Suspicion

Her head was twisted, lolling to one side at an unnatural angle. The python had emerged halfway out of her split mouth, but it was already lifeless now—its great length meant its head dragged along the ground.

Thick green blood spread from beneath their feet, the stench corroding the ground itself.

It was as bloody a scene as it could get.

“Ran Jie, how did you know she was possessed by an alien?” Ding Naiqing had somehow already walked over to Tu Ran, his eyes brimming with admiration.

Tu Ran looked at that simple, harmless face before her, thought back to how ferocious he had been when firing his gun, and remarked inwardly that one could never judge a person by their appearance.

During the fierce battle just now, the suspicious tuft of hair on Naya Rivera had fallen to the ground. Tu Ran bent down, picked it up, and held it out in front of Ding Naiqing.

“It’s green mastiff fur. I spotted it on her, and the smell of blood on her was far too strong. She also claimed to be a vegetarian, so I suspected she was lying,” Tu Ran said, letting the fur slip from her fingers and flutter to the ground. “In all honesty, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain she was possessed by an alien, which is why I pointed my gun at her from behind at the end. In extremely dangerous situations, the vast majority of aliens don’t keep their composure.”

It was the same method Xi Chunzhi had used to test her back in the elevator.

Hearing her explanation, Ding Naiqing couldn’t help but give her a thumbs-up. “Ran Jie, your sense of smell is incredible. I passed by her two or three times earlier and didn’t catch even a whiff of blood. And your observational skills are top-notch too—you noticed a single tuft of fur. I’d always thought only the forensic experts in the Executive Department could be that meticulous.”

“And you even remembered what green mastiff fur looks like! As a fellow pioneer, I don’t even know what a green mastiff is.” Ding Naiqing’s words were steeped in admiration for Tu Ran, like a devoted fan.

They hadn’t deliberately lowered their voices, so the surrounding guards overheard their conversation, and any previous disrespect toward Tu Ran vanished.

Someone with such keen observation, who could remain remarkably calm and fire her gun even when faced with the maid’s head spinning a full one hundred and eighty degrees—that was no ordinary person.

For them, they had nearly dropped their own guns when they saw that horror-movie-like scene.

Tu Ran merely smiled faintly and said nothing.

The two guards who had been sent out earlier with the thermal scanner to scan the farm for other living creatures returned at that moment.

They had hurried back upon hearing gunshots, and when they saw the twisted corpse of the person and the snake intertwined on the ground, they felt both disgust and shock.

“You found the alien that fast?” One of the young guards, surnamed Wang, exclaimed in surprise. “So this time the alien was a snake.”

“Did you find anything unusual?” Tu Ran ignored their remarks.

“No, but we did find the corpse of a mastiff.”

With that, the young guard cast an image from his communicator onto the screen.

In the corner of a wooden room lay the mutilated corpse of a mastiff. Half of its massive head was missing, revealing bloodstained white brain matter pooled on the floor. Its thick back had been split open, and the spine was nowhere to be found.

Just by looking at the image, Tu Ran could almost smell the nauseating, overpowering stench of blood.

No wonder Naya Rivera had carried such a heavy scent with her.