Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Everyone inside the café had noticed it as all of them subconsciously got up with shock etched in their face.

 A few waiters even dropped their trays without them knowing it as the café which was bustling with chatter suddenly fell silent.

 “Aaaaaahhhhh!!!”

 Then came the screams as customers all got up and ran out of the café. Even the waiters scrambled far away as the manager called the cops with a pale face.

 Only that office lady's BFF, still s.h.i.+vering, mustered up some courage as she grabbed her best friend's hand.

 “Oh, my G.o.d! Oh, my G.o.d! Liv! My G.o.d!”

 She was only capable of repeating a fear-ridden ‘Oh my G.o.ds' as she tried to pry her friend's hand from the fork. Yet the latter's strength was mysteriously beyond her imagination as she could not even move her wrist.

 Lin Sheng sat behind and saw clearly the small boy slowly flowing out of the long hair beauty, reforming and heading out of the café.

 He did not act, as this was just the body of a crimson armor warrior, he did not have the speed and reaction to stop it.

 On the other hand, this was the first time he saw these non-shade monsters causing such damages.

 “A pity, a crimson armor warrior is not all that strong or reactive, or else I could stop that boy and save a life.”

 Lin Sheng sighed.

 *Bamm!!*

 Just at that moment, a ruckus broke out at the Chowchow Records Tower. The windowpane of one of the office levels Basbo was on suddenly shattered as countless gla.s.s fragments rained down.

 *Roaaar!!*

 A shapeless soul ripple halo blasted out in a frenzy from there and spread across the entire place. The sound sounded like a b.e.s.t.i.a.l roar, yet no one seemed to have heard it.

 Lin Sheng got out of the coffee shop and looked at the incident scene at the tower. And soon, a monster with a dozen human heads jumped out of the building with a middle-aged man in its hand and landed brutally onto the ground.

 *Bamm!!*

 Two ma.s.sive foot marks suddenly appeared on the ground.

 In the eyes of the crowd, Basbo was simply held by the neck up high by an invisible monster, yet he survived the fall unscathed.

 “So it begins…” Lin Sheng pretended to scream with the rest and ran to the side streets for safety. In fact, he had transformed into black smoke when no one was looking and observed from nearby.

 “Basbo!! Give Leah back!!” The dozens of heads on the Shade h.o.m.onculus all wore a furious expression as it roared.

 The core of his body was a normal man who was about to get married to his beloved girlfriend.

 Yet, this originally happy ending was shattered when Basbo used his powers to charm his girlfriend forcibly in a bar.

 The girl's loss of the chast.i.ty aside, she had become a willing slave to Basbo and any important VIPs he deigns to.

 That sent the man into deep despair, and not too long later, at the grip of crus.h.i.+ng despair, he consumed poison and committed suicide.

 Yet, Lin Sheng's luck was on his side as he managed to find remnants of his soul that have yet to disappear.

 So, he used the Shade creation technique to turn him into a Shade, and during the experiment, he had added another ten different spirit fragments and something special as well.

 It was not only that. What Lin Sheng wanted was a powerful weapon that he could send into a battlefield.

 Using a large amount of memories and knowledge he had as a basis, plus his continuous study and extraction of souls, he had made huge strides in the study of the souls.

 The study made him realize that his usage of souls was the crudest of methods.

 The power that could be unleashed from a person's soul is probably beyond his imaginations, so he now focused on uncovering the secrets of the soul.

 *Bam!!*

 The Shade h.o.m.onculus opened its mouth as it gave Basbo's arm a brutal bite, and tearing the limb off. Amid the bone-chilling cry, a pool of blood splashed against the ground.

 The homunculus did not just stop there as it started to infuse a large amount of black smoke-like substance into the arm wound.

 “The Asterism should be showing up any time now.”

 Lin Sheng looked at the time and saw that most of the pedestrians had already cleared away as a couple of green dots were quickly making their way towards the deserted street.

 “Based on their aura, a Two-winger leading a couple of other One-wingers. They won't be able to do anything to the Shade h.o.m.onculus.”

 Soon, a couple of green silhouettes clashed with the homunculus.

 Amid the clash, aside from some flesh wounds, the homunculus was like a battle tank as it ran rampant. The walls and pavements were crushed and torn apart as Basbo was simply tossed about as he hung upon death's door.

 The small Asterism squad had no means to save the hostage as their ranks were soon thinned by wounded.

 All of their attacks against the homunculus only left minor scratches.

 At that point, Lin Sheng had no need to further observe. He had obtained all of the combat data he needed, so he turned and left.

 Basbo would not die. That was the order he had engraved in the mind of the homunculus. But, he would suffer, as the dark power medical techniques, even when paired with modern medicine would not be able to do anything for his wounds.

 The Holy Sanctum and holy power were Basbo's only hope, and by extension, it was Cavendian's only hope.

 On the way back, Lin Sheng ran into another bizarre shade attacking a living person. This time, he managed to stop it and take out the boy shade as well.

 With Asterism running all around town trying to maintain order, even normal civilians could see them flying around every corner of the city. The normally bustling city center barely had any cars on it.

 Now that cases upon cases happening back to back, the streets were deserted as no one dared to head out and tempt fate.

 When Lin Sheng walked past a few darker areas, he could sense that there was a dangerous aura permeating from the darkness.

 “That's the aura of the Blacktide…”

 Lin Sheng was now very familiar with that aura. With his present knowledge, he could clearly tell that the world he was in was slowly being engulfed and consumed by the Blacktide.

 That made him suspect that this was the reason that he was so easily able to enter the dream; where expanse contracted and eons became instant, into the worlds that had long been consumed by the Blacktide.

 It was not for the fact his soul was powerful and could ignore the distance between worlds. And the biggest possibility was that his world, and the consumed worlds, were simply just too close…

 As he refocused, Lin Sheng's main body in the underground lab slowly opened his eyes.

 “The test results are pretty good. And the mission objective is completed as well. The control is perfect. The third homunculus experiment is a success.”

 He said as he stood up and walked to the lab desk, as he typed into the notebook the results and process of the experiment earlier.

 Lin Sheng had been onto the homunculi experimentation ever since the patrol mission.

 Using the various effects and distortions of the soul based on locality, plus the special brainwas.h.i.+ng technique of the Holy Sanctum, and the technique he had gained for controlling the Shades, Lin Sheng had managed to further improve upon all of them into the homunculus technique he had now.