“Be careful!” Jason warned as Aimee and Thomas leapt over the cracks to reach the other side.

“We should evacuate the civilians around.” Laura took a quick look at the rising iridescent liquid coming from the bottom of the cracks, swallowing debris, broken pipes, and even car tires and cracked windows, and said to the others.

But at this time, instead of running away from danger, a lot of people just gathered around the outer perimeters of the cracks around the restaurant building, with their phones and cameras pointing at this building, as if they just discovered a new flashy site of scenery that they could share online.

“Go! Get out of here!” Jason shouted at the people around the restaurant building as he hopped over the cracks with Caroline: “What the fuck are you doing!? Get outta here!”

“Yo! What happened? ” One yong man with tattoos on his neck got to the side of Thomas, Aimee and Laura: “You guys were in there? Did you see what happened?”

“Hey! Didn’t we tell you to get outta here?” Laura was about to say something, but Thomas stepped forward and said to this young man: “It’s dangerous here! Go! Nothing to see here!”

“Sheesh, okay!” The young man backed off a few steps, but still held his phone up with the camera pointing at the restaurant building: “But - can you see that!? HOLYYYY SHIIIT!”

Jason and Caroline looked back, and instantly felt that their heads just grew thrice as big - some kind of energy field disruption occurred within the restaurant building, and now it was manifesting in the alterations of airflow, light, space and even gravity - the debris from both inside and outside the building started floating upwards, and cracks appeared in the air as if there was a thin and invisible dome of glass that was damaged and almost completely shattered.

“Get outta here!” Caroline breathed in, then let out a powerful roar: “Everyone! Evacuate this place! You wanna be the next victims of San Francisco?!”

This worked only to a small extent, a lot of the people who were already more concerned with their safety immediately fled the scene with every means they had. But still, many people were attracted by this otherworldly sight and some of them even came closer.

“Hey! Be careful! Come back here, it’s too dangerous!” Just this moment, a girl’s voice came to the attention of Laura, as she looked to the direction from which the voice came, she saw a teenage girl with a backpack, a selfie stick on the outer side of the cracks talking to a teenage boy that just jumped over a narrow part of the cracks to the other side with his phone tied to his wrist, seemingly in an attempt to see what was inside.

“What the fuck are you doing!?” Laura cursed, and without any hesitation she conjured a spell with her left hand, an orb of energy appeared around the teenage boy and sent him back to where he was - alongside his girlfriend.

“Wow!” “Woah!” “Did you see that?” Many people gathered around the area immediately turned their cameras to Laura.

“LEAVE!” Jason and Caroline roared one more time, a silver and an orange shockwave exploded from them, hitting almost all people around the restaurant building.

The effect of the orange shockwave released by Caroline was mostly physical, which formed a wall of warm air that pushed the people back and away from the cracks; Jason’s silver shockwave, on the other hand, had a mainly mental effect: everyone of the people affected by it immediately felt a sense of worry, fear and disgust at the supernatural scenes.

With this move, more people turned back and left the scene, but there were still some that remained - the teenage boy and his girlfriend were among them.

“Boom!” Just when Thomas and Aimee were about to pull out their police routine to drive the rest of the people away, something exploded inside the restaurant building, and a beam of light purple shot up into the sky, bringing countless pieces of debris with it.

The glowing iridescent liquid finally reached the surface level and started flowing into the streets. The remaining one and a half dozen people, with their eyes fixated on the purple beam in the sky, did not even feel that their feet were drenched in it. But when the team of Jason and Caroline took a look at them, they instantly found out the unpleasant effect this liquid had on people - especially unpowered civilians.

“We have to seal this place off!” Jason waved his hand, and a long silver rope wrapped around five people and dragged them into the sky - these people still had their eyes fixated on the purple beam of light in the process, and did not react at all to the actions of Jason.

All five of them collaborated and forcefully took these civilians away from the area where the liquid was flowing, this time they finally encountered no resistance at all. But they were already somewhat late - the liquid seemed to have sped up, and more and more areas of the street became covered in it.

Vehicles of the Division rushed towards the restaurant with the horns honking and law enforcement lights blaring - the two agents that made it out earlier finally brought reinforcement.

Early upload for this weekend! 

The reason? The full Xianshi Inn is on Amazon! Just go onto Amazon and search "Xianshi Inn" and you will see it there. 

If you would like to support my work, or read the finale early, go check it out! All the rest of the chapters will be continuously uploaded per my normal schedule.

Thank you so much for all my dear readers, I couldn't have finished this journey without you!

Best regards and my sincere gratitude,

Egao Chan