The Fantastical Beasts at World's End

At 8:32 that night, the office of the special criminal team on the second floor of the Provincial Public Security Bureau was filled with smoke.

Xia Zhiming sat on the swivel chair behind the desk with his brows furrowed, holding a cigarette in one hand, tapping the wooden table rhythmically with his knuckles with the other, staring at the thin curling smoke in a daze.Dozens of people sat or leaned on the small conference table on the side. They were fully armed and wore uniform black protective clothing. Most of them looked dignified with cigarettes in their mouths.

A short-haired man with a baby face sitting cross-legged on a chair took a cigarette from between his pouting upper lip and nose, and said, "Boss, call us here tonight, it won't be just like this Smoking all night?"

"Tsk!" Xia Zhiming stopped tapping his fingers, and said impatiently, "Why are you so anxious?!"

The baby face stared forward and pointed to the wall clock on the wall: "What time is it! In the past few emergency operations, the starting team was exhausted and could last for two hours! Besides, you are not in a hurry, boss! What? You are not in a hurry to knock on some table."

Knocking on the table when impatient was Xia Zhiming's unconscious habit, which was thoroughly understood by these bastards.Xia Zhiming glared, and shrank his neck back with his baby face.

"It sounds a bit wrong, Boss..." A person next to him extinguished his cigarette, threw it into the ashtray full of cigarette butts, and nodded in agreement, "It stands to reason that it's time to change shifts."

Many people responded in agreement.

The baby face became more energetic, and moved forward with all its strength: "Boss, let me tell you, my right eyelid twitched all day today—ah!" Before he finished speaking, he almost fell forward with an imbalance.

The tall man standing on the table behind him with a blank face quickly reached out and slipped his hand to catch the baby's collar, and pulled him back, so that he could avoid knocking out his front teeth in the face.

The baby face smiled coquettishly at Mu Mu who was stuck behind him, and Mu Mu shaved his forehead.

In fact, Babyface was right, Xia Zhiming had been thinking about it just now when he was in a daze.

In the past few times when the special poisonous smog came, the government would immediately take emergency measures——

On the one hand, the emergency air force is dispatched to spray the medicine mixed with water in proportion at high altitude. These medicines come into contact with the fog in the air, envelop it, and then fall down as relatively harmless rain; The public security system and medical teams came out to evacuate the crowd outside and provided emergency rescue to the injured.

Although the protective clothing worn by these personnel has been tested, the actual effect against the poisonous fog is not yet fully determined. Therefore, this emergency operation generally adopts a rotation system to prevent the protective clothing from being eroded by the poisonous fog for a long time and unable to protect. effect.

In the past, it usually took an hour and a half and a maximum of two hours to change a new batch of personnel, but today it has been more than three hours, which is really too long.

Xia Zhiming took a deep breath of the cigarette, then put out the remaining piece in the ashtray beside his hand, and reached for the phone next to the computer.

Just when his fingertips were about to touch, the phone rang suddenly, and everyone was so startled that they immediately got up and threw away their cigarettes, put on hats with protective masks, and looked ready to go.Xia Zhiming picked up the receiver without waiting for the second beep: "Hello! Is it our turn?"

"Don't...ho..." the voice of the person over there was hoarse, and it seemed that he was struggling to speak, almost out of breath, "don't come out...ho!...don't..."

"Hello?!" Xia Zhiming stood up abruptly, "What's going on?! What's wrong with you?!"

"Don't come out... there's a problem, those medicines...we thought that those medicines could be the same as before, and the mist would be removed, ahem... the fog disappeared quickly at first, and everyone was very...very happy, thinking The effect of the new potion...is very good...decided to delay time, ahem, to save more people, and suddenly there was a bigger fog, completely...useless...even the helicopter was...destroyed...cough cough cough , cough cough" The man seemed to have exhausted all his energy after speaking, he took a quick breath twice, his breath was like a gossamer, "Don't come out... you're dead... all... dead——"

Before the voice fell, there was no more breath.

"Boss!" Seeing Xia Zhiming's expression, everyone knew that something was wrong, and asked in a hurry, "What's wrong?!" "What's wrong?" "What are you talking about?"

Xia Zhiming rushed out without answering a word, crossed the long corridor, strode down the stairs all the way, passed the hall on the first floor, but stopped abruptly in front of the glass door leading to the outside.

Behind him came the sound of footsteps going down the stairs, and all the post-department teams who were left in the public security hall heard the movement and gathered together. There could be hundreds of people in Wuyangyang.

They gathered around and asked about the situation one after another, but they all fell silent the moment they saw the scene outside the gate through the glass.

white, sky white

Can't see anything but fog or fog...

The milky white fog, so thick that there was almost no visibility at all, enveloped the world in a manner that seemed to swallow everything, like a huge, boundless cocoon that couldn't be broken free.

"Zi-"

A small, faint sound broke the deathly silence.Xia Zhiming froze and listened for a while. He stood at the front of the crowd and heard it most clearly.

Following the sound, Xia Zhiming took two steps forward, squatted down close to the side of the glass door, and stared at the place where the sound came from for a few seconds.

At the place where the glass is connected to the wall, tiny bubbles are bubbling on the edge, making a "sizzling" sound from time to time, and a little smoke rises up, like oil dripping into boiling water.

After Xia Zhiming understood, his eyes widened and he staggered back.

"Go back!" Xia Zhiming jumped up and turned around, waving his arms to disperse the crowd behind, "Go back quickly, where's the captain?! Where's the captains of each team! Take them all back to the office and stay there! This fucking mist is so evil that it can melt glass! Fuck !"

Xia Zhiming stepped up to the third floor in two or three steps, rushed straight to an office, and rushed in without even knocking on the door: "Something happened!"

A handsome man who looked to be in his 40s was sitting behind his desk, crossed his hands, squinted his eyes and looked at Xia Zhiming intently: "I thought you guys wanted to start a riot just now. Before I got the notice, Don’t even think about rushing out with any excuses, this is the first time you’ve played this trick—”

He was interrupted by Xia Zhiming before he finished speaking. He slapped his hands on the desk, leaned forward, and said in a hurry: "This time something really happened! I don't know why you didn't receive the notification, but there was a call just now From my place, maybe I wanted to call you but I made the wrong call, anyway, the situation is urgent this time!"

Xia Zhiming said a few words about the content of the phone call and what he saw downstairs just now. He spoke in a hurry and in a loud voice. After speaking, he took a rough breath and looked at the man.

The man spread his hands calmly: "There is no other way but to wait."

"you!"

He patted Xia Zhiming's shoulder reassuringly: "I'm just telling the truth. I haven't received any notice of the new action, which means that even the higher-ups haven't thought of a countermeasure. We just have to wait. You're not the only one who is in a hurry, but no matter how anxious you are What is the way, why don't you go out and die?"

Xia Zhiming couldn't help but tugged at the man's collar, gritted his teeth and said, "It wasn't going to be like this! I told you that there would be fog! I told you before that you said you would report it through the procedure. !The result? Hmm? If I believed what I said about the emergency notification, it wouldn’t be the result! There wouldn’t be so many people dying outside!”

The man sighed, opened Xia Zhiming's hand holding the collar, and straightened the collar: "Some things are not as simple as you think, nor are I able to control them."