Chapter 80: Li Qi's Mother

Right as the anomaly was about to be expelled, Li Qi feigned an attack before fleeing the scene.

Everyone immediately set off in pursuit, but in terms of pure speed, even the fastest member of Adam's team couldn't keep up with a level three anomaly.

With Shae's Hyperspeed ability and Nie Yiyi's ability to enhance her own speed through the power of wind, they quickly left Adam behind while the three were giving chase, but they were still unable to catch up to the anomaly.

As the chase continued, they quickly reached the edge of the town, and by then, the anomaly had already entered the farmland.

"Stop! If we keep going like this, we'll get split up!"

At this point, Adam had already been left far behind by Shae and Nie YIyi, and if the two of them were to rush into the farmland, there was a very good chance that they would be targeted individually and defeated by the anomaly.

Thus, the two of them followed Adam's advice and drew to a halt.

"Damn, we let it get away again."

"It's alright, I'm sure the anomaly must've already expended a lot of its power."

Adam rushed to the edge of the town to join Shae and Nie Yiyi, and all of the nearby pedestrians immediately screamed and fled in all directions at the sight of him. In their eyes, he seemed to be the most terrifying of the bunch.

"What do we do now?"

"We wait. Hook will join us soon."

Sure enough, Hook emerged with his magnifying glass out of the blue a few minutes later.

As he made his way out of an alley, he complained, "It's a good thing I have these tracking abilities. Otherwise, I'd be completely lost by now."

"Are you gonna be able to track down the anomaly?"

"Of course. I've already met it face-to-face. If I still can't track it down, then what's the point of even having me in the team?" There was a very eye-catching black line in the magnifying glass. "Should we go after it?"

"Of course! We have to kill it while it's at its weakest."

"I feel like this isn't the way to go," Hook said in a rather hesitant voice. "Even if we catch up to it again, we can't attack it because it's possessing Li Qi's psychic body, and if it tries to get away again, none of us are fast enough to keep up with it, so it'll just be a futile cycle."

.

"No, it's fine. I did some research earlier today, and I found out that these possession class anomalies can't possess a host for very long. On top of that, we have Lina with us, and she can force the anomaly out of Li Qi's body. On top of that, a long and drawn-out battle is exactly what we want. The anomaly has already been injured, and if it runs away again, we'll just have to keep going after it. If we can't kill it the first time, then we'll just have to attack it a second time, or a third time, however many times it takes to bring it down. Also, I have a trump card up my sleeve."

The trump card that Adam was referring to was Distortion.

As an entity that stood at the pinnacle of level two anomalies, it was also the most adept at self-concealment among all of Adam's anomalies. Once the nun anomaly was weakened to a certain extent, he was confident that Distortion would be able to finish the job.

"Alright, we'll do as you say then." Hook pointed in a certain direction as he spoke. "Follow me."

Everyone was moving along very quickly as they didn't want to afford the anomaly any time to rest, particularly when it was holding Li Qi hostage. His existence provided a constant source of negative energy for the anomaly to absorb, thereby accelerating its recovery.

"Li Qi isn't going to be killed by that bad nun, is he?" Lina asked in a concerned voice while still strapped to Adam's back.

"No, there's no way an anomaly can directly kill its host."

The way that emotional anomalies killed their host was to make them ill and feeble, or drive them to commit suicide.

The anomaly had driven Li Qi to attempt suicide on many occasions, but it was unable to directly kill him in the psychic world. After all, fundamentally speaking, the anomaly was a part of his emotions.

Emotions could only torture someone, confining them to boundless darkness, making them suffer through fear, pain, and despair, but only in extremely rare cases could emotions become so powerful that they could trigger a panic attack that led directly to one's death, and there was no way that a level three anomaly would've been capable of triggering such severe panic attacks.

Hence, Adam was fully confident that Li Qi was going to be fine.

"Speed up a little," Adam urged while trailing along behind Hook.

Under Hook's guidance, they passed through the extensive farmland area, then arrived on another farm. This was an abandoned farm where most of the buildings were already in a state of disrepair, and the only building that was still relatively intact was a barn.

"The anomaly is in that barn. You guys can take care of it, I'm gonna disappear for a while."

Dense mist began to emanate from Hook's body as he spoke, and he vanished into thin air again.

That suited Adam just fine, and began to devise a strategy.

"The anomaly is most likely waiting inside for a sneak attack. I'll go in first to take the attack, and after that, you two bring Lina into the barn."

Adam plucked Lina off his back, then placed her into Shae's arms before charging directly toward the sealed barn.

Just as he anticipated, as soon as he set foot into the barn, a manure fork was immediately plunged into his neck. He lashed out in retaliation, but the anomaly retreated back into the darkness.

Adam took advantage of this opportunity to knock down a large section of one of the barn's walls, allowing his companions to see what was happening inside.

Time was almost up for the anomaly's possession, and Li Qi's body was beginning to display signs of instability. Not only was he spasming violently, there seemed to be something struggling to emerge from his body.

Shae immediately carried Lina over to the barn, then instructed, "Force it out of Li Qi's body just like you did before!"

"Leave my friend's body! Don't hurt my friend! Don't hurt Li Qi! He's my friend!"

The anomaly was already struggling to maintain the possession, and in the face of Lina's condemnation, it finally succumbed, leaving Li Qi's body with an anguished wail.

Just like before, the nun anomaly immediately tried to escape after leaving Li Qi's body, unleashing its strange ability to flee the scene as a dark shadow.

However, everyone was already prepared for this, and Adam plunged his blade into the ground with all his might, expending a great deal of power to unleash a Vampiric Halo.

Even though this was a recovery ability, it was also simultaneously able to harm the opponent.

Similarly, Shae and Nie Yiyi were also launching long-range attacks at the fleeing anomaly with all their might, making no effort to conserve their energy. The violent shockwaves from their attacks blew up the entire barn while also blasting a crater that was over a meter deep into the ground.

In the face of this violent barrage of attacks, the nun anomaly was blasted directly out of the ground, and its body was riddled with holes. It had clearly been severely wounded by the fierce assault, but it was still able to escape.

Despite its severe injuries, it was still too fast for anyone to keep up with.

Thus, the third chase began.

After calling Hook out of hiding again, Adam picked up Li Qi, and the team followed Hook to Li Qi's childhood home.

This was the place of origin for the anomaly, so it was the most effective place for it to rest and recuperate.

After leaving the town and the plots of farmland, the neighboring module consisted of the outskirts of Sandrise City. In the real world, this was obviously geographically inaccurate, but everyone's psychic world was made up of these psychic modules that were put together like jigsaw puzzles.

They had arrived at a standalone house on the edge of the city.

Everyone made their way into the house to find that not only was the anomaly in there, so was Li Qi's mother, a woman who appeared to be quite kind and compassionate, but wore an anxious and agitated expression.

She was in the process of cutting some fruit as everyone entered the home.

"These fruits are packed with vitamins and nutrients, so you have to finish them all. Make sure you don't leave even a single piece on the plate!"

"Mum?"

There was no affection in Li Qi's eyes as he caught sight of his mother, only fear and unease.