For days, they had not eaten or drunk anything, clinging to life solely by the power of the rules.

Maintaining a regular routine is like a continuous IV drip; while it can provide the energy and basic nutrients necessary for life, it can never replace the vitality brought by a normal diet.

Professor Jiang's face was noticeably thinner than when she first arrived.

Ji Mo's method of breaking the rules has always been simple and brutal. With one punch, the logically consistent rules instantly collapse. The officials immediately come to their senses and instinctively attack Ji Mo, who is closest to them, but are countered and knocked to the ground.

"I am from Sanchuan."

"?!"

"Calm down? I'll let go once you're calm."

As soon as Ji Mo let go, the other party quickly escaped, creating a distance of several meters. After confirming for a moment, he clasped his hands and introduced himself: "Extraordinary Countermeasures Bureau, Group 3, Wang Qun."

"Official personnel?" Ji Mo was somewhat surprised now. "How were you captured?"

When he saw Professor Jiang, he thought that the police were simply arresting ordinary people indiscriminately, and that they had just happened to catch someone from the mortal realm.

Unlike Wang Qun, Professor Jiang seemed too weak; he didn't awaken even after the rules were lifted.

This avoids the trouble of Ji Mo having to explain his identity.

"I was summoned..." Wang Qun briefly described what happened before he fell unconscious, still troubled by the original mission he was supposed to perform. "I don't know if my teammates have taken over my mission. If it breaks out, it will be troublesome."

"When I came to the Realm of Rules, I didn't hear of any major supernatural events. Someone should have taken over your mission," Ji Mo said reassuringly. "Were the only two of you summoned?"

"I don't know. I was unconscious before I was brought here, and I don't even know how much time has passed."

"Besides the dungeon, there are also signs of life in other places. Maybe they are also people who have been summoned?" Ji Mo pondered.

Wang Qun thought so too, and asked Ji Mo to find other survivors while he took care of the remaining prisoners.

Seeing that Ji Mo was about to leave, the prisoner panicked. Even though they were both from the mortal realm, the sense of security they provided was completely different.

Wang Qun was good at diverting attention, and immediately shouted, "Quiet down, quiet down, please line up in an orderly manner to register with me."

"Register? Register for what?"

"It is fate that we met. Afterwards, the mortal realm will assist you all in returning to your original realm."

The prisoners looked at each other, then forgot about Ji Mo and swarmed forward.

"Name?"

Alfonso.

"Which world do you come from?"

"Wuhai Boundary".

Wang Qun looked up and reminded him, "The Mortal Realm is only responsible for sending you back to the designated world; they don't guarantee you'll get citizenship. Are you sure?"

Alfonso hesitated for a moment, then repeated: "S-0178."

"A small world attached to the city?" Wang Qun guessed it immediately. Only the city and its attached small worlds liked to name their worlds this way.

The numbers are easy to remember, but they feel impersonal, as if the whole world is nothing more than a file.

Alfonso did not answer.

Wang Qun didn't care: "Okay, got it. Next."

"Agra, M-0237."

"...?" Wang Qun paused for a moment, then called out the next person.

After recording everyone's names and the worlds they came from, he frowned, incredulous: "...You all come from the city-state and its subsidiary small worlds?"

The responses to "yes" and "no" fluctuated.

……

What silenced Ji Mo was that the humans imprisoned in the dungeon were actually in relatively good condition. The condition of the humans he saw elsewhere constantly reminded him that the eerie creatures were beings with twisted desires toward humans.

Red Eyes once mentioned that the higher-ups of the Church of Death favored Huang Quan, attributing it to Huang Quan's talent for flattery, but he did not mention Huang Quan's desire for scientific research.

Using analogy, Huang Quan can be considered a bizarre version of a scientist.

Besides the consciousness projects of Death and Duchess Wayne, Huang Quan also has many other experimental projects in private, almost all of which are related to humans.

For example, experiments involving the fusion of humans and the bizarre.

Humans are forced to stitch together bizarre parts, and flesh and alien matter coexist with difficulty under the coercion of rules, constantly repelling each other yet constantly being repaired by the rules, becoming painful creations that constantly ooze blood.

For example, to test the limits of resurrection-related rules, humans could be thrown into a room with numerous death traps.

Human experimental subjects were repeatedly pushed to the brink of death, only to be forcibly pulled back by the power of the rules at the very moment of their impending release, all to record just how many cycles of near-death and resurrection a life could endure.

When he saw something that could hardly be called a "person," wriggling slightly in the corner, he read meaning from its eyes.

"Please, kill me..."

Ji Mo subconsciously wanted to heal the other person, and the warm healing power fell on the other person, but what she received was terror.

"No...don't heal me..."

Ji Mo had no choice but to stop the treatment, watching helplessly as the thing tried to retreat, even in the shadows it could give the other party a sense of security.

"...Let Xiao Jiu do it."

Ji Mo's treatment can only heal the body, but it is clear that these poor people need spiritual healing.

As he scanned the area from the ground up to the upper floors, layer by layer, Ji Mo became increasingly alarmed.

Upon reaching the highest level and seeing the last mortal, the person was completely stunned.

An elderly cadre who looked somewhat familiar was making and drinking tea by himself, reading the newspaper in his hand with great interest, even though it was a news article from many years ago.

Even after Ji Mo opened the door, he didn't show any panic, but just glanced at it.

Both sides were surprised.

"Ji Mo?"

"...Old Sun?"

Can anyone tell him why the deputy leader of Team 4 of the Extraordinary Countermeasures Bureau is here?