Class Reptilia, Order Serpentes
Ding Naiqing's body went rigid. He slowly raised his head, his eyes gleaming with barely contained excitement.
"So this might be an al—"
Before he could finish, Tu Ran pressed a finger to her lips, signaling him to be quiet.
The two instinctively leaned in closer.
"So, this could be the alien!" Ding Naiqing's voice trembled with uncontrollable joy. "It's a snake-type alien. After it crawled out of Mr. Igan's body, it barely moved two steps before it ran into the next human it wanted to possess."
Snakes were nothing unusual on a farm; that was probably why the Executive Department hadn't noticed this clue before.
Ding Naiqing was ecstatic. "This is the first time I've encountered a snake-order alien."
"Calm down, calm down," Tu Ran whispered, barely audible to anyone but the two of them. "If this alien is still on the farm, it might be watching us from somewhere right now. We have to be careful."
"Mm-hmm." Ding Naiqing clamped a hand over his mouth and nodded vigorously in agreement.
Meanwhile, the eight guards not far away were watching them with odd expressions.
"What are they talking about? Why do they have to keep it from us? So secretive," one guard muttered, cradling his rifle, curiosity piqued.
"Who knows?" another guard replied, busy checking his magazine. He added coolly, "Maybe they're performing some kind of ritual?"
The others laughed at his blatant sarcasm.
The Regaken State branch of the Federal Government didn't have a Pioneer Team; in fact, among the Federation's forty-two states, only the Federal Administrative Center had one.
They'd only heard that the federal headquarters had recently established this new department, dedicated to exploring the world within the Threshold.
For people living more than two thousand kilometers from the federal center, the Threshold felt distant, and so did the aliens.
In fact, their understanding of aliens was limited to what the news broadcast to the public. The Federal Administrative Center headquarters hadn't shared any alien information with departments other than the Pioneers, and the headlines that made it to public news deliberately downplayed the monstrous horrors to avoid causing panic among ordinary citizens.
As a result, most people held little fear of aliens—especially these Executive Department guards.
Getting into the Executive Department required passing rigorous selection and trials. They patrolled the city daily, dealing with criminals, navigating the darkest corners of urban life, and scraping by in gunfire and danger.
They were used to fighting tangible, palpable threats.
But now, an invisible thing had possessed a farmer, gnawed his bones clean, and disappeared without a trace.
Instead of dispatching a dedicated task force to investigate and solve the case, the government sent a group of seemingly unremarkable people to search for some alien.
Alien, alien, alien. In recent years, that word had dominated headline after headline—pioneers, species extinction programs, migration, the Threshold... a constant stream of novelties, but no real progress in sight.
And now, these two pioneers before them—young, hardly looking sharp—were hardly reassuring.
"Anyone who can become a Pioneer and survive this long is no ordinary person." A voice drifted over, tinged with age, from one of the older guards.