Chapter 11 The Last Feeling?

"Is this your final feeling?" An Xuan, hiding behind a rock, stared at Zuo Qing in front of him, his expression extremely solemn.

This was their agreed-upon rendezvous point.

The two had separately shaken off their temporary teammates to meet here and exchange information they had gathered.

"Yes," Zuo Qing said quickly, sounding agitated. "I suspect it's Chen Qiang. He's the Crimson who infiltrated this nightmare!"

After a pause, Zuo Qing calmed down slightly and said to An Xuan, "You were with him last night. What do you think of him?"

An Xuan recalled the events and stroked his chin. "Very calm. He didn't show any of the panic he displayed at the beginning. If he's a rookie, then his psychological resilience and potential are quite good."

"Not just good," Zuo Qing corrected, breathing heavily, "but terrifying!"

Seemingly recalling her first encounter with a nightmare, Zuo Qing had already marked this young man named Chen Qiang as extremely dangerous.

She was certain that this young man was the Crimson who had infiltrated this mission.

Staring at his nominal subordinate, An Xuan frowned slightly. "Look at the state you're in." His tone was stern. "I don't care what you encountered or saw before. You need to calm down now and not let fear control you."

"And don't judge things based on feeling alone," An Xuan said. "Use your head."

"But..."

"No buts," An Xuan interrupted.

After a long stare, An Xuan's sharp gaze gradually softened, and his lips moved. "Xiao Qing," he hesitated, and said softly, "You're not suited for this job. After this mission, I'll submit a proposal to have you transferred out of the Execution Department."

"I'm not leaving," Zuo Qing refused decisively, her eyes gradually turning red.

An Xuan sighed and looked at her. "I know you joined the Night Watchers for your father and have been tracking the Crimson. You can consider transferring to other departments. How about Intelligence? That's your old profession, and your intuition might be..."

"I said, I'm not leaving!" Zuo Qing gritted her teeth. "If you dare to go out and say anything to the higher-ups, I'm not done with you!"

"Listen to me. I'm doing this for your own good!"

"I won't!"

...

An Xuan felt a headache coming on. If it weren't for her incredible intuition, he wouldn't have brought her along. Sometimes, the simplest intuition can determine a lot.

Zuo Qing was right about one thing: the most terrifying thing about the Crimson wasn't their cruelty and violence, but the restraint that allowed them to hide that boiling cruelty and violence beneath a calm exterior.

Only in the second before they decided to hunt would they tear off their disguises and reveal their fangs.

And then, for the prey, their nightmare would have just begun.

The Execution Department, as the strongest, most elite, and most influential department of the Night Watchers, faced greater risks than other departments.

While conducting in-depth investigations into nightmares, they also had to protect important figures and encircle and suppress organizations like the Crimson, which relied on nightmares to carry out indiscriminate or premeditated crimes.

It was said that the history of the Night Watchers was a dark book written in blood, and the part belonging to the Execution Department was the bloodiest page.

Several people who had been recruited into the department at the same time as An Xuan had already disappeared without a trace.

Another had barely escaped from a nightmare with his life but had gone insane.

He was housed in a hospital run by the Night Watchers themselves.

The most distinctive feature of this hospital was that there was almost nothing red in it, especially crimson.

Even the plasma bags used for transfusions had to be wrapped in paper of another color.

Usually sky blue, or sometimes light green, because these colors were less stimulating and helped keep the patients, whose mental states were extremely unstable, calm.

And there was more than one layer, to prevent the patients from tearing the paper and exposing the blood's true color.

Even a little bit of crimson would drive the patients confined here mad.

And these people were An Xuan's teammates, the former elites of the Execution Department.

The only mistake they had made in their lives was encountering the Crimson in a nightmare, being captured and tortured like prey... and then being thrown out the door in a mocking manner.

To let them live.

To live forever as a disgrace...

Whenever he thought of these things, and of his teammates lying in their beds, bound in restraints, their eyes vacant, drool trickling from their mouths, shouting from time to time, An Xuan became even more determined to eradicate the Crimson.

Perhaps one day in the future, he would die too, or be captured and tortured by the Crimson like those pitiful and admirable teammates, and eventually become a madman.

But before that, he would continue down this path, just like the predecessors who had met with misfortune, persevering despite a multitude of deaths.

No one else could die in the nightmares. He had a premonition that the Crimson... were brewing a huge conspiracy. He didn't dare to guess how big.

Everyone who was drawn into the nightmares saw the Crimson as madmen and was awed by their brutal methods, but he knew that beneath that extremely repressed madness lay their almost perfect execution.

In his eyes, the Crimson were more like a group of devout believers.

But they revered neither Christ nor the Buddhas and immortals of various mainstream mythological systems.

Not even devils.

The only thing that could make them willingly bow their heads was something hidden in the darkness, in the deepest, deepest depths.

What it was, An Xuan didn't know.

But he had a feeling that it must be hidden in the nightmares.

The Crimson, like them, were exploring the nightmares, but the Night Watchers were seeking a way to eliminate the nightmares, while the Crimson were searching for that thing.

Using any means necessary.

Not caring about their own lives, let alone the lives of others, these were the most terrifying people. They had no bottom line and no limit. Their purpose was purely appalling.

They were a group of martyrs who had smelled the scent and gathered spontaneously!

What worried An Xuan even more was that the Crimson were growing at an unimaginable rate, far faster than the Execution Department!

According to reliable intelligence, there were very few official members of the Crimson. Most were followers who worshiped the Crimson to an extreme degree, under the guise of the Crimson. They might not have the Crimson's brains, restraint, or skills... but their madness was even greater than that of the Crimson.

That was the most terrifying thing.

The Crimson was just a symbol, a sign, but around that symbol, that sign, countless bloodthirsty people swarmed in, enjoying a carnival that even the Crimson themselves might not be able to stop.

To this day, he had never encountered an official member of the Crimson. All those he had killed or suppressed through various means were followers of the Crimson.

Their madness was still fresh in An Xuan's mind.