At the moment when the Yin Ren fell to the ground, black hair danced and blocked the gap that hadn’t yet been closed. However, it was like trying to block a burst water pipe with bare hands. Countless Evil Force still squeezed through the gap. The power, full of resentment and pain, was like concentrated acid, burning Yin Ren’s wing with intense pain.
Finally reaching Sunken Society, he couldn’t afford to be passive anymore.
While the raging Evil Force hadn’t yet turned into a torrent, Yin Ren disregarded everything and blocked the gaps, quickly surveying the surrounding situation.
He smelled Zhong Chengshuo’s breath, as well as various kinds of corpse odors. Among them, there were various strange and evil qi. Compared to the Ant Nest in Gengsheng Town, this ghostly place was no less daunting.
A huge and dangerous corpse vault.
Zhong Chengshuo was once “stored” here.
Having been in contact with modern times for a long time, Yin Ren probably knew what kind of situation a place to store corpses would be. As soon as he thought of Zhong Chengshuo dragging his mutilated corpse out of here, Yin Ren’s hostility couldn’t be suppressed.
Nor did he want to suppress it.
In the blink of an eye, Yin Ren’s Evil Force surged in all directions. Countless mortuary cabinets sounded with frantic banging noises, responding with all their might. In an instant, sharp magic alarms echoed in the darkness.
Yin Ren sneered.
There was no need to reveal the true form of the Evil Force. As the “Great Celestial Master,” he was proficient in being a ghost master, corpse servant, and spirit smith. Since awakening in this era, Yin Ren hadn’t found a place suitable for “controlling corpses”.
At the moment when Yin Ren was tightly blocking the external Evil Force, the corpses shrouded in evil qi broke open the sturdy metal door and walked unsteadily towards Yin Ren.
Clack, clack.
The cold and stiff flesh slapped against the floor.
The first to break through the door were two century-old zombies. Behind them were all sorts of strange and terrifying evil beings, contaminated and mutated by Evil Force. They shook their extra limbs, opened different numbers of eyes, and emitted wailing cries from their throats.
A few bodies were missing arms and legs during the process of breaking through the door, so they stuck together to form a large, fused corpse monster. The strange smell spread in the corridor, and the thick evil qi stirred up ripples.
Cack, clack.
The dark corridor was crowded with shadows, and the bodies were all naked. The broken internal organs swayed slowly, and the deformed flesh shone with a watery sheen. Countless bones bulged, and turbid yellow corpse fluid dripped on the ground. The bluish-white color of dead flesh and the brownish yellow of dried corpses were mixed together, contrasting against the gray-white corridor, as if everything had lost its color.
This was truly a hellish scene.
Only the heavy seal of Yin Ren that was woven into his red clothes emitted a bright light in the shadows. The bodies stood obediently behind Yin Ren, solemn as if they were a funeral procession.
They gradually crowded the corridor, lifting their heavy, deformed heads, and their bones made a dry, turning sound.
It was almost over.
Perhaps for an individual, this place was an unsolvable maze. But when all the corpses had left, the only entrance disguised as a door became incredibly distinct.
Amid the almost piercing alarm, Yin Ren finally released those gaps that had reached their limit.
The next moment, the raging Evil Force in the previous interstitial space spewed out. Dozens of corpses behind Yin Ren bounced out, blocking him and rapidly stretching their arms to instantly generate layers of hard and dry membranes.
Yin Ren turned around smoothly and passed over each corpse without looking back, heading straight for the exit.
Behind him, countless bodies rushed forward into the torrent of the Evil Force. In the distorted space, the corpses were either crushed or devoured. However, they still went forward ignorantly, and all kinds of vicious corpse spells rained down on the pure Evil Force.
Even if it was a mantis trying to stop a car, with so many mantis corpses, the sticky corpse fluid could still cause the wheels to skid.
The quality of the goods of Sunken Society was quite high. Countless fierce corpses acted as sandbags in the flood, and the speed of the Evil Force slowed down a bit.
In the flood, Mr. Qiu’s remains were splashed everywhere. Any corpse that came into contact with the solid debris would expand and burst, blossoming into flesh and blood fireworks.
The sharp alarm, the sound of the walls collapsing, and the sound of corpse explosions mixed together. The quiet corpse vault suddenly became unbelievably lively, as if it were New Year’s.
Yin Ren dragged the suitcase left and right, executing each floor the same way. Even if he was frantically consumed by this strange Evil Force, the number of corpses running out of the corpse vault only increased as if it were inexhaustible.
If he wasn’t being chased, Yin Ren would love this exhilarating feeling, like a mouse falling into a rice bin*.
*An expression describing a situation where someone unexpectedly benefits from a mistake or mishap.
Meanwhile, Zhong Chengshuo obediently sat in the half-open suitcase. His body was surrounded by wings, and his hands were clinging to the edge of the suitcase, not knowing what he was sensing.
Soon, Yin Ren rushed up to the third floor connected to the elevator.
However, in the deafening alarm, the elevator was thoroughly sealed off.
There was no escape route again.
Just as Yin Ren had this thought, Zhong Chengshuo pinched the bundle of wings again. He typed quickly, and Yin Ren simply grew an eye on one of the wing clusters and distracted himself to watch.
[You triggered the magic alarm, so you can only escape up to three floors. Above the third floor, the elevator will be heavily guarded, making it difficult to break through. Erase your presence, and you can use the bottom of the elevator to borrow force.]
Yin Ren reacted instantly.
There must be a gap below the elevator shaft. He could take Zhong Chengshuo with him and hide in there, completely sealing off their breath, and let some of his hair strands crawl up—when the Evil Force arrived like a mudslide, it could help them break through all defenses.
After most of the Evil Force had surged out, they could use the remaining corpses as a consumable shield, which could indeed surprise the enemy and avoid being caught in a pincer attack.
However…
“It’s hard to defend when hiding. I can tolerate it, but you will briefly come into contact with those things.”
Yin Ren spoke very fast.
“That kind of Evil Force is different from mine. It’s exceptionally violent—”
Zhong Chengshuo just patted his wings and made an OK gesture.
Yin Ren didn’t waste any more words, nor did he hesitate.
With several spells, he shattered the elevator and went straight to the bottom of the elevator shaft, suppressing all aura. Only a strand of black hair broke away from Yin Ren’s body and spread its momentum, crawling up through numerous obstacles and cracks.
As a strand of weak and unconnected hair, it crawled exceptionally fast. As expected, the Evil Force fell for the trap and chased after the strand of hair aggressively.
Bang!
Bang!!
Bang!!!
The sound of massive explosions kept coming from above the elevator shaft, where the Evil Force collided head-on with the heavy protection of Sunken Society. Countless debris burst down like bullets. Yin Ren used his wing ball to protect himself and his suitcase while being completely soaked in the Evil Force. It felt like he had fallen into a strong acid and every skin on his body was aching.
Zhong Chengshuo, on the other hand, quietly curled up his body, just like a baby in a womb. Yin Ren couldn’t open his eyes, so he could only hold his lover tightly with his wings.
In the warm embrace of his wings, Zhong Chengshuo clenched his fists slightly.
At first, Yin Ren didn’t understand the meaning of this behavior, but the rhythm of that clenched fist was so familiar that he quickly remembered where it came from.
It was Zhong Chengshuo’s heartbeat.
No words, no heartbeat, no breath. Zhong Chengshuo used this posture to tell him that he was okay and that he didn’t need to worry.
…Zhong Chengshuo knew he would worry.
In the midst of pain and burning, Yin Ren curled up the corners of his mouth.
The sound of explosions became more frequent and blurred. The surging Evil Force also became thinner, and finally, a trace of the breath of the living seeped down from far above. Screams and another wave of alarms entered Yin Ren’s ears.
Now!
In an instant, a large army of corpses crowded into the narrow elevator shaft. Yin Ren protected Zhong Chengshuo and rushed straight up. Behind him, the corpses passed over his body, acting as a shield and blocking the front. When they encountered the scattered Evil Force, there were bursts of corpse explosions.
Yin Ren displayed the fastest speed of his life. In less than three seconds, he rushed straight to the top of the elevator.
Finding that something was off, the torrent of Evil Force turned with difficulty.
“The more, the merrier.”
Yin Ren wiped the blood and sweat off his face.
“…I love lively places the most.”
As soon as he finished speaking, the flood of corpses behind him collided head-on with the Evil Force.
Another explosion of corpses sounded, and the sturdy barriers around them immediately collapsed. The electronic alarms changed their tone into a hoarse and unpleasant mixing like a funeral march.
The space twisted, and the corpses were thrown askew. In the center of it all, Yin Ren was covered in red clothes, revealing an almost relieved smile.
It was a chilling sight to behold.
On the surface of the distant world, Wei Huaqian furrowed his brow.
His personal interface was filled with various alarms, and the blood-red warnings kept scrolling.
Something had gone wrong in the underground corpse vault.
Sunken Society had immediately sealed off the storage area and dispatched the cleanup crew. They even cut off Minister Zou’s access to the relic warehouse. Everything was executed in the fastest and most ruthless manner possible. If the risky areas were compared to carrion, he had already cut out the wound at the fastest speed possible.
…Why did something happen in the underground corpse vault?!
And it was the highest level alert!
Wei Huaqian tried to access the surveillance of the incident, but no matter which camera he looked at, the screen was pitch black—as if a bottomless eye was pressed against the lens.
Only data was frantically being transmitted, screen after screen.
An unprecedented amount of Evil Force had erupted.
…Wait, unprecedented? An eruption of Evil Force with no source?
Wei Huaqian’s hand, which was operating the tablet computer, stopped in mid-air, and his back instantly became damp with sweat. He didn’t even have time to feel sorry for the precious items in the vault. There were only two words in his mind—
Divine Descent.
He pinched his brow hard and quickly examined the rows of data.
No, no, this isn’t right.
In recent years, Sunken Society had conducted many experiments on Evil Force and gained a deep understanding of its characteristics. Wei Huaqian was very certain that the data in front of him was much weaker than a real Divine Descent. This outbreak was more like a weakened version of Divine Descent in a small area. The nature of the Evil Force had significant differences from a true Divine Descent.
The Evil Force that erupted twenty-eight years ago during Divine Descent was… fresher?
And the Evil Force that was currently causing destruction everywhere was quickly deteriorating into evil qi, like it was rapidly decaying. This level… Sunken Society should still be able to handle it at this level.
He held his breath and quickly gave instructions one by one.
Quickly separate the transition space and connect it to the human world, luring the destroyers away!
Sunken Society was his most convenient tool. The top priority was to guard the branch; even if this tool became damaged and difficult to use, it was still better than bare hands.
At the moment when Wei Huaqian was fully focused on giving orders, a certain data on the screen suddenly plummeted like a cliff.
At the same time, in the interstitial space, Yin Ren’s movements suddenly stopped.
The Evil Force around him still surged, but there was something clearly different. It was a subtle, instinctive awareness—
Just now, the source of the Evil Force had completely “died”.
The pain in that power disappeared, leaving only icy resentment and endless chaos.
And at the moment when Yin Ren was fully focused on sensing it, behind him, inside the suitcase…
The wounds on the body of this headless corpse soaked in this Evil Force were quietly closing, little by little.
The author has something to say:
Xiao Yin: Explosion of fireworks! I emptied your inventory.
About half an hour ago, Lu Xiaohe slumped in the darkness.
After Yin Ren entered the rift, the darkness around them suddenly collapsed, and the sharp sound of glass breaking came from outside. Looking out through the protective shield, the dim waiting hall twisted into a mess, and the world around them seemed to be collapsing.
The evil qi readings returned by the equipment remained high, far beyond that of a large evil appearing. However, there was no evil around; only the evil qi of unknown origin lingered.
Fu Tianyi had never seen such a scene before, and he shook from head to toe.
Unfortunately, Lu Xiaohe’s data collection didn’t stop, and he didn’t know whether to stop maintaining the Corpse Cage, so he had to bear it. He had never output such a huge amount of power for such a long time. Fu Tianyi’s face turned pale, and he felt like even his bone marrow was being squeezed into powder.
The two of them guarded Yin Ren’s single hair and didn’t dare to breathe.
A burst of fire broke through the darkness, and a sturdy fire dragon pierced through the broken space, hovering in the darkness. The space that was originally eerie and broken looked somewhat normal after being illuminated by the flames. There were also three figures following the fire.
“Fu Xingchuan!” Fu Tianyi immediately recognized his senior, and tears almost burst out of his eyes. Even so, he didn’t dare to stop his spell.
However, Fu Xingchuan didn’t immediately reassure the two of them. He limped over to the gap and looked at the hair left outside by Yin Ren.
Ge Tingting quickly ran towards Lu Xiaohe and hugged the science post who was covered in sweat. Huang Jin took out two talismans from his bag and threw one at each of them.
“Yin Ren went in, and the attacker didn’t appear again. I don’t know if he also went in.” Fu Tianyi quickly stuffed the talisman into his chest and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Suddenly there was a spatial fluctuation, but I didn’t detect the aura of any evil creature—”
“Shh.” Fu Xingchuan made a quiet gesture.
He pinched several spells, and more than a dozen giant fire dragons shrank to the size of snakes. They roamed around the hair left by Yin Ren and successively drilled into the gap.
After doing all this, Fu Xingchuan sighed. He took out a small knife and cut a deep and long wound on his arm.
The oozing blood didn’t gather and drip but instead condensed into pea-sized droplets that floated in the air. Fu Xingchuan’s hair and earring floated and solidified, hanging unnaturally in the deep shadows.
He cleared his throat and recited a series of obscure and difficult-to-understand syllables. The rhythm was peculiar and had an ancient feel.
The distortion of the air in the nearby ten square meters suddenly slowed down. The ruins vibrated incessantly, as if a force was competing against the collapse here, trying to squeeze the space together.
At the moment when the basic spatial integration was about to be completed, Fu Xingchuan’s chanting rhythm gradually accelerated. Countless thin threads shot out from the blood beads, thoroughly piercing the nearby space as if adding countless veins to it.
The space was still trembling slightly, squeezing out a tiny crack, but at least it was possible to see its original appearance.
Fu Xingchuan pinched a strange spell and pressed his wound wearily. “You can use protective spells now. It’s safe.”
Fu Tianyi didn’t dare to move at all.
Fu Xingchuan glared at him. “That’s enough. Until when are you going to keep giving blood to that Corpse Cage?”
“But… Yin Ren…” Fu Tianyi hesitated.
Seeing that Fu Xingchuan also used an amazing spell, the impact of power from Yin Ren was slightly reduced.
Maybe it was just because he had no reference point, Fu Tianyi thought dazedly. The situation was critical, and he was definitely intimidated. No matter how mysterious and powerful Yin Ren was, he couldn’t beat the real #1 Ghost General.
As soon as Fu Tianyi let go, a watermelon-sized ball with a shimmering surface squeezed out of the gap and shot towards Fu Xingchuan like a bullet. At the same time, the strand of hair from Yin Ren, which was left outside, suddenly snapped, and the protective spell collapsed in an instant.
In extreme exhaustion, the young cultivator’s brain was blank.
He turned his power toward the ball with an almost tragic feeling. He had to protect Fu Xingchuan…
Before Fu Tianyi’s thoughts had even turned, the ball broke through his defense line with a swish, just like punching through a piece of wet tissue paper.
The ball hit Fu Xingchuan’s forehead, and it pressed against his brow as it delivered cognitive magic while whimpering and whining.
…An A-level evil, Yellow Millet.
Why is Yellow Millet here? And why did Fu Xingchuan seem familiar with this Yellow Millet?!
It was taboo to have private dealings with dangerous evils! Fu Tianyi stared at Yellow Millet without blinking, almost forgetting to breathe.
After the perception transmission of Yellow Millet ended, Fu Xingchuan’s expression was so dark that it was almost dripping with water. The warm and melting light of the fire dragon illuminated the surrounding space, but Fu Xingchuan’s face was still cold.
Perhaps because she was ignorant and fearless, Ge Tingting from Unit 9 was the first to speak. “What about Yin Ren? What happened to him?”
“He’s dead.” Fu Xingchuan answered with an ugly face. “It’s not safe here. I’ll send you out right away.”
There was a hint of sharpness in his words, indicating that he wouldn’t accept any questions.
In the darkness, Ge Tingting widened her eyes, her face lost and confused. She stood there, apparently unable to digest this news. Lu Xiaohe supported her shoulder, with slightly red eyes.
Huang Jin lowered his head, his features sinking into the shadows.
“Is that it?” he asked, with an underlying meaning. “Could he really…”
“Yes, how could it be that simple? Yin Ren is too powerful.”
Fu Tianyi interrupted Huang Jin in a daze. His head was seemingly emitting smoke.
“Was that Yellow Millet a messenger? Can Yin Ren control Yellow Millet? Are you sure he’s dead? What happened in that gap?”
“Curiosity can lead to death. I remember that was Shian’s first lesson,” Fu Xingchuan said without candor. The blood from his wound continued to gather and gradually congealed into a ball of blood.
“In our line of work, death is always sudden. It seems that Beijing is still too peaceful.”
Ge Tingting still stared at that gap in a daze.
She had seen Zhong Chengshuo being brutally shot in front of her—his blood splattering onto her feet. The senior’s death was particularly intense, making it hard for her to breathe.
Yin Ren… But Yin Ren only said a brief goodbye to them before disappearing into the unknown. They didn’t even know how he died, like the glistening dew on leaves at night, disappearing without a trace before sunrise.
In just a few months, two people…
Two people who lived by her side, whose bodies couldn’t even be brought home.
Ge Tingting stared with wide eyes, staring at the darkness that devoured everything. She didn’t cry, but her eyes just hurt from being dry.
Fu Xingchuan was already fortifying the retreat route, while Fu Tianyi squatted by his feet, poking at Yellow Millet while busy questioning his life. Yellow Millet paid him no attention and just lay on the ground sobbing.
Lu Xiaohe was tugging at her clothes, saying something, but Ge Tingting wasn’t in the mood to look at her phone. She could probably guess that Lu Xiaohe was trying to persuade her to go back. Huang Jin activated a tranquility talisman and carefully put it in Ge Tingting’s pocket.
But… but…
Ge Tingting couldn’t take her eyes off that void of darkness.
At this moment, it was like death itself.
She didn’t know if it was her imagination, but it seemed like something was moving in that pitch-black depth.
Like a vortex.
But compared to a calm and orderly vortex, this one was particularly restless. There were many strange, lumpy objects mixed inside, like chunks of meat that hadn’t been crushed in a blender.
Ge Tingting stared at that strange vortex, pulling on Lu Xiaohe’s hand. Lu Xiaohe said something sadly, turning to face Ge Tingting directly. But as soon as she saw Ge Tingting’s face, she let out a scream.
The next moment, the surrounding detection machines and she herself screamed together.
The once stable space tore apart into strands of blood vessels and violently churned again. This time, instead of breaking into neat fragments, they twisted into vortices of different sizes, like liquid special effects gone awry.
Fu Xingchuan suddenly stopped in his tracks, rushing back in disbelief—
The youngest member of Unit 9 was staring at the gap, eyes wide open, continuously shedding tears. Fu Xingchuan acted decisively, using a shroud spell to cover Ge Tingting’s eyes.
Huang Jin consciously approached, and Fu Tianyi was struck hard in the abdomen by Yellow Millet and thrown back to the foot of Fu Xingchuan.
Fu Xingchuan didn’t care at all whether he would lose too much blood. Strands of blood gathered around the five people, forming a strong sphere. Compared to Fu Xingchuan’s current expression, his previous icy look could be described as “reveling in the spring breeze*”.
*(如沐春风) Idiom often used to describe the feeling of being in a pleasant and comfortable environment, which makes one happy and content.
Fu Tianyi had never seen such a fierce expression from Fu Xingchuan before.
He dared not inquire further about Yellow Millet and couldn’t even muster the strength to stand up. The new rising star of the Fu family lay honestly on the ground. “What’s going on?”
“The aura of a Divine Descent.”
Fu Xingchuan’s face was pale, letting the blood flow.
He didn’t answer Fu Tianyi’s question but murmured into his phone.
“Completely seal off the Haigu Municipal Hospital. Get the people outside to prepare for preventive sealing measures and great sealing arrays!”
Huang Jin’s expression changed. “Wait, what do we do?”
“Stop this wave first!” Fu Xingchuan gritted his teeth. “It’s too late to run. When the concentration of the evil qi goes up, we don’t even know how people will die!”
At the same time, on the other side.
Mr. Qiu was stuck in the wreckage of the interstitial space, violently shaking as many pieces of his flesh flew off. It was as if there was something invisible gnawing at it, causing the space to twist into ominous vortexes.
An extremely cold momentum was stirring in midair.
Half an hour ago, Yin Ren might have been cold and ruthless, fighting to the death with this unknown force. Now—Lord Ghost King quickly pulled out a large suitcase, padded it with a winged ball, and stuffed Zhong Chengshuo into it.
Zhong Chengshuo looked at him in confusion and tilted his neck.
“Something’s wrong. Let’s run!” Yin Ren said loudly.
Now that Zhong Chengshuo wasn’t wearing clothes, he could only use other things to support the levitation spell. The huge suitcase flew up and carried his lover, whom he couldn’t make sense of in any way.
With everything ready, Yin Ren flew out at the fastest speed, breaking through the darkness with a suitcase like a reindeer pulling a sleigh. He wanted to imitate Mr. Qiu and tear open a rift to another interstitial space, but he was afraid that the other side would be a deep sea of magma, which would hurt Zhong Chengshuo, whom he had finally found.
He had to escape through this interstitial space.
The distortion behind him grew larger and closer, and a strange tremor came from the west, like chewing.
Along with the indistinct sound of chewing, an unfamiliar Evil Force inside the space became even more intense, filled with pain and madness. They didn’t scatter and escape, but aimed at Yin Ren, pressing straight towards him.
If the Evil Force Yin Ren had previously absorbed from Mr. Qiu was like clear water, the things in front of him would be like a dirty mudslide. This Evil Force was too unstable that taking a bite might drive him crazy.
Yin Ren could only barely cut through the surging power and rush towards the boundary of space.
But the space was small, and he had already known this when he stretched his body just now.
Soon, Lord Ghost King and his underworld sleigh arrived at the end. On the other side wasn’t darkness but countless youths in red and blue clothes. The broken space was like coping and pasting, connecting regularly in the void.
And beyond the dilapidated corridor, the violent Evil Force almost turned into liquid. Where it flowed, countless spaces twisted and rotated, instantly losing their original shape.
Yin Ren turned the suitcase behind him. The Evil Force in the air had already become so strong that even he, an Evil Spirit, was uncomfortable. Yin Ren didn’t want to know what would happen if he was engulfed by that thing, let alone what would happen if Zhong Chengshuo encountered it.
What the hell is that thing?!
Five seconds.
The raging Evil Force formed a wave and quickly approached the two of them.
As soon as Yin Ren changed his previous passivity, he was so anxious that he was sweating profusely. He shielded the suitcase with his whole body and had never thought so quickly before.
“Splitting space and escape” was like drawing lots, and he had to be cautious with Zhong Chengshuo. Even if they were lucky enough to draw a suitable space, this thing might still chase after them.
The fire dragon of Fu Xingchuan just now indicated the direction to the outside world. But if they escaped directly to the outside world and this Evil Force surged even a little, it would cause great disaster.
Four seconds.
Yin Ren could almost see the dizzying vortex in the muddy flood.
…Think. He must think.
This place was likely a Sunken Society stronghold. Those people established a stronghold in the interstitial space and took precautions—this space was like one of the building blocks. If any part had a problem, it could be directly “dismantled” and isolated.
But mortals weren’t gods after all, and such “dismantling” was just using magic to lower barriers and forcibly divide.
In other words, there must be remaining parts of Sunken Society’s stronghold connected to this interstitial space.
Three seconds.
Beyond that, he had no other choice.
Yin Ren hugged the suitcase, and his black hair suddenly stretched out. He deliberately avoided the area where Fu Xingchuan came into contact, and his hair scattered in the remaining direction.
With the skills he just learned from Mr. Qiu and techniques he had never used before; Yin Ren had no confidence.
But he had to do it, even if he wasn’t sure.
With surging power, his hair pierced through millions of adjacent interstitial spaces in an instant. A torrent of sensations flooded Yin Ren’s mind, almost knocking him out. Yin Ren endured the pain and breathed heavily, forcing himself to feel everything.
……The void, sea water, mud, ice, and lava… There is no trace of life…
……Steel, cement, stone, sand, and strong acid… Still no trace of life…
No… no… no…
His own skills were still too immature and unfamiliar, and it was difficult to distinguish the breath of living creatures. The surge of Evil Force was approaching, and the trembling of his wings became more and more obvious.
Perhaps they could just gamble…
Two seconds.
A hand reached out from the luggage and grabbed Yin Ren’s hair. That hand moved its bent fingers and pointed at itself, then pointed in the distance.
In the blink of an eye, Yin Ren understood the meaning of his partner.
Before the space was split, Zhong Chengshuo might have stayed in other areas. Yin Ren wasn’t used to identifying unfamiliar breaths, but if it was the breath of his lover that he was familiar with to the extreme…
In the space filled with countless bubbles, a strand of hair moved slightly.
One second.
A breaking sound rang out.
In the next moment, Yin Ren, dressed in red, dragged a floating silver suitcase and landed on one knee on the neatly arranged ground.
In front of him was an endless corridor with the same style as the deepest part of the Sunken Society’s corpse vault.
Author’s note:
The headless boyfriend in the suitcase… It sounds like quite a scary story.
Xiao Zhong and Xiao Yin: Hello, friends of Sunken Society. We’re back again!
Kinky Thoughts:
Note: The title is an idiom (祸水东引) that directly translates to disaster water flows to the east. It refers to an impending disaster that is spreading and affecting others, and it is often used to describe a situation where a bad influence or bad luck is spreading to others.
It was midnight, and the restaurant had already closed. The large terrace was empty, except for a dowdy-looking woman named Qi Xin.
She casually pulled out a chair and sat down, tapping her fingers on the edge of the table. In the center of the table was a stylish mirror vase, which distorted her features in a somewhat comical way.
Her twisted features spoke first, emitting a gentle voice that humans couldn’t hear.
“Qiu Fang has been severely injured,” the voice said. “The shell it found was destroyed, which is one thing, but this time the enemy has hurt its true body in its hometown.”
“How severe are the injuries?” Qi Xin asked absentmindedly.
“Near-death and comatose.”
“So it’s no use to you anymore… It was just a hot-headed rookie, so you only dared to give him the job of a watchdog, right?”
The distorted image didn’t answer.
“Let me rephrase the question.” Qi Xin took out a pair of chopsticks from the restaurant’s spare box and played with them between her fingers. “It’s a burden now. Do you still want to protect it?”
“We’re comrades after all, and some things don’t need to be done so harshly.”
The voice spoke softly.
“Its food supply is the most abundant, and even if it’s near death and comatose, it will slowly recover from its injuries over time. The rest of us can handle it.”
Qi Xin’s movements paused, and her tone was indifferent. “‘Comrades’? I see why Qiu Fang respects you so much. You’re printed from the same mold, and the human stench is overwhelming.”
The voice didn’t respond. “You should deal with the thing that hurt Qiu Fang. I know you don’t like to be ordered around…but you seem to know something about this. Give me an answer as soon as possible.”
The voice remained gentle, but Qi Xin could sense the warning in it.
“Fine,” she said. “Can I do whatever I want?”
“Mm.”
“Qiu Fang’s body is stuck between a gap and its hometown, comatose and unable to move due to its injuries,” Qi Xin said suggestively. “It must be very painful; I can’t bear to watch… I’ve come up with a good idea to kill two birds with one stone.”
The image on the vase had returned to normal at some point, and her voice floated around the empty terrace.
Qi Xin shook her head, stood up, and looked in the direction of Haigu Municipal Hospital.
She casually threw the chopsticks on the table, and they stood straight up on the table.
……
Yin Ren remained limp on the ground—given that the winged ocean really collapsed, this state couldn’t be considered wrong.
Zhong Chengshuo was a science post and couldn’t become an evil after death.
Even in his most outrageous and hopeless imagination, Zhong Chengshuo should not… Should not show such behavior if he wasn’t a normal human being. He had lived for thousands of years and had never seen such a “thing”.
But Zhong Chengshuo might still be alive.
This idea was like a flickering flame that suddenly broke through the thick darkness. As long as there was a little light, he knew which direction to go.
His scattered thoughts gathered together, and Yin Ren became more and more sober. He desperately squeezed his body, trying to regain his human form.
Without a human form, there were no five senses, and his current form only had touch and a new and strange “perception”. These perceptions were too weak, and he had to confirm them with his own eyes.
He must confirm them with his own eyes.
The winged ocean gradually stirred up a vortex again, and the translucent black wings rushed towards the center of the vortex. They disappeared as if out of thin air, and a humanoid figure gradually appeared in the vortex.
The wreckage and ruins were stirred up by the vortex, leaving strange-shaped ruins in circles. In the center of the ruins, black hair spread all over the ground. Yin Ren attacked again, and the sealing talismans attached to the wall crawled up his skin. Soon, an ancient red robe formed.
The corpse lay in Yin Ren’s arms, still embracing the wing cluster at the end of his long hair. The various scars on its body were still there, but it had relaxed its posture a bit.
‘Is this an illusion,’ Yin Ren thought nervously.
There were no traces of evil qi or Evil Force on Zhong Chengshuo’s body, which meant it was no different from an ordinary human corpse. Could it be that the scene of the corpse moving just now was caused by his excessive sadness and his perception was wrong?
Yin Ren reached out his cold hand and gently touched Zhong Chengshuo’s hand—there seemed to be something in the palm of that hand just now, and his touch was particularly clear.
Zhong Chengshuo’s hand clenched in vain, and Yin Ren easily pried it open. A round little hamster pendant fell out of his hand, and the words “Wealth and Prosperity” were particularly clear in the darkness.
Yin Ren’s eyes were hot.
It’s not an illusion, not a hallucination.
The enemy had no reason to leave it specifically for the defenseless Zhong Chengshuo.
Although he couldn’t figure out why, the fact was in front of him—his lover was alive for some reason.
Yin Ren quickly cast one healing spell after another on the corpse, but unfortunately, even the smallest wounds couldn’t be healed.
Even in such an outrageous state, Zhong Chengshuo was still unaffected by the metaphysics.
“Zhong Chengshuo!” Yin Ren was at a loss. He tightly held the corpse’s hand and dared not move, afraid of destroying its inexplicable vitality. “Zhong Chengshuo…”
The stiff fingertips of the headless corpse moved, gently grasping Yin Ren’s hand. However, no matter how Yin Ren called, he didn’t make any further movements.
Could it be that Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t hear him? Is this considered an evil? Yin Ren could hardly believe it.
Just when he was at a loss, the hand of the corpse moved again. Zhong Chengshuo struggled to raise his injured arm and gently touched Yin Ren’s throat with his fingertips.
Vibration, yes, vibration.
They could still communicate.
A strand of long hair stumbled out and quickly picked up the cell phone that had been playing dead for a long time. The phone seemed to have been shocked and was shaking like a sieve without even making a buzzing sound.
Yin Ren quickly brought up the input interface.
As he had expected, as soon as he held the phone, as if Zhong Chengshuo could see, he quickly typed out words.
Zhong Chengshuo seemed shocked: [Is Haigu still there?]
Yin Ren: “…”
Good. This familiar thought process undoubtedly belonged to the Zhong Chengshuo he knew well.
“It’s still there.” Yin Ren answered weakly. “Auntie Tao was killed by the sniper, and the others were just injured. Other than that, the situation outside is relatively stable. The Fu family knows that I am Zhong Yi, an evil. But your identity as King Yama and my identity as an Evil Spirit haven’t been exposed. Do you have any more questions?”
As he spoke, Yin Ren gently held the person in his arms. Zhong Chengshuo’s head was gone, and his limbs were broken, so he was much lighter than before.
He held the other person quietly, as if embracing a fragile soap bubble.
[To be fair, it’s your turn to ask questions.] Zhong Chengshuo typed quickly. Without waiting for Yin Ren’s response, his fingertips touched Yin Ren’s throat again.
Yin Ren took a deep breath, and the tips of his black hair flicked restlessly on the ground.
“What are you exactly?” Yin Ren spoke slowly and clearly, trying to suppress the trembling in his voice, “How can I heal you?”
After confirming that Zhong Chengshuo was alive, Yin Ren was frightened by his condition. With his body in such a state, Yin Ren wasn’t even sure how long Zhong Chengshuo’s “life” would last.
[I don’t know.] For a moment, Zhong Chengshuo seemed to transform into Dog Thing. [Now it seems that strictly speaking, I shouldn’t be considered human.]
Yin Ren fell silent.
He stared at the corpse in his arms and rubbed the back of the body that had been shot full of holes. He wanted to delve into this terrifying confession, but his heart was filled with relief, drowning out all doubts.
Seeing Yin Ren not answer for a long time, Zhong Chengshuo’s corpse pondered for a moment.
[Are you okay?] He withdrew his hand from Yin Ren’s throat and repeated the question.
Yin Ren was startled.
“Better,” he answered truthfully.
Next, a pair of cold and deformed hands touched Yin Ren’s cheek. The fingers, covered in wounds, pressed against Yin Ren’s lips, gently moving like a cool kiss.
[But I’m not okay.] After a moment, Zhong Chengshuo withdrew his hands.
[I’m afraid you’ll be angry because of me and expose your identity, causing harm to Haigu.]
[But I’m also afraid that you won’t be angry and soon forget about me, and I’ll have to stay in the corpse vault thinking of this forever.]
On the pale phone screen, the words jumped quickly.
[I was afraid when we separated.] This was how the body summarized it.
Yin Ren didn’t know how to react for a moment. This was the first time Zhong Chengshuo expressed the emotion of “fear”. He was like a patient in a hurry to seek medical advice, describing his feelings openly and straightforwardly.
“I thought you would ask about the battle or the opponent just now…” Yin Ren murmured after a long while.
[I haven’t finished being afraid yet.] Zhong Chengshuo typed with difficulty in the gap of their embrace. [Let’s talk about it after I finish being afraid. We still have a lot of time to communicate.]
In the midst of great sadness and joy, Yin Ren didn’t know how to react. When he realized the movement of his mouth, he had already laughed out loud. Zhong Chengshuo thought he was trembling and quickly reached out to touch him.
It wasn’t until the other’s fingers frantically wiped his cheeks that Yin Ren noticed the tears on his face. He didn’t choke up, but the tears continued to flow. They dripped onto Zhong Chengshuo’s body, quickly spreading a sheen on the cold skin.
Zhong Chengshuo never made baseless assumptions. What he said must have firm support.
Just now he said that they still had a lot of time to communicate.
Zhong Chengshuo was frightened by the warm tears. He hugged the wings beside him tightly and awkwardly patted them, with very stiff movements. Yin Ren found it funny again. He wiped away a few tears haphazardly and pretended to be fine.
Now Zhong Chengshuo seemed to be especially “afraid”.
“What are you afraid of?” Yin Ren cleared his throat and held Zhong Chengshuo’s flailing paws.
[I’m afraid you’ll know that I’m not human and start to guard against me.] Zhong Chengshuo typed faster. [Aren’t you upset? I can’t tell now that I can’t see.]
“Especially upset.”
Yin Ren quickly gathered his hair and made a large wing bundle beside him, letting Zhong Chengshuo soak in it.
“When you recover, you have to compensate me with a lifetime of self-service barbecue.”
…But could Zhong Chengshuo really recover? Yin Ren wasn’t sure. He was still covered in the remains of Mr. Qiu’s body, and his Evil Force was definitely over the limit. He didn’t know if Zhong Chengshuo would be affected.
Feeling the warmth of the wing bundle, Zhong Chengshuo buried himself inside. Although he had no head, he looked serious in his gestures.
[Yin Ren, I don’t know why I haven’t died yet, and I didn’t mean to worry you.]
Zhong Chengshuo explained sincerely.
Yin Ren: “…” He really thought I was upset!
He sighed heavily, lowered his head, and kissed the grim wound on Zhong Chengshuo’s chest, where his heart should have been.
“I’ll answer you again. I’m so happy, I don’t know what to do.”
Yin Ren sniffled and deliberately raised his voice.
“When you recover, we’ll continue to eat together for a lifetime.”
This time, Zhong Chengshuo didn’t respond. His hand stayed near Yin Ren’s neck and trembled slightly. Yin Ren was startled and broke out in a cold sweat in an instant.
“Zhong Chengshuo. Are you okay? Zhong Chengshuo—”
[But I don’t know how to grow back my head.] Zhong Chengshuo finally freed up a hand and slowly typed another line. [Yin Ren, what should I do?]
Yin Ren’s wings, which had been flapping frantically, slowly settled down. He took a deep breath to steady himself and licked his dry lips. “It’s okay. When the time comes, I’ll sneak you out. There’s always a way if we try hard enough…”
Before he could finish speaking, he suddenly realized something.
A little over ten minutes ago, he had asked Yellow Millet to pass a message to Fu Xingchuan, saying that he wanted to self-seal himself. His attention had been focused on Zhong Chengshuo until now, and he only noticed it just now. Fu Xingchuan’s fire dragon, which had been maintaining the gap, had disappeared long ago. Obviously, he had received Yellow Millet’s message and closed the gap completely. With Fu Xingchuan’s means, to conceal Yin Ren’s situation, he must have said that Yin Ren “sacrificed himself in the gap”.
…And Zhong Chengshuo wasn’t human. Before he could figure out Zhong Chengshuo’s situation, he absolutely couldn’t expose him to Shian. For safety’s sake, he couldn’t even openly change his mind and bring Zhong Chengshuo back to the human world.
Had he… “died” too?
Forget about self-service barbecue or healing people. How to leave without arousing suspicion was a big problem.
In the narrow interstitial space, Yin Ren held Zhong Chengshuo tightly with a blank mind.
In the entire dark interstitial space, only the wreckage of Mr. Qiu was suspended in mid-air.
Just as Yin Ren stared at the air in a daze, the wreckage moved slightly.
The author has something to say:
Xiao Zhong’s head can’t grow back immediately. How unexpected! (…
When he returned to the abandoned building, Huang Jin was still in a daze.
He rushed all the way to the ward where Hao Wenzhe and Unit 7 were located, and just as he was about to knock on the door, he was almost scared to death by the door suddenly opening.
Hao Wenzhe’s eyes were tinged with a terrifying dark color, and his tablet emitted a faint light.
“The abnormal data has been reported. There is spatial oscillation nearby. The reading of Evil Force is increasing linearly,” he muttered wearily. “The coordinates are near the abandoned hospital building. Be prepared for protection. Fu Xingchuan will be here soon…”
Two neatly dressed members of Unit 7 and Xiao Wu were standing behind him, and the rear commander, Xiao Zhao, gestured with his thumbs up to indicate that preparations were ready.
After a brief exchange, he noticed Huang Jin, who was standing dumbfounded at the door.
“Do you have something to say?” Hao Wenzhe asked perfunctorily.
In Huang Jin’s eyes, Hao Wenzhe was covered in all thought sizes of “How annoying. This is why I hate going to public places”, and his impatient emotions almost smeared his face.
“I know what happened.” Huang Jin spoke at the fastest speed he could manage. “That attacker has come again. He’s attacking Unit 9 and dragged Yin Ren into the gap.”
“Follow me and explain in detail.” Hao Wenzhe turned his head.
In just a couple of sentences, the two members of Unit 7 and delivery guy Xiao Wu, had already disappeared without a trace, leaving only Hao Wenzhe and Huang Jin in the corridor.
Hao Wenzhe ran at a standard speed for a slightly chubby middle-aged man. “What were you guys from Unit 9 doing in the abandoned building so late at night?”
‘Good question.’ Huang Jin choked.
“Yin Ren thought that the attacker valued the Other Side and wanted to tear the gap open to force him to make a move”… This reason sounded unreliable just by saying it. Except for Fu Xingchuan and Li Nian, others may not even know that Yin Ren was an evil.
“He… He witnessed Zhong Chengshuo being dragged into a rift and tried to enter the rift to find him. We were afraid that he would be too depressed, so we accompanied him to do some research.” Huang Jin squeezed out the little emotional intelligence he had left and tried to talk his way out.
Hao Wenzhe scoffed.
“Just looking at the data, the space near the abandoned building is about to explode. Your friend worked really hard to get into that rift.” When Hao Wenzhe said this, Huang Jin thought he was being sarcastic. Even if Yin Ren had entered the rift, his actions would at most only affect the space on the other side of the rift.
But at that moment, when he returned to the abandoned building, Huang Jin felt that Hao Wenzhe’s statement was still understated.
The entire abandoned building appeared to have dense cracks.
The building was clearly in front of them, but it looked like a scene in a broken mirror—cracks and deformities were exaggerated to the extreme, like a game model with a serious texture error. Those “space fragments” were still constantly moving, and their trajectories were extremely ominous, as if they would burst at any moment.
The three Level-B investigation team members hesitated outside, while Fu Xingchuan stood at the forefront with a limping leg and a black cat standing quietly at his feet.
Hao Wenzhe wiped the sweat from his forehead and let out a long sigh.
“Is this all the people we have?” he frowned.
“I suggest that the main force be stationed farther away,” Fu Xingchuan said, observing the constantly changing “fragments” of buildings. “We are enough here.”
“This is not a small matter,” Hao Wenzhe said, dissatisfied. “According to my calculations, there is a strange variation in the concentration of Evil Force here. Moreover, there is a large and close abnormal ‘interstitial space’.”
“Which is why we are enough,” Fu Xingchuan said. “If something really happens, it’s not something that can be solved with numbers.”
Huang Jin swallowed his saliva, trying hard not to look at the broken spaces. “Fu—Fu Tianyi and Lu Xiaohe are still inside…”
“I know,” Fu Xingchuan raised his hand, and a bright red magic light instantly ignited the night. Countless fire dragons rose out of nowhere, swirling and dancing around the shattered old buildings, gradually gathering the floating space fragments together.
“We need to activate preventive containment measures.” Dr. Cat squatted next to Fu Xingchuan with his tail slightly curled.
Huang Jin’s face froze.
Preventive containment measures, commonly known as “amber sealing”. It referred to the practice of first freezing the relevant space in the face of an inexplicable and spreading disaster.
If there were people in the relevant space, they would become like little insects fossilized in amber.
Hao Wenzhe glanced at Dr. Cat. “Indeed. This is a hospital, and there are still many patients here. We need to prioritize the safety of the people. The abnormal spatial data here has already exceeded the standard. If a large gap reappears, it may affect the civilians in the entire area.”
As he spoke, he dialed a certain phone number. “Hello? Prepare the department’s…”
Beep.
Hao Wenzhe’s phone was snatched away by Fu Xingchuan, who hung up directly.
“…What are you doing?” Hao Wenzhe narrowed his eyes. “You don’t have the authority, I can only make my own judgment.”
“If I were still a Minister, I might agree with your judgment. Now… I’m not in that position, and I have to do something stupid to justify my job.” Fu Xingchuan snapped his fingers, and a fire dragon descended from the sky, entwining around him.
“I’m going in. Give me three hours. After three hours, do whatever you want.”
“Min… Senior Fu, this is not in accordance with the regulations,” Wang Zhou from Unit 7 stuttered. “We must obey the commands of the rear command and not act without authorization…”
Fu Xingchuan smiled. “Stop me?”
Everyone in Shian fell silent.
Fu Xingchuan smiled and shook his head, turning towards the shattered and dilapidated building. At this moment, a small figure pushed past the crowd and followed him step by step.
“I’m going too. I’ll take responsibility for the consequences!” Ge Tingting’s face still had a dazed look from just waking up. “All my friends are inside!”
Fu Xingchuan patted her shoulder without refusing.
His footsteps paused for a moment, as if waiting for something.
Yellow Millet in Huang Jin’s hand muttered as it struggled itself out of his sweaty palms and shot towards Ge Tingting in the darkness. Huang Jin remained where he was, with beads of sweat on his forehead.
He wasn’t obliged to go; Unit 7 was waiting outside. He had done his duty by reporting, and now it was up to fate.
It was a violation of the safety regulations, but as long as Fu Xingchuan was there, it should be okay. Ge Tingting was just a passionate young girl, and it was normal for her not to understand the gravity of the situation.
…Besides, staying outside didn’t mean he was doing nothing; he could assist Hao Wenzhe and the others with the external work. He was only a talented spirit smith; not a strong figure like “King Yama” who could save the world.
What he had to do was simple; he just needed to stand where he was.
Just like before, he meticulously planned each step, being cautious and careful—as long as he didn’t take any risks, he wouldn’t have to face additional danger. As long as he didn’t strive for success, he wouldn’t be hurt by failure.
As long as he stayed here, he wouldn’t have to face an unknown future.
Just like before.
Huang Jin stood rigidly, and in the dim lighting, countless fragments of space fused and folded in front of him.
After a brief pause, Fu Xingchuan resumed his stride. Another fire dragon lit up, encircling Ge Tingting. A tall and short figure walked towards the dilapidated building on the edge of collapse, their silhouettes almost being swallowed by the darkness.
“Alright, let them go.” Hao Wenzhe heaved a sigh. “Um… Xiao Huang? Xiao Bai? Come help me set up the site. I need to measure the site… Hey?!”
“Wait for me!”
Huang Jin tightly grabbed the small bag of talismans in his hand and rushed forward.
“I… I’m going too!”
……
Yin Ren felt the environmental spell around him start to activate.
This interstitial space should have been incredibly vast, but it had been cleverly divided into numerous, precise spells. His disturbance had been detected early on, and the nearby space was neatly isolated, like a leaf that had fallen from a branch.
Since they dared to establish their base in an interstitial space, the creators had certainly taken precautionary measures.
…But so what?
The fights between mortals were something Yin Ren didn’t care to think about anymore.
The body wrapped inside him was cold and heavy, and the sensation of broken skin and flesh made him shiver. Yin Ren dared not touch the deep and shallow wounds, but he couldn’t stop himself from fidgeting with them.
The body was so damaged that he couldn’t even give it a farewell kiss.
Yin Ren’s body swelled subconsciously. The relic warehouse was completely reduced to rubble. A translucent black ocean filled the torn space—the means of separating human space were indeed crude. With just a few movements, small cracks appeared around the small space.
Those were small gaps.
They connected the interstitial space with the real world, corresponding to its location.
Yin Ren embraced the remains of what was Zhong Chengshuo’s mutilated corpse in a numb state. If not for the contract he had with Fu Xingchuan, he would have even wanted to let go of his restraint over his Evil Force.
Perhaps he had devoured too much of Mr. Qiu that it caused his body to grow too large. Yin Ren gradually lost control over them, and even his thoughts became increasingly fragmented and scattered. The peculiar dizziness accompanied by paralysis appeared again, just like the last time he vomited in the hotpot restaurant—he was probably changing again…
Last time, he felt uncomfortable, and Zhong Chengshuo moved him into his bedroom. Yin Ren still remembered that look of helplessness as Zhong Chengshuo held the IV bag.
He really wanted to go back to that time.
Now that he had avenged Zhong Chengshuo and found his target, the nearby space had been completely destroyed. As for the remaining issues, he would let humans solve that themselves…
Yin Ren didn’t even have the strength to go berserk. He tried to shrink his body to restore some semblance of human form, but unfortunately, his body didn’t obey.
Sadness. Weariness. Suffocation.
Unprecedented pain he had never felt before.
He didn’t want to think about the future anymore. He didn’t like this era, and he didn’t want to like mortals anymore.
If he couldn’t return to human form, it would be better to sleep with this corpse here. Time was always the most useful thing, and after sleeping for another thousand years, perhaps this grief would be somewhat diluted.
At that time, the outside world would have changed drastically.
Was there a more suitable seal than the “interstitial space” of the gap?
Yin Ren struggled to move his body, and his wings brushed over Zhong Chengshuo’s corpse.
[If I dream of you again.]
He thought with difficulty.
[Don’t wake me up again, Zhong Chengshuo.]
With the fluttering of his wings, the remains of Mr. Qiu’s limbs trapped in the space were shattered. The debris splashed onto the wings, but Yin Ren didn’t move again.
Yin Ren squeezed out his last bit of reason and began to construct an array around his body, preparing to reinforce this space as a true seal. Dim red light crawled up the damaged walls, weaving dense runes and covering the surroundings with layers of “red gauze”.
“Puff.” Yellow Millet caught a wing cluster and rubbed it fiercely. “Puff…”
After that, dozens of fire dragons followed, cautiously moving through small gaps to ensure they wouldn’t close up.
It was Fu Xingchuan’s spell.
“Yin Ren. Yin Ren. Can you hear me?” Someone called out to him urgently, sounding like Lu Xiaohe.
“Is Yin Ren really inside?” Ge Tingting’s AI voice was very clear. “This place gives me a really uncomfortable feeling…”
“Something’s not right…” Fu Tianyi’s voice was hoarse and parched. “You have to come out quickly.”
Poor young people, ignorant of the truth.
But it didn’t matter. Once he sealed himself in here, Fu Xingchuan might tell them the truth. He didn’t know how long it would take him to recover his human form—perhaps he would never be able to. Unfortunately, they would have to be responsible for the follow up regarding Zhong Chengshuo’s parents, …
[Tell Fu Xingchuan that I want to seal myself.]
Yin Ren laboriously lifted a small wing and lightly brushed against Yellow Millet.
[Tell him I took care of the sniper and let him handle the investigation afterwards. How much they can find out depends on the whims of fate…]
Yellow Millet made a long, mournful puffing sound.
[Hu Tao and Lu Tanfei are both fierce ghosts under my command, so take care of them since they’re your juniors.]
“Puff! Puff—”
[Go.]
Yellow Millet’s large eyeballs became moist.
“Go. I’m just taking a nap. No need to worry.”
Yin Ren repeated.
The ball bounced out with a pop, leaving only the fire dragons carefully wandering through the darkness. Their light reflected off Mr. Qiu’s body parts, giving off a dim and obscure radiance.
The semi-transparent “black seawater” was as calm as a mirror.
‘It’s not much different from before,’ Yin Ren thought. They had been sleeping against each other’s foreheads all along. This time they were sleeping pressed up against each other. Unfortunately, Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t give him a hug.
The feeling of his wings being held was still vivid in his memory.
The sensation was so vivid that it was as if he were being tightly embraced.
……
Yin Ren: “?”
His wings were wrapped around him as if he were being tightly embraced.
Like a bucket of cold water poured over his head, his scattered and blurry consciousness was suddenly scared into focus. Despite his body’s difficulty in controlling itself, Yin Ren tried to flap his wings and feel the posture of the corpse.
…The corpse was broken and stiff, as cold as ever.
But its posture had indeed changed. At this moment, the missing arms were no longer curled up on the chest, but were stretched out wide, holding his wings tightly. Something was pressing against the palm of the corpse’s hand, and it felt a bit rough.
What’s going on?
Could it be that he was too attached to the past and unconsciously moved Zhong Chengshuo’s body?
Time seemed to freeze, and Yin Ren’s wings trembled slightly as he carefully withdrew from Zhong Chengshuo’s embrace.
In the next instant, the corpse unhappily pulled the wings back that tried to escape, and gently rubbed its neck against them.
Yin Ren: “……?!”
The sealing technique that was being perfected suddenly stopped, and all the wings exploded at once.
In the midst of chaotic perception, the rhythmic vibrations became the only order. At that moment, Yin Ren almost forgot the sniper he had been chasing.
Lu Xiaohe had analyzed that the hamster pendant existed in another dimension, which made it extremely difficult to locate. Normally, ordinary signals from other dimensions couldn’t reach his phone.
But his phone was vibrating.
Zhong Chengshuo’s hamster pendant was in this space… which meant he was likely to be here.
A pair of wings lightly flapped in the frozen, dark ocean.
Deep underground, Minister Han leaned back, and the legs of his chair made a piercing creaking sound. The surveillance footage from the relic warehouse suddenly flickered with black glitches and patches, frantically flashing in his eyes.
Something was wrong.
Warm liquid oozed out of his nostrils, and Minister Han quickly wiped it with his sleeve. He had to quickly notify the others…
His gaze unconsciously swept over his sleeve, and Minister Han’s eyes froze.
He thought he was facing some kind of evil, which affected his physical condition, and he had a nosebleed. But the white and murky liquid on his sleeve was mixed with soft, jelly-like matter.
It’s… brain… brain… brain…
Bang!
Minister Han fell to the ground with his chair, clutching his phone tightly. His eyes were wide open, and his pupils shattered before they could enlarge. The large screen in the conference room finally couldn’t bear the weight, and a burst of electric light flashed, accompanied by a smell of burnt flesh.
The next moment, a piercing alarm sounded in the conference room.
Less than five minutes passed.
[All life signs in the relic warehouse area have disappeared.]
[Unknown attack in the storage area. The concentration of Evil Force is rapidly approaching the critical value of an Evil Spirit.]
[Help! Help!]
Wei Huaqian sat in the car, looking at the jumping messages on his phone screen expressionlessly.
After a moment of contemplation, he typed a line of text unhurriedly.
[No need for rescue. Protect the corpse vault. Abandon the storage area space if necessary.]
Most likely, that abnormal “Minister Zou” had done something, but unfortunately, the attacker was ultimately an outsider. The area he attacked was almost worthless, and he exposed his attack method. The most skilled thing about Sunken Society was timely abandonment and survival by sacrificing limbs. This failed attack would become nourishment for Sunken Society.
What Wei Huaqian was more concerned about was another matter.
Only the faction led by Mr. Qiu could cause such a big disturbance at Sunken Society Haigu Branch. Next, he had to talk to those people.
……
At the Haigu Municipal Hospital, Huang Jin stretched his lazy waist.
Since his fight with Ge Tingting, Huang Jin had been studying the tranquility talisman. After staying up until midnight, he finally made some progress. The wooden board was covered with complex and incomprehensible symbols, tied with a red string, neat and pleasing to the eye, and placed right in front of him.
Finally, Huang Jin thought to himself, he could rest. When they continued their work the next day, he could try out their effects.
The young smith rubbed his eyes and was about to stand up when suddenly a colorful giant eyeball appeared before him.
Huang Jin: “……”
Huang Jin: “Aaahhhhh!!!”
Yellow Millet didn’t care about the mental health of this human and urgently screamed. Under its cognitive manipulation, the ward suddenly disappeared and turned into a miniature waiting room in a dilapidated building.
Everything was like a 3D movie, quickly displayed in front of Huang Jin.
After the display was over, Yellow Millet didn’t even wait for this human to digest it. It shrank to the size of a ping pong ball and bounced quickly around the ward. There was a jingling and clanging sound, and Huang Jin’s workbench was knocked into a mess by it.
Huang Jin’s carving knife and wood were scattered all over and a glass cup smashed on the floor, breaking into several pieces.
Ding Lizi was awakened by the noise, and she opened her blind eyes in confusion. “Huang Jin, what’s that sound…?”
“I have diarrhea!” Huang Jin shouted hoarsely. “I need to go out first!”
He didn’t care about whether this was an A-level or non-A-level evil thing and grabbed Yellow Millet, who was threatening and going crazy. After hesitating for half a second, he grabbed the freshly baked tranquility talisman.
[Attackers in the hospital ruins!]
After the warning was sent out via text, Huang Jin ran towards the staff ward of the Shian Haigu branch. He was originally heading straight for the ward of Hao Wenzhe and Unit 7, but when he passed the ward of Unit 9, he stopped for a moment.
“Ge Tingting!” He knew she wouldn’t understand, but he still pounded on the door and shouted with the loudest voice. “There’s a mission! Attackers in the abandoned building!”
Her AI must be able to receive it.
After doing all this, he rushed towards the ward where Hao Wenzhe was located. Yellow Millet floated not far behind Huang Jin, frantically hitting him on the back of his head.
…
In Sunken Society Haigu Branch, darkness still lingered in the warehouse area.
Here.
In the almost-exploding train of thought, Yin Ren stretched his limbs desperately.
The person he was looking for was here.
Before he could search carefully, he had to remove the dangerous obstacles—such as the still annoying sniper. He was useless now and would only bring more unstable factors.
He had to deal with it, Yin Ren thought confusedly.
He wanted to bring its limbs as a gift for the person he liked.
The darkness spread wider and wider.
Miscellaneous items, boxes, ordinary corpses… all insignificant things mixed together. Semi-transparent wings piled up among them, pulling out thin threads like spider webs, wrapping around the space where Mr. Qiu’s huge hand was.
Mr. Qiu used his old trick, trying to tear space to escape again. But those semi-transparent black “spider webs” densely filled the space, and he couldn’t shake them off—
His sharp fingertips kept picking at them. The space, originally fragile and vulnerable, suddenly became unbreakable, no longer listening to his commands.
Who taught this cub?
He couldn’t even do this himself! Up until now, he had no idea who this cub belonged to or what its “essence” was.
Damn it!
In the process of chasing him, this cub’s growth rate was terrifying. Mr. Qiu finally decided to let go of face and give up this part of his body.
It wasn’t difficult to find a human shell. Besides, after a thousand or eight hundred years, his original body’s damage would heal, and there was plenty of time ahead.
The huge hand no longer moved, and Mr. Qiu tried to cut off part of his limb, like a lizard cutting off its own tail.
…Wait. I can’t cut it off?
No, to be precise, he could cut off this body. But when he saw it cut in half, the feeling of being devoured not only didn’t disappear but spread even more rapidly.
Whoosh.
Soft, translucent “spider silk” wrapped around him. Mr. Qiu decided to abandon part of his body and cut himself instead—but it was just a momentary pause, and the darkness surged, then a warm and cruel tide engulfed him.
The dark red giant hand hung softly on the pitch-black “water surface”, like the last cry of a drowning person.
…Why can’t I cut it off?!
An unfamiliar emotion rushed over him like a burn. How much he wished this cub would make a mistake—distracted, relaxed, or just give up. But those black “tides” continued to infiltrate his body, and the gnawing sensation grew stronger and stronger. It followed this part of his body, connected to his original body, and went straight to his core.
Has this little one gone mad?!
Yin Ren’s method was like a snake swallowing an elephant!
Under the influence of that strange emotion, Mr. Qiu didn’t dare to be careless. He focused all his attention, pouring the power of his body into an attack—
It was no longer time to consider whether “humans would be alerted”!
Dark red “fireworks” exploded in the space, and hundreds of hands burst out of the wrists of the giant hand in an instant. They formed a dense ball and bounced towards the soft black ocean, resembling a strange-shaped sea urchin.
The cub still clung tightly to the first hand.
It never stopped biting his body. The fragments falling from the giant hand were instantly submerged by wings, like snowflakes falling into the sea.
Yin Ren didn’t think too much. He even had the leisure to let his thoughts wander.
Buzz, buzz!
The distress signal from the hamster pendant was still vibrating. Did someone accidentally activate it, or was this Sunken Society’s work?
Shian’s phone must have been taken away separately and the enemy wouldn’t bother to leave the hamster pendant on Zheng Chengshuo’s body…
His thoughts were like a kite in a hurricane. In the past, Yin Ren would have been confused by this unprecedented sensory chaos.
But at this moment, a mental needle pinned Yin Ren’s thoughts, keeping his reason in place—
Zhong Chengshuo wasn’t with him, and he couldn’t lose control.
Yin Ren brutally kept himself alert.
Mr. Qiu attacked him, and his wings were subjected to countless tearing and bombing. Waves of power exploded in turn, making Yin Ren feel like an unlucky dough that was squeezed and flattened by a tremendous force from all directions.
But Yin Ren still didn’t let go.
He continued to bite Mr. Qiu’s body, instinctively devouring everything. He created wounds regardless of the consequences and then squeezed into the depths of the wound. The bone-like tissue of the giant hands was crushed into powder, and countless crimson characters dissipated and corroded the metal-like “blade epidermis”.
Buzz, buzz!
Devour, then continue to destroy.
This order-like vibration kept inspiring Yin Ren, urging him to end the battle quickly. Yin Ren’s body was torn apart time and time again, but he quickly restored himself using the power obtained from devouring.
Countless red claws twitched desperately, and the space shook wildly, twisted, and distorted.
One side tried everything to crush, while the other side tried to devour and regenerate. Red and black entangled endlessly, so thick that it resembled a tangible relic warehouse with countless relics floating around. They swayed with Yin Ren’s movements, like ship debris in a storm.
In the intense vibration, the movements of the claws became increasingly chaotic.
Mr. Qiu could barely concentrate.
He never thought that he would lose, just as he never thought that he would be pushed to the brink of “destruction”.
The body of this cub was no different from toxins, and they crazily infiltrated his body, decomposing him alive. In human terms, his condition could be described as “rotting alive”.
It was just a cub… He only wanted to teach them a lesson…
Mr. Qiu’s body on the Other Side felt exhausted. He knew he should focus his energy, but deadly fatigue and weakness seized him. Although the cub’s strength wasn’t strong, it crossed the boundaries of space and corroded incessantly.
Along with it came the strange emotion he had briefly experienced when facing “that one”—he knew that this emotion was called “fear” and would make people numb and panic.
He was scared.
Mr. Qiu finally understood where his instinctive warning had come from not long ago.
…This deadly cub was a “predator” who could restrain him. Having been at the top of the food chain for too long, he had long forgotten what it was like to be prey.
[No… impossible…] As the increasingly dark surrounded, Mr. Qiu struggled in vain. [This cub… Have to inform… that one…]
As long as he concentrated his strength; as long as he concentrated his remaining strength, he could warn and call for help.
Mr. Qiu was extremely clear in this thought.
But he just couldn’t do it.
The transparent wings were warm and soft, but he felt like he was in nine feet of ice. Under the layers of fear and weakness, he gradually couldn’t even move a finger.
Buzz, buzz!
This was the last sound that Mr. Qiu heard.
In the gap of space, Mr. Qiu completely lost consciousness.
Yin Ren was still mechanically devouring, and he could sense that his enemy had only lost consciousness and had not yet completely disappeared. In the darkness beyond the hundreds of hands, there still existed an immensely huge body.
He needed to destroy more.
Yin Ren tried to digest Mr. Qiu’s body, which was lying paralyzed in this space. The transparent wings kept shaking, like the claws of a young beast that had nowhere to put its food.
In the chaos, he felt all kinds of dead things inside him.
The movements of his battle with Mr. Qiu were too big, and these small things mixed into his body and drifted around. They were too insignificant to be affected too much.
In the chaotic perception, Yin Ren tried hard to stabilize his touch. His wings rubbed against those fragments, sending signals back to his body.
A pen without a cap, a teddy bear with only one eye, a bulging schoolbag, an empty suitcase…
A wet and deformed helmet, eyeballs connected to nerves, twisted and deformed corpses…
The remains were all male figures, numbering in the dozens or even hundreds. Perhaps it was the sensation of living creatures that Yin Ren felt when he first arrived—those people either had bodies as thick as barrels or were as thin as monkeys, all of them being impatiently tossed aside by Yin Ren.
This was a transitional space in the gap, where there would be no “ordinary people”.
Buzz, buzz!
Where is it? Where is the hamster pendant?
Where is Zhong Chengshuo?
As long as he carefully filled the entire space, he would definitely feel it. As long as he continued to devour… Destroy his enemies, and find his loved one; it was like killing two birds with one stone…
In the twisted space, Yin Ren’s consumption became increasingly frenzied, and impurities in his body were expelled faster and faster. The translucent wings grew rapidly, flowing over the corners of the relic warehouse and surging up the corridor.
Although they were soft and warm objects, the metal walls of the storage area collapsed one after another.
However, when he threw one of the bodies, Yin Ren suddenly stopped.
Compared with the other bodies, this one was particularly broken. It had lost its head, one leg was bent and deformed, and its upper body was embedded with many objects, with the back being even more badly damaged. The body was exposed, and its fists were clenched. Its arms were curled up in front of its chest, almost losing its human shape.
…But even though it was so damaged, it was still a very beautiful and sturdy body.
And on top of that, there was an exaggerated scar stretching across its chest and abdomen.
The ugly and huge scar that his own fingers had once lightly traced its shape.
Yin Ren’s thoughts almost came to a halt.
The destruction and devouring gradually stopped, and the wings were tightly wrapped around the remains in the center. Yin Ren’s movements were extremely light, as if he was afraid of waking up the person in his arms. Those swinging wings seemed a bit confused, and the surging power that was originally full dissipated in an instant, becoming lifeless.
Buzz buzz!
The phone was still vibrating, but it didn’t matter anymore. He found him.
A normal life, a normal death. Just like the beautiful words—”I’m fine.”
It turned out that there was no miracle.
…This was the expected answer. His last ray of hope was shattered, and it was even more bitter than he thought.
Swish.
The ocean of wings struggled painfully. Yin Ren touched the boundary of the interstitial space at some point but couldn’t help but continue to expand. The boundless pain gradually became intense, and he needed this pain at the moment.
Swish, swish.
Zhong Chengshuo wasn’t by his side so he couldn’t lose control.
But now that Zhong Chengshuo was by his side, could he lose control, just a little?
The author’s has something to say:
Xiao Zhong: No, I just got a little motion sickness… (faints.jpg)
This counts as a reunion! The next chapter is a real reunion!!!
Kinky Thoughts:
Despite knowing Zhong Chengshuo is still alive, I still bawled for Yin Ren.
The night grew darker, and the room became increasingly dim. The gaps blended into the darkness, and the air became as thick as the ocean floor.
Fu Tianyi dared not even take a breath.
When he saw the moment the hamster pendant was destroyed, his sympathy barely emerged before it was engulfed by endless fear.
Yin Ren spun back into the protective barrier without any particular expression on his face. However, in that short moment, the evil qi around him suddenly stopped—Fu Tianyi had already felt that this person was “overflowing with murderous intent”, but only now did he realize what true killing intent was.
There was nothing except pure malice.
It struck like a tsunami, with no room for resistance.
Fu Tianyi had come into contact with many dangerous evil things and boasted of having seen things in the depths of darkness. But compared to Yin Ren, those things were nothing more than clowns on stage.
Fear almost instantly devoured Fu Tianyi, and he almost forgot how to move his body. Unfortunately, he dared not stop the input of his power. The shroud emitted a grayish light and crazily drained his strength.
Fu Tianyi felt as if he had turned into a dried-up cicada shell that could be crushed into pieces by a gust of wind.
He couldn’t stop; absolutely couldn’t stop.
If he alarmed Yin Ren now, who knew what would happen. This thought weighed heavily on him, and his self-esteem, beliefs, and hesitation were all crushed to powder. Fu Tianyi didn’t even care if the sniper attacked him. In his gradually disordered mind, only the words “can’t stop” remained.
Even Lu Xiaohe, who was a science post, sensed that something was wrong and breathed out slowly. Although it was autumn, her exhaled breath was like that of a bitterly cold winter.
She unusually said nothing and gradually increased the speed of typing on the keyboard.
Now there was no hamster pendant that could be used as a locator; only brief records of Yin Ren’s previous attempts. If they relied on them for calculations, there would be a significant margin of error.
But she had to do something. If she did nothing, Yin Ren…
Lu Xiaohe gritted her teeth and quickly activated the emergency program, trying to send the distress signal to Shian’s main processor. However, the attacker outside did something unknown, and her distress signal couldn’t be sent out.
Yin Ren’s right hand hadn’t recovered.
She didn’t dare think too much about what material the bullet was made of. It had exploded Yin Ren’s entire arm, revealing a translucent, sticky black-grey substance at the break. Something was wriggling in the cross-section, but it couldn’t reconstruct the arm as it had before.
Lu Xiaohe didn’t dare to think about it.
“I—I can calculate the approximate range,” she said. Her throat was so hoarse that it even scared herself. “Even if there’s no hamster pendant, as long as you fight for some more time.”
She tried to make the faint hope sound more optimistic, completely ignoring the fact that her voice was trembling.
Outside the window, some dark clouds covered the moon, and there was no light left in the room.
The attacker’s bullets repeatedly hit the protective barrier, causing the entire space to shake. They looked like three poor creatures crammed into a submarine, waiting for it to be destroyed and buried in the infinite darkness.
Lu Xiaohe heard a light laughter.
It was Yin Ren’s voice, and her back instantly broke out in goosebumps.
Why is Yin Ren laughing?
“Yellow Millet, I’ll throw you out of the building later. Go and find the Shian personnel in the ward area,” Yin Ren instructed dreamily. “Fu Tianyi, continue with your work. Everything’s fine.”
His tone was strangely soft.
“Lu Xiaohe, give me the general area,” he repeated.
“The current range is too big!” Lu Xiaohe almost screamed; her laptop was almost smashed by her frantic typing. “According to the previous calculations, that area contains at least hundreds of ‘interstitial spaces’. You won’t be able to find them all!”
“Give it to me,” Yin Ren repeated.
Lu Xiaohe knew Yin Ren didn’t mean any harm, but those words still made her shiver.
She quickly marked the model area and turned the screen over—her hand was too cold and stiff that she almost didn’t catch the computer screen.
Yin Ren didn’t say anything else; he plucked the “spherical charm” on his phone with his remaining left hand and tossed it towards the side window. Accompanied by the small ball’s cry of “puffff—” Yin Ren turned sideways at the same time.
There was a dull sound of tearing.
The gap was torn open again, larger than ever before.
Yin Ren roughly glanced at it, then leaped into one of the shimmering spaces without hesitation. The next second, the gap closed quickly, like a scared clamshell, tighter than ever before.
Lu Xiaohe was shocked to the point of exploding.
No one knew what the interstitial space inside the gap would look like. Lucky ones might be just an ordinary open space or room, but the possibility of high altitude, underwater, or even inside magma couldn’t be ruled out.
Is Yin Ren really that desperate?!
Her fingers trembled in midair and couldn’t hit the keyboard for a long time. It was Fu Tianyi who reacted first. He breathed heavily and said urgently, “Look!”
A long black hair penetrated through the gap, sticking to the dark red coffin like spider silk. It was immersed in the thick night, with a soft halo flashing at the edge.
“The protective barrier is still here.” Fu Tianyi’s nose was bleeding with two black and red streaks, and his tongue was obviously not cooperating. “As long as the barrier is here, he’s still alive.”
Lu Xiaohe’s body, which was stretched tight, relaxed slightly, with sweat all over her forehead.
“I understand.” Amid the buzzing sound in her ears, she replied reluctantly.
The space outside the protective barrier continued to shake, but the gunfire disappeared.
In the gap, Yin Ren plunged into the front yard of an abandoned kindergarten.
As with all gaps, there were no living creatures in this “interstitial space”. The paint on the slide was peeling off, the door was covered in thick rust, and the gray windows were cracked. Inside was pure blackness. The colors outside the park were chaotic and dreamlike, making it difficult to see clearly.
Everything was terrifyingly silent.
…It was an excellent place that wouldn’t affect anyone.
Yin Ren lowered his right hand, which had been blown up, and slowly moved his head. In this silent place, another presence was particularly obvious—
Bang!
Another shot directly blew up Yin Ren’s right shoulder. He didn’t even try to dodge, as if the injury wasn’t his own.
It really hurts.
Zhong Chengshuo must have hurt like this too.
Bang! Bang!
Yin Ren’s head was blown off, and another shot pierced through his abdomen. Gray-black, moist fragments splashed on Yin Ren’s face, sliding down like tears.
Yin Ren still stood quietly in place, motionless, with his clothes torn apart.
……
Not far away, Qiu Fang withdrew his hand.
Did that evil give up completely when it saw its hope destroyed? He wondered in suspicion.
But no matter what kind of evil it was, it was remarkable that it could withstand four bullets. It was a pity that if it was willing to go crazy outside and put on a good show of killing its colleagues, it would be more to his liking.
Qiu Fang shook his head, clapped, twisted his shoulders, and raised his hand again—
But what he saw in his field of vision was no longer the figure in tattered white clothes.
He saw black.
Yin Ren’s battered body was like a leaking bag that was overflowing with countless translucent black wings that surged out of it. They extended rapidly, like a natural disaster. Just as Qiu Fang realized something was wrong, several wings had already slipped past him.
Like a black avalanche.
Those black snow waves appeared out of nowhere and rushed in all directions. In the center of the surging black wave, a huge vortex appeared. The vortex kept twisting, and the surroundings seemed to want to take shape but were powerless to disperse. In the depths of the vortex, there were distant and sad whispers.
Is that “Yin Ren”?
Qiu Fang was stunned for a moment.
Those translucent black substances spewed out between heaven and earth, almost covering the sky.
“Qi…” A look of panic suddenly appeared on Qiu Fang’s bewildered face. “That bastard…”
He reflexively tore open a gap and tried to escape to another interstitial space. Yin Ren’s situation was really off, and although he hadn’t attacked, Qiu Fang’s instincts transmitted a faint warning.
It was a faint, unfamiliar sense of oppression.
The same kind of breath.
…It was the breath of the “same kind” that he had never encountered before. Although it was unfamiliar and clumsy, he would never misjudge it.
A cub, and a very dangerous one at that.
That one surnamed Qi did this on purpose!
Qiu Fang fired several shots and moved towards the back of the interstitial space. He instantly sank into the dark sea and almost lost his human form.
This “interstitial space” was a lightless ocean abyss without any living beings. Qiu Fang cautiously sealed the gap and clicked his tongue in frustration.
It was better to kill those two Shian employees earlier first and then report the matter to “that one” as soon as possible. Qi Xin, that bastard, had a hidden agenda, and this young creature was also very suspicious… Huh?
Something cold coiled around his ankle.
There shouldn’t be any living creatures here.
Qiu Fang stiffly lowered his head and saw the space being violently torn open. Several translucent tentacles stretched out and tried to reach him.
[Give it back to me.]
The thought seemed to be directly implanted in his brain.
[Give it back to me.]
The mental noise was like strong acid, growing stronger and clearer. Qiu Fang shot and shattered the tentacles that were coming his way, and a powerful and violent energy emanated from the severed tips.
[Give it back to me.]
The thought repeated softly, as if it couldn’t feel any pain.
Swish, swish.
More tentacles pierced through the space, and the darkness spread like ink on the seabed. Countless wings rose and fell with the water flow, creating a string of pearl-like bubbles.
Swish, swish.
The thing that used to be called “Yin Ren” stretched its body and slowly spread out on the seabed in the gap. Although it was a lightless seabed, the surrounding darkness suddenly became heavier.
Qiu Fang knew that, in the face of such a strange situation, he should probably run away with his tail between his legs.
But if he did that, he would undoubtedly fall into Qi Xin’s trap, and that old thing would make fun of him for thousands of years. Just thinking about that bastard’s smug look made Qiu Fang’s teeth itch.
Anyway, this body was only a small part of him, and he had to teach this young cub a lesson.
Qiu Fang put away his gun and stopped shooting. The next moment, his clothes disappeared.
Something cracked in the void and gradually revealed white bones and black-gray metal. They merged together, forming a giant human hand.
The bones were twisted, and the blades served as skin. In the gaps between hard objects, countless “texts” of languages were scattered, filling every trench.
Various texts appeared in an ugly black-red color, constantly twitching, accompanied by various hoarse and unpleasant sound fragments.
Overall, it looked like a giant burned hand. The wrist was completely broken, disappearing into the bottomless darkness.
The hand’s five fingers twisted and reached out towards the soft and delicate sea of wings with a menacing aura. It grabbed one of them, squeezed it hard, and blood spurted out from between its fingers.
The shattered wings leaked out from its fingers, but they gathered again, stiff but still able to move.
Swish, swish.
The giant hand suddenly stopped moving.
Several semi-transparent soft limbs wrapped around its seams, seeping inside, like finely packed teeth constantly nibbling away. The giant spider-like hand struggled, but those weak and fragile limbs clung on like a bone-deep ulcer. They brought a very unpleasant feeling of coldness, and a sense of damage radiated from this small part of his body.
[What the hell are you?!] Qiu Fang’s “hand” wildly flailed, and his thoughts pierced straight at those semi-transparent limbs. [There’s no such kind on the Other Side!]
But his enemy would only ever answer with one sentence.
[Give it back to me.]
Temporal rifts bloomed behind the giant hand like surgical blades, cutting through successive layers of space. The giant hand moved at its fastest speed through the rifts, trying to shake off these soft and fragile but ominous and broken limbs.
During this time, the broken limbs were still eating away at his “body”, like some kind of infection.
Whenever Qiu Fang tried to stop, the space around him would slowly crack open, spewing out soft, semi-transparent wings. The broken pieces of wings on the giant hand gradually increased, and the icy erosion sensation became more vivid.
An empty blue sky, a desert in a storm, a snow-capped mountain peak, a dark underground.
One after another, the interstitial spaces became like afterimages, and the speed at which the Yin Ren tore through the rifts became faster and faster. In a trance, Qiu Fang suddenly remembered a scene he had seen in the human world.
It was a nature documentary playing in a hospital.
A young leopard stumbled and chased after its prey. At first, its movements were so clumsy that they were laughable, and the prey frightened it so much that it stumbled around.
But as time passed, it ran faster and faster, biting more and more accurately. Eventually, its movements became more and more brutal.
…This damn cub was hunting him.
The moment Qiu Fang realized this, his mind almost went blank. The hollow feeling of invasion on his body became heavier and heavier, and he had to think quickly of a solution.
Should he escape to the human side?No, that would completely alert humans and jeopardize that one’s plan.
Should he go back to the other side? No, he couldn’t let this unexplained thing in…
That’s right. Yin Ren is just a cub!
Cubs never knew their limits, so he could exhaust this unknown Yin Ren to the limit and let him self-destruct. If all else failed, he could just abandon this part of his body.
The situation was urgent, and even if he was ridiculed by Qi Xin for a hundred million years, he would still admit it.
An abandoned factory, a dirty chimney, a quiet classroom with slanting sunlight, an unmanned dance floor with dazzling lights.
The giant hand was boneless and weak, like an octopus swimming through the shattered space. The black tide composed of wings chased after it without fatigue, surging like some kind of inanimate object.
……
In a trance, Zhong Chengshuo saw a huge black shadow.
It flew past the relic warehouse, faint and ethereal, as if it wasn’t part of this world.
Is it an illusion? Is it because he had sewn the head too hastily, and now his visual nerves were malfunctioning?
It wasn’t surprising. He had been wandering around the warehouse for several hours, and despite finding several newer shelves, there were no traces of the hamster pendant. This was already the 382nd shelf he had checked, so it was no wonder he was experiencing visual fatigue.
Zhong Chengshuo carefully held his head and continued to inspect the huge shelf in front of him.
“This is so fucking weird.”
Not far away, a criminal punched a shelf.
“People are disappearing one by one, yet there’s no sign of that bastard. Such a waste of my time. It’s just one bastard!”
The shelf trembled slightly, and something gold and red jumped out of the pile of clutter.
Zhong Chengshuo held his breath and cautiously took two steps forward. Meanwhile, the criminal swept the shelves with a stick as if to vent his anger. The clutter scattered all over the floor and the golden and red light bounced a few times before rolling into the mess on the ground.
It would be suspicious to squat down and search through the mess so Zhong Chengshuo tried to stabilize himself as much as possible and forced himself to stay in place.
He had to wait until the person left…
“Motherfucker, what are you looking at?” Unexpectedly, the red-eyed criminal not only didn’t leave but also turned his stick towards Zhong Chengshuo.
Zhong Chengshuo tightly gripped his bayonet knife and quickly considered an appropriate response.
What happened next was like a slow-motion scene from a movie.
A black and red giant hand came through the air, and the sturdy metal shelf bent like rubber. The criminal’s incredibly tough helmet was easily crushed, and his eyeballs burst out of his broken skull. The clutter on the shelf became like a bomb full of nails, shooting out at deadly speeds in all directions.
A hammer directly smashed into Zhong Chengshuo’s chest, and a fruit knife pierced the helmet and lodged in his makeshift head.
Despite the inexplicable scene in front of him, Zhong Chengshuo’s eyes only saw the faint light.
He dragged his broken body forward and desperately searched through the clutter on the ground. The mountainous giant hand swept past him again, and his already weak head was sliced off, instantly turning into minced meat.
His senses were lost once again.
Zhong Chengshuo didn’t stop searching. The hard debris cut his fingers and scraped off the flesh on his fingertips. His body was slowly deteriorating, and his sense of touch became increasingly blurry.
Finally, his palm touched something.
Round, smooth, and cool to the touch. The small hamster looked cute and silly, and he had played with that silhouette countless times before.
I’m here.
Zhong Chengshuo gripped the hamster pendant tightly and triggered the emergency call mechanism.
Yin Ren, I’m here.
……
Yin Ren’s five senses were already in disorder.
Perception seemed to have scattered into countless fragments, suddenly thrusting him into a shell of a centipede, amplifying the sensation by billions of times, which was essentially his current sense of confusion.
He couldn’t feel anything, and there was only one goal left in his world. The sniper was like a faint ripple, swaying not far away from him.
Yin Ren was completely relying on instinct to track. His mind was freezing, and his perception was dissipating. His body had become too massive, but he didn’t want to stop.
Just a little more. Just a little more to catch him.
His body continued to surge forward, pouring into another space again. This space was slightly different from before, with a few weak reactions, probably most of which were living things.
He didn’t care.
He just wanted…
Buzz buzz buzz! Buzz buzz buzz!
Somewhere in Yin Ren’s body, his phone was vibrating like crazy. The black ocean suddenly froze in place, and every wing stopped flapping.
It was the distress signal from Zhong Chengshuo’s hamster.
In an underground location, Zhong Chengshuo held onto the front of the human guard’s clothing tightly.
The zombie guard lay on the side, watching helplessly. Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t use magic, but he was skilled at tearing off the corpse talisman with his nails, just like King Yama, the King of Hell.
With its movement and vocal nodes destroyed, the zombie guard turned into a crude humanoid canvas, lying on the wall corner, at Zhong Chengshuo’s mercy.
The human guard, who was caught by the collar, was anxious. Zhong Chengshuo didn’t care about his thoughts. He tightened his fingers, and asked again, “Where are the personal items of the corpses stored?”
Dead people always hated having their things taken away, and this was a universal truth.
The human guard closed his mouth, having given up on running away. He would occasionally glance at the door, hoping someone would notice the broken light—
This thing, which he didn’t know what it was, only used physical attacks and Sunken Society certainly had the numbers to overwhelm it!
But the hands of this thing were so cold, it made him uneasy.
After asking his question, Zhong Chengshuo froze in place like a statue, silently waiting for thirty seconds. Just as the thirty-second mark passed, he extended his other hand and began to remove the human guard’s uniform.
The human guard instinctively protected his chest and exclaimed, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Otherwise, it will be stained with blood later,” Zhong Chengshuo replied calmly, slowly unbuttoning the uniform as if he were skinning an animal.
The human guard: “……”
The human guard: “Your personal belongings will be classified and stored in the relic warehouse for seven days and nights. After confirming that there are no problems, they will be packaged and sent to the research department outside for identification. Do you need me to guide you to the relic warehouse?”
He didn’t even dare to take a breath halfway through, and by the end of his sentence, he barely had a whistle in his voice.
Zhong Chengshuo stopped unbuttoning the uniform.
“Okay.”
He stared at the human guard with Minister Zou’s dull eyes.
“Then give me the personal belongings of this person first.”
The human guard tremblingly took out Minister Zou’s phone and then nervously handed over his own phone. Zhong Chengshuo put both phones in his pocket and lifted the zombie guard with one hand, placing it back at the entrance to the underground corpse vault while it was still dark.
The zombie guard let out a sigh of relief. It dutifully stood in place, decorating the area with the original “peace” that was there before. Before the corpse talisman was repaired, it couldn’t speak or move, which meant it would be mostly his unlucky colleague who would be held accountable.
It looked at Zhong Chengshuo and the human guard walking away with an almost sympathetic look.
Hopefully, this guy was just a lonely ghost who wanted to retrieve his private belongings, or else this matter wouldn’t end well.
The pale lamps gradually retreated. Zhong Chengshuo and the guard walked shoulder-to-shoulder through the dim corridor that was similar to a tomb due to the low ceilings towards the underground corpse vault exit. The nearby corridors were complicated like a spider’s web, and the guard deliberately chose the “proper” main roads.
Zhong Chengshuo could see the desire in his eyes. The guard most likely wanted to trigger an alarm to notify Sunken Society, so he followed quietly, noting all the scenes along the way. Whenever this guard wanted to walk the same path again, he would stop quietly and stare at the uniform buttons of the guards without expression, causing the guard to almost stumble over his own feet.
Click clack.
The sound of two pairs of footsteps, one light and one heavy, echoed in the corridor. Zhong Chengshuo kept puffing his chest, but he didn’t really breathe. In contrast, the guard’s breathing became increasingly heavy and rapid.
“How much further is it to the relic warehouse?” Zhong Chengshuo asked as if chatting.
“We have to change zones,” the guard said hoarsely. “This area only stores individual bodies and specimens. I’m not lying to you…”
“I know, some practitioners’ personal belongings may react with their bodies and cause problems,” Zhong Chengshuo continued to answer with a leaky throat yet his tone was calm enough to make one’s hair stand on end. “But considering convenience, the warehouse and the morgue can’t be too far apart. At least not more than thirty minutes of a straight-line distance.”
The guard hung his head and dared not say a word.
This evil thing that came out was not only strong but also very difficult to fool.
It had decisively killed Minister Zou and disabled the zombie guard. The guard thought it would create a commotion at the entrance of the underground corpse vault, relying on its strength, but who knew this evil thing was exceptionally calm and completely untrickable…
Making a big fuss was certainly cool, but Sunken Society could easily block it using crowd tactics.
This guy not only wanted to retrieve his own belongings but also wanted to escape.
The guard’s plan to escape in the chaos was ruined, and he didn’t dare to intentionally provoke this evil thing. At this point, he could only hope that the people of Sunken Society would discover that something was wrong on their own.
Perhaps some strange god heard the guard’s thoughts, as the next moment, Minister Zou’s phone rang.
Zhong Chengshuo slowly took it out and was relieved to find the face recognition unlock option.
He declined the call directly and quickly replied with one hand.
It was an internal communication group called “Technical Department Two~Five”.
[Technical Department Two—Zou: I’m caught up with something. It’s not convenient to talk.]
[Technical Department Two—Han: The boss is coming for a meeting this morning. Hurry up. It’s important.]
[Technical Department Two—Zou: Okay.]
‘Time’s running out,’ Zhong Chengshuo thought.
According to the guard, after the items here were confirmed to be okay, they would be “transported out”.
He had been here for less than seven days, so the hamster phone charm must still be here. But the fact that they had to pack and transport it was enough to make him smell that something was off.
Sunken Society could easily take defensive and protective measures and build a separate laboratory near the corpse vault. Insisting on building the laboratory outside could only mean that there was something fishy about this place.
In other words, it was hard to escape from here.
He couldn’t go to the so-called boss meeting. At most, his colleagues would notice something was wrong with Mr. Zou after half a day.
Zhong Chengshuo’s footsteps became heavier, causing the guard to jump in place. He led Zhong Chengshuo up and down, turning probably eighteen corners, until they finally arrived at a new area.
Compared to the dim and gloomy corpse vault, the walls here were painted light green, giving it a somewhat hospital-like feeling, and there were fewer messy fork roads.
There was a fenced wall with an open gate between the two areas, and a detector beside the gate flickered with a bright green light.
Zhong Chengshuo stopped cautiously.
“This is the storage area, and we guards have permission to be here.” Seeing Zhong Chengshuo’s gaze, the guard quickly explained his necessity, “The relic warehouse is as big as a maze, and it’s hidden deep. It’s hard for you to find it alone.”
Zhong Chengshuo supported Minister Zou’s heavy head and said, “Let’s go.”
Just as the two of them passed through the narrow gate of the fence and stepped into the storage area, the bright green lights in the corners they couldn’t see suddenly went out.
This scene was being projected in real-time on a display screen in another underground building. Perhaps due to poor signal, the image flickered and blurred.
Wei Huaqian sat at the end of a long table with three other people sitting sparsely around it.
One of them was thin and sweating, wiping his face with a tissue over and over again.
“Minister Han, is this what you called ‘no problem’?” A woman with round and gentle features spoke. Her voice was strangely mixed with coquettishness and contempt. “The meeting is about to start, and he followed a guard to the storage area?”
“He said he…was caught up in something. Maybe he’s just looking for something.” Minister Han was like a fish out of water. His mouth opened and closed, unable to suppress the guilt in his voice.
“Come on, isn’t he still walking? Is the situation that urgent that he’s using Sunken Society’s property for private use?” The woman sneered.
“Boss Qu is so sharp. You’re able to guess there might be something wrong right away.” The only old man at the table didn’t forget to flatter.
Wei Huaqian didn’t even look at the old man. His eyes were fixed on the bloated figure on the screen.
The other three ministers didn’t know that Minister Zou had begged and pleaded to get into this meeting. The mistake during the Gengsheng Town incident was too big, and before they could fix it, Mr. Qiu caused a disturbance that disrupted Shian, indirectly dragging Sunken Society into trouble.
At this critical juncture, Minister Zou planned to use Zhong Chengshuo’s corpse to make a comeback and present an important plan—there was no time to waste, so they were counting on him.
The meeting had just started for half a minute when Wei Huaqian immediately ordered surveillance near the corpse vault to be accessed.
“Evil things don’t just appear out of thin air. Perhaps the employees under Lao Zou’s command made an operational mistake.” The middle-aged woman was the first to react. “There are two dangerous corpses stored there for over three hundred years. I remember their characteristics…”
Wei Huaqian: “The night is long and full of dreams. Isolate the storage area and use magic to destroy it.”
The other three fell silent instantly.
“That’s… quite severe.” Minister Han was the first to react.
Valuables had long been transferred to the closed area, so the items sent in the past seven days were all low-value personal items. The value of the corpse vault was much higher than that of the storage area, so the urgent matter was to eliminate any anomaly as soon as possible.
He quickly pulled out his phone and gave instructions.
Wei Huaqian had been staring at Minister Zou on the screen the entire time, tapping his fingers on the desk from time to time.
Less than ten seconds after Minister Han hung up the phone, the screen suddenly switched. Thick metal plates dropped on both sides of the gate, completely separating the relic warehouse from the corpse vault.
On the other side of those flashing, blurry colored blocks, Zhong Chengshuo and the guard stopped in their tracks.
The guard let out a sob.
As a guard at the Sunken Society Haigu Branch, he had at least figured out the various hidden rules of the organization. Now that all escape routes had been completely blocked, Sunken Society had no intention of letting him go back alive.
Next, there would definitely be a “great purge”.
Zhong Chengshuo sighed. “Faster than I thought.”
As he spoke, the pale green walls around them suddenly lit up, casting an ominous glow that made the hallway look like day time. Zhong Chengshuo kicked the guard, who was as still as a statue, and pounced on him.
The green light covered both of them from head to toe, shining brightly and continuously.
Even though Zhong Chengshuo managed to block most of the light, the guard’s limbs were still exposed to the green light. He made an inhuman groaning sound, and when he moved slightly, his limbs were left behind like decorations made of sand, instantly turning into flesh-colored powder.
There was no blood from the cut. The guard twisted his body in confusion, as if commanding his now disappeared limbs.
He didn’t even realize that half of his head had been cut off, leaving only a fragmented wound covered in powder.
“Ah… Ah…” the guard murmured. “Why… I’m only half a cultivator… Why is it so serious…”
He turned his remaining eye around in desperation. “Why… are you fine… Why…”
Before he could finish speaking, the guard began to cough violently. Flesh-colored powder mixed with blood splattered on the ground.
Zhong Chengshuo was like a dead umbrella, silently propping himself up on the guard’s body, creating a small patch of shade in the green light.
“I’m leaving,” Zhong Chengshuo said calmly. “You can tell me the direction of the relic warehouse or you can remain silent.”
The guard looked at him in fear and despair with tears overflowing from his remaining eye.
“The guards of Sunken Society’s corpse vault are usually ordinary cultivators who have been in the organization for at least ten years. You know they experiment on people, but you still want to help guard it. A miserable death is a common outcome.”
Zhong Chengshuo lowered his eyes, looking directly at the muddy pupils of the corpse, revealing a thick darkness. His voice was becoming softer, with a sound like liquid seepage, almost as if he was trying to soothe a crying baby to sleep.
The guard shook his head desperately, like a leaf in the wind, causing the missing pieces of his head to fall like sand.
Fear.
Zhong Chengshuo quietly chewed on his fear, frozen in place like a plant. Time ticked by slowly until he finally bent down and whispered something into the guard’s ear.
The guard’s tears gushed down as he too muttered a response. After speaking, a miracle-like calmness washed over the guard’s once hopeless face.
……
Outside the screen, Wei Huaqian narrowed his eyes and stopped tapping his fingers on the table. They could only see Minister Zou slowly standing up, but he didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he stood there silently. The guard, now without limbs and only part of his head, was completely exposed to the light. He writhed like a salted slug, and in less than a minute, a living person was turned to dust amidst the magical radiance.
Only then did Minister Zou straighten his clothes and walk in a certain direction.
“The spell was ineffective. Isn’t that an evil thing?” Minister Han was shocked to see Minister Zou not reacting to the green light. “How is that possible?”
“That must be Minister Zou himself. Strange. Is his faith so firm? This is the guy that hangs a safety talisman in his car on purpose.” The middle-aged woman frowned. “But he specially protected that guard… The guard only has limited clearance and can’t go to high-level places.”
The old man hastily nodded in agreement.
The woman turned to Wei Huaqian carefully. “Boss, do we continue to monitor his actions? Maybe there will be more…”
“Stop the spell and let the cleanup crew in.” Wei Huaqian interrupted flatly.
The woman gasped in shock.
Clearly, there was no intention of leaving any survivors.
The cleanup crew was a group of fugitives that Sunken Society kept in its branches. They generally had little education and didn’t leave the branch much. In a sense, these villains were regarded as twisted science posts—they neither believed nor disbelieved in science and only cared about money and face.
They couldn’t achieve complete immunity to magic, but they were tough-skinned and could deal with weak cultivators.
Wei Huaqian seemed to ignore the gasp of his subordinate. He turned his head, propped his hands on his forehead, and stared intently at the screen.
Minister Han cleared his throat with difficulty. “How much can we adjust?”
“As much as we can.” There was a hint of amusement in Wei Huaqian’s voice.
He wanted to see how much this unknown thing was capable of. After all, as long as he obtained the remains of the body, he could hand it over to the research team—it would be interesting to have the technicians in Department 2 study the remains of their former boss.
In the video, Zhong Chengshuo started to jog. He tried to keep his head stable as he ran towards the location the guard had pointed out—the relics warehouse, just like the underground corpse vault, was also located on the bottom floor. This wasn’t because it was super important, but simply because Sunken Society had killed too many “human guinea pigs” and accumulated too many relics.
This was his only chance.
Zhong Chengshuo had not run for long when he heard hurried and chaotic footsteps behind him. The once silent corridor suddenly became chaotic, and the overlapping echoes made the space crowded.
Conversations and running sounds came at him from several directions at the same time, full of hostility.
Without hesitation, Zhong Chengshuo instantly accelerated and rushed towards his destination. He jumped down each flight of stairs at an almost falling speed that the soles of his shoes barely scraped against the ground. He focused intensely on the small cellphone charm laying somewhere underground, as if it was the most important thing in the world.
Unfortunately, he was one step too late.
Just when he was one floor away from his destination, he was blocked by the chasing soldiers who had caught up to him.
The elevator in the storage area could go straight to the deepest level, and a group of them had even come up from underground to block him. Zhong Chengshuo was trapped at the corner of the staircase.
This group of people approached from all sides, looking down on “Minister Zou” with contempt, as if they were looking at a piece of meat on a cutting board.
“It’s a fat pig that runs fast.” One of them taunted, causing a few scattered laughs.
Zhong Chengshuo quickly scanned all the unexpected guests. The people sent by Sunken Society this time had nothing to do with cultivators.
As far as Zhong Chengshuo could see, there were at least twenty people, and there were even more outside the corridor. These people were strong, wore “cloth armor” made of fiber with hard protective parts on key areas, and wore protective helmets similar to football helmets on their heads.
Pairs of eyes peered out from the helmets, and Zhong Chengshuo was familiar with that look and those eyes—they had all appeared on the A-level wanted list.
Murderers.
Apparently, Sunken Society allowed its lackeys to have a little personality. The criminals had clubs, butterfly knives, and triangular blades, and the most extreme ones had shovels and machetes.
Perhaps considering the problem of accidental injury in a small space, there were no weapons of mass destruction such as shotguns.
Zhong Chengshuo quickly scanned the nearby lighting and cameras, moved his joints, and silently lowered his center of gravity. If he still had a heart, his heart rate at this moment would definitely shatter his ribs.
Half a second.
With these big executioners crowding together, and the originally cramped corridor seemed even more suffocating. The gaps between them weren’t even big enough for a child to stand in, so it was hard to find even a glimmer of life among them.
One second.
As long as he made a tiny mistake, this group of people could hold him down with their weight alone.
The next moment.
“Yo, this idiot still wants to move…” A thin man with a butterfly knife hadn’t finished his sentence when his tongue froze in his mouth.
The butterfly knife in his hand disappeared.
With a few light cracks, the butterfly knife was dismantled into three pieces in Zhong Chengshuo’s hand. Before the others could react, Zhong Chengshuo had flung the handle and the blade of the disassembled knife, instantly shattering the nearest three lighting fixtures.
This time, the darkness was even more complete than in the corpse vault.
The criminals on the cleanup crew weren’t stupid. The ones in front relied on their position to shout and charge directly at Zhong Chengshuo, trying to suppress him with a sea of people. But that bloated “Minister Zou ” was like a phantom, evaporating on the spot.
What followed was a warm and sticky liquid.
It sprayed everywhere, splattering everyone’s faces and bodies. When the criminals reacted and turned on their emergency lights, five seconds had already passed.
The surroundings were dark and blood-red.
The people in front had become headless bodies—the sturdy cloth armor and hard helmets couldn’t withstand the swift and precise knife strikes on their necks.
The heads had rolled on the ground with their helmets still on, while the bodies had collapsed with a dull thud. The ground was wet and slippery with blood. These people all had sharp weapons in their hands, but their movements had slowed down unconsciously.
“It’s a machete! My brother has lost his machete!”
“Fuck! That guy ran down. Chase him!”
At the same time, Zhong Chengshuo picked up a spare head with one arm, and with a machete in one hand, he came to a sudden stop at the bottom of the stairs.
As fate would have it, he didn’t have time to run far. The unfortunate end of the stairs had no elevator or transitional hall; only a plain metal door stood in the open. Next to it was the damn facial recognition device—this time, Minister Zou no longer had authority to open it.
He was just a door away from his hamster pendant.
Dozens of people had swarmed down the stairs behind him; their footsteps sounding like torrential rain. There was only a dead end in front of him, but even though his heart no longer existed, Zhong Chengshuo still felt a suffocating squeeze in his chest.
The familiar fear hit him again like a shot of adrenaline.
He didn’t want it to end.
Instead of the bank-style “vault” doors like the underground corpse vault, it was an ordinary metal door.
He held a thick-backed machete in his hand and a hard helmet that still had a head attached to it.
He didn’t want it to end.
Two seconds later, Zhong Chengshuo kicked hard at the door lock. He paid no attention to the dangerous cracking sound of the bones in his leg and kicked again. After four or five kicks, there was a slight deformation on the door.
Zhong Chengshuo raised the machete and precisely inserted the blade into a small gap. Then he jammed the head into the door frame and used all his strength to pry it open.
Crack.
The deformation of the door wasn’t significant, but the gap had widened a lot.
Time seemed to slow down, and countless equations floated through Zhong Chengshuo’s mind. He kicked his battered legs repeatedly, creating several gaps in different positions.
Just as he lifted his foot again, a dozen gunshots rang out. A wave of heat hit his back, and his left eye instantly lost sensation.
His back was riddled with bullets, and his left eye was probably shot through.
He had felt pain, but not much. It was more like a numb, dull ache, accompanied by the subtle sensation of foreign objects entering his body.
Compared to the sniper’s explosive bomb, this level of power was nothing.
Zhong Chengshuo used a flying kick, causing the metal door to shake unbearably and then collapse. There was no sound behind him. Zhong Chengshuo didn’t know if the criminals were scared by him, an “undead zombie”, or if they had other thoughts. He simply lifted his bent right leg and limped into the relic warehouse.
The hamster pendant Yin Ren gave him was there.
He remembered it clearly. It was a little hamster with “Wealth and Prosperity” attached to it.
However, the moment he saw the large relic warehouse clearly, another kind of fear crawled up and plunged into his back like a knife.
This was indeed a “large” warehouse for relics.
This underground warehouse was so big that he couldn’t see the end at a glance. The shelves led directly into the ceilings and were about six meters high, full of messy objects: common clothing, suitcases, handbags, and other casual items. Some damaged cameras lay quietly in the dust, and the cleaning tools used by the cleaners were also dumped in the gaps in the shelves. The skin of various balls was old and damaged, and most of them were deflated.
Stationery, books, bows…
Water cups, sneakers, remote controls…
The metal shelves used bones bonded together by glue and were piled high, making an extremely colorful but bleak maze.
His hamster pendant was just a drop of water in this sea of objects.
Zhong Chengshuo shook his head and forced himself to remain calm.
His task was still here, and theoretically, the possibility of completion wasn’t zero.
This wasn’t the end.
……
“He has been on the run for how long?” Minister Han asked cautiously.
“Fifteen hours and twenty-eight minutes.” The middle-aged woman rotated the steel pen in her hand. There were two empty lunch boxes by her side. “The boss instructed that if we can’t solve it in 24 hours, we have to consider a full lockdown of the relic warehouse. If he wanted to create a scene, I suspect he would have done it from the start.”
Since Minister Zou’s destination was the dull “relic warehouse”, Wei Huaqian was too lazy to watch a bunch of people play hide-and-seek and left before noon.
He ordered his people to completely seal off the underground corpse vault, wait until they knew the situation of the “evil being” that escaped before continuing further inventory work.
Once they entered the relic warehouse, there was no turning back—
The relic warehouse, internally referred to as the “dead man’s dump” contained “material items” that were tasteless to eat, a waste to discard, and could be completely sealed off.
Full lockdown meant they would lower the separators and fix the suspicious intruder in place. Then, they would completely seal off several divided spaces, pour in liquid nitrogen, and destroy all the physical things inside.
Now it was already late at night, and in the picture, “Minister Zou” was still limping and running away. In the vast “garbage dump”, that guy was dragging his broken body, painfully and awkwardly fleeing.
After taking so many bullets and still being able to move, he could only be a dead man. As for why this thing could evade magic, they would soon have an answer—
“Minister Zou” was already on his last breath.
He killed more than a dozen criminals, but they were all tough guys in the cleanup crew. Even if the crazy Minister Zou cut them down, they could still tear off one or two pieces of flesh in return. In contrast, Minister Zou could only strip the corpses and get some clothes to block his wounds.
He was like a small animal that knew it was about to be slaughtered, fleeing with a desperate and sad momentum.
What a pitiful guy. The middle-aged woman yawned.
“Minister Han, you continue to watch. I’ll go back first.” She stretched her neck.
The picture was too blurry, and there were too many obstacles in that ghostly place. It wouldn’t matter if they didn’t watch for a while. After all, the end was about to come, she thought.
Minister Han nodded obediently.
In a place they couldn’t see, Zhong Chengshuo used the cover of miscellaneous objects and gradually changed his blood-stained clothes, becoming more and more similar to the appearance of the criminals.
Half an hour later, a criminal bent down and sewed Minister Zou’s head onto another corpse. Then, he stood up unsteadily, covering his neck with the shadow of the helmet.
He played with the bayonet in his hand for a while as his bloodshot eyes scanned the dusty shelves. Slow motion covered the stiffness of his movements. This silent criminal, together with his other “companions,” continued to roam and explore.
But what others saw were just suspicious figures, and what he saw was the thickness of the accumulated dust.
At the same time.
“I know where our battlefield should be,” Yin Ren said.
“Wait, hold on. Don’t get excited yet. Even if the data is correct, I don’t know what this coordinate means!” Lu Xiaohe wiped the sweat from her face. “I need to study it. I have to wait until tomorrow when Fu Tianyi wakes up…”
Without hesitation, Yin Ren took out his phone and searched for Fu Tianyi’s phone number.
Lu Xiaohe: “…”
One day apart felt like three autumns have passed*, and this guy was becoming more and more ruthless.
*(一日不见如隔三秋) Idiom referring to the feeling of missing someone very much, as if even a short period of time apart feels like an eternity. It emphasizes one’s emotions when separated from a loved one or close friend.
“He must have gone to sleep as soon as he got back, so it makes no difference,” Yin Ren said while flipping through his contacts.
“I’m here.” A head with dark circles under his eyes stretched in from behind the door, sounding a bit resentful. “Miss Lu ran so loudly that it woke me up.”
“You came at the right time.”
“Also, do we need the assistance of Da Huang and Xiao Ge?” Lu Xiaohe tried to pull back the unrestrained Yin Ren. “You also need to rest…”
She hadn’t finished speaking when she saw the gap suddenly widen, like an eye suddenly opening.
This time, Yin Ren held on longer than any previous time.
In the darkness of the gap, various chaotic spatial bubbles were stacked, shimmering with strange textures of light.
“Fu Tianyi, I need more data,” Yin Ren said hoarsely.
“I just need to figure out one coordinate… Just one coordinate.”
Fu Tianyi was exhausted, as if his whole body had been run over by a car. “Breaking through the limit” was a training method, but he couldn’t help but mutter a few words of complaint. It was just that, when he saw Yin Ren’s expression clearly, he didn’t dare say anything.
In the dark waiting room, Yin Ren’s eyes were red as if a sharp blade had been unsheathed. He deliberately restrained his aura, but the oppressive feeling was still like a knife cutting through skin.
Fu Tianyi reached out with his sore and weak hand and tried to activate his power again.
He felt all the muscles in his body crushed into meat sauce. Even the most dangerous missions before weren’t as relentless as this endless night and day of feeling like his flesh was cut with a blunt knife.
Even though he grumbled in his heart, he didn’t hold back his power. Lu Xiaohe didn’t say anything more, and quickly started typing on the keyboard.
“Xiao Fu, be steady… I’ll adjust the space folding parameters…”
She didn’t even have time to wipe the sweat from her nose.
“Yin Ren, tonight I can only try to build a computational model as much as possible. I don’t have any equipment to simulate the signal right now, so I have to use the detection device from the Shian to adjust the gap. Promise me that when I finish the model, you’ll rest… Yin Ren?!”
Lu Xiaohe screamed, and Fu Tianyi was so scared that he lost his strength.
Without hesitation, Yin Ren tore off the hamster pendant from his phone and put his hand into the gap, then pulled it out. “The signal source is exactly the same. Is this okay?”
“It—it’s possible.” Lu Xiaohe swallowed hard.
It was possible, but she was afraid that if Yin Ren made a mistake, the gap would swallow his arm and the hamster pendant whole.
“Just in time.” Yin Ren’s hair tips couldn’t help but move as if to calm himself. “Trust me.”
Lu Xiaohe had just planned to get up from the chair, but then sat back down. She let out a deep sigh and said, “Anyway, I’ll take a break after I finish perfecting the algorithm. I won’t care about you anymore!”
“Thank you,” Yin Ren replied indifferently.
For the first time in his life, he was holding the hamster pendant in his hand that was full of sweat.
Finally, there was a turning point.
When he found the possible location of the hamster pendant, he used the opportunity to break through the “interstitial space” over there. The sniper had no reason to throw a phone pendant there, so Zhong Chengshuo must be nearby.
The answer he wanted was within reach, and after days of darkness, a glimmer of light finally appeared.
Yin Ren adjusted his breathing and was about to tear open the gap again when suddenly his hair stood on end—
A feeling of being watched.
Yin Ren’s black hair shot straight up and instantly passed over Lu Xiaohe and Fu Tianyi, who were both dumbfounded. Sure enough, the next moment, a bullet pierced through the window and directly hit where Lu Xiaohe was originally located.
The blinking machine was blown black, and the squeaking sounds of machinery stopping sounded one after another.
“Don’t worry!” Lu Xiaohe’s face was whiter than a corpse. She hugged her remaining laptop tightly, and her voice barely sounded calm. “My data is all in a private cloud, which he can’t destroy!”
As she spoke, she glanced at Yin Ren’s hair with the corner of her eye.
“You can always start over,” Yin Ren said. “As long as you find the way, you can always start over.”
The answer was another round of firepower suppression. Pure physical bullets poured in from the doors and windows, causing the floor of the waiting room to shatter, and sharp fragments flew everywhere. If it were a human, this situation would be enough to turn them into minced meat.
This time, Yin Ren didn’t hide his skills.
In the darkness, one protective spell after another lit up. They had obviously been modified—the surrounding space appeared to be distorted like water waves. They emitted a faint fluorescent light, cutting the view outside the protective shield like a mirage.
The protection gradually narrowed and stopped near the coffin where the corpse was located, just enough for three people to stand.
“Can we keep going?” Yin Ren asked Lu Xiaohe.
“Must be able to.” Lu Xiaohe smiled bitterly. “Unless you can throw me out of the country in one shot, I doubt he will keep sniping at me.”
“I can keep going too.” Fu Tianyi stared blankly at the protective spells around him. “I can do whatever you want me to do.”
“Very good.” Yin Ren clenched the hamster pendant in his hand.
He maintained the sturdy protective spell while reaching out his right hand. Yin Ren opened the gap again and used the hamster pendant to touch the interstitial space.
This time, just as he reached into those illusory spaces, a cold hand suddenly grabbed his wrist.
An unfamiliar hand.
Yin Ren instantly retracted his hand, and the gap quickly closed again. Just before it closed—
Bang!!!
A bullet flew out of the gap, grazing his tightly clenched right hand.
The bullet was off target.
Because the moment it touched him, Yin Ren’s right hand, along with the chubby hamster pendant, exploded into powder.
In the dark of night, the hour hand trembled slowly and pointed to ten o’clock.
Although testing intermittent data was important, people weren’t machines. High-intensity, concentrated work was exhausting, so Yin Ren urged everyone many times in advance to go back and rest—working soberly the next day was better than working groggily.
But Yin Ren didn’t follow the others back and stayed alone in the abandoned building.
To facilitate their movements, Fu Tianyi simply moved into Unit 9’s ward. The group of three in the ward had finished their supper and, except for Fu Tianyi, who had gone to bed right after, sat around a table.
Lu Xiaohe was worried and said, “I counted. Yin Ren had a bowl of porridge in the morning, a boiled egg at noon, and nothing for dinner. Now he’s not in our sight, and we don’t know how much he actually has slept… He won’t be able to keep going like this. Shall we buy something and bring it to him?”
She pulled up the takeout platform interface.
Huang Jin laughed inwardly. As a genuine evil, Yin Ren could theoretically live without eating. With so many evils in the world, he had never heard of any starving to death.
But he was also unable to understand why Yin Ren was so serious.
“Even if he’s on the verge of a breakdown, his emotions don’t seem to be collapsing into madness,” Huang Jin muttered. “He’s just scary in his determination. I don’t understand what he’s thinking…”
He had seen Yin Ren’s arms explode all day long to the point of blankness.
Lu Xiaohe thought it was some kind of mystical skill, while Ge Tingting only felt that Yin Ren was amazing. In the end, he had shouldered everything himself.
“What do you mean?” Ge Tingting argued with Huang Jin. “They were in a relationship, so it’s a bit much to think about other people’s grieving behavior.”
“How old are you? Do you understand anything?”
“You don’t even have a girlfriend.” Ge Tingting wrinkled her nose. “I seem to know a coward who is too scared to confess to Ding Jie.”
Huang Jin instantly choked up.
“Adults have to consider many things!” He coughed twice and wiped his nose hard. “It’s not like little kids nowadays, who get heartbroken at thirteen or fourteen, and think they’ve seen through the world at sixteen or seventeen… Lu Xiaohe, say something to her too!”
“What can I say? I’ve never been in a relationship either.” Lu Xiaohe was calm. “We science posts value practicality. Those who have no experience shouldn’t speak casually.”
Da Huang and Xiao Ge looked at her in surprise.
“Not surprising, right? I don’t want to date, and besides, my mother has been sick for a long time.” Lu Xiaohe shrugged. “As long as I talk about my family situation, even the most enthusiastic pursuer will run away.”
She fell silent for a moment.
“…Yin Ren said that if we successfully find Xiao Zhong, each of us can make a wish.” She moved her gaze away. “Do you think he’s serious?”
“Yes.” Huang Jin almost immediately answered. “But personally, I don’t recommend that you make a wish.”
There was a momentary freeze in Lu Xiaohe’s expression.
“You haven’t had much contact with the real world of metaphysics, so it’s normal not to understand,” Huang Jin said seriously, tapping his fingertips on the table.
“’Wishing’ is a very dangerous thing. If you’re not careful, you’ll be in deep trouble… There’s a saying among the Nightwalkers: ‘Don’t make wishes that cannot be fulfilled immediately.'”
“Because Sunken Society loves to make wish deals that cheat people,” Ge Tingting interjected.
“No, Sunken Society so-called wishes are generally fulfilled immediately. Money, power, fame, special abilities… all of them are contracted and delivered. But if it’s the kind of wish that cannot be immediately fulfilled, the wish maker will definitely be remembered.”
“Isn’t it a good thing to be remembered?” Ge Tingting asked curiously.
“If you make a wish that exceeds the abilities of an ordinary person, you have to weigh what ‘thing’ you are dealing with,” Huang Jin said in a low voice. “Neither of us seems to have accumulated enough virtue to withstand it, so we must be careful.”
Forget about accumulating virtue; they had probably committed enough sins in their past lives. Huang Jin sighed pessimistically.
Lu Xiaohe remained silent. A thought passed through her mind. ‘It doesn’t matter if I’m remembered or not.’ She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief instead.
“Anyway, that’s how it is. Even if you believe in Yin Ren, you must make your wish within the normal range.”
“After all that talk, you don’t believe in Yin Ren,” Ge Tingting summarized.
“You may know someone’s face, but not their heart. It’s not right to believe in someone we’ve only known for a few months, right?”
Ge Tingting typed furiously, and the AI voice continued, “But if Yin Ren doesn’t believe in us, there’s no need to show his sadness, right?”
“Yin Ren is very strong, and he didn’t reveal anything before. Such a strong person won’t easily reveal their true emotions in front of small fries.” ‘Unless he has ulterior motives.’ Huang Jin thought.
“Doesn’t that mean his sadness is real? He even offered the conditions for us ‘small fries’ to make wishes, so he must need help.” Ge Tingting furrowed her brows. “According to what you said, he has to suppress his emotions completely and handle the problem of Zhong Chengshuo by himself… Is that necessary considering his strength?”
Huang Jin opened his mouth, but no sound came out.
“Or do you think that ‘small fries’ like us are not qualified to help someone as strong as Yin Ren? Huang Jin, do you think you have seen the world?”
Lu Xiaohe looked at them with enthusiasm as she took a sip of hot water.
“I don’t know what you’ve been through, and I haven’t seen much of the world either. But at the time of the Corpse Cage, I wanted to say that you’re always judging from a high horse, spouting a bunch of harsh words, and then coldly observing everything from the sidelines! Is it really so great to be able to see people’s thoughts?”
“If Yin Ren asks us for help, I’ll go and help. If Yin Ren is sad, then as teammates, we should find a way to help him. Why do you have to make simple things so complicated?”
Huang Jin’s expression suddenly changed.
He stood up abruptly and rushed out the door.
“?!” Ge Tingting was stunned.
She turned her head stiffly. “Xiaohe Jie, do you think he ran out to cry?”
As soon as the AI finished speaking, two messages suddenly appeared in the Shian WeChat group.
[Ten Thousand Taels: I have a new idea for making the tranquility talisman. Simply suppressing it may not be “strong”. I should handle it in a more simple way…unclog instead of block.]
[Ten Thousand Taels: @Ear Person, what I said earlier was a little inappropriate. Let me think about it again.]
[Ear Person: This is an apology, right? Senior forgives you.]
[Ten Thousand Taels: …… 👋]
He didn’t reply after that.
Ge Tingting played with her phone for a while. “Xiaohe Sister, I’m going to bed now. I have to get up early tomorrow.”
“Go ahead,” said Lu Xiaohe.
The two juniors had finally quieted down. Lu Xiaohe stretched and decided to wash her face. However, as soon as she stood up, something unusual suddenly entered her mind—
Huang Jin could see people’s thoughts? She had read the case report of the Bai Yongji case, which showed that Huang Jin could even see Fu Xingchuan’s thought process—even if Minister Fu could hide sensitive information through quick thinking, Huang Jin’s eyes would never miss any malicious intent.
Why is he so guarded against Yin Ren?
Lu Xiaohe pondered for a few seconds and sat down in front of the wall of machines. She logged into her expanded account and began to search for Yin Ren’s identity details in the employee database—if Yin Ren was really a powerful cultivator, Shian would definitely have supplementary information. Even if those data weren’t open to her, with Lu Xiaohe’s current permissions, she could at least see the indexes.
She opened the labyrinth-like related items of Shian layer by layer and quickly recorded the recording time of each task’s supplementary data.
Nothing.
There was nothing in the Shian system about Yin Ren’s identity.
Lu Xiaohe’s movements stopped, and the glow of the screen was reflected in her eyes, which blinked incessantly.
Even if Yin Ren was an unknown powerful person, even if Yin Ren was the biological father of Sunken Society leader, Shian would still truthfully record it in the system.
…Why is there nothing?
With this thought in mind, only a member of the Fu family could activate the Corpse Cage. The one who really constructed the internal spatial technique was the ancient Charon, Fu Wuya.
However, Yin Ren was trying to keep the Corpse Cage running so he could analyze the spatial technique.
Is the spatial technique something that can be learned at will? If not, why does Yin Ren have abilities close to a Charon?
But before she could draw a conclusion, another alert sounded.
The progress of unlocking Zhong Chengshuo’s hamster device had finally reached 100%.
Lu Xiaohe jumped up from her chair, clamped the laptop under her arm, and ran towards the night wearing slippers.
Fifteen minutes ago, in the abandoned building.
Yin Ren was once again forced to close the gap.
The space itself was too solid, and he was like an ant trying to move a mountain. Even if he could learn Fu Wuya’s technique or use the limited activation time of the Corpse Cage with Fu Tianyi’s support, it wasn’t enough to completely decipher the spatial magic.
But even though he didn’t know the way, he didn’t want to stop and rest.
He was like an angry prisoner, repeatedly hitting the sturdy prison door.
He believed there was always a way. At least during these eight or nine hours of the night, he may be able to loosen the door a bit more, and a little more looser was better than nothing.
The ear-piercing sound of space tearing and closing and the sticky sound of flesh exploding were better than the silence of an empty place.
Crack!
The gap was torn open for the umpteenth time, and this time it stayed open for half a second longer than before.
There was no direct road to another world inside the gap. On the contrary, it was dark inside, with countless large and semi-transparent cavities that looked like enlarged pomegranates.
Each cavity was blurry, with different scenery shadows visible inside. Those shadows constantly twisted and squeezed each other, and the colors mixed together, forming a dim compound eye that made people nauseous.
This immature gap led to a strange space close to the human world but was absolutely deserted.
No one knew where a mature gap would lead, and those who entered it never returned.
At this moment, Yin Ren only had this gap that was about to collapse. It was shallower than an immature gap, and the countless colorful masses inside it were like unopened “passages.” On the other side, perhaps it was already in a deeper, more untouchable place.
Even if he could open a path, where should he lead Mr. Qiu?
Numbly, amidst the excruciating pain of flesh and blood bursting, Yin Ren thought to himself.
If Mr. Qiu’s body was the same as Qi Xin’s, and damage wasn’t fundamental, what should he do? He had to prepare for the worst and choose a battlefield that was inaccessible…
Not far away, Lu Xiaohe’s device suddenly emitted a pleasant beeping sound.
It was Zhong Chengshuo’s hamster device that was just cracked!
Yin Ren stopped thinking instantly and hurriedly ran to Lu Xiaohe’s device. Unfortunately, the device was too complicated. His fingers were groping in a hurry, and he didn’t know how to start it. He wanted to press randomly, but he was afraid of mishandling it and destroying the hard-earned data.
Fortunately, in less than three minutes, Lu Xiaohe, with disheveled hair and a dirty face, rushed in with the laptop in her hand.
“Get out of the way!” she shouted with the typical arrogance of a science post, rushing towards the screen like a cannonball, almost leaving afterimages of her fingers.
Countless obscure and difficult-to-understand data instantly filled the screen. Lu Xiaohe’s eyes moved quickly, and the screen scrolled down one by one. Yin Ren was nervously staring at Lu Xiaohe’s expression, feeling helpless for a while.
Lu Xiaohe’s expression went from excitement to confusion, and finally settled into “worry”.
Yin Ren’s hopeful red eyes dimmed, and he remained silent.
“…The positioning result has indeed come out.” Lu Xiaohe cleared her throat twice. “But the coordinates are very strange… I have calculated it several times, and they are all coordinates that should not exist in the world. There is always an additional correction parameter… I’m sorry, this explanation is hard to understand, isn’t it?”
She thought for a while.
“Simply put, if Zhong Chengshuo’s algorithm is correct, the hamster pendant is in a space that does not exist in the world.”
“Zhong Chengshuo’s algorithm won’t be wrong.”
Yin Ren answered very confidently.
“His algorithms especially can’t be wrong now.”
Wait a minute.
A space that doesn’t exist in the world.
The Other Side was a space that didn’t exist in the world. According to Shian’s information, dead objects couldn’t enter The Other Side. That meant the hamster pendant was in a place between “this world” and “The Other Side”.
It neither existed in this world, nor was it truly in The Other Side… For example, it could be in an immature or already decaying gap.
Yin Ren stared fiercely at the now-closed huge gap. His gaze penetrated through the darkness and looked towards the countless blurred images revealed when it was opened.
In the early morning, Qiu Fang was standing in an alley without surveillance.
Unlike the crowd around him, who were looking down at their phones, he had nothing in his hands. His plain white T-shirt had no pockets, and his tight-fitting jeans revealed that he had nothing inside.
Qiu Fang’s face was relatively clean, and his outfit made him stand out on the street. Unfortunately, the dark alley was filled with smelly garbage cans, rats scurrying along the walls, and unconscious thugs.
Several badly dressed young people were lying on the ground, unconscious, with blood stains all over the ground. A few teeth were scattered in the blood. Qiu Fang leaned against the wall, without a single drop of blood on him, looking at the people on the ground with disgust, as if he were looking at cockroaches turned upside down.
Qiu Fang stood motionless for half an hour, watching those people struggling to breathe, until suddenly he turned his head and looked in the direction of Haigu Municipal Hospital.
“The gap is shaking,” he murmured to himself. “Someone is breaking into the gap there.”
Then he fell silent, as if listening to someone’s reply.
“It’s definitely not you, and it’s not Miss Qi… Mr. Le is not nearby… Sunken Society doesn’t have this kind of power. Could it be that they have made some kind of research breakthrough?” Qiu Fang frowned.
He made a gesture with his hand, as if holding a gun, and pointed towards the hospital, but didn’t take any further action.
“No, that person’s spatial magic is similar to the Fu family’s, so it’s not easy to target.” Qiu Fang lowered his arm. “I need to attack up close.”
Then he fell silent again, as if listening to something.
“My opinion is the same as that guy’s. You’d better not go.” A female voice came from above.
Qiu Fang looked up and saw Qi Xin in a gray-black suit. She smiled faintly and looked down at him with her sparse brows.
“You can’t aim at him and forcing you to show up at close range is clearly a trap. Mr. Qiu, although I understand your ‘nature’ of provoking disputes, attacking the Fu family is too reckless, don’t you think?” Her tone was very light, but it made him uncomfortable.
“It’s just a group of humans.”
Qiu Fang spat.
“If it weren’t for the ‘ending’ we want being too troublesome, I could easily kill them all. I just played with them casually before and don’t need you to get involved.”
“Is that so?” Qi Xin smiled more meaningfully. “Thanks to humans, you have been able to grow rapidly in the past few thousand years and sit on an equal footing with us. Humans also like to say that they should have a sense of awe towards food.”
Qiu Fang had no choice but to look up at Qi Xin, and he didn’t bother to hide his disgust.
Qi Xin remained unmoved. Her facial expression twisted so much that it didn’t look like a “smile”. “Besides, you are obviously the most human-like among the four of us, aren’t you?”
Qiu Fang was shocked. His eyes bulged as something quickly surged in his shadow, forming dark whirlpools.
“Not long ago, you attacked the Fu family, causing someone to be traumatized and seek revenge during that crazy attack. If they really break through to our side, who will be responsible?” Qi Xin continued in a calm and collected manner, as if she hadn’t seen his reaction.
“That’s enough.”
Two voices from the shadows simultaneously spoke on the dusty glass of the alleyway.
One was a gentle female voice.
“Mr. Qiu has been working hard to expel potential invaders, and his previous behavior was instinctive. Don’t provoke him.”
“I didn’t provoke him,” Qi Xin lightly said. “I’m just advising him not to fall into a trap.”
“I’ll go.”
The moment he heard the woman’s voice, Qiu Fang instantly stopped the whirlpool. He scratched his hair, but accidentally tore off a piece of his scalp due to the force.
“A trap? Even if humans dig out their six Evil Spirits and attack together, it’s just a finger’s work for me. With them, how big a storm can they make? If that gap is really opened up by humans, I’ll be fucking ridiculed by this surnamed Qi every day.”
Qi Xin looked in the direction of the hospital and smirked.
“You and him can go together and settle it quickly,” the shadow on the glass lip-synced, making a sound that only they could hear. “The top priority is to close the gap.”
“I’m not going.” Qi Xin tidied up her scattered hair and narrowed her eyes. “If I follow him, won’t it ruin Mr. Qiu’s enthusiasm? Besides, I’m not interested in this kind of fighting. Even if I win, there will be no food to eat.”
“I don’t need an old bastard like you to deal with a few pieces of trash,” Qiu Fang sneered.
The shadows on the window sighed together.
“I understand,” the woman’s voice said, even gentler now. “The Haigu branch of Sunken Society is just below the hospital and is also built on a shrinking gap. You should act swiftly and don’t touch Sunken Society for now.”
“Okay.” Mr. Qiu bowed to the shadows on the glass.
He walked out of the alleyway quickly without even a glance at Qi Xin.
“You were a little harsh just now.” The woman’s voice became even more gentle. “He’s still young, and his nature affects him. We’re all companions working together. Why be so harsh on him?”
“Maybe I don’t like playing the ‘hero game’.”
Qi Xin grabbed a stone from the wall and weighed it in her hand. “I’ve never been a ‘righteous partner’ with you guys. I just promised not to make trouble. Stop using your methods on me.”
Crack!
Qi Xin flung the stone, hitting the glass window and shattering the shadow figures.
Confirming that those broken shadows would no longer move on their own, she lightly clapped her hands and also looked in the direction of the Haigu Municipal Hospital.
The smile on her face became even more apparent.
……
Zhong Chengshuo had some free time and followed the same route back, carefully disposing of Minister Zou’s body.
Confirming that there were no monitoring devices on the upper floors, his movements became much more calm.
With two bodies, he could do a lot more—
Minister Zou’s head was also finely cut off by him, and he became more proficient at it with practice. This time, Zhong Chengshuo had sewn it more skillfully.
Minister Zou was slightly taller than Zhang Wei and had a slightly larger body so Zhong Chengshuo put Zhang Wei’s clothes on the outer layer of the lining and adjusted it to roughly match the appearance, then he put on a coat. The sturdy and beautiful body was covered up, suddenly appearing much richer and almost identical to Minister Zou from before.
Maybe it was because his neural processing was more refined, this time he was much more precise in manipulating the head; at least not as slowly as before.
After doing all this, Zhong Chengshuo stepped out of the morgue again. He moved forward along the clear route in his mind and walked all the way to the elevator.
Ding.
After a long time, the elevator’s crisp sound echoed on the first floor of the morgue.
At the door of the underground morgue.
“The elevator just rang,” the human guard said.
“Yes, the elevator rang.” The zombie guard picked his nose. “That guy who went down just now finally came back. I thought we were going to lose another one. I don’t know if he found what he was looking for. Let him fill out a brief record form later.”
Half an hour passed.
The tall, thin human guard said, “Strange, why isn’t Minister Zou coming out? Can it be that he could still get lost on the first floor?”
“Who knows.” The zombie guard continued to concentrate on picking his nose. “Maybe he ran into something and got scared.”
Ding.
In the corridor behind the two guards, a faint and distant sound was heard, which was the sound of the elevator arriving on the first floor.
The two guards looked at each other.
Ding.
Five minutes later, the sound rang again.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
In the underground morgue, where no one was supposed to be, the crisp electronic sound effect was extremely regular, with intervals of almost exactly one second. The human guard immediately got goosebumps all over his body. He glanced at the tightly closed door of the underground morgue and rubbed his exposed forearm.
“This is not right. Go check the surveillance.”
The zombie guard sprayed out a disdainful breath and slowly moved to the side guard room. The screen was full of surveillance footage.
The “Minister Zou” who entered a while ago was shown in the footage.
The picture was dim near the elevator door, which creaked and rattled as it slid open. Minister Zou’s shadow stretched long down the corridor. When the elevator door opened completely, he walked out normally, but then walked backwards step by step.
The indicator light blinked, and the elevator descended.
Five minutes passed, and the elevator arrived on the first floor again. The door opened as usual, and the above scene repeated. If it weren’t for the constantly advancing time on the surveillance footage, the zombie would almost think that this was a looped video.
Strange things happened frequently, but those monsters usually came straightforwardly. There were rarely such… bizarre phenomena.
As a zombie guard who had been dead for more than ten years, it was the first time he felt a little scared.
He leaned closer to the screen, carefully observing the details of the footage.
Minister Zou’s face was calm and his movements were natural, indicating there was no stiffness which meant he shouldn’t be controlled or possessed. His clothes were clean, and there were no suspicious marks on them.
The eerie loop continued, and this “normal” scene made the zombie guard even more uneasy.
“Minister Zou seems to have been possessed. You go in and take a look. I’ll stay here and guard.” The zombie rubbed the non-existent goosebumps and tremblingly returned to his post.
“You can’t say that,” the human guard said sternly. “You’re the monster here, and the other side is just an ordinary person possessed by an evil spirit. Why don’t you go? I’m flesh and blood and may end up in the hospital.”
The zombie gritted his teeth angrily and pushed open the thick door.
The corridor leading to the elevator was neither short nor long. The zombie nervously sharpened his nails, ready to attack at any moment.
Ding.
The elevator door opened slowly again, and Minister Zou appeared in front of the zombie guard with a calm expression.
Zhong Chengshuo quickly scanned the zombie in front of him.
Not too long ago, wearing a staff uniform, the evil qi emanating from his body was typical of Sunken Society. Such zombies were artificially created and durable, but not particularly powerful.
Nearby guards.
Zhong Chengshuo took two steps forward, and this time he didn’t retreat into the elevator.
“Just you?” The zombie looked behind him. “What about Zhang Wei?”
Zhong Chengshuo shook his head.
Seeing that “Minister Zou” could still react normally, the zombie relaxed. “What was that all about just now, going up and down like that? Are you playing with us?”
Zhong Chengshuo continued to shake his head, pressing his temple hard and pointing to his neck, making a dizzying gesture.
“Oh, your throat is injured, no wonder there’s a bloody smell.” The zombie sniffed. “It’s not that bad. There’s no evil qi on your body. You were probably just possessed. When you go out, have someone exorcize you.”
Zhong Chengshuo nodded pitifully.
With the zombie in front and him behind, the two walked straight towards the door. But as they passed the corner and reached the final exit corridor, the zombie’s steps slowed down.
“Something isn’t right,” it muttered. “I just felt it. Your human smell is too weak, almost like a freshly dead person…urgh!”
It didn’t finish the sentence.
Zhong Chengshuo’s hand pierced through its flesh directly, stabbing the corpse talisman inside that was as vital as a heart. The movement of his hand was as precise as that of a scalpel, directly breaking through its weakest defense and hitting the vital point.
The zombie had never been so scared—comparable to a bank clerk with a gun pointed at his back.
“You… You… You have something to say. We’re all evil things, so there’s nothing we can’t talk about.”
“I’m not an evil thing,” Zhong Chengshuo said in a low voice. “Cooperate with me. Take me out, and you might still have a chance to survive,” he continued solemnly.
Feeling the hand lightly scraping the corpse talisman, the zombie’s teeth chattered.
The human guard quickly saw his monster colleague.
Looking through the peephole from afar, the zombie was leading Minister Zou out. Minister Zou looked fine, but the two seemed a bit too familiar, with their shoulders hooked and their faces close together.
There was no expression on the zombie’s face, and his steps seemed even stiffer than usual.
“Hurry up, fill out the registration form, and get out.” The human guard put his heart back in his stomach. “Seriously, we still haven’t found anyone, and we’re just causing trouble for ourselves.”
Zhong Chengshuo nodded sincerely and glanced at the nearby light.
“Alright, hurry up and come out.” The human guard kept muttering, but then saw Minister Zou maintaining the posture of “embracing” the zombie, taking off his own work card with one hand.
“Registration doesn’t require a card…”
Before the human guard could finish his sentence, a thin work card flew past his temple and directly shattered the only lamp at the entrance of the morgue.
The surrounding area instantly plunged into darkness.
Bang!
In an instant, the nearby guard room was tightly closed.
Zhong Chengshuo, who was stuck in the small guard room, slowly took off his obstructive lab coat.
“Hello. Excuse me, where are the personal items of the corpses stored?”
He spoke softly with a gentle tone.
“I want to get my things back.”
The author has something to say:
Xiao Zhong: That’s the token of love my lover gave me (referring to the hamster).
The beef buns near the hospital were famous, and despite Lu Xiaohe and the others eating with restraint, the fragrant meat smell still entered Yin Ren’s nose.
In the past, he would have bought a dozen buns to take home. Zhong Chengshuo would express a slight dissatisfaction with this greasy taste and then help him make crispy bottom pan-fried buns—he had bought buns here before and specifically asked Zhong Chengshuo to help make something similar.
Yin Ren remembered that the man was wearing the “Dangerous Person” apron, pursing his lips, and frying the buns as if doing an experiment.
At that time, he was lying on the sofa playing with his tablet, and he could see Zhong Chengshuo just by raising his head. Amidst the sizzling sound of frying buns, Zhong Chengshuo would sometimes turn his head to look over. The man didn’t often smile, but when he met Yin Ren’s gaze, he would tilt his head slightly, indicating “I caught you”.
Then Yin Ren would look more upright and even use a little hair to harass him.
At the time, he only felt that those fragments were ordinary. He thought he would miss the thrills in the abandoned amusement park and the moment of redemption in the Archive more, but what pressed him down were all these small details.
They were hidden in every corner of his life and would come to mind if he wasn’t careful.
Compared with that, the years he spent in the wilderness were like a blank piece of paper.
‘Liking mortals is too terrible,’ Yin Ren thought.
But if he were given another chance… If he were given another chance…
He would still be attracted to that annoying yet lovable guy.
The smell of the buns still lingered at the tip of his nose, but Yin Ren had no appetite. He subconsciously touched the pocket of his pants—a small hardcover notebook was placed in his pocket, and every page was written with “I’m fine”.
It was a hope he wanted to touch but didn’t dare to.
Yin Ren was lost in thought when Dog Thing vibrated.
“Yes?” Yin Ren skillfully answered the phone.
“The Corpse Cage just reacted. There is a Fu family member nearby.” Fu Xingchuan restrained his tone as much as possible. “You asked us to send the Corpse Cage over earlier and said you had a way… Is your way to catch Fu Tianyi to do the job?”
“The elders of the Fu family are either rooted in place or busy outside, and someone has to control the Corpse Cage.” Yin Ren casually twirled his hair and spoke with a smile, but there was no smile in his eyes. “Although I can also flay a piece of the Fu family’s blood alive and make it into a spirit weapon to pass it off as real, that’s still a bit inhumane for this era.”
Fu Tianyi swallowed a mouthful of millet porridge with difficulty, looking puzzled. The other three members of Unit 9 didn’t find anything unusual and were busy grabbing the last tea egg on the table.
Fu Xingchuan sighed. “Fu Tianyi is only 21 years old and has never been in contact with many Corpse Cage-related spells. He is also proud and arrogant. Moreover, his previous mission was dangerous, but the preparations were all fully done… “
“Fu Xingchuan, just say what you want to say.”
“This is just great!” Fu Xingchuan coughed a few times and suppressed the laughter in his voice. “I’m here to convey the words of the ancestor and my personal attitude… Use him as much as you want, and be sure to be ruthless, but leave him with some leeway.”
Yin Ren: “……”
As expected, the Fu family was still the Fu family; each one abnormal in their own way. Yin Ren had just wanted to hang up the phone when he heard the voice on the other end of the line become a little more serious.
“As for the sniper case, Shian’s current focus is on ‘preventing cross-dimensional attacks’. Although we won’t stop tracking the attacker, Shian will definitely prioritize preventing such incidents.”
Fu Xingchuan’s tone became more serious.
“You can ask Lu Xiahe to pay attention to Shian’s research on space. I don’t care about your methods, but I just need you to remember one thing—our ‘innocent pact’ can’t be wronged.”
“I remember,” Yin Ren replied succinctly.
“Good. By the way, do you and Xiao Zhong know a doctor at the hospital? I remember she was surnamed Sun… Be careful and don’t reveal anything in front of familiar faces.”
Dr. Sun?
Yin Ren’s hand, which was stroking the hardcover book, suddenly stopped.
“I remembered an interesting thing. Go and help me check the ‘enemy’ who was hospitalized before, but be careful not to use Shian’s official investigation methods.”
“Clues?”
“It’s not very useful. Just something I thought of.”
Even if the sniper was really Mr. Qiu, that “Mr. Qiu” could easily pretend to be ignorant, especially given the “perfect human disguise” of Qi Xin. If they rashly investigate, they might stir up trouble.
This matter wasn’t easy, and only the “#1 Ghost General” could handle it.
“Ah, my leg isn’t healed yet…” Fu Xingchuan muttered. “Okay, I’ll think of a way.”
On the other side, Fu Tianyi gradually stopped stirring his porridge. His expression became more and more anxious.
Yin Ren’s tone didn’t sound like he was speaking to the “#1 Ghost General” at all. Instead, it was more like an elder communicating with a junior.
Who is this guy?
Half an hour later, Fu Tianyi stopped thinking about this question.
Lu Xiahe sat in a corner of the waiting room. As the numbers on the temporary screen wall were changing frantically, Huang Jin murmured to himself, while constantly strengthening the defensive array around him. Ge Tingting stood next to Yin Ren, ready to assist Fu Tianyi, who for the first time was going to assist the bride into the sedan chair*.
*Clarity: This line is basically saying, normally Fu Tianyi is the person being lifted in the sedan chair (being supported by others), but now, he’s the one doing the lifting.
“Activate the Corpse Cage, and I’ll take a closer look at how the spell works,” Yin Ren said.
“What do I need to do?” Fu Tianyi took a deep breath.
“Remember this pattern, infuse it with power, and stop when I say so.” Yin Ren reached out his hand, and a set of runes appeared above the coffin in an instant. “Tingting, make sure to stabilize the corpse, so that it doesn’t move too much.”
How did Yin Ren know such a spell? Perhaps he had a close relationship with the Fu family as this spell had been passed down by the ancestor. Fu Tianyi silently recited it three times in his heart, barely holding back his curiosity.
It wasn’t too difficult to maintain the input of power.
He used eight points of strength from the beginning, but the output of power was like a drop in the bucket. In just a few minutes, Fu Tianyi’s power began to fluctuate, causing the Corpse Cage to shake uncontrollably. Ge Tingting’s face turned red, as she continued to pour power into the body, hoping to keep it from moving around in the coffin.
His performance was utterly terrible.
Fu Tianyi’s face turned pale as he put out the maximum strength he could muster—in his usual tasks, this strength would be enough to deliver a decisive blow.
The Corpse Cage finally convulsed, and a layer of faint light appeared on the surface of the rotten skin.
“Okay,” Yin Ren said. “With this intensity, let’s try to sustain it for four hours.”
However, Fu Tianyi couldn’t even last for four seconds. After a frustrated burst of output, he sat on the ground like he had just climbed out of a pool.
“I can’t hold on…” He weakly pressed his temple. “The patterns are too complicated, and the power requirements are too high…”
“Is that so?” Yin Ren remained noncommittal.
“I personally improved the control technique. I only wanted it to maintain its startup state without having to confront enemies,” Yin Ren said casually. “The power consumption and complexity of this spell have been reduced by about half… and someone like you is the strongest of the new generation of the Fu family?”
“Is it possible to modify a technique of this level?” Fu Tianyi exclaimed. Even that girl, Ge Tingting, was earnestly nodding and recording!
It was no longer a matter of “poor performance”. Even in his best condition, he was like a blade of grass compared to others.
…And this made him unreconciled.
In a daze, Fu Tianyi slowly clenched his fist.
“I have recorded the data of spatial disturbances, but the sample size isn’t enough,” Lu Xiaohe interjected calmly. “Try it first and adjust it according to Mr. Fu’s subsequent data.”
With a bitter face, Huang Jin added three more protection spirit weapons.
Try it? Fu Tianyi wiped the sweat from his face. What was he supposed to try?
Crack.
In the next second, a burst of hostility erupted around him. It turned into a cold wind and made Fu Tianyi’s face shake. Yin Ren stretched out his right hand and directly cast the spell in front of the gap.
A spell that was infinitely more complicated than the Corpse Cage formed instantly. It was like a huge brand from hell, with black light emanating from its edges, floating in front of the dark gap.
The gap seemed to sense something, and it twisted restlessly, with gray-black mist pouring down from the edges. A terrible cracking sound came from all sides, followed by the harsh sound of something being forcibly torn apart.
Fu Tianyi covered his ears and numbly watched the scene in front of him.
The pitch-black gap grew bigger and bigger, and the wriggling shadows in the darkness beyond were faintly visible. Yin Ren stood with his back to Fu Tianyi. In front of the huge gap, his black hair fluttered in the hostility, like a figure walking out of a painting.
Unfortunately, in the next moment, there was a disgusting sound of something too heavy collapsing, and the gap that had been propped open suddenly closed. It was like an opened mouth that suddenly bit down, instantly shattering Yin Ren’s complex and mysterious spell formation.
What shattered along with it was Yin Ren’s right arm.
Flesh and blood were scattered and turned into dust. Yin Ren’s palm and arm completely exploded, and along with the spell formation, they were swallowed up by the gap, leaving no trace behind.
Fu Tianyi: “?!”
“No,” Yin Ren murmured. “It’s not quite there yet. The array needs to be adjusted… Fu Tianyi, what are you doing? Keep activating the Corpse Cage. Lu Xiaohe needs more ‘space connectivity’ data.”
Fu Tianyi asked, “Wait, are your hands okay?”
Yan Ren didn’t answer.
The next second, he saw bones and muscles rapidly emerge from Yan Ren’s shoulder, forming a brand-new arm in an instant.
Then Yin Ren raised his hand again, and a brand-new array appeared before the gap.
Immediately followed was the familiar scene—the gap was pushed open, the array failed to tear the space, and the spell backfired. The newly grown arm couldn’t hold on for five minutes before it exploded in the air again.
Yin Ren clicked his tongue and grew another arm, as if he felt no pain. Lu Xiaohe was busy with the data in front of the screen and didn’t look over, while Huang Jin seemed used to it and only focused on reinforcing the protection.
Ge Tingting had already secured the Corpse Cage. “Yin Ren is really powerful.”
Her AI voice was serious.
Fu Tianyi was in a daze.
They’re crazy. All of them are crazy.
Yin Ren paid no attention to Fu Tianyi’s progress, repeatedly exploding his arms, but didn’t urge Fu Tianyi again. Even though they all knew that the faster Fu Tianyi mastered the Corpse Cage, the faster Yin Ren could adjust the array.
With the sound of flesh and blood exploding, Fu Tianyi felt like he was on pins and needles every second he was idle.
These people were crazy, and he, who stayed behind, must be crazy too.
He raised his hand again above the Corpse Cage, disregarding his exhausted body, and tried to activate the Corpse Cage again.
……
With the location of the “morgue” provided by Zhong Chengshuo, Minister Zou soon found the correct path.
But with such a big monster behind him, he didn’t dare to confirm the state of Zhong Chengshuo’s corpse.
“This is the deepest part of the underground morgue, divided into three layers. We have to climb the stairs to get to the elevator. This is the third to last layer, so we’ll be out soon.”
Perhaps to save his own life, Minister Zou explained very passionately.
Zhong Chengshuo stayed about two steps behind him. Once he felt stable, he found Minister Zou’s wet pants very distracting and didn’t want to be too close to him.
“What about when we get to the elevator?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
“We can leave the morgue then.” Minister Zou’s forehead broke out in sweat again.
After leaving the morgue, what awaited them was Sunken Society of the Haigu branch—one of the strongest branches of Sunken Society. By then, this monster wouldn’t be able to escape. Each ghost master could drown it with just one spit.
But first, this monster couldn’t get into the elevator.
When they arrived at the elevator, he could immediately sound the alarm and rush into it. By the time he left the underground morgue, this guy would soon be under the control of Sunken Society’s security.
He just had to stabilize this guy first.
“Leave the morgue…” Fortunately, the self-proclaimed fitness instructor didn’t ask any further questions.
“You said your loved one is waiting for you, right?” Minister Zou quickly changed the subject. “She’s probably a very beautiful girl. You must have a good relationship.”
“I don’t know if we have a good relationship.”
Zhong Chengshuo lowered the head that didn’t belong to him, and stepped on the stairs, step by step.
“But I really want to go see them.”
“You will definitely see them.”
Minister Zou smiled apologetically and took two steps forward without making a sound.
“You see, this is the elevator. I’ll go wash my face first…”
Crack.
“I’ll definitely see him.”
Zhong Chengshuo calmly repeated as he watched Minister Zou’s broken neck slide softly to the ground.
The author has something to say:
Congratulations to Xiao Zhong for getting a second head (…
Kinky Translations 