The peculiar sense of reality dislocation and the helpless “observer perspective” where nothing could be done, all had an answer. Only “he himself” could influence him to such an extent.
That was his memory; that was the reality that had happened before.
However, under the urgent seal, they became fragmented. Now he had to pick up the broken fragments and put them back together in their heartbreaking original state.
Chaos, struggle, blankness.
Perhaps his sanity also wanted to save itself, and as the memory approached that sad endpoint, it appeared increasingly shattered.
Yin Ren had always been very skilled at modifying and sealing memories. However, even the powerful Yin Ren could not change the established reality.
He could have eliminated or beautified them, but instead he chose to preserve them almost coldly in their original form. He slowly drank the poisonous soup that passed through his intestines.
“I remember everything now.”
Yin Ren’s voice became much clearer.
The blood in his memory lingered and refused to dissipate, leaving behind the image of the tragic scene in his mind. Yin Ren subconsciously wanted to retreat to his memories and immerse himself back into the initial peace; the memories accompanied by kisses and casual talks—
Back then, all he had to worry about was the slightly nauseating dining environment and the long-awaited barbecue buffet for over twenty years. He was in the midst of a newly started awkward romance, and his biggest concern was “how to stop Zhong Chengshuo from getting old”.
That person will not age anymore.
Yin Ren forced himself to open his eyes and pulled himself out of the world of memories.
In front of him was no longer a pool of blood in the sunset, and the stairs seemed to lead to hell. He was sitting on a chair, with a faint mist rolling on the slate floor, and a starless night sky above his head.
He could feel countless ancient defense barriers around him rumbling as they cut off this small area from the outside world.
The B- and C-level investigation teams participating in the competition were all staying in this spacious stone building. Yin Ren could hear quiet conversations and sobbing and smell the strong scent of blood.
But he didn’t have the energy to ponder all of this.
Because the peculiar questioner was right in front of him.
“… You’re awake.” The questioner let out a long sigh.
In front of Yin Ren was a strange willow tree that emitted a scent similar to that of Fu Xingchuan. Various human facial features of different sizes grew on its thick trunk, which was clearly an exceptionally odd and somewhat comical scene. However, Yin Ren’s heart was completely devoid of thoughts.
He was equally uninterested in thinking about what it was.
“How long has it been?” Yin Ren asked expressionlessly.
“Five hours,” the willow tree—Fu Wuya answered, his voice somewhat heavy. “Every time you mentioned the part of your memory about the idle chat on ‘Primordial Elements’, you wouldn’t continue on your own.”
Yin Ren didn’t respond.
That was how memory seals worked. To break the seal, “gradual external guidance” and “relative calmness within oneself” were both indispensable. As a safety fuse to prevent himself from breaking down, this mechanism was quite effective.
Through each inquiry, the seal gradually dissipated, and the memories of the past few hours returned in full force. Like waking up from a long dream, the blood on Yin Ren’s face had dried up.
…Unfortunately, the buffer of the seal could only prevent collapse, but not eliminate the pain.
Numbly sitting in the chair, Yin Ren still had Zhong Chengshuo’s blood-stained hardcover notebook on his knees. His consciousness was approaching blankness, and his stomach was very hungry, but he didn’t feel like eating anything.
He was in a strange state of suspension, with countless emotions surging up simultaneously. Yin Ren didn’t know which ones to deal with first, so he just stayed where he was.
This place was a bit desolate. In just a few short months, he had become accustomed to having someone else around.
He had a strange subconscious feeling that Zhong Chengshuo was still around, just called away by Shian to do something, and that was why he wasn’t by his side.
That person was strong, and there were still so many mysteries that surrounded him. He also had elderly parents to support, and research on the Divine Descent and Evil Spirits hadn’t been completed…
They hadn’t even had time to figure out how to take their relationship to the next level.
How could Zhong Chengshuo die?
Even if he died, that person should die in a heroic battle instead of disappearing like this, suddenly, like a soap bubble.
Zhong Chengshuo definitely wouldn’t leave like this.
Yin Ren rubbed the hardcover of the blood-stained notebook. Zhong Chengshuo really liked this little notebook. Now it was covered in dust, and Yin Ren didn’t know if that person would show a distressed and conflicted expression.
The fire in the ancestral hall flickered, illuminating the exquisite and grand murals of Zhong Yi.
Seeing Yin Ren sitting there like a statue, Fu Wuya’s huge eyes turned to him. “This is the Fu family ancestral hall, so it’s relatively safe for now.”
“I’m here, and it’s considered ‘safe’?” Yin Ren raised his eyes dully.
The eyes on the willow tree turned, scanning the people taking refuge around them. Its lips moved slightly, and a voice whispered into Yin Ren’s ear, “I know you’re an evil, but you’d rather seal your memories than lose control in a crowd. It would be a bit much to exclude you again.”
“……”
Yin Ren didn’t continue with the topic. He continued to look at the notebook cover with English words he couldn’t quite understand. Yin Ren knew that if he opened it, he would see Zhong Chengshuo’s handwriting. It was very neat and beautiful, like print font.
The hard leather cover was light and sturdy, but he didn’t have the strength to open it.
“Where is Fu Xingchuan?” Yin Ren changed the subject. “Speaking” had never made him so tired.
Fu Wuya said, “I am here to represent the Fu family. What do you want to do?”
“I just want to know the general location of Sunken Society’s headquarters,” Yin Ren replied almost rightfully. “They have no use for Zhong Chengshuo’s body. Only his blood relatives have a need for it—so as long as I can find his blood relatives, I can bring him back.”
“We haven’t yet found out who the intruder who fired the shots is. Including Zhong Chengshuo, he shot and injured two people and severely wounded five others, but he didn’t show any malice, making it extremely difficult to prevent.”
“But one thing is certain, he committed the crime through interstitial space. I happen to be familiar with this, and this is currently the safest place in all of Haigu.”
Fu Wuya didn’t directly deny Yin Ren’s request.
“This matter is not urgent, Yin Ren. We can talk about it slowly—”
Bang!
A series of explosions rang out, and murals of Zhong Yi in the ancestral hall were destroyed. When the smoke cleared, the wall plaster fell with a loud clatter. The solemn faces of the Zhong Yi statutes were now only filled with despair.
Outside the ancestral hall, countless Zhong Yi statues of various sizes shook at the same time. Something flesh-like oozed from their faces, forming a blur of chaos.
The voices of the surrounding Shian people stopped completely, and they each assumed a defensive posture, searching for the source of the attack in confusion. Yin Ren remained seated in his original position, as if everything had nothing to do with him.
His back was slightly bent, and his breathing was particularly difficult. His face was very young, but his breath aged in an instant.
“I’m in a hurry,” Yin Ren said. “I’m tired, and I don’t have time to continue playing with you, the children of the Fu family.”
The eyes on the tree trunk widened suddenly.
“Did that kid write down eating malt sugar mooncakes during the Mid-Autumn Festival in the family rules? When I taught him that spell, he always said—when he starts a family and becomes successful, he must write this in the family rules.”
“Who are you…”
“Let’s see, the group of kids I brought with me clamored to slay demons and monsters together when they grew up. I didn’t expect that this little group would continue to this day. The name Huajisi was formed and led by Fu Liu, right?’
Fu Wuya’s black eyes suddenly shrank.
“You’ve been wanting to find out who I am, haven’t you?”
Yin Ren raised his eyes; his face was as pale as paper, and his eyes were blood red.
“Now I have given you proof—your ancestors were saved by me from the mouth of a wild boar. Are you disappointed?”
The branches of the willow tree trembled and rustled. The surrounding winds grew stronger, and the master’s wavering clearly affected the nearby protective spells. The space emitted a squeezed sound.
Yin Ren’s long hair was blown by the wind, maintaining his wretched posture. Compared to Fu Wuya, who had transformed into an evil tree, he looked even smaller.
He had saved many people and killed even more. Human life was as insignificant as weeds to him, but he couldn’t even stop such an attack.
The so-called Great Celestial Master Zhong Yi never had a strong sense of justice* nor was he omnipotent.
*Hate evil like an enemy (嫉恶如仇) Idiom referring to a strong sense of justice and the determination to fight against evil and injustice, as if one’s personal enemy was involved.
He killed evil spirits to satisfy his hunger. He briefly traveled with mortal children because he wanted to talk. He entered the human world on a rainy night a few months ago because he liked excitement.
At that time, Zhong Chengshuo pushed his bicycle and led him into the world in the pouring rain.
Yin Ren’s fingers trembled slightly.
The hard cover notebook slipped off his fingertips and fell onto the stone floor with a snap.
The last page of the notebook opened upward, revealing rows of neat handwriting. Yin Ren bent down to pick it up, and his movements completely froze when he saw the words.
[This is Zhong Chengshuo’s personal notebook. If you see this line, I am probably already dead.]
Zhong Chengshuo wrote this.
[I met an evil named Yin Ren. Since he asked me to meet him alone, there is a possibility that he may kill me.]
This sentence was carefully crossed out, and only a rough outline could be seen… Yin Ren struggled to recall. It was probably related to the Bai Yongji case, the night he invited Zhong Chengshuo to have an “accomplice negotiation”.
[Recently, I successfully entered Shian. In addition to a normal last will, I need a more special one. Whoever reads this last will, if I die from unnatural causes and am targeted for murder, no matter how the case looks, please thoroughly investigate my death and don’t delay.]
[If you are a Nightwalker, if you can discover my secret during your investigation, you will obtain my research materials on a certain case from these years. Hand it over to Shian, and you will receive a generous reward. If you cannot find it, please hand this last will to Shian, and the reward you get may be less.]
The “secret” mentioned in this passage… Perhaps Zhong Chengshuo was referring to his secret base. That guy only took him there once, and Yin Ren naturally assumed that there would be many more opportunities in the future.
Yin Ren read slowly, as if this would allow him to continue the conversation with the missing person.
[If you are from Shian, simply report ‘the Other Side’.]
[If you are the one who killed me, then my luck is really bad and there’s nothing to say. I wish you luck that you won’t be discovered during the investigation, although I think it’s unlikely.]
Even if it was a farewell note, this person’s tone was very irritating. Yin Ren could imagine Zhong Chengshuo saying these words in a rigid manner, and the corners of his mouth twitched subconsciously.
[In addition, don’t cremate my body. Please donate it to Shian too.]
Yin Ren rubbed the last line. His movements were as light as feathers, as if that line of words would be awakened.
“I will,” he said softly.
……
Sunken Society, Haigu Branch, underground corpse vault.
“Have you heard? The one who just came in was wrapped in a body bag and fell into the morgue out of nowhere,” said one of the guards mysteriously. “I saw ‘Compensation for Gengsheng Town’ written on it.”
“Shh, don’t say that. When the boss comes to confirm, I don’t know how bad his face will look,” said the second guard, who was clearly a zombie. It scratched its dry skin. “Just throw the body over. Who knows if it’s an apology or a provocation? The less you know about what’s going on up top, the longer you’ll live.”
The human guard gave it a look that spoke volumes.
“Right, the body is locked in the deepest part, isn’t it? I don’t know what precious material it’s made of, tsk tsk…” It cautiously changed the subject.
The two guards were in a dark freezer room located several floors below ground level.
In the cramped space, the metal morgue cabinet was as thick as a safe. This place was too deep, so the surveillance cameras had been replaced with layers upon layers of surveillance spells. The whole space was like a stone coffin buried deep underground, with no light to be seen inside.
And in this deepest corner of the darkness, in the almost-solidified silence of death…
…Zhong Chengshuo was sacrificed? How could that be possible?
That person was fine, right in front of his eyes. Yin Ren’s almost paralyzed thoughts turned with difficulty. He resisted the dizziness and opened his eyes wide to see the orderly battle scene in front of him.
While his head was blank, his body was still moving on its own.
Yin Ren watched as he used a ghost control spell and quietly enhanced San Jie’s auxiliary magic. The golden light inside the skull was flourishing, and 14 genderless corpses with golden shadows surrounded the two cone-shaped monsters in the center.
“Great job!” Luo Wanxiang floated in mid-air using her jet propulsion device and gave the two a thumbs up.
Zhong Chengshuo was still concentrating on attacking the orange cone. He didn’t show off his skills like Luo Wanxiang but was like a lurking beast—most of the time was spent waiting and observing, and his shots were simple and direct, but he could always seriously injure the thing’s eyes.
Simple, but deadly.
With Yin Ren’s red light spell, the crimson highlights on the two cones grew in number. Lined with a circle of golden light from his spells, there was a bit more solemnity in this gloomy skull.
The situation had basically become stable. The two science posts caused continuous damage to the monster, and there were no giant insects rushing around. Ge Tingting and the others probably controlled them.
It was just that those little white monsters were still dishonest.
They took advantage of everyone’s attention on the cone monster, and some of them crawled towards San Jie and Yin Ren, while the rest trembled and penetrated into the darkness to follow the Yandu group that was blocking the bugs.
“Hu Tao, help Ge Tingting watch and warn them at any time!”
Yin Ren wouldn’t naturally miss this.
[1] Hu Tao replied weakly in the Coffin Nails group.
The former Great Celestial Master made a gesture, and a spell suddenly started, pushing the little monsters out wave after wave. The white monsters fluctuated layer by layer, like ripples on the ground. Occasionally, one or two daring ones would break through the ripples and wrap around Yin Ren’s toes.
However, Yin Ren’s skin was covered with a thick layer of evil qi, and the little monsters who had repeated their tricks were blown far away by the surging evil qi before they could touch his skin.
They crawled tremblingly and flew away with tears splashing, completely devoid of the creepy influence they had before.
As he felt the intermittent contact again and again, Yin Ren gradually developed a strange sensation.
He should know how to deal with these things, just like he should know how to yawn and blink.
It was difficult to express this feeling in words—a certain invisible and intangible “new organ” gradually awakened, trying to function awkwardly, like a newborn cub smelling the world for the first time.
The small monsters touched him lightly, one after another, and a layer of invisible and intangible barrier gradually formed around Yin Ren. This barrier was like eyelids, closely adhering to his skin. He felt like he was soaking in warm water, with his whole body feeling warm and comfortable.
The surrounding stench instantly dissipated, and the white monsters no longer looked so hideous.
With this barely discernible protection, the evil qi attached to his body seemed clumsy and superfluous, like trying to force a snake to shed its skin back on.
Yin Ren maintained this mysterious state, stepping on the crawling small monsters on the ground and slowly reducing the protective layer of evil qi. The small monsters’ eyeballs slipped into the gaps between his toes, cold and slippery, feeling like fungus.
The thick layer of evil qi gradually dissipated until it disappeared.
As he expected, with this new “protection”, even without the need for evil qi isolation, he wouldn’t be affected at all.
Thanks to these little things that crazily stimulated him, he seemed to have gained a whole new ability.
Yin Ren adjusted his breathing and once again confirmed that his emotions were very stable. Even if the white monster flooded his instep, he didn’t have the impulse to devour Zhong Chengshuo as before—to put it bluntly, he just wanted to find time to kiss Zhong Chengshuo when no one was paying attention.
How great.
Like a cat learning to extend its claws for the first time. In order to maintain this sensation, Yin Ren dared not be distracted. He worked hard to maintain it and walked in the cone’s direction, past Sang Jie. With only two science posts, Zhong Chengshuo and Luo Wanxiang, it was still somewhat difficult to restrain the two giants. Zhong Chengshuo was, after all, a mortal with a physical body, so Yin Ren had to pay more attention.
And there was nothing better than “battle” to train and control new abilities.
Zhong Chengshuo seemed to have eyes on his back. Yin Ren had just taken two steps when Zhong Chengshuo simply turned his head around.
Seeing Yin Ren walking freely on the white monster, Zhong Chengshuo looked somewhat surprised, but he just silently watched Yin Ren for a second without asking anything.
The rest of the battle was incredibly easy.
Whatever emotional influence the cone monster could have, for Yin Ren, it was just a stupid cone. With the three of them, Yin Ren, Zhong Chengshuo, and Luo Wanxiang, working together, not only were the monster’s eyes full of wounds, but dozens of cracks appeared on its orange shell.
One fatal weakness was thus compensated for, and Yin Ren was finally able to touch these things directly.
The “shielding influence” ability was useful, but it had to be driven by instinct and relied on grasping physical sensation. Yin Ren was very used to this kind of training method, and he just needed to go back and practice and study repeatedly.
So many years had passed that Yin Ren almost forgot what “ability growth” felt like. He was so happy at the time…
……
What does it feel like to be happy again?
He couldn’t remember at all.
[The competition didn’t end normally, right?] That voice said in his mind.
‘Yes, the competition didn’t end normally,’ Yin Ren thought slightly wearily.
What happened… afterwards?
From early morning until dusk, the two cone-shaped monsters went from being full of fighting spirit to being covered in wounds.
Everyone in Shian had reached their limit. Sang Jie was panting heavily, and her bone staff was dull and lifeless. Without power in her equipment, Luo Wanxiang had to limp and step on rotting flesh to continue fighting. According to Hu Tao’s feedback, the situation on the other side had also stabilized with some effort.
Zhong Chengshuo was still the same, showing no signs of fatigue on his face.
“Just one final blow left.” He evaluated the movement trajectory of the cone-shaped monsters. “The competition is about to…”
At this critical moment, Fu Xingchuan’s voice pressed in from all sides.
Before everyone could react, a crimson magical light illuminated the surroundings. The expensive Corpse Cage, worth millions, rotted away in an instant, leaving only yellow-white bones.
In the next moment, their vision suddenly distorted, and countless cracks like peeling wall paint appeared.
Without the cover of the Corpse Cage, the small monsters and the orange cones on the ground emitted smoke, and the latter burrowed into the cracks and disappeared.
The small white monsters weren’t so lucky. They screamed “Don’t want to die” and dissolved quickly in the air, leaving no trace of their remains.
Everything happened in just a few seconds. The space collapsed, and the three small teams with injuries all over their bodies regained their normal shapes and fell to the ground at the same time. The members’ injuries were different, but they all looked bewildered.
“There are hot towels in the cabinet on your right.”
Fu Xingchuan said to the nine people and the cat lying on the ground. As for the ghost, Hu Tao, she had already rushed out of the building when she heard the word “evacuate”.
Yin Ren couldn’t say whether he was disappointed or relieved when the competition was suddenly interrupted. He sauntered over to the cabinet, pulled out two hot towels, and draped one over his own neck before going to wipe the face of Zhong Chengshuo as per his request.
He needed to be the first to determine the extent of Zhong Chengshuo’s injuries.
Zhong Chengshuo stood still and obediently took off his glasses, allowing Yin Ren to wipe his face like scrubbing a statue.
Despite the cancellation of the competition, the surroundings were peaceful and clean. Yin Ren wiped his lover’s face, but the feeling of inner turmoil couldn’t be eased.
He couldn’t help but turn his head to observe the situation of the people around him.
Sang Jie and Luo Wanxiang simply put up two peace signs and gasped for breath while resting. Huang Jin and Ge Tingting moved to opposite corners, ignoring each other. Lu Xiaohe fell into a pile of machinery and groaned in pain while holding her waist. Fu Tianyi sat facing the wall, and the depression all over his body was visible to everyone…
In the center of the small room, the three masters were still arguing beside the bones.
Perhaps it was because Yandu’s performance in the group was so mediocre that the “#1 Evil Smith” couldn’t sit still. “Hey, Lao Fu, why did you stop without telling us? At least give us a heads up.”
“This doesn’t comply with the procedure.” Qiao Shang solemnly agreed. “There were no signs of alarm from the spirit weapons, so there was no need to be so anxious.”
“The ancestors have issued a warning, and the nearby space is abnormal. You all know Fu Wuya. He wouldn’t issue a warning for no reason.”
Fu Xingchuan took out a cigarette and put it in his mouth, but he didn’t light it.
“Now that the overall situation has been decided, if you’re uncomfortable, we can arrange other forms of extra matches.”
“But this warning doesn’t have any follow-up, and it’s not just about whether to have extra matches or not.” Zhou Gong’s smile was a bit forced.
“The B-level investigation team broke through the illusion array in the mountains. Isn’t that good? I’ve always felt that your B and C teams’ content seemed to be reversed from the beginning… Lao Fu, even if someone attacks, they should go after our B-level members first. Aren’t you too concerned about a group of C-level newcomers?”
Not far away, Yin Ren sighed inwardly. The three layers of defense inside and outside were just a test, and they all knew it.
Fu Xingchuan laughed and tried to smooth things over. “These are all our future talents. Didn’t I say before that these young people are a bit special and might have some new ideas? Let’s not forget that.”
Qiao Shang shook her head, looking unhappy. “We can talk about the extra match later, but the problem is your attitude… It only takes a few seconds to tell us. Are you really lacking those few seconds?”
Fu Xingchuan scratched his head and let out a sigh. “I really am lacking those few seconds.”
As he spoke, he didn’t look at anyone and just stared at a void; his expression was complicated.
Contrary to what they had expected, everything didn’t end smoothly. Even the “space anomaly” from earlier was just a false alarm.
The battle didn’t go wrong, and Zhong Chengshuo was still alive. The abnormalities in his body might be just a side effect of awakening a new ability, which filled Yin Ren with hope.
But the unbearable tearing sensation had not disappeared, and his mind still felt numb.
“Can we go eat first? Oh, maybe we should go back and clean up first.”
Yin Ren asked cheerfully, feeling in a good mood.
Maintaining the state of “isolating influence” required a lot of energy, and he was starving. After fighting in the corpse for so long, Zhong Chengshuo probably also wanted to take a nice hot bath.
Maybe they could wash together and have a kiss in the hot water.
“For now, let’s not separate.” Fu Xingchuan didn’t agree. “There might be some adhesive phenomenon in the space near the Corpse Cage, and there may be small gaps in the short term. When we reach the above ground, you can move freely.”
He had to say that this judgment was quite cautious.
…What went wrong? Why was his heart so resistant to “continue”?
Yin Ren thought blankly.
He remembered that they walked out of the door happily and followed the exhausted team upward.
He remembered they stepped on the upward stairs, and the old wooden smell drifted in the corridor.
He remembered they walked towards the exit, where there was no door panel. Through the arched doorway, they could see the red and green evening sky. The two masters of Shian walked in front, while Fu Xingchuan personally guarded the end of the team. The figures in front were folded into sections by the steps, and the wind from the outside carried the fragrance of the mountains and blew down along the steps.
He remembered holding Zhang Chengshuo’s wrist, speeding up, and walking in front of him. Everything was ordinary, just like the end of every small adventure. The Fu residence was nice, but Yin Ren had already started to miss home.
“What do you want to eat tonight? I want to have some night market cold noodles. I don’t know if the cook here can make it.”
“I asked about the recipe when I bought groceries,” Zhong Chengshuo answered seriously. “I can tell the kitchen staff.”
…Where did it go wrong, exactly?
The environment was so peaceful, yet Yin Ren felt more and more suffocated.
[Don’t resist the memories.] The voice appeared again, clearer than before.
Memories.
Memory fragments…
Yin Ren suddenly realized something—something spewed out from the darkness and hit his consciousness directly.
It was the end of a “memory.”
The tired team climbed up the steps, only a few steps away from the arched doorway. A chaotic day was about to end, and the beautiful sunset was right in front of them. They would rest well for the night and compete in other ways tomorrow.
In order to quickly familiarize himself with his newly acquired ability, Yin Ren still maintained the “isolation” state. As long as he became stronger, the people he cared about would be in a little less danger… That was what he thought at the time.
His “isolation” did indeed isolate the influence of those abnormal monsters.
But it also isolated other things, such as the malicious surveillance of the sniper in the abandoned amusement park.
Familiar gunfire sounded, and Yin Ren’s mind was almost blank.
It was that guy.
Someone was shouting, but he couldn’t hear clearly, and the colors in his field of vision became blurry. Just like in the abandoned amusement park, Yin Ren desperately threw himself towards Zhong Chengshuo, trying to shield him from that person.
But what he touched was a warm and moist sensation.
It wasn’t a spell that was cast, as there was no hint of magic in the air. It was an ordinary bullet… a high-powered, purely scientific projectile with tremendous killing force.
It hit the center of Zhong Chengshuo’s chest and exploded inside his body.
Everything happened too quickly. Zhong Chengshuo touched his bloody and mangled chest; a look of shock still on his face, as he turned his head to look at Yin Ren. He seemed to want to say something.
Yin Ren pressed both hands on Zhong Chengshuo’s chest and activated one healing spell after another in vain. He blocked the direction from which the bullet came and instantly shattered several pieces of wall to build a safe shelter, then frantically tried to stop the bleeding.
A huge sense of unreality engulfed him.
If it was just the heart… If it was just the heart, then there was still hope. Shian had a lot of futuristic medical technology that was ahead of its time. They must have contingency plans for this kind of pure gunshot wound. Everything was not over yet…
But he had to stop the bleeding first. That was the only thing he could do…
Zhong Chengshuo struggled to stretch out his hand, his palm full of blood covering Yin Ren’s hand.
That person’s palm was still warm.
“This place really gives people a headache. It’s a pity that some people’s cleverness backfires. With just a little teasing, they come out in a hurry…”
A light and brisk voice sounded from the depths of the darkness. It was vague, like there was a layer of water film in between.
“Well, on second thought, you can’t hide in there forever. It’s just dying a little earlier now.”
There were a few gunshots again.
Yin Ren’s eyes were instantly covered with blood, and the hand that Zhong Chengshuo was holding onto his back twitched.
This time, the bullet bizarrely changed its trajectory and shot out from the wall behind Zhong Chengshuo.
This time, it hit Zhong Chengshuo’s head directly, ruthlessly exploding it.
Yin Ren’s body was splattered with hot blood and broken flesh. He stared blankly at the headless body in front of him, almost all the blood in his body was frozen.
Is it all a dream?
Just a surreal nightmare?
The ancient Ghost King forgot about those bizarre abilities, forgot about his own earth-shattering power. He stood dazed in place, like an ordinary person.
Not far away, the blood-red sunlight slanted through the archway. They shone red on the blood on the ground through the shattered “wall shelter”.
“Zhong…”
The blood on his hand was still warm.
It seemed that someone was injured around him and shouting loudly, but Yin Ren didn’t hear it…or rather, he heard it but didn’t understand.
He clenched the familiar body with trembling fingers.
However, countless semi-transparent black tentacles spread out from the wall, wrapping around Zhong Chengshuo’s body like sea anemones and violently pulled him into the wall.
Just like sinking into the water.
Yin Ren didn’t care if anyone was watching around him, and subconsciously wrapped his hair around—at least, he had to keep that person here.
At the critical moment, Yin Ren’s hair tightly wrapped around Zhong Chengshuo’s body as he spoke, refusing to let go. A small part of Zhong Chengshuo’s body remained outside, wrapped in wriggling, translucent tentacles.
Faint laughter came from inside the wall.
“That guy is really deceiving people. This one is indeed an ‘ordinary person.’ As for you… aren’t you an evil?”
As soon as the words fell, there was a sharp pain.
The hair that grabbed Zhong Chengshuo was cut off in unison, and he couldn’t feel Zhong Chengshuo’s body temperature anymore. The next moment, the tentacles suddenly retracted, accompanied by a distorted explosion, and the wall quickly returned to its original state.
Only a pool of blood and debris, and a few broken nylon straps remained in front of him. Zhong Chengshuo’s hard skin fell near the base of the wall, and the pages gradually soaked with blood.
His lover had completely disappeared.
Yin Ren stared at the wall, for a few seconds, or perhaps a century. He turned his head dazedly and looked at the door a few steps away.
Almost insane sadness and hatred overwhelmed Yin Ren’s mind, breaking through the icy coldness in his heart. He used his last bit of reason to press his temple with one hand.
He can’t lose control here. He can’t lose control here.
Absolutely cannot lose control here.
Whether it was Zhong Yi or an evil, if even his identity as an “Evil Spirit” was exposed, how could he get Zhong Chengshuo back?
‘…He had to snatch him back,’ Yin Ren thought in a daze.
Yin Ren watched his fingers touch his temple, and the magic suddenly started. Faced with bone-deep despair, he knew what to do.
The radiance of the magic illuminated the pool of blood, and Yin Ren decisively sealed his memories of the past few hours.
“A powerful ancestor predicted that the appearance of the Primordial Elements in the world is a sign of the end of the world… Ah, appearing in this place doesn’t count as an appearance, right?”
San Jie’s voice was gradually drowned out by blistering murmurs. Strange silver stars appeared around the scene in front of Yin Ren. He instinctively looked at Zhong Chengshuo, who held his shoulders.
The surroundings were quiet, and there was no unusual presence of either evil qi or Evil Force.
What happened just now…?
[Take it easy. Take your time. What happened after that?] A weird voice sounded deep in Yin Ren’s mind, as misty as a cloud of smoke.
Who’s talking?
Yin Ren shook his head vigorously. The dim space in front of him revealed faint shadows.
He blinked, and everything in front of him returned to normal. Luo Wanxiang’s hair was strung up a bit by her goggle strap, and the decoration on San Jie’s body shone with a fine light, and her cloudy pupils looked fixedly at Yin Ren.
The subtle voice in his head dissipated without a trace.
“Not feeling well?” Zhong Chengshuo asked while still holding his phone, which was recording, in his hand.
“It’s okay. Perhaps I’m just a little hungry.”
The trance for a moment was like dew on a lotus leaf, and it disappeared in an instant. Yin Ren took a breath and looked at the seemingly endless dry esophagus in front of him.
He hesitated for a few seconds, then took a slow step to stand shoulder to shoulder with Zhong Chengshuo. Zhong Chengshuo got closer, and his gaze behind the lens became a little softer.
“You’re right. We shouldn’t go this way. It’s better to be stable.” Yin Ren involuntarily murmured. “Why don’t I go talk to the Linnan’s people and we turn around?”
“We’ve already gone so far. If we turn around, it’ll be too inefficient. Skirmishes are all about adaptability.” Zhong Chengshuo stuffed a chocolate chip into Yin Ren’s mouth.
Yin Ren subconsciously looked at his lover. Under the gentle gaze of the man, everything seemed to return to normal.
Every time he gave Yin Ren food, Zhong Chengshuo would look over with unwavering eyes, his gaze pure with the intention of “giving you food.” This reminded Yin Ren of a long time ago, when he had encountered countless animals with whom he couldn’t communicate. “Sharing food” was undoubtedly their highest expression of goodwill.
Zhong Chengshuo made him think of them.
Yin Ren touched his lips. Seeing the way Zhong Chengshuo was staring at him without blinking, he couldn’t help but want to kiss him.
Since they had already kissed and Zhong Chengshuo was a clean freak, he didn’t seem to dislike it. When the people from Linnan weren’t paying attention, he would definitely kiss him properly while sober.
Yin Ren then licked the chocolate chip in his mouth; it was indeed his favorite brand.
He was very familiar with the sweet and bitter taste, and it always made him feel at ease. The melted cocoa butter slid across the tip of his tongue and was swallowed into the darkness of his esophagus.
At the same time, in the larger and more unpredictable esophagus—
“Yin Ren, Yin Ren!”
The next moment, Lu Xiaohe’s voice exploded in his ears. Her cheerful voice was full of urgency. “Be careful Don’t touch those things directly!”
The scene in front of him suddenly changed, giving Yin Ren a jolt.
What’s going on?
It was like waking up from a dream. The unique flavor of chocolate was still on the tip of his tongue, but what he saw in front of him was no longer the clearly lit esophagus but a huge rotten cranial cavity.
Luo Wanxiang’s mechanical ball hung from the highest part of the cranial cavity, emitting a strong light that illuminated the hellish scene.
Yellow-white bones were exposed behind the flesh, and half-rotten brains flowed slowly. Above this fetid waterfall, the skull bent into a huge dome. Looking “downstream”, the mucus flowed silently, overflowing over the huge reef-like teeth.
The corpse’s cranial cavity was completely opened up and empty.
It was supposed to be the location of the brain, but there were so many unknown things around that it looked more like a tree root. They were soaked in gray and rancid brain matter, forming an ominous swamp. Unknown insect corpses overturned in the “swamp” and became hills.
The overwhelming white monster crawled all over the skull cavity, and in the middle of the empty skull cavity, a huge orange cone full of holes floated. Countless eyeball structures protruded from the holes, each looking in different directions.
A disgusting murmur came from the cone, making people’s heads go numb.
They had seen such a sight in the Archive. This thing had floated through Guo Laifu’s street of consciousness with great fanfare. Yin Ren searched his memory blankly, but he couldn’t remember how it appeared at all.
No, that wasn’t right. He remembered…
They… They proceeded along the esophagus without any danger and met Shian’s arrangement at the throat.
There were complicated runes floating on the rotten flesh, and under the guidance of the brilliance of the runes, all the “attachment” monsters who had left gathered there. The white hyphae limbs were overwhelming, and they penetrated deeply into the corrupt muscle tissue, blocking the passage of the head of the corpse cage tightly.
The runes flickered, and the little monsters piled up frantically. Accompanied by the unpleasant sound of space squeezing, a crack gradually appeared in the void.
From the outside world, its size was far from being called a “gap”, but for them at this moment, it was already huge enough.
Piles of white little monsters trembled and moved, their eye structures splashing tears. They looked like they were hiding from the orange cone, yet they also seemed to be deliberately leading it towards the members of Shian.
The scenes were clearly imprinted in his memory.
…Why didn’t he remember it just now? What’s the matter with this weird sense of fragmentation?
Yin Ren thickened his evil qi layer on the surface of his body to ensure he wouldn’t touch those monsters. San Jie cut her wrists and drenched the human bone necklace with blood. She held it aloft, chanting something under her breath as if she were singing.
Zhong Chengshuo dutifully stayed behind; his whole body was tense, ready to fight at any moment. Perceiving that Yin Ren was looking at him, Zhong Chengshuo tilted his head and slightly blinked at him.
[After that?] The wonderful voice passed through Yin Ren’s mind again, blurred like an illusion.
There it is again.
There was no abnormal feeling in his body. It may be the remnants of some kind of environmental technique. It was imperative to deal with the battle in front of him. Yin Ren concentrated and prepared to summon his ghosts.
“Let’s go!”
Luo Wanxiang, who was lying on the ground, shouted.
Wait, lying on the ground?
The sense of absurdity like waking up from a dream struck again, and Yin Ren was stunned on the spot.
The surrounding environment became much dimmer. Yin Ren slapped his cheeks hard, but still didn’t find anything wrong. Not to mention the influence of the evil qi, there wasn’t even the slightest trace of magic around.
But he seemed to be “fragmented” again, and a large part of time was missing.
Is this the ability of the cone monster? …Why does it seem like other people are fine?
No, the other people aren’t “fine”.
The cranial cavity was still the same, and Luo Wanxiang was indeed lying on the ground, but her mouth was full of blood, and she couldn’t speak loudly. Her gaze was no longer clear, as if she had been affected by something. Even so, she still raised her arms high, trying to attack the conical monster with a laser.
San Jie covered her ears and knelt on the ground. Tears kept flowing out of her blind eyes while her bone rod was deeply inserted in front of her.
The situation was so weird that Yin Ren couldn’t help but feel a chill in his back.
Fortunately, Zhong Chengshuo was still standing behind him, and the breath was warm and familiar.
“Don’t be in a daze. Ge Tingting also encountered a cone monster over there!”
In the unilateral headset, Lu Xiaohe reminded them with a hoarse voice.
“Fu Tianyi’s situation isn’t good, so it’s best to let them join us. Yin Ren, Hu Tao is over there. You have to order her to cooperate! …Damn it, I should have followed Xiao Zhong’s suggestion…”
[Hehe, I thought that kid from the Fu family was powerful, but it turned out he’s just an amateur*. He can’t even keep up with his own spirit weapons, which is almost depleted.]
*Three-legged cat (三脚猫) Idiom referring to someone who has only a superficial or limited level of skill or ability in a particular area, especially in a way that appears clumsy or unskilled.
At the same time, Hu Tao’s message was jumping on the screen. She made no secret of hiding her gloating tone.
[It’s not impossible for me to help with the rendezvous. That cat said it would take about five minutes… These guys are too cowardly and just running for their lives at this level!]
[Lu Xiaohe’s judgment is correct. You should also be careful and don’t touch those things.] This time, before Yin Ren had finished thinking about the situation, the reply in his hand was sent out without authorization.
What’s going on?
The whispering voice lingered in his ears from time to time.
[And then what happened?]
[And then what happened?]
[And then what happened?]
The weird sense of reality tearing came in waves, and Yin Ren’s thinking was half a beat slower than his movements.
He wanted to look back and call to Zhong Chengshuo, but he couldn’t move his body. As the tearing sensation intensified, he felt like a ghost attached to his own body, watching helplessly as it moved, fought, and conversed.
This time, it was Zhong Chengshuo who took a step forward and walked to Yin Ren’s side.
“I can’t continue to be lazy. My grades will be affected,” Zhong Chengshuo said in a low voice. “That thing can’t affect me. I can cooperate with you.
‘No, it can’t be like this,’ Yin Ren thought.
The situation was weirder than he expected. If it was just the arrangement of Shian, it would be at most the extent of “releasing monsters to affect emotions”—what he felt now was too evil and was definitely not a normal “attack”.
He wanted to call out to Zhong Chengshuo and suggest that they use more of their strength to quickly leave this ghost of a place.
But in the rancid skull cavity of the Corpse Cage, he heard his voice say, “Okay.”
His voice even added happily, “I’ll be your glasses, and you’ll be my hair… Just remember to take it easy, okay?”
Zhong Chengshuo hummed and drew out the baton he had used in battle with Yin Ren. He shook his hand casually, and the body of the baton staggered, revealing a sharp blade. Fine talismans were engraved on the sharp blade.
It could only cause physical damage to evil things, but it wasn’t a rare spirit weapon, so it was just right to use it publicly.
The moment the weapon was in place, Zhong Chengshuo rushed towards the giant object not far away. Luo Wanxiang yelled after him as she tried to stand up.
“Okay, so you were hiding your true abilities before, huh?”
She got rid of her broken goggles.
“It’s not hiding.” Zhong Chengshuo swung his blade in an arc and explained sincerely, “I’m just physically strong. Without mechanical protection like you, I can get injured easily.”
“Fine, fine.” Lu Wanxiang said, “Don’t talk nonsense. Hurry up!”
The two science posts became the front. Yin Ren “watched” himself stand behind San Jie.
San Jie’s hands and wrists were all cut, and her face was pale. Yin Ren watched as he used a spell to stop her bleeding. “Use your ancestors to suppress them.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll support the offensive… First, I will help them ‘see’.”
“Beetles are approaching at 9 and 10 o’clock. A group of beetles is approaching! Protect the battlefield!” In his unilateral headset, Lu Xiaohe shouted hoarsely. “Damn it, Shian went all out this time…!”
“Fu Tianyi and the others are almost here. Shian must have a way to drive away insects and monsters. Adjust your strategy according to the next step.”
Zhong Chengshuo made a quick slash. The blade scraped against the bulging eye of the cone-shaped monster. Luo Wanxiang’s laser shot without hesitation, causing the cone-shaped creature to let out a louder screech.
Yin Ren cast a spell in the empty space, and countless crimson light spots emanated from his palm, sticking to the orange-red cone-shaped creature.
These light spots were entities that burned, visible even to the science post. They were ideal for marking the slow-moving giant.
The orange-red cone-shaped creature was covered in sporadic red light, and on Zhong Chengshuo’s lenses, a constellation-like outline gradually appeared. Zhong Chengshuo took off his glasses, turned his head slightly, and smiled at Yin Ren with some awkwardness.
No… Stop…
He didn’t know why, but this thought seemed imprinted in Yin Ren’s mind, causing a burst of pain. His internal organs seemed to be frozen, and he wished that time would stop.
Can’t go on like this…
Yin Ren tried to make other moves to disrupt the situation. As the battle gradually progressed, he was eager to release some of his Evil Force, wrapping everyone up in his hair and forcibly taking things off the established track.
However, in that strange sense of tearing, he was just a “bystander” who couldn’t even manipulate his evil qi.
Everything, from the large scattered light point spell to the flow of evil qi in his body, seemed to be proceeding according to a script in an orderly manner. Yin Ren’s heart was filled with nameless anger three feet high, but his body beat calmly, unable to even produce a cold sweat.
“3 centimeters… 2 centimeters… 0.8 centimeters… Yandu’s people are coming! Be on guard!”
Bang!
A large, rough piece of horsehide wrapped into a package resembling a shell smashed through the rotten flesh and wetly hit the ground.
Another cone-shaped monster followed closely, darting into the skull like a dart, and was then instantly marked by Yin Ren’s crimson light spots. At the same time, the two people from Unit 9 and the Yandu group scrambled out of the horsehide in bewilderment.
Although, Huang Jin looked at the scene outside, he briefly made a move to try to climb back in.
In front of him, the blade of Zhou Chengshuo’s police baton was cutting towards the giant cone-shaped monster, followed closely by Luo Wanxiang. The two science post members formed a barrier and confronted the strange creature.
“What are your combat countermeasures? Synchronize it!”
“Auntie Tao’s physical fitness is not good, so the Yandu group will go and deal with the insect swarm first!”
Lu Xiaohe was talking while Dr. Cat was screaming. His ears were jumbled with voices, and the brilliance of countless spells flashed through the darkness. In the fishy and chaotic space, two orange-yellow monsters were like warning lights, painfully piercing the eyes.
Yin Ren looked at his hands, and flickering black spots appeared in his vision.
It shouldn’t be like this. It shouldn’t continue…
……
“Don’t rush. Take your time. What happened next?”
The voice, very close to Yin Ren, was coaxing him carefully.
“Keep remembering. How exactly did your partner sacrifice himself?”
Following Fu Xingchuan’s movements, the corpse cage shook slightly.
Those little white monsters were still crawling on the ground, shaking out strange afterimages. They seemed to have sensed something, lost interest in everyone present, and slowly crawled into the depths of darkness, receding like the tide.
The shaking stopped. Luo Wanxiang let out a sigh of relief.
She snapped on a portable light and illuminated the small flesh cavity like day.
Luo Wanxiang’s short hair was messed up, and there were traces of mucus on her goggles. Her situation was barely okay. Her work clothes were probably made from waterproof materials, as the damage wasn’t serious. Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t help but take a few more looks.
The mechanical ball next to Luo Wanxiang smoothly broadcasted steadily. “Terrain fine scanning progress 96%… 99%… Scanning complete. Navigation route has been pushed.”
“We’ll go through the esophagus. Any anomalous spaces or unidentified organisms will be detected by my AI,” Luo Wanxiang announced as she handed the map over to the other three people. “As long as there’s no issues with the route, we should be able to leave here within two hours.”
Yin Ren hummed, not making any comments.
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute!”
Lu Xiaohe opened the communication and shouted into the headsets.
“Their close-range data is very detailed, but we have the big topographic map.” Lu Xiaohe coughed several times. “Zhong Chengshuo, send her the data from my additional scans. I’ll be able to contact Ge Tingting and Huang Jin soon… Hey, what’s up with this signal data?”
[Meow.]
There was a thin cat cry deep in his ears, causing Yin Ren to raise his brows.
A few steps away from him, San Jie covered her head, causing the ethnic ornaments she was wearing to collide with each other, making a soft rattling sound. Her hair was braided into a thick black braid at the back of her head, and when she lowered her head like this, the thick braid slid in front of her.
“In my head…. There’s a cat meowing…” After being attacked by the white monster, her spirit hadn’t been stable.
Yin Ren comforted, “Don’t be nervous, I heard it too.”
Zhong Chengshuo, who didn’t hear it, took out his hardcover notebook with interest and recorded the discovery—Luo Wanxiang had no special reaction. The cat’s meow was probably only heard by cultivators. When they returned home, he would study this with Yin Ren.
As he was writing, the tip of Zhong Chengshuo’s pen stopped subconsciously.
The concepts of “returning home” and “doing things together” for those two were now as natural as breathing… and it was a wonderful feeling.
“Cognitive coordinates are confirmed. Contact established. Lu Xiaohe, write down the signal band. I’ll help you establish communication later.” In the unilateral headset, Dr. Meiqiu’s purring voice was clear.
“How did you do that?!” Lu Xiaohe drew a cold, deep breath.
Zhong Chengshuo had the same question.
In addition to being a person with the “Infinite” branch ability, Meiqiu was still a true domestic cat in terms of lifespan, habits, and physical traits. It couldn’t withstand such a high load, let alone use human techniques, but it could influence human cultivators in some form.
Dr. Cat, well aware of its advantages, purred contentedly. “Why should I tell you?”
The subtle sound of teeth grinding came from Lu Xiaohe’s communication.
“We haven’t even hit the road yet, but the three rear commanders are already in a heated discussion,” Yin Ren leaned in and whispered. “They’re really competitive.”
Zhong Chengshuo: “The two million bonus is enough for you to eat 10,000 times at your favorite BBQ buffet, which means you can eat one meal a day for 27 years.”
Yin Ren stood at attention in an instant, showing a very serious look.
“Very good. Now the number of people on both sides is equal, and there’s a rear commander following each field.”
While Dr. Meiqiu of Yandu showed off, there was a sense of urgency in Lu Xiaohe’s voice. She took a sip of water and cleared her throat.
“Then the rear commanders of the respective teams are responsible for short-range intelligence judgments, and I’m responsible for information communication and general route coordination between the two teams. In this way, everyone can get points, and there won’t be any duplication of work.”
Linnan’s AI Commander: “Roger that.”
Dr. Cat disdainfully commented, “Why are you so nervous? Anyway, even if I don’t win, I have enough money to spend in my life.”
Lu Xiaohe took a deep breath. “Anyone who has objections can say so in advance.”
Meiqiu: “No objections. Your judgment is fine. I’m just not happy listening to human orders.”
“Crack.”
In the unilateral headset, there was the sound of Lu Xiaohe crushing a can angrily.
Luo Wanxiang leaned against the wall of flesh and scratched her head. “Anyway, that’s the way it is. Let’s follow the big map and leave…”
Zhong Chengshuo poked Yin Ren in the back.
Yin Ren was thinking about something, so he didn’t respond for a while. Zhong Chengshuo looked at the other’s long, waterfall-like hair and decided to use the wonderful touch he had experienced just now…
Comrade Xiao Zhong opened his arms, wrapped his arms around Yin Ren’s shoulders, and then rested his chin on it. Sure enough, his adrenaline and dopamine were secreted at the same time, and they were once again mixed into an electrified excitement and resistance.
Luo Wanxiang’s face twitched for a moment, and it was clear that she was struggling for a bit before finally deciding to pretend she hadn’t seen anything.
Yin Ren, on the other hand, was literally taken aback. “Zhong Ge?”
Zhong Chengshuo turned his head sideways, and a small goosebump appeared on the side of Yin Ren’s neck, and then it gradually turned light red.
“I have an objection.” Zhong Chengshuo’s voice was too small to be heard. “You let me be lazy, but I’m a bit stifled.”
Yin Ren couldn’t help but stretch out his hand and rub the other’s warm hair. “…Go on.”
After receiving confirmation, Zhong Chengshuo quickly raised his voice. “We can’t go through the esophagus.”
Lu Xiaohe and Luo Wanxiang said “Ah?” at almost the same time.
“This is not an ‘escape game’, it’s a ‘skirmish’.” Zhong Chengshuo spoke without letting go of Yin Ren. “Whether it was bugs or other traps before, strictly speaking, it was an inherent part of this environment.”
The mechanical ball carrying the AI floated beside Zhong Chengshuo, and a flashing red light rushed straight to his face.
Zhong Chengshuo subconsciously let go of Yin Ren and wanted to stand up straight and speak as before… Ah, no, no, he had to be as lazy as possible.
Thinking of this, Zhong Chengshuo clung to Yin Ren again. Imitating Yin Ren’s relaxed appearance, he scattered his weight on his lover and worked hard to implement the lazy plan.
“The previous time was mostly an ‘adaptation period’ for us to get used to the environment and try to take action. Now that everyone’s actions are relatively clear, it’s time for Shian to take action—in a real skirmish, there will definitely be enemies.”
Luo Wanxiang shivered.
Zhong Chengshuo was lying on Yin Ren’s shoulder. His eyes behind the glasses seemed to absorb all light, while Yin Ren’s face was so beautiful to the point of abnormality. Coupled with the stench of corpses coming from all directions, the scene not only didn’t look sticky and ambiguous but was eerie.
She previously thought Zhong Chengshuo was just an add-on.
Yin Ren looked outstanding and was adept at handling things. On the other hand, Zhong Chengshuo only had various scattered props with little spiritual reaction. He was probably in a supporting role similar to a “human scientific encyclopedia”.
But now, even as a science post, she could detect an almost intuitive “something’s wrong”.
Luo Wanxiang: “You mean, those messy things are just the appetizers of the environment, and next, Shian may take the initiative with a ‘hostile attitude’?”
Zhong Chengshuo hummed naturally as if it were a matter of course that “Shian may be hostile”.
“Individual actions are fine, but we’re now taking a joint route. In order to ensure the difficulty of the competition, Shian may proactively set up ambushes on the ‘main road’.”
“Since it’s joint, I suggest going the opposite way. We go in the direction of the abdomen, rendezvous with the Yandu branch, and concentrate our strength on puncturing a hole to leave.”
“But there are too many uncontrollable factors with that approach,” Lu Xiaohe, who had been listening all along, didn’t directly refute the idea. “Aside from the difficulty of meeting up, the outside corrupt organizations are unstable. If we deviate from the natural passages within the human body, we might not be able to respond well if we’re attacked…”
“Linnan is well equipped,” Zhong Chengshuo replied as he stared at Luo Wanxiang’s bulging pockets.
……
Ten minutes later, Zhong Chengshuo was walking towards the esophagus with his head down.
His proposal was rejected, and the reason for the rejection was simple—San Jie was blind, and it was too risky to act rashly. Luo Wanxiang said she wanted to take it step by step. Since the owner of the equipment was unwilling to cooperate, they could only proceed slowly in the direction of the oral cavity.
However, Miss Luo, the mechanic, didn’t deny Zhong Chengshuo’s point.
She asked the mechanical ball to patrol in front over and over again and only dared to move when she was sure it was okay. Lu Xiaohe and Meiqiu were busy setting up Ge Tingting’s and the others’ communication, so the surrounding area suddenly became quiet.
Under the lighting of the mechanical ball, the narrow and rotten esophagus was like a dark tunnel.
Zhong Chengshuo’s gaze swept towards Yin Ren as always, but this time the other party didn’t look back at him. Zhong Chengshuo followed Yin Ren’s gaze and found he was looking at San Jie’s bone necklace.
Before he had time to ask, Yin Ren had already stood beside San Jie. “You also encountered that kind of white monster? It’s so scary. I almost collapsed.”
The “palpitations” in his tone were so real that Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t tell if they actually came from the heart or not.
“We have also encountered people from Sunken Society who can ‘Resonate’ before, and it feels quite similar… That kind of monster also has special abilities?”
Yin Ren’s tone was just right, with the casualness of “chatting casually with comrades in arms”, making it difficult for people to refuse.
Zhong Chengshuo’s eyes lit up. Something close to happiness rose in his heart—before he could figure out how to be polite, his social master took the lead.
Sure enough, the comrades of the Linnan branch fell for the trap.
“It’s not a specific ability.” San Jie shook her head honestly. “You got it backwards. It’s not that they are like people with the ‘Resonance’ ability, but that the ‘Resonance’ branch is like them… There are records in my house. They appeared two thousand years ago, but the earliest special abilities in people only appeared a thousand years ago.”
Speaking of this, she was a little lost.
“The records in my family are too complicated and messy, so they haven’t been fully recognized by the officials yet… But my grandparents won’t lie to me.”
“Do you have research on ‘those things’?” Lord Ghost King asked. “Your response was much better than mine just now. I don’t think they harassed you much… Ah, if it’s confidential, then pretend as if I didn’t ask.”
Luo Wanxiang, who was walking in front, turned her head and looked at Yin Ren warily.
“It’s okay, Luoluo. We’re living creatures in this world. There’s nothing we can’t talk about.” At this moment, Sanjie’s eyes seemed unimpaired again, as her dull gaze turned towards Luo Wanxiang.
There was a hint of majesty in her voice.
For fear of missing something, Zhong Chengshuo turned on his cell phone and started recording as he stared at the girl dressed as a shaman.
“They are neither creatures nor evil things. We are just aware of their existence.” San Jie introduced in a slightly hoarse voice.
“People with strong psychic abilities or lunatics can vaguely sense them. They can influence people’s emotions, causing them to shout, laugh, or achieve enlightenment and bliss. Some people don’t eat, drink, or sleep, just to enhance their spirituality and experience the joy of spiritual communication… but if they make a mistake and come into contact with the wrong ‘type’, there are also those who become insane and commit suicide.”
San Jie made a prayer gesture and let out a long sigh.
“There was an old man who told me before that if you walk to a place that doesn’t exist, you can see them. If you dream too deeply, you will see them. If you touch them rashly, your mind will be destroyed. As for how to resist the influence…”
Zhong Chengshuo looked past Yin Ren and gazed eagerly at Sang Jie, wishing he could record the conversation in place of his phone.
“I’m sorry. I’m afraid I can’t ‘teach’ you how to resist their influence.”
San Jie touched the bones of her ancestors on her chest, and her tone became a bit more reverent.
“I can resist them to some extent, thanks to the protection of the spirits of my ancestors’ remains in heaven. I have no right to lend them.”
Oh, it’s this kind of arcane and mysterious explanation again. Zhong Chengshuo had an expression as if he had been punched.
Unfortunately, he couldn’t borrow the human bone necklace for research…
Yin Ren looked at his lover, whose face was cloudy and gloomy, and continued amiably, “Is that all? It’s quite interesting. Let’s talk about it more, even if it’s just some stories.”
San Jie was also a member of the special investigation team in Shian. She shook her head. “Now is not the time to tell stories, but I can tell you one thing…”
“They neither live nor die, and our elders call them ‘Primordial Elementals’.”
“A powerful ancestor predicted that the appearance of the Primordial Elementals in the world is a sign of the end of the world… Ah, appearing in this place doesn’t count as an appearance, right?”
She nervously pinched the corners of her clothes.
The author has something to say:
Xiao Zhong: I don’t know how to be lazy.
Xiao Zhong:
Xiao Zhong: Just imitate Yin Ren.
Xiao Yin: ?
Of course, if you count inflation, you can’t get BBQ for 27 years…! But such calculation is still shocking. Two million is really a lot.
Even if a cat had a Ph.D., with the nape of its neck being held, it was still subjected to the whims of fate.
Dr. Cat was well-behaved. It hung softly in Yin Ren’s hand, looking like a black cloth bag. It didn’t mind being held while it grumbled and complained. Mr. Meiqiu swore all kinds of indecent words and attacked all humans present indiscriminately—it could be seen that humans weren’t ashamed to talk about cat bell*, and the same applies in reverse.
*Literally refers to a cat’s collar, but metaphorically refers to something that reveals or exposes the true nature or intentions of a person or thing. || In this context, Meiqiu is cursing up a storm, just like humans would do when angry, so regardless of species, it seems they’re the same in this aspect.
On the contrary, Yin Ren couldn’t listen to it anymore. His smile gradually stiffened, and he carefully put down the cat that was crazily spewing vulgar words.
Dr. Cat wasn’t stupid and didn’t run away immediately. It climbed up high, looking down at the four shallow humans with its black tail swishing back and forth.
“Do you want to act together?” Yin Ren pretended as if nothing had happened. “It’s more efficient and in line with Shian’s cultural spirit.”
Zhong Chengshuo kept his mind on his new task of “being lazy”. He took a step back and half-hid behind Yin Ren, acting professionally. Luo Wanxiang looked them up and down and murmured something.
“We have no problem. It’s just this cat… Ah no, this Mr. Doctor belongs to Yandu…” She scratched her head.
Dr. Cat had already started licking his paws and washing his face.
“I’m going to find my companion.”
It raised its turquoise eyes, and its two pupils widened roundly in the shadows.
“The emotions of the two men are stable, and the communication facilities on their bodies are in operation. They must have contacted their rear commander.”
It took a few seconds for Yin Ren to realize that “men” was referring to him and Zhong Chengshuo.
“The rear commander of Linnan is also a portable AI. If I join you, the distribution of rear commanders will be seriously unbalanced.” Dr. Cat bowed his head, stretched out his hind feet, and licked the fur on his stomach vigorously.
“But it’s dangerous to run around.” Luo Wanxiang reminded as kindly as she could.
Dr. Cat: “Bugs react slowly. I usually eat them as snacks… Are you humans afraid of crispy fried chicken if it were magnified hundreds of times?”
Yin Ren swallowed reflexively, causing the black cat to twitch its ear and glance at him.
“Of course, insects are a good source of protein. You can also play with them before eating. You should give it a try.”
Yin Ren couldn’t help but recall the rich insects nearby for a while and choke on his saliva.
Zhong Chengshuo patted him on the back and turned to the cat. “Your companions are near the kidney. Just in case, please keep in touch with us… Do you need additional equipment?”
Rear commanders often required mechanical equipment assistance, but there were no mechanical traces on this cat, so he didn’t know how the Yandu group usually communicated.
After the competition, it would be nice if this cat could be bribed with some canned food. Zhong Chengshuo especially wanted to do an interview with it.
“If necessary, I will take the initiative to contact you,” Dr. Cat replied in a sharp voice. “I don’t want equipment. I’m here because I’m thirsty… Quickly, share me some clean water.”
The humans looked at each other. Zhong Chengshuo took the lead by taking out a disposable water cup and poured half a glass of water.
Dr. Cat drank it clean in one breath. It looked at Zhong Chengshuo for a while, then flicked its tail and ran away silently.
Even if it was a small animal that swore a lot, cute animals were always reassuring. After the commotion caused by the black cat, Sang Jie finally calmed down. Her blind eyes turned in the direction Dr. Cat had left, but she didn’t know what she had “seen”.
As she turned around, Yin Ren secretly snorted.
Sang Jie’s symptoms of being harassed by the little monsters were mild, and it seemed that it wasn’t because of her “talent”.
Compared to when she was in the Fu residence, she had a more exaggerated bone necklace around her neck.
The necklace was undoubtedly made of human bone, and it had a history of more than two hundred years. The bones were carved with fine runes and emitted a faint aura that was much the same; most likely, they belonged to her ancestors.
The white monsters were repulsed by these bones, and only a few were willing to get close to Sang Jie.
Yin Ren found something interesting. The decision to “merge” was right.
……
The abdomen of the corpse.
It didn’t take long for Ge Tingting’s “rational plan” to slowly collapse.
If they moved forward haphazardly, their bodies would become smaller. If they didn’t constantly discern auras while walking, they could be easily attacked by giant insects that suddenly appear. However, having experienced the battle royale in Gengsheng Town, Ge Tingting had adapted well to these little things.
But there were no teammates in Gengsheng Town who were dragging her down…
Originally, she secretly expected Fu Tianyi to use his high combat abilities, but as a result, the elite of the Fu family collapsed first.
Time reversed half an hour ago.
Not long into the action, in addition to scavenging insects, they encountered misshapen monsters and also peculiar white creatures.
They emitted a faint, menacing aura as the translucent white hyphae spread around; their eyeball-like structure was always wet. These monsters were constantly wriggling in the crevices of the carrion, swimming around maliciously.
Ge Tingting accidentally touched a little bit of it, but she didn’t have any strange reactions. If anything, she became even more passionate about this competition—she was determined to become stronger and stay in Shian, where she would never have to worry about food, clothing, or good treatment.
This enthusiasm was so big that it became a bit abnormal, and it almost turned into fear of “What if I get fired”, but in general, it had a positive effect.
Auntie Tao and Huang Jin weren’t too different. They just took out their phones and stared at someone’s picture on the screensaver intently.
Huang Jin’s state was worse though; he was out of his mind.
Fortunately, Comrade Huang Jin, had been bitten by a snake, feared even rope for ten years*. After his emotions were amplified by the fleshy xanthium and Kong Wanqing, the “tranquility charm” was replaced with an “explosive spirit weapon” and became the thing that the spirit smith was best at making.
*(一朝被蛇咬十年怕井绳) Idiom referring to once someone has experienced a traumatic event, they will be very cautious and fearful in similar situations in the future (AKA once bitten, twice shy).
He dipped his fingertips in blood and drew a tranquility rune on his arm. The fresh blood exuded a faint red light. Under the red light, Huang Jin tried to take a few deep breaths and finally didn’t collapse on the spot while holding the screensaver of Ding Lizi.
Even though he seemed to want to.
A few steps away, someone else had collapsed…
Fu Tianyi almost fell. He barely leaned against the flesh wall and slid woefully to the ground. Among everyone in the group, he was the most affected.
The rookie of the Fu family had scattered hair and dirty clothes and had long since lost his initial composure. He leaned close to the wall, hugging his knees, while breathing heavily to the point of no return.
“Be careful of overbreathing.” Auntie Tao stared at the phone as she reminded him sternly.
As if ignoring the situation, Fu Tianyi‘s pupils trembled wildly, and his breathing echoed constantly in the darkness. The more he lost control, the more the white monsters crawled onto him. He took out several strange and odd-looking spirit weapons to drive them away, but they were completely ineffective.
Half a minute later, this person was covered in what looked like three feet of snow, full of little writhing white monsters.
Ge Tingting tried to use foreign objects to pull off the white monsters, but those objects simply passed through and had no effect. She didn’t want to touch them directly, so she grabbed Huang Jin’s sleeve and dragged him in front of Fu Tianyi.
“Put a tranquility talisman on him.” The tranquility talisman couldn’t peel off those little monsters, but looking at Huang Jin’s state, it had some effect on maintaining sanity.
If she saw someone dying without trying to save them, her points would certainly be deducted, was what Ge Tingting was thinking.
Huang Jin didn’t save him immediately. He looked at Fu Tianyi faintly as several white monsters circled Huang Jin’s neck. Their white eyes poked into his collar.
“He’s very attached to his family, almost having a worship-like reverence for the Fu family.” Huang Jin observed Fu Tianyi’s thoughts and said, “This attachment makes him particularly nervous, afraid of losing at home—the more he worries about the future, the less he can perform at the moment. That’s what this kind of person refers to, right?”
Ge Tingting: “…Draw the tranquility rune and leave him alone.”
Huang Jin’s tone was off. While he was usually a bit harsh, he had never been so direct before.
“Do you still want to take him with us? Be careful. He can hurt us.” Huang Jin still hadn’t started drawing the runes and kept muttering loudly. “We’re not monsters like Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo, so it’s good to take care of ourselves.”
“How do you know the result if you don’t try?” Ge Tingting hurriedly explained, “This is a competition, not a mission. We’d better take it seriously.”
“Why are you acting so serious? Have you forgotten what Shian did to you? You’re not an adult in the strict sense yet they sent you to such messy hellholes.”
“I don’t understand. If I have committed a crime, I may grumble privately if I get punished, but you don’t even have any criminal responsibility. Why do you have to seek out suffering? Are you such a masochist?”
The resentment in Huang Jin’s tone became more obvious. His breathing became faster, and a stream of tears fell from the white monster on his body.
Ge Tingting was startled.
She knew that Huang Jin was in the wrong state, but just now, the thought of “What should I do if I’m abandoned by Shian” swarmed up. Something in her heart seemed to be ignited, and it exploded and scattered in an instant. From an angle that Ge Tingting couldn’t see, the white monsters on her body had accelerated its squirming.
Some words tumbled out of her heart and went on a rampage in her head, trying to find an outlet…
“You have the skills to survive, and as long as you don’t mention it, no one will be able to see your abnormality! If you hadn’t committed a crime, you could easily find a job and make a living. What about me?”
The AI’s voice was extremely calm, but Ge Tingting’s facial features were a little distorted.
“What about me?” she asked again, holding up her phone. “Low education, communication barrier, no money, or even any skills. My fate can be seen in just a glance. Without this, I can’t even communicate with you normally. Shian is the best opportunity of my life!”
“Do you think I’m not aware of the danger? Do you think I’m not afraid of death? There’s no reason for Shian to take care of me for nothing. The only way to ensure safety is to keep training, learning, and becoming stronger. Even climb higher and never be eliminated!”
Vaguely, Ge Tingting had a feeling of stepping into air.
Her reluctance to the current situation continued to turn into panic about being abandoned, and the little white monsters gradually marched towards her.
“There has to be a limit to being brave. When a person dies, that’s it.” Huang Jin clenched his phone tightly. In the muddy darkness, Ding Lizi’s photo on his screensaver was particularly conspicuous.
“It’s easy for you to preach. What right do you have to educate me like this? Weren’t you the one who wanted to die back then?”
Ge Tingting knew that she shouldn’t have said this, but her head was buzzing, and she just wanted to pour out the emotions that she couldn’t carry. She couldn’t control the movements of her fingers at all.
Huang Jin stood straight, made a long face, and stopped painting the tranquility charm. “Alright, do whatever you want. If someone brings up some nonsense, they can deal with it themselves. I don’t care anymore—this Huang kid is just being dramatic.”
The white monsters on her shoulders and neck kept tightening, as if they were adding a white collar to her. Eventually, it kept going up and was about to completely cover Ge Tingting’s eyes.
This whole time, Auntie Tao was unusually quiet. The white hyphae had entered her mouth, but she stared at the phone screen as if it had nothing to do with her, without even blinking. Symbolizing a snowman, Fu Tianyi was still curled up in a corner of the flesh wall, and his breathing gradually became irregular.
“Meow—”
A sharp cat call cut through the darkness.
The black cat leaped out from the shadows and stepped lightly on the white monsters. Dr. Cat swept the ground with his tail, his fur standing on end, as he let out a hostile hiss.
The little monster, under some unknown influence, took a few steps back and shrank.
“Humans, look into my eyes!”
The black cat let out a huge purr, and the sound directly hit everyone’s heads. The low-frequency, soft purr was like a warm flannel blanket rubbing against the tight nerves.
As if their entire bodies were soaked in warm water, Ge Tingting suddenly relaxed, and most of the nameless fire suddenly dissipated. Huang Jin’s face looked a lot better, and Auntie Tao’s eyes became focused.
“Meiqiu. The enemy just now… Is it emotional amplification…?” Fu Tianyi struggled to stand up.
“I knew that there were ‘those things’ here,” Meiqiu said in a low voice. “Highly social animals like you are troublesome with too many messy emotions.”
Ge Tingting and Huang Jin subconsciously wanted to look at each other, but the two realized something and staggered their gaze awkwardly.
Outside the Corpse Cage.
“The cat of the ‘Infinite’ branch is a very capable science post. How interesting.” Fu Xingchuan touched his chin. “You did a lot of research, right?’
The Yandu’s branch coach, Zhou Gong, scratched his chubby face and smiled benevolently.
“We didn’t study it specifically. It was just luck. We accidentally discovered that the abilities of the ‘Infinite’ branch are not easily interfered with by the abilities of the ‘Resonance’ branch… Those little things have abilities that are somewhat similar in nature to ‘Resonance’.”
“Isn’t this a foregone conclusion? Does Yandu want to win that badly?” Fu Xingchuan raised his eyebrows. They all knew about the “things” in the Corpse Cage.
“Oh, how can you say that? I just did a little homework.” Zhou Gong laughed even more heartily.
“I see.”
Qiao Shang, the “#1 Priestess” who had been quiet all this time, finally spoke up.
“Fu Xingchuan, the Corpse Cage is a good topic. I thought you would focus on insects and small evil creatures… By making ‘those things’ a test question directly, how did you convince those above?”
Fu Xingchuan scratched the back of his head.
“Sang Jie is a shaman practitioner, and her family has always been aware of ‘those things’. Meiqiu is an Infinite ability user, and due to the mutual restraint of abilities and species differences, he can immunize against the effects of ‘attachment’. We also have several interesting kids on our side.”
“They will collide, and there may be new discoveries—all of you are people who have been specially trained in the Archive. ‘Attachment’ is the weakest among ‘those things’, isn’t it?”
Qiao Shang frowned. “That’s right, but it’s still too early for them.”
“That’s not necessarily true. The enemy doesn’t care if it’s too early or not.” Fu Xingchuan rubbed the stubble on his chin and said in a brisk tone, “Just an intuition that things will be changing soon.”
Qiao Shan looked over suspiciously, but Fu Xingchuan didn’t continue speaking.
He just stretched out a hand and pressed it on the corpse.
“Not bad, the temporary teams are basically formed. The real assessment can now begin.”
Before he had time to put away the long needles around him, the transparent barrier between the red strings flickered. The huge “fish tank” divided the small space into two floors. The outside was the smelly, chaotic corpse cavity, but the inside was quiet.
In the chaotic shadows, the touch on the lips was extremely vivid. Yin Ren’s hot and humid breath rushed towards his face, immediately covering the rancid smell around him.
Should he attack? Stay away? Or…
Zhong Chengshuo felt as if countless small fireworks had exploded in his brain. It was like the light flick of a goldfish’s tail. The feeling wasn’t intense, but it lasted forever.
It was just lips meeting. In the past, Zhong Chengshuo didn’t understand this intimate way of “feeding organs sticking together*”. Now the burning heat of swallowing each other made him dizzy.
*It’s a euphemism for kissing. Feeding organs is referring to your mouth.
Seeing the two of them being sticky, the hazy black shadow on the phone made a weak grunt. Zhong Chengshuo naturally couldn’t see the changes on the phone, but he could hear the complaining “Woof woof”.
Zhong Chengshuo instantly recovered a bit of clarity.
“Mr. Lu… Just now… Um—”
No, the two strikes he made just now definitely weren’t enough to remove the negative effects. Yin Ren had just changed from an “irrational approach” to a “relatively restrained approach”.
Thus, Zhong Chengshuo tried to continue, “Tell me, Yin Ren. He just… Huh?!”
Yin Ren didn’t give him a chance to speak.
He didn’t close his eyes, so the pair of red pupils shimmered. He pressed his soft lips further, accompanied by slightly sharp teeth, giving Zhong Chengshuo a strange sensation. The tips of the teeth gently moved with just the right amount of pressure, bringing a slight sourness and softness. Strands of hair carefully surrounded Zhong Chengshuo as they swayed gently.
Yin Ren kissed awkwardly but firmly. His hands tightly hooked the nylon strap on Zhong Chengshuo’s chest.
The two maintained a seemingly uncomfortable distance, but Zhong Chengshuo no longer struggled. He raised his hand and slowly lowered it, then tentatively raised it again.
His fingertips pressed on Yin Ren’s shoulder, touching the fabric soaked in body heat, then they slid down to Yin Ren’s arm, probing back.
They slowly tightened and finally turned into an embrace.
Zhong Chengshuo tried to concentrate with his remaining rationality. He firmly gripped Dog Thing and continued the “attack” just now. This time, however, the “blade” slid against Yin Ren’s back.
It was like he was teasing but also dissecting.
In the world that was invisible to Zhong Chengshuo, the dark shadow on the phone tentatively squirmed, peeling off the “white monsters” on Yin Ren’s body little by little. Their fragments were as light as willow flakes, swaying and falling around the two of them.
The remaining little monsters may have noticed the existence of Dog Thing and retreated like the tide, beginning to crawl away from Yin Ren’s body.
The brilliance in Yin Ren’s eyes was returning, but his kiss didn’t become lighter but instead got heavier. Zhong Chengshuo’s lips felt some pain. His teeth were pried open, and the other party’s breath was pierced directly into him with a sweet, bloody aura.
A warm and lingering strange touch.
That weird alert reappeared, but he wanted to continue this hair-raising contact. Zhong Chengshuo took a compromising approach—he exerted force from his waist and legs, his arms twisted, and he pressed the Yin Ren to the ground, so that he could free himself at any time.
Under the light impact, the two of them knocked their teeth slightly, and the bloody aura became a bit stronger.
Amidst the faint blood, they kissed each other quietly and jerkily.
Zhong Chengshuo had never felt this way before. He even forgot the nature of the “ground” under him. His heart was beating wildly because of the tension, and his spirit was frozen on the feelings of his lips.
When Yin Ren pushed back, the sky spun around, and the two of them flipped. Zhong Chengshuo had his back on the ground, and he reflexively tried to get up, but black hair had wrapped around his ankles.
There weren’t many strands of hair, so he could tear them off by force, and there was an opening in the left side, so he could easily escape with some force.
However, Zhong Chengshuo didn’t move.
Every nerve of his was tense. Instinct prompted him to avoid. Curiosity forced him to continue. Attraction and vigilance, safety and danger, survival and death; the junction between them was so blurred and was twisted into a weird and strong excitement.
Yin Ren’s kiss gradually changed flavor.
The kiss slowly moved; first to his slightly cool lips, then to his chin.
At a certain moment, the heat on his cheeks suddenly disappeared. The evil tilted its head slightly; its warm breath flowing down his skin, and quickly stopped at Zhong Chengshuo’s throat.
Yin Ren’s sharp teeth gently pressed against the skin, making him feel a little itchy. The itching in his throat ignited his nerves and penetrated all the way into his bones.
Zhong Chengshuo’s mouth was finally free. He knew what he should say, but his vocal cords didn’t listen. All he could do was move his right hand and squeeze the back of Yin Ren’s neck, not too lightly nor heavily, with a bit of warning force.
As if awakened, Yin Ren’s biting abruptly stopped.
The tip of Yin Ren’s nose rubbed against Zhong Chengshuo’s Adam’s apple. His breathing completely stopped, but his heartbeat was too fast to be normal. In his dim vision, Zhong Chengshuo could only see Yin Ren’s black hair scattered all over the ground. Yin Ren’s grasp on him loosened, and there was a vague sound in his throat as if he were struggling.
Zhong Chengshuo pursed his lips instinctively and tasted the warm and slightly salty liquid.
There were no wounds on his lips. This was Yin Ren’s blood.
“Yin Ren.”
It was a pity that before he had time to continue, an excited voice exploded in his ears.
“Hey, hey, hey?” Lu Xiaohe cried happily. “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”
Zhong Chengshuo sighed, continuing to let Yin Ren stick to his body. He just laid on the ground like this and replied solemnly, “I can.”
“Where’s Yin Ren?”
“Here, here.”
Yin Ren shook his head. He felt a little dizzy as he silently propped up his body.
He tied up his scattered hair, took Dog Thing from Zhong Chengshuo’s hand, and pinched Yellow Millet from the gap between the nylon straps—while the two had kissed passionately, this thing shrank itself into the size of a peanut, pretending to be air as it clung to the nylon belt buckle.
Lord Ghost King maintained the posture of sitting on Zhong Chengshuo’s waist and abdomen while holding his phone as he looked around.
“Ahhh… Don’t want to die… Ahhh…” The little monsters hugged the fragments of their bodies and huddled together on the edge of Zhong Chengshuo’s seal, tremblingly.
It seemed that it no longer had a desire to fight.
Yin Ren lowered his head and looked at Dog Thing again. The blurred black shadow on the phone had disappeared, and only [Evil Force, Evil Force, Evil Force] was frantically swiping on the screen.
He absent-mindedly replied, “Wait until we get home.”
“I rebuilt the contact line, hehe.” In the headset, Lu Xiaohe was completely unaware of the situation. Her joy was palpable. “When you’re active again, I can calculate the space map!”
“Okay.” Yin Ren coughed twice.
Zhong Chengshuo had been staring at the wound on his lower lip. Yin Ren hurriedly withdrew the blood and healed the wound.
Lu Xiaohe continued enthusiastically, “…The two of your reactions are too cold. Can’t you be happier? Speaking of Xiao Zhong, you should be able to guess the winning condition of this competition.”
Zhong Chengshuo finally looked away and glanced at the dark corpse cavity not far away. “Yes.”
In fact, Yin Ren also had a rough guess in his heart.
Shian threw them here by surprise without giving any background information or hints, which was typical of a skirmish arrangement.
There was only one way out of this “skirmish”, and that was to survive. Considering that Shian wouldn’t really kill them, as long as they could escape, the competition could end.
…But that was just the “end of the competition”.
“According to my guess, this is a free scoring competition. ‘Getting out’ is only considered a pass. There are other performance factors to consider, including—escape time, escape method, physical and mental condition, and any important performance.”
Just in case, Lu Xiaohe enthusiastically explained.
“The fewer the rules, the more things you need to judge for yourself. It’s best not to wander around like a headless fly. Even if there’s no monitoring here, basic location tracking and evil qi detection are indispensable.”
Making sure that those little monsters had no intention of approaching, Yin Ren put Dog Thing away. “We know.”
Zhong Chengshuo looked at him intently, to which Yin Ren tried to avoid his gaze for the first time.
It wasn’t like it was a big deal to sit on his lover’s stomach, since he did it all the time, but when Yin Ren tried to stand up, Zhong Chengshuo grabbed his wrist.
Zhong Chengshuo looked at Yin Ren persistently as he responded smoothly, “Lu Jie, give me your location. Let’s meet up.”
“No,” Lu Xiaohe answered crisply.
“As the rear commander, I have to give priority to collecting intelligence and directing combat forces to escape. If I run around, the efficiency will be seriously reduced… My guess is that if I escape first, my points will be deducted.”
Yin Ren hummed approvingly. Lu Xiaohe’s judgment was correct. She had no combat ability, and “prioritizing self-protection” and “supporting the combatants” should indeed be her priorities.
Just like now, “stand up from Zhong Chengshuo” was what he should be doing. Yin Ren shook the wrist that was grabbed by Zhong Chengshuo, but the man still held it tightly and insisted on using it as a cushion.
Zhong Chengshuo said, “Explore the surrounding situation first and contact us later.”
“Hey, hey. Wait a minute. We can still chat casually for a while—” Comrade Lu Xiaohe understood, but in this hellish place, it was good to have a living person to chat with.
“We need a ‘two-person world’,” Zhong Chengshuo replied solemnly.
“Xiao Zhong, do you know that Shian can also hear our communication?”
“Then Yin Ren and I have some personal issues that need to be dealt with.”
“…Okay, you guys deal with it first.” Lu Xiaohe squeezed out a response between her teeth.
She knew those two little rabbits… Those big brats were unreliable. Lu Xiaohe turned grief and anger into strength and began to search for Ge Tingting and Huang Jin, who were farther away.
And the two big brats were facing each other in a not-so-graceful posture.
“I should have picked a clean place to kiss you. I was wrong. I’m sorry,” Yin Ren said uncomfortably. “There’s also good news. Dog Thing is quite good, so those things won’t approach again.”
As for Zhong Chengshuo, Yin Ren suspected that even if this person was covered in layers of paste, his emotions probably wouldn’t be affected.
“The problem isn’t the kissing. I like your kiss very much.”
Zhong Chengshuo pointed to his throat, and there was still a light red mark on his skin.
“I just want to know, why did you bite me just now? Your state isn’t right.”
Yin Ren inwardly twisted.
If this was switched to someone else, he might be able to get away with this problem without getting caught. Unfortunately, Comrade Xiao Zhong didn’t know what euphemism was. After they started dating, instead of making progress, this person became even more candid, which was a bit scary.
“I just had the urge to ‘swallow you’.”
Yin Ren forced himself to withdraw his gaze and looked directly into Zhong Chengshuo’s eyes.
“Swallow you down and combine us into one so we’ll never have to separate again… It’s just a thought similar to a person being under the influence and ‘wanting to beat his boss’. I just took a bite, and I definitely don’t have any intention of putting it into practice!”
Lord Ghost King showed all his sincerity as he spoke at his fastest speed to explain.
However, it was similar to what he thought. In face of such a shocking statement, Zhong Chengshuo simply let out a sigh.
“Then why didn’t you bite all the way?” Zhong Chengshuo continued to ask with interest.
Yin Ren looked at this person in shock. “Don’t you think such a thought is too perverted? I definitely don’t really want to hurt you.”
Although he did feel that this impulse came a bit weird.
As a sunny and sound evil, Yin Ren had never had such thoughts before. When thinking about the difference in lifespan, he only thought about how to keep this person “scientifically”. Even if he was affected by deep “attachment”, he controlled it very well, turning the emotion that was magnified thousands of times into a kiss.
But not long ago, the moment he kissed Zhong Chengshuo, this aggressive thought came down from the sky and rolled around in Yin Ren’s mind.
“In other words, this is the first time you have the idea of ‘obviously like it but want to hurt me’.” Zhong Chengshuo objectively summarized, as if it wasn’t himself who was almost nibbled on.
“That being said…”
Yin Ren was a little confused. He didn’t understand what Zhong Chengshuo wanted to express. It seemed that his person didn’t plan to make trouble with him at this point, right?
“If such an idea appears in the future, can you tell me directly? Just treat it as an evil thing to observe.” Zhong Chengshuo loosened his grip on Yin Ren’s wrist.
Then he took out a hard-cover book and, in front of Yin Ren, wrote down several lines.
Yin Ren: “……”
Got it. So you created a special journal for observing biology, right?
But as the one who acted first, he couldn’t say a word of refusal.
After he finished writing, Zhong Chengshuo seemed to be aware of something and turned his gaze to Yin Ren again. “It’s okay. I really don’t mind… I’m going to release the spirit weapons. Are you sure you won’t get caught again?”
“Sure.” Yin Ren covered the surface of his body with a layer of evil qi that was almost solid, which could be considered an anti-monster cream.
With a bang, Zhong Chengshuo’s “sealed fish tank” shattered.
The white monsters saw that there was nothing to gain. Sobbing, they burrowed back into the carrion and ran away. Yin Ren scratched his head vigorously to calm down from his trance.
“Sorry, it seems like I need to be more serious.” He stretched his muscles.
It seemed that this game couldn’t be easily handled. Fu Xingchuan had thrown these weird techniques and unknown monsters in front of him, so he had to show a serious attitude. They would have to mix in with Shian in the future, so they obviously couldn’t be too lazy.
“Nn.”
Zhong Chengshuo nodded solemnly. His lips were slightly red and swollen. Coupled with that handsome and wistful face, there was a subtle attraction.
Yin Ren couldn’t help but take out Dog Thing again and took preventive measures by patting the dead corners of his T-shirt.
Just when the two of them had sorted out their clothes and were ready to leave—
“…Xiao Yin…” A dry and shocked voice floated out of the dark cavity. “You two… Why are you two…”
Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo: “……”
Oh right, Fierce Ghost Grandpa Lu was still there.
Lord Ghost King silently raised his hand and slowly covered his face.
……
It was rare that Wei Huaqian wasn’t in the dim underground headquarters of Sunken Society.
He was staying on the top floor of a luxury hotel in Haigu. The rooms here were famous for their excellent views. Looking out from the huge floor-to-ceiling windows, the central park in Haigu was lush and green, and the city was surrounded by mountains with gently undulating peaks. The Shian building stood not far away, like a nail that couldn’t be pounded in, which was a bit unsightly.
Wei Huaqian picked up a piece of stewed and soft fish lips and chewed absentmindedly.
His phone was on speaker and was placed on the edge of the table.
“…What I just said is exactly what Mr. Qiu meant.”
A gentle female voice echoed in the empty room, as standard as the customer service voice of a listed company.
Wei Huaqian didn’t answer immediately. He took out a napkin and wiped his mouth slowly, then swallowed a sip of wine. As soon as his Adam’s apple bobbed, it took a full half a minute before he spoke.
“What does Mr. Qiu mean?”
Wei Huaqian turned the glass of wine with his fingers.
“Shooting the Charon I want to cultivate is Mr. Qiu’s intention. It was Ms. Qi’s intention to destroy our research in Gengsheng Town. Twice—twice in a row—as ‘collaborators’, you have caused us extremely heavy losses.”
“Now there’s no shadow of the next Charon ability user and the research materials in Gengsheng Town are also cognitively polluted. We can’t make another imitation—isn’t this funny? As the leader of thousands of years of research, no one ever knows the name of the ‘Imitation’.”
The only good thing may be that this cognitive pollution applies equally to all beings. Sunken Society may not be able to read it, but that same applies to Shian as well… Mr. Qiu’s gang could provide a large number of sources of Evil Force, so it wasn’t surprising to have such special ability.
Unfortunately, Wei Huaqian wanted to be more cautious, but these guys went too far. Taking such a big loss and not saying a word wasn’t the style of Sunken Society.
After listening to what he said, there was no sound on the other side of the line. He couldn’t even hear the sound of breathing.
Wei Huaqian took another sip of wine, then spoke with a little more coldness in his voice.
“You provide stable Evil Force corruption, and we share the human data of those corrupted to you. This was supposed to be a fair trade, but now it seems that you have interfered too much.”
“…So this time, we came to greet you in advance.”
Ten seconds later, the woman on the other line spoke as if nothing had happened; her voice was still gentle like before.
“Mr. Qiu decided to test those two little people, and they happen to be the object of your attention. The fact that we informed you in advance is also a kind of sincerity on our side, don’t you think?”
We Huaqian looked at the sunny city outside the floor-to-ceiling window and snorted.
“You want to start with Zhong Chengshuo and Yin Ren…”
Now he could be sure that those two boys were definitely not so simple.
Those two had received a lot of “attention”, so Shian must be aware of this. The Haigu branch suddenly participated in a joint exercise competition, and the venue was at the Fu residence. Not to mention, the C-level investigation team didn’t even leave the yard of the Fu family.
That old weasel Fu Xingchuan most likely used the Corpse Cage inherited from the Fu family.
In this regard, Sunken Society had no choice but to quietly wait for the next opportunity.
This was almost a public statement—”Sunken Society has continued to keep an eye on those two, and it’s not just a momentary impulse. The purpose of the attention isn’t so urgent that we will take risks.” Even Fu Xingchuan should know these two points.
Wei Huaqian stared at the delicious soup in the exquisite porcelain bowl as the spoon stirred out sticky bubbles.
After they popped one by one, Wei Huaqian hummed.
“Your Mr. Qiu wants to play, and I can’t stop him, nor do I want to. We only have one request—when he’s ‘playing’, it’s best to show his name in disguise so as to save Shian the trouble of looking for us.”
It would be best if Shian could also catch these guys with some small clues. Wei Huaqian thought this maliciously despite being collaborators.
He had been curious about these strange “suppliers” for a long time.
“We will.” There was a hint of laughter in the gentle female voice. “This was originally our unilateral action.”
“I’m still a little curious, and I hope you can answer,” Wei Huaqian said.
“How do you plan to break through the ‘Corpse Cage’? Given Shian’s personality, the Corpse Cage will definitely be placed in a closed underground room, with several experts guarding it. Not to mention the Fu family itself has various protection techniques that have been passed down for thousands of years, including the immortal old man Fu Wuya sitting in command.”
For generations, the Fu family had sat on the top levels of Huajisi, and their status in the metaphysical world wasn’t low. The Fu residence could be considered the alternate headquarters. For thousands of years, Sunken Society had used countless means but failed to penetrate it. In modern times, Sunken Society gave up on this hard-to-chew bone.
To break through the defense of the Fu family, one would need a Charon ability user who could shuttle through space, which the mysterious “supplier” might possess. Together with those unknown sources of Evil Force pollution, the opportunity was quite tempting.
If these people were restrained by Shian and revealed their true colors, there was no telling how much Sunken Society would be able to swallow up…
“Hehe, trade secrets.”
The gentle female voice responded; the smile in her tone was obvious this time.
“Like you said, this is a fair deal. Please don’t interfere too much, Mr. Wei.”
The call hung up.
Wei Huaqian sneered and flipped his phone over. He pulled out the laptop that was placed on the table and clicked into a certain folder. Inside were photos of Zhong Chengshuo and Yin Ren, tightly packed.
“Okay.”
He looked at them for a moment and narrowed his eyes.
On the screen was a photo of Zhong Chengshuo and Yin Ren. When they were photographed, the two of them were shopping and eating at the night market. Yin Ren was stuffing a spoonful of coconut jelly into Zhong Chengshuo’s mouth while half a spoon was in his mouth.
The surveillance was too far away, so the picture was blurry, but it couldn’t cover the intimacy between the two of them.
Wei Huaqian’s wrinkled fingers tapped on the screen and scratched around the two men’s brows.
“Is this a ‘romantic relationship’? That’s a pleasant surprise… I hope Mr. Qiu can drive them crazy. The crazier, the better.”
……
“I’m really going crazy,” Yin Ren said.
It was past 1 p.m. and he hadn’t eaten lunch yet.
Even a Ghost King had no habit of eating human carrion. After wiping his hand thoroughly with alcohol, Zhong Chengshuo chewed on a compressed biscuit as if nothing had happened, with the aura of eating a regular diet even at the end of the world.
But Yin Ren didn’t want to eat that kind of dry stuff. He held his beloved chocolate chip package and didn’t know whether to open it or not.
He also didn’t want his previous memories to be tarnished by the rancid smell.
Especially after they had passed the fifth hurdles of beetle and the six general of maggots, Yin Ren decided to keep his mouth shut and maintain the noble character that a ferocious evil should have–the Resentment Basket could be eaten, and bad tributes as well, but not bugs; absolutely not.
“Is the map still not ready?” Yin Ren asked Lu Xiaohe pitifully.
“You two are done with your own world” Lu Xiaohe dragged her tone.
Yin Ren: “It’s still not finished. It’s going to take years.”
Lu Xiaohe: “……”
Mental abuse on teammates was prohibited.
She coughed frantically. “I was dropped in the lungs, and you guys are near the heart. As long as you move in a general direction, you should be able to enter the esophagus smoothly.”
There was another clacking of keyboard sound in the headset.
“I just confirmed the location of Huang Jin and Ge Tingting. The two of them ran near the kidney, and there are other Shian signals around them. They’re probably acting with people from other branches and want to escape from here. Theoretically, it’s faster going through the intestines…”
Yin Ren sympathized with the two in his heart for a few seconds.
“The specific situation is sent to your phone,” Lu Xiaohe said. “I’m going to enjoy my one-person world. Bye bye.”
She hung up the call aggressively.
Yin Ren laughed. In such a weird and terrifying environment, Lu Xiaohe could still maintain a relaxed conversation state. It had to be said that this young girl had astounding potential as the rear commander.
“Ahhhh… wuwu…”
Not far away, there was another low whimper.
Again? Yin Ren added several layers of thick evil qi to his body.
This time, Zhong Chengshuo also stopped.
“Someone is crying,” he said firmly, with a hint of excitement on his face.
The corner of Yin Ren’s mouth twitched.
“Someone crying in the wilderness” and “Someone crying inside a carrion” were completely strange in two orders of magnitude. Seeing Zhong Chengshuo’s subconscious reaction, this person really didn’t feel any fear at all.
“Wuwu…. Wuwu…”
The faint crying continued, and there were more little white monsters nearby. Yin Ren had already sent Lu Tanfei away, so he used a levitation spell and moved together with Zhong Chengshuo.
“Wuwu… I want to go home. I miss my parents…” A somewhat hoarse female voice sobbed. “Luoluo, can we stop comparing? I’m so homesick…”
“Come on, have another bite! Mmm. It’s very good!” Another energetic female voice encouraged. “When we run out, you can ask for leave to go home to see your parents and I’ll go with you—”
“Mm… I want to go home… I really want to go home…”
Yin Ren made a gesture to Zhong Chengshuo and floated around the corner like a ghost.
Not far away, in the empty meat cavity, Luo Wanxiang and Sang Jie were waiting. Several mechanical rods surrounded a tight laser net, and the two girls were eating lunch inside.
To be precise, it was Lu Wanxiang who was feeding Sang Jie. Although the latter was full of tears, she didn’t stop waving the bone staff in her hand. Behind the two girls, about six fierce ghosts were brutally attacking the Yandu group without mercy.
There were also many white monsters lying on Sang Jie’s traditional outfit. She probably took some remedial measures, as there weren’t too many monsters that gathered on her body.
However, the price wasn’t small. Their faces were covered in grime, and they looked quite tired. Judging by the number of insect corpses nearby, they should have been trapped here for a while.
Yin Ren shrank his head—it seemed that everyone’s performance of being crushed by “attachment” was different. Sang Jie’s performance was “extremely negative”. In comparison, his reaction of “gnawing on Zhong Chengshuo” seemed quite alright.
For now, “not being favored by the white monsters” wasn’t entirely due to Zhong Chengshuo’s physical condition. The impact on the science post was indeed smaller.
“Hey, there’s a Shian signal response near you. They are probably people from the other branches.”
Lu Xiaohe’s vague voice suddenly came out. She had taken advantage of carrying a large luggage and was able to bring many things. It sounded like she was chewing on some delicious meat products.
“I don’t know the specific situation. It’s up to you to judge whether you want to act together or not.”
Yin Ren turned his head knowingly. “Zhong…”
Zhong Chengshuo was floating crossed-legged, folding the empty compressed biscuit bag into small pieces. He ignored the fact that he was inside a corpse and took out a small bag with “trash” printed on it, carefully packing the trash and putting it back into his backpack. His posture was so upright that he looked like a primary school student on a spring outing.
Yin Ren cleared his throat amusingly. “Do you want to act together?”
“What do you think?” Zhong Chengshuo asked a little jerkily.
They were in an advantageous situation, and acting together wasn’t much different from “rescuing your opponent”. Logically speaking, this may score them points, and they may lose points for “not actively cooperating”.
There were pros and cons, so it was difficult to choose. Out of confidentiality considerations, Zhong Chengshuo would mercilessly choose to act alone, but…
“Let’s go together,” Yin Ren whispered. “If it’s really a skirmish, it’s never wrong to unite all fighting forces.”
“And they all have very strong combat capabilities. If I put in more effort, you can use this to conserve your strength.”
Seeing Zhong Chengshuo’s surprised expression, Yin Ren was also shocked. “You haven’t thought you can be lazy, have you?”
“Nn.” King Yama, who was used to acting alone, hesitated for a while and slowly turned his head.
Yin Ren’s expression twisted for a bit before settling on a “disappointed” look.
Click.
While the two of them were fooling around, there was a very light sound in the shadows.
Yin Ren grabbed Zhong Chengshuo and flew up abruptly. A cobweb-like white net exploded nearby, and a small mechanical ball spun rapidly, with a small red light flashing in the darkness.
“Which branch’s friend? Eavesdropping isn’t good behavior. Warning! Warning!”
A rigid mechanical sound came from the small ball.
Despite their efforts to suppress their aura, they were still discovered? Yin Ren cleared his throat, intending to speak up…
“Meow meow meow!!!” There was a sharp cat cry full of displeasure that came from the net. “What the hell. My fur is all dirty—!”
Yin Ren slowly shifted his gaze and spotted Dr. Cat struggling frantically within the net. The cat was making human-like sounds and clawing at the net with all its might. To be honest, Machinist Luo Wanxiang didn’t use too much force when setting up the net, so it wasn’t really a threat to humans. However, for a cat, the difficulty was on another level.
Luo Wanxiang obviously realized this too, so she hurriedly got up to make amends.
Before her hand could touch Dr. Cat, the black cat was picked up by the nape of its neck and held in his hand.
“Miss Luo, Miss Sang Jie, and Mr. Meiqiu.”
Yin Ren smiled and removed the net from the black cat.
The young Zhong Chengshuo was lying in front of the fish tank, staring at the goldfish sinking to the bottom. Its tail had a beautiful arc that scattered in the water like a red veil. Through the cold glass, it seemed to be floating in another world.
It was dying.
He didn’t know why it didn’t eat much. Zhong Chengshuo watched as it weakened little by little, and its dull fish eyes stared at the outside world without blinking, avoiding his gaze.
In the round fish tank, the beautiful tail slowly loosened. Zhong Chengshuo stretched out his hand and lightly touched the surface of the water. He thought for a while, then drew his hand back again.
There was nothing he could do.
His adoptive parents were busy and wouldn’t have time to accompany him to see a vet for the goldfish.
This goldfish didn’t show any typical symptoms; it just went on a hunger strike for no reason. They hadn’t kept it for long, so there weren’t any deep feelings for it. Even if they took it to the hospital, the cost of seeing a vet wasn’t as good as just buying another one.
The fish had no expression and wouldn’t make noise. Zhong Chengshuo liked it, which meant he didn’t have to worry about reacting to the goldfish. If possible, he hoped it could live a little longer.
But if it couldn’t, it didn’t matter.
He stared at the fish quietly, watching it die. At the end of countless inferences, its fate was already predetermined.
‘This was the “most reasonable” development,’ Zhong Chengshuo thought calmly.
In the end, Zhong Chengshuo grabbed the beautiful tail and threw the fish in the trash can. It was colder than when it was alive.
The lid of the trash can closed, and it was filled with odor and darkness, just like at this moment…
Zhong Chengshuo threw out more than a dozen fine needles again. This was his last inventory—since this was an official competition of Shian, he didn’t bring the Evil Fruit, and he didn’t carry any high-end spirit weapons with him.
He only brought some medium-sized goods for defense.
The thin needles stacked on the first wave of long red threads. The gaps between the red threads began to slowly produce transparent diaphragms, which intersected and fused with each other, with a texture somewhat like glass.
In the corrupted, dark flesh cavity, a deformed, rough “glass fish tank” appeared.
Watching the battle, Lu Tanfei let out a “huh”—this time it wasn’t just the evil qi that was sealed, but the little monsters whispering outside could no longer enter the internal space. The two of them were completely isolated from the world, and their aura seemed to have disappeared.
“Xiao Zhong, why are you locking yourself in?” Lu Tanfei said anxiously. “It’s hard to…”
“I can’t stop Yin Ren. Right now, Yin Ren is interested in me, so he won’t run around.”
Zhong Chengshuo took out a lighter from his pocket and clicked it. Cyan flame jumped in the darkness.
As the flame waved and shook, the spirit weapon needles moved at the sound, and the red ropes intertwined again. This time, they returned to their respective positions, and the “glass fish tank” became incomparably neat, as if it had obviously been calculated with precision.
The cyan firelight was reflected in Yin Ren’s red eyes, turning into a little shimmer.
“Ah……”
Yin Ren let out a long sigh from his throat.
His head wasn’t a mess, but the attachment was so huge that he couldn’t think smoothly.
In the Archive, he used his mental strength to resist the corruption of the Evil Force… However, this time, the abnormality broke out precisely inside his mind, and it was the first time he had dealt with this situation.
No wonder this kind of underworld competition venue was created… No wonder all the “No. 1’s” of Shian’s three occupations were present… This kid, Fu Xingchuan, was quite tough…
Yin Ren desperately wanted to stop, but his legs automatically walked towards Zhong Chengshuo.
One step, then another.
His “attachment” to Zhong Chengshuo had magnified hundreds of times, and the other party’s vivid state made him unable to look away. Just as a person who was about to die of thirst saw water or a person who hadn’t slept for five nights saw a bed, it was an irresistible desire.
Fortunately, no matter how crazy Fu Xingchuan was, he wouldn’t let his own residence blow up… The space here was distorted, which provided a natural protective barrier, so the Evil Force had little impact on the outside world. Minister Fu probably had backup…
Zhong Chengshuo’s head was always clear. If he sensed any risks, he would surely escape…
Immediately afterwards, Yin Ren saw the cyan light of fire, as well as the three-dimensional seal array all around.
Zhong Chengshuo also sealed himself inside the array.
Lord Ghost King’s trance was instantly dispersed by several points. This was the second time that the smart person chose the dumbest path.
Didn’t you say, “I don’t know what to do”?!
The soft white “hyphae” stretched into Yin Ren’s eyes, nose, ears, and mouth, bringing agitation from his heart. Yin Ren forcibly stretched out his hair strands so that they wouldn’t entangle Zhong Chengshuo’s legs. The desire to be close and the idea of protection entangled each other, causing Yin Ren’s vision to blur.
“You can get close to me.” In the dimness, he heard Zhong Chengshuo say.
“No… No…”
Under the huge emotional coercion, his body had long been numb, and he couldn’t control his strength. Even a hug may seriously hurt Zhong Chengshuo.
“You need to vent your emotions.” The cyan light went out as Zhong Chengshuo’s voice echoed in the darkness. “Compared to simply suppressing, you can let go.”
“I… don’t want to…” Yin Ren was still struggling.
Zhong Chengshuo didn’t know how to conceal his concern. This person’s awkwardness had the opposite effect, only causing Yin Ren’s attachment to grow wildly like weeds. A lively person, an unpredictable person, so clumsy and cute… He wanted to keep him forever…
Yin Ren bit his lip. In the dull pain, he stopped the thoughts that were gradually getting out of control.
“It’s okay. I won’t be caught by you. It’s just a normal fight—fighting is the best way to vent.”
Zhong Chengshuo even took a bold step forward.
A surge of hope suddenly rose in Yin Ren’s heart, and he forcibly held onto the burning and chaotic emotions. “Do you have a solution…?”
“No!” Zhong Chengshuo turned on the lights and declared, “We’ll figure it out as we go along.”
Yin Ren: “……” Wow. It’s the familiar behavior of Zhong Chengshuo. At this moment, he really wanted to fight with him.
As the thought crossed his mind, his thinking became clear for a moment. Yin Ren hugged his trace of clarity and let go of the suppression on his legs.
He pounced at Zhong Chengshuo like a leopard.
The latter didn’t use the chain, but strangely flew in place and floated in the air. “Puff puff puff.” Muttering complaints came from behind Zhong Chengshuo—
Yellow Millet, the great Class A-A evil, shrank itself into the size of a backpack at this moment and was tightly bound behind Zhong Chengshuo’s nylon belt. It flew quickly with Zhong Chengshuo and continued to mount in disguise.
Yellow Millet couldn’t suppress Yin Ren, but facing a Ghost King who hadn’t used his full strength, it could still temporarily hide.
The distorted emotions instantly had an outlet.
Yin Ren no longer suppressed his emotions and was immediately relieved. He stepped on the corpse and bounced straight to Zhong Chengshuo.
The latter smiled and passed him again. The two drew fuzzy afterimages in the narrow seal. The two afterimages entangled with each other, almost winding into a ball of thread, but never intersecting.
Lu Tanfei was stunned.
Forget about Yin Ren, but was Zhong Chengshuo really a normal human?
At this speed, humans theoretically couldn’t see anything clearly, let alone react, but Zhong Chengshuo not only reacted in place but even paused from time to time, as if observing something.
Yin Ren’s fingers slid over the fabric around Zhong Chengshuo’s waist, and he flipped while flying at high speed. Zhong Chengshuo flew past him, sticking close to his ear, and the warm breath brushed against Yin Ren’s earlobe.
Zhong Chengshuo’s lower lip grazed over Yin Ren’s hair tips. He gathered his body and swam like a fish in the darkness. When the distance was close enough, he could even feel Yin Ren’s heartbeat—even though it was a corrupt object tainted with death, that lively heartbeat felt like it was pounding in his own chest.
Zhong Chengshuo let go of the baton, and the heavy metal slammed to the ground. He pulled out a few talismans from his pockets to suppress the power of the Evil Force and familiarly clamped the talisman between his fingers.
In the shadows, they were like two fish entangled together. Zhong Chengshuo passed by his side again, and Yin Ren abruptly felt a trace of clarity…
There was an extra talisman posted on his neck to suppress his Evil Force!
Zhong Chengshuo was slowly reducing his mental pressure little by little and freeing up his energy.
Wrists, collarbone, exposed waist.
The warm and moist paper was tightly attached to his skin, like someone’s palm, pushing away those annoying attachments. This was indeed not a solution, and Yin Ren tried to concentrate—this wasn’t “yet” the solution, but…
But as an “accomplice”, they should think together.
They would write down the answers together.
“Zhong Ge… come a few more times.” His voice was almost blown away by the fast-moving wind.
Zhong Chengshuo undoubtedly heard what he said.
“Dog Thing, bite!”
Zhong Chengshuo flew over again. His command was ringing in Yin Ren’s ear.
Zhong Chengshuo opened his eyes slightly. He instantly took off Dog Thing stuck on Yin Ren’s nylon belt, only to see its response viciously bounce on the screen.
[Siren: That’s a weak that I can’t eat!!!]
Zhong Chengshuo said sincerely, “It said those things can’t be eaten.”
“Can’t eat or bite?” Yin Ren hummed with difficulty.
As the same kind, since these weak strange things could survive in this place, so can Dog Thing. Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t see them, but Dog Thing could.
“I’ll give you Evil Force. Hurry up…”
“Woof woof!” Dog Thing barked weakly.
Zhong Chengshuo’s eyes lit up as he gripped Dog Thing like a dagger in his hand and stabbed straight towards Yin Ren. Yin Ren broke through the airflow and, in the almost uncontrollable sticky attachment, opened his arms towards the other.
“Ah… Ah… I don’t want to die…”
The white monster almost covered Yin Ren’s body, and those bud-like eyes kept dropping liquid. Those transparent liquids washed away the dirt brought by the corpse, making it seem like Yin Ren’s body had an extra layer of weird white gauze.
“…I don’t want to part… I don’t want to part…”
Unfortunately, these prayers couldn’t reach Zhong Chengshuo’s ears.
He rushed straight to Yin Ren with an imperative momentum.
With a wave of his right hand, a translucent black shadow appeared from the phone. It bit the monster on Yin Ren’s shoulder with one bite, and after the sound of silk tearing, a large piece of the thick “white monster” on Yin Ren’s shoulder was missing.
They made a sound that was close to sobbing.
“No… No… Don’t…”
“I don’t want to die…”
With tactile feedback of Dog Thing, it was as if Zhong Chengshuo could see those monsters. His hand quickly slashed along Yin Ren’s shoulders to his chest, breaking away most of the white monsters. Yin Ren seemed as if he were peeling off the lower half of his white robe.
The black thing on the phone spat out monster fragments, making exaggerated retching sounds from time to time.
Half of the monsters on his body were lifted off, and Yin Ren was able to finally breathe smoothly.
Seeing that those red eyes had some focus, Zhong Chengshuo slowly breathed a sigh of relief, and for the first time, he slowed down his flight speed. The clothes on his back were already drenched in sweat. However, before Zhong Chengshuo could speak, one hand suddenly grabbed the nylon strap on his chest.
“Yin…?”
Countless strands of hair gently gathered together and hooked Zhong Chengshuo’s waist. Yin Ren’s entire body was close as he pressed the back of Zhong Chengshuo’s head with force.
Zhong Chengshuo’s eyes widened in surprise…
Unlike that firm strength, Yin Ren opened his eyes and gently bit his lips.
In the ancient ancestral hall, the huge tree closed its eyes tightly.
The mist lingered, and the air was stagnant. Unlike the outside world, this atmosphere was like an old record, and everything that happened here would leave deep or shallow marks.
For instance, the conversation that occurred not long ago.
“Fu Xingchuan.” Fu Wuya called out to his many generations great-grandson. “I know what you’re thinking, but my corpse cage technique isn’t that simple. There are things…”
“There are ‘those things’ that exude Evil Force.”
Fu Xingchuan didn’t look back.
“Minister Jiao also mentioned them… Well, there’s also such creatures in the ‘Archive’ of the mentally ill. I know that they probably belong to the ‘other Side’.”
After all, Fu Wuya was a Charon.
Unlike Jiao Lian, who physically moved around, Elder Fu used his abilities to forcibly merge spaces of “this side” and “the other side”, twisting out a “junction door”. His first door wasn’t big, and it was difficult for people to travel through, but it had the powerful effect of distorting space.
And in this process, there would always be nefarious things from “the other side” who would be attracted to the junction.
These types of nefarious beings were fixed. Not only were they tiny, but they were also pitifully weak. When the corpse cage technique failed, they would instantly dissipate in the air, leaving only a little bit of Evil Force behind.
Fu Xingchuan once donated five corpse cages to Shian for research, but unfortunately, after this thing left the corpse cage, it was unable to survive stably on “this side”, and the research fell into a bottleneck.
“If that evil is really Zhong Yi, perhaps there will be some new discoveries beyond the ordinary.”
Fu Wuya was silent for a while. He stretched out a trembling branch and pressed the mute button on the TV remote control.
“This is a risky move. You may irritate him.” There was a little more unhappiness in Fu Wuya’s voice. “And if that person is really Zhong Yi, your approach is disrespectful…”
“Disrespectful? I don’t think so.”
Fu Xingchuan still didn’t look back. He scratched the back of his head, and the tassel earring on his ear swayed with his movements.
“Those little things aren’t destructive. We have tried them ourselves. The game’s design isn’t only for him. If something goes wrong, we can immediately intervene… It’s better than going into a serious battle.”
“If he is really Zhong Yi, at most he will dislike me and won’t spread his hostility to Shian as a whole.”
Fu Xingchuan didn’t go on.
As the former leader of Huajisi and as a thousand-year-old fox, Fu Wuya understood the implications behind these words.
Thinking that Unit 9 had been in the Archive, let alone Fu Xingchuan, Fu Wuya was a little nervous—ordinary metaphysicians would at most experience a short-term psychological trauma when they came into contact with those things. As Yin Ren was a powerful evil, god knew what kind of special reaction he would have.
The unknown in battle was the worst. Commuting to and from work with a nuclear bomb wasn’t scary; the scary thing was when this nuclear bomb exploded as soon as it was touched.
It was hard to say if Shian could prevent Yin Ren from being exposed to “unknown creatures” from Sunken Society, so it was better to give him a “vaccine” in a controlled environment and see his possible reaction in advance.
Whether it was a physical response or an emotional response, they would all become valuable basis for judgment…
Judging whether they could have a “deep cooperation”.
……
He understood the truth, but still, it could be Zhong Yi. Fu Wuya ended his memories and maintained the corpse cage technique in melancholy.
“Ancestors forgive me. Ancestors bless me…” The evil tree muttered as its branches dug circles on the nearby stone wall.
Perhaps it was his illusion, but Fu Wuya felt that since Fu Xingchuan knew his remaining lifespan, his temperament was that of a dead pig not afraid of boiling water*.
*Refers to someone who has no fear and isn’t afraid of danger or consequences.
At the same time, in the ground floor of the Fu family’s main house.
Zhong Chengshuo fiddled with the talisman buttoned on his clothes, and the levitation technique suddenly failed. He landed on the ground, bent his back, and looked warily at Yin Ren.
Yin Ren’s state wasn’t right.
The Evil Force detector on Zhong Chengshuo’s body didn’t show a warning that this person was out of control, but Zhong Chengshuo could see that Yin Ren was in a trance. His eyes were staring straight at him with no inner light.
Affected?
…By what?
Zhong Chengshuo quickly made a decision. He abandoned his excess luggage and bounced out like a beast. While Yin Ren was still in a daze, he grabbed Yin Ren’s phone that he was holding.
Zhong Chengshuo decisively launched the Coffin Nail app and turned on the voice call mode.
“Yin Ren’s state isn’t right. Lu Tanfei, are you still there?”
Zhong Chengshuo tightly fixed Dog Thing to his nylon belt pocket and pulled down Yellow Millet.
As a competent old cushion, Yellow Millet immediately noticed something was wrong with Yin Ren. It allowed itself to be pinched by Zhong Chengshuo without making a sound.
“Lu Tanfei, please answer if you can hear me.” Zhong Chengshuo raised his voice.
“…Sss…Sss… I can hear… Sorry, I’m not familiar using voice…”
An old man’s hoarse reply came from the phone.
Zhong Chengshuo sighed with relief. Sure enough, this thing could turn what he couldn’t see into visible text messages, and it could do the same with sound.
“What happened to Yin Ren?”
“I don’t know, but there are a lot of strange things on the ground… The aura isn’t like an evil being. They look like white silk everywhere, and their eyes are like flower buds. They keep repeating, ‘I don’t want to die’, ‘Someone is waiting for me’… What are these things? What should I do?”
The old man sounded at a loss.
In the shaking light, Zhong Chengshuo looked at Yin Ren, who was stumbling towards him, and took a few steps back.
In the thick darkness, those eyes were dazzling. It was just that there was no will to fight or malice in them—only a strong sense of powerlessness.
“They—they have entangled Xiao Yin’s feet and are still climbing up!” On the phone, Grandpa Lu was broadcasting in real time.
Zhong Chengshuo lowered his gaze. He swept the light across but found nothing on Yin Ren’s smooth ankle.
…It was still a bit troubling that he couldn’t see.
Zhong Chengshuo whisked his hand to the back pocket of his waist. Hearing two clicks, a folding baton engraved with runes appeared in his hand. A chain hung from the end of the baton, and the metal grip on the chain dangled slightly.
This was the gentlest weapon he wielded.
“Yin Ren!” Zhong Chengshuo tried to awaken his lover. “Yin Ren, can you hear me?”
However, Yin Ren’s gaze became more lax, and his breathing gradually became chaotic. He looked up and down at Zhong Chengshuo, whose back was drenched in sweat.
Hearing Zhong Chengshuo’s call, his steps paused a little. Unfortunately, in the next second, his hands stretched out together and reached for Zhong Chengshuo. The fingernails on his fingertips had turned an ominous black.
They were surrounded by brownish-red walls of flesh, covered with broken holes of varying sizes. Zhong Chengshuo knew that he could at least make a quick escape by turning his back and hiding in the darkness.
In the face of unknown conditions, fleeing was the most foolproof approach.
But…
King Yama stepped on the dirty corpse with his bare feet, motionless, but he didn’t even bother to be concerned about it.
“It climbed up to his knees, and those little buds are still dripping water… It’s like it’s crying. How scary,” Grandpa Lu said. “Xiao Zhong, do you understand? What should I do?”
“First, find a safe place to hide and continue to report.” Zhong Chengshuo’s entire body tightened as he readied himself to exert force at any moment.
One step. Another step.
Those hands were getting closer to him.
As an evil, Yin Ren could teleport. This slow and struggling way of moving forward should be the result of Yin Ren’s hard struggle.
Yin Ren was still sober.
Zhong Chengshuo reached up with his metal claws and grabbed onto the ceiling, suspending himself in mid-air. Yin Ren’s grasp missed, and he looked up bewilderedly. With a swing of the thin chain, Zhong Chengshuo swung behind Yin Ren.
As soon as he landed, Zhong Chengshuo lowered his center again and assumed a combat posture.
“Zhong Cheng…shuo…”
Yin Ren spoke in a distorted voice. Under the light, those red eyes stared wide without blinking.
“Why…did…you…leave…?”
Lu Tanfei floated high in the flesh cavity, sending thoughts towards Coffin Nails. “It’s climbing to his waist. It’s climbing to his waist! Xiao Yin is acting like he can’t see anything. It’s terrible!”
“Why…?” Yin Ren was still murmuring. His fingers twitched, and the black hair on the back of his head was about to move.
Zhong Chengshuo was leaning against the wall of flesh. He forced himself to adjust his breathing, and his head was spinning rapidly.
Attacked by the bizarre “non-evil object” and having no perception of the attacker… suddenly becomes extremely confused emotionally and is unable to think properly…
He had seen such symptoms before.
In the Archive, Huang Jin was attacked by a fleshy xanthium, and his symptoms were exactly the same as Yin Ren’s. Judging from Huang Jin’s later description, it should be that a certain emotion had been extremely magnified.
But after that, Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t reason any further.
At the beginning, Huang Jin was worried about Ding Lizi, so he could understand that logically, but for Yin Ren… He was someone who deeply understood human emotions.
At this time, if this person were sober, he would explain the source of those emotions with a smile and then come up with a smooth way to resolve them. Yin Ren seemed to have never had serious troubles. What kind of “emotional weakness” did a person who had traveled through hundreds of years have?
Under the extreme amplification of “emotional weakness”, what would Yin Ren do to him?
They had only been dating for a short time, and their relationship was far from the point of death. Some just approached cautiously and tentatively. Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t find any special signs, and there were too many unknowns.
Zhong Chengshuo clenched the baton in his hand. For the first time, he found that the weapon he held was incredibly heavy.
The other party hadn’t released his will to fight yet, so he should escape. He should take precautions… He should…
Some kind of feeling he wasn’t familiar with tied his feet and put a heavy weight on his heart. Logic and instinct were strongly advising him to leave, but Zhong Chengshuo’s legs were firmly nailed to the ground.
In the darkness full of corruption, the surrounding things were soaked in thick, dead air, as if everything no longer existed.
Zhong Chengshuo tried to raise the weapon with his right hand, but his left hand moved first. He grabbed the nylon strap vaguely, but unfortunately, the chocolate chips he had packed in the luggage bag weren’t on him.
He couldn’t even use the old method to appease this person.
“Yin Ren.”
Looking at his lover, who was approaching step by step, Zhong Chengshuo spoke with some confusion.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“I…” Yin Ren spat out his words with difficulty. His red eyes were already muddy. “I don’t want to…”
“I don’t understand,” Zhong Chengshuo said softly.
He couldn’t understand Yin Ren’s abnormality at the moment, just as he didn’t understand why Yin Ren was angry before… He had seen so many works and documents in which people expressed their emotions, but none of them could analyze the heart of a thousand-year-old evil.
“Zhong…” Yin Ren’s hair began to slither on the ground.
Zhong Chengshuo moved.
He held the chain in his mouth and flung his hands. Dozens of long needles pierced in all directions. They extended into red lines and sealed in the small cavity of the flesh. In an instant, the spreading aura was completely sealed off with no overflow.
“Those things are about to completely wrap Xiao Yin!” Lu Tanfei coughed nervously again. “Xiao Zhong, aren’t you invulnerable to ghosts and spirits? Can’t you tear them off?”
“They don’t have a physical body. I can’t do it.”
Zhong Chengshuo stared tightly at Yin Ren and pinched Yellow Millet as if by magic.
“Yellow Millet, I’ll throw you out. Immediately grow bigger and hold Yin Ren back,” Zhong Chengshuo said quickly. “I’ll contact Fu Xingchuan.”
The problem was difficult to solve, so it was “most reasonable” to obtain support as soon as possible.
Yellow Millet let out a grunt as if unafraid of death and turned completely black, like it was simulating closing its eyes. But it waited for a long time and was still held firmly in Zhong Chengshuo’s palm.
“No.”
Zhong Chengshuo had deformed Yellow Millet’s shape from the pinching.
“If a better solution can’t be found…”
These things appeared here because Shian deliberately did this. He and Yin Ren weren’t contestants in the ordinary sense. If their performance was too bad, Fu Xingchuan would reassess Yin Ren’s danger and stability.
Indeed, the danger of “Yin Ren”.
Zhong Chengshuo froze in place. He suddenly understood where the “difficulty” of his thinking came from.
“I’m only used to thinking about how ‘I’ can get back in one piece… This is the first time I’ve tried thinking about ‘we’.”
The red lines on the long needles flickered as Evil Force rushed back and forth in the narrow space. Yin Ren’s godless red eyes were locked firmly on Zhong Chengshuo, and a vague murmur was coming from his throat.
Zhong Chengshuo stuffed Yellow Millet, who was puffing, back into his pocket. His baton swung in a circle in the shadows, and a dim light flashed across the edge.
“Yin Ren, I’ll come up with a more suitable solution.”
The author has something to say:
I found out that after writing about the cockroach, no one wanted to talk to me anymore!
…The cockroach chapter is over. Really, look at my sincere eyes.
Yin Ren felt the remaining Evil Force in the corpse. Something was swimming in the depths of the carrion, exuding a slight hostility. The good news was that it was still far away from them for the time being and obviously didn’t have the ability to act quickly.
…So it had nothing to do with them.
Shian’s idea was good. Whether it was an ordinary creature or a small evil, after everyone “shrank”, the threat wasn’t the same. It was just that 99% of the current seriousness from Lord Ghost King stemmed from “I don’t want to eat in a hellhole like this”.
“We’re in the main vein.”
Zhong Chengshuo carefully observed the remaining “mud” on the wall.
“When looking for our colleagues as we explore, we can figure out the placement of the body and try to find the exit from the esophagus or near the respiratory tract.”
He automatically avoided the option of the “intestine”.
Those medical terms were hard for Yin Ren to understand, but he generally knew what Zhong Chengshuo was saying.
“It’s a pity that we have to be more careful in finding people.” Yin Ren sighed.
Right now, he could only give orders like a ghost master. “Hu Tao, you take Grandpa Lu to look for the living—mainly Lu Xiaohe, Ge Tingting, and Huang Jin. Don’t bother with the others.”
“It’s not over yet?” Hu Tao pulled on her eyelids in despair. “An abandoned amusement park, then an abandoned mine. This time, you finally started to explore an abandoned corpse? Can you adjust to a normal place next time…”
“Find three dolls. I remember.” Lu Tanfei didn’t say much. He was anxious to go back to accompany his grandson. “Hu Jie and I will split up, so it’ll be faster.”
……
The first one to be found was Lu Xiaohe.
When Lu Tanfei followed her aura, Lu Xiaohe was carrying a bag full of investigation machinery on her back while wearing indoor slippers.
She quickly found a small space where she piled the detection machines crookedly on the dry flesh film. Lu Xiaohe sprayed the surroundings with potions to eliminate the odors and repel insects, then sat crossed-legged and turned on the computer.
She didn’t seem to have the slightest intention of finding a way out, but just explored and searched to her content.
“The distance is only 20 centimeters? …Have we shrunk? Well, the machines can still operate normally, so it’s not shrinking proportionally, and the possibility of space disorder is higher…” She took out a clip from her pocket on her pajamas and clipped her bangs together while muttering, “No wonder the location is still in the Fu residence, but the environment has changed so much.”
In the dim corpse cavity, the shimmer of the screen illuminated her solemn face. For some reason, Lu Tanfei sensed a feeling of déjà vu in this girl.
Lu Xiaohe tapped on the keyboard as she muttered “prize money”.
Suddenly, there was a loud rubbing sound nearby. Something seemed to be crawling from the outside. The machinery in the meat cavity rattled and vibrated, and the stench in the air became more intense.
Lu Xiaohe narrowed her eyes and stopped her fingers.
A dazzling metallic blue was exposed from the gap in the meat cavity, and there were also pitted shadows embedded in it. Saw-toothed and hairy worm legs slid across the shadows, making a clear sound. It stopped suspiciously when passing by Lu Xiaohe, but fortunately, it didn’t do anything.
A huge hard-shelled beetle. Considering the environment here, that thing was probably a species of beetle in the Histeridae family.
Shian’s insect repellent was still useful. Lu Xiaohe solemnly put the spray at hand. Although the original intention of this potion was to get rid of poisonous insects in an unknown environment… using it like this wasn’t bad either.
Lu Xiaohe’s expression didn’t fluctuate.
In view of the inability to communicate with the science post, Lu Tanfei planned to leave. Lu Xiaohe’s mentality was good. Given a certain amount of time, she would certainly contact her teammates directly.
“Prize money… Prize…” Lu Xiaohe stopped suddenly halfway through her words.
Thinking that something unexpected had happened, Lu Tanfei hurriedly turned around.
He saw Lu Xiaohe stretch her body and take out two cans of energy drinks and a mask from the bottom of her backpack. Comrade Lu Xiaohe first drank the drinks, then patted her face and applied the face mask.
“Alright!” Facing darkness in all directions, she cheered herself up.
Lu Tanfei: “……”
Do young people work so hard nowadays that they’re incomprehensible?
Well, it didn’t matter. He would go back and report as soon as possible. As a newly dead ghost, he wanted to maintain his sanity for as long as possible, so he had to maintain a good relationship with the ghost master.
Compared to the conscientious Lu Tanfei, Miss Hu Tao wasn’t so lucky.
She did run to a place with a strong living aura, but before her feet stood still, her body was bound by a paper chain…
“A ghost.” Fu Tianyi’s face was pale.
His pajamas were dirty, his slightly long hair was scattered, and he wasn’t wearing a mask. However, as a ghost, Hu Tao was able to see through the darkness. She saw a handsome young man with a human face on the other side, which made her anger fall from 9 points to 7.
A woman in her 40s or 50s was standing next to this person, but her face wasn’t very good-looking. Only then did Hu Tao see a normal person—it turned out that people would panic if they were suddenly thrown into such a place.
She almost forgot.
“Let me go. I’m a registered ghost of Shian!” Hu Tao tried to be reasonable.
“Not a spirit that a shaman can control. From Haigu?” Fu Tianyi’s voice was a bit hoarse.
Hu Tao: “I’m a ghost who was born, raised, and died in Haigu. I have a registered ghost ID number. Where’s your rear commander? I’m sure they can check it.”
Fu Tianyi’s face became paler. “Unfortunately, they haven’t contacted us yet.”
This was the first time he had lost contact with the rear commander.
“Forget it. I’m not looking for you anyway. Let me go. I have urgent things to do,” Hu Tao said loudly. “Bye bye!”
As soon as her voice fell, the paper chain became scorching hot, causing her to frown.
In the darkness and stench, Hu Tao turned to Fu Tianyi again. She opened her eyes wide, and bloodstains gradually appeared on her body—she gradually returned to her “unfriendly appearance”.
“…What is your intention?”
“We lack combat power.” Fu Tianyi sighed.
‘Things are bad,’ he thought.
He studied under Zhou Gong—simultaneously studying two profession branches of the corpse servant and spirit smith. As a result, there were no corpses and few spirit weapons, so the situation was overwhelmingly unfavorable.
This was completely different from the competition he expected.
If Fu Xingchuan was the first genius of the “Xing” generation of the Fu family, Fu Tianyi was the first genius of the “Tianyi” generation. The elders of the Fu family named him “Tianyi”, which meant they expected him to be on par with Zhong Yi*.
*Clarity: His name [Tian] (天) means heaven/god/divine (etc..) and the [Yi] (异) is the same character in Zhong Yi. Since Zhong Yi is revered (like a god), that’s why they combined Tian + Yi and named him Tianyi.
Fu Tianyi was also capable and ambitious. Unlike Fu Xingchuan, who was running around during the “Divine Descent” era, he had smooth sailing from childhood to adulthood. His abilities were flawless, and he always achieved the best results, ranking first in all simulations and real battles.
There were also cases of disconnection from the rear commander in simulated battles, but experiencing it in real life was a completely different state of mind.
Indeed, Shian wouldn’t kill anyone, but in this kind of competition, the competitors—especially the non-science posts who were responsible for offense—were extremely vulnerable to injury.
Fu Tianyi became more irritable. If he was seriously injured in a match while in the Fu residence, he would truly lose face. Since Haigu had leeway to allow ghosts to come out, then “expropriation” was definitely not a violation of the rules.
After all, “ghosts” were the same as “spirit weapons”. Bluntly put, they were all weapons.
“Sorry, I still have tasks to do!” Hu Tao said sternly. Her goodwill that was aroused by this person’s appearance had disappeared without a trace. “I’m going to tell Yin Ren!”
“You know, we’re currently in a competitive relationship.” Fu Tianyi rolled his eyes. “According to the ‘Regulations on the Behavior of Ghosts Registered by Shian’, Shian will protect you, and in case of an emergency, you also have an obligation to obey Shian employees. Aren’t you breaking the rules?”
With blood-stained hair, Hu Tao stared at Fu Tianyi with one eye and snorted bitterly.
“Before getting in touch with Professor Cat, you have to act as a guard.” Fu Tianyi pulled on the paper chain. “Ghost, take us to the direction where the evil qi is weakest.”
“Tsk.” Hu Tao clicked her tongue loudly.
But she kept her wits about her, knowing she could choose her own path. Even if she couldn’t rebel against this kid, she would still make him suffer a bit.
Just because a place had the weakest evil qi didn’t mean it would be less hostile.
……
At the same time.
Ge Tingting and Huang Jin were running desperately. They panted as if they were going to die at any moment, and the slippers they were wearing had been long lost. The cockroach rustled after the two of them; its thick and long tentacles flicked back and forth, and the tip brushed against Huang Jin’s lower back.
Suddenly, three catties of goosebumps appeared on Huang Jin’s skin.
I can’t wear this anymore!
The two of them didn’t care about whether the corpse was decomposing or not. They buried their heads and ran, stepping on the sticky, rotten flesh with a squelching sound under their feet. Although the cockroach didn’t seem to be an adult, and they could probably still handle it if they worked together… But who would want to engage in hand-to-hand combat with a cockroach as tough as a boxing champion!
Ge Tingting: “Ahhhhh—”
She waved her hands as hard as she could, trying to direct the surrounding carrion to gather so as to trap the cockroach behind them. Unfortunately, she lost her concentration while running and the little bumps on the ground became useless.
Tsk!
Huang Jin gritted his teeth. He made his best effort to rip off his t-shirt, bit his finger, and put a blood symbol on it. Then he used the t-shirt to wipe over the corpse wall so that it was stained with the smell of the dead.
“Stop for me!”
The cursed spirit weapon that was made in a hurry was stuck on the cockroach’s head, causing it to suddenly stop in its tracks.
Huang Jin panted for breath. His heart was slamming against his ribs frantically. Amid the buzzing tinnitus, he turned his face and tried to speak to Ge Tingting. “No… It’s okay…”
Before “okay” was finished, it was interrupted by another wave of meaningless shouts from Ge Tingting.
Huang Jin turned his head stiffly…
Crack, crack, crack. The cursed cloth was slowly disappearing into the cockroach’s mouth.
Ah, yes. Shian’s uniform was made of pure cotton. Thanks to this, he would be sure to propose to Shian to use chemical fiber instead.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!” This time, Huang Jin yelled louder than Ge Tingting.
What was this? What? A nightmare?
When he was chased by Yellow Millet, Huang Jin never felt so powerless and ridiculous. An unknown fire rose from the bottom of his heart, and the next moment, a light flashed in his chaotic mind.
With his fingers still bleeding, Huang Jin gritted his teeth and wrote a mirrored rune on his palm. He stumbled and took a few steps forward, slapping his palm hard against the flesh wall.
Blood-written spells could use human corpses as talismans. Spiritual weapons should have countless forms. Right now, they were just materials that have been enlarged!
Before the blood was dry, Huang Jin did a few more slaps on the “wall”.
In the shaking phone light, Ge Tingting scanned the corpse wall printed with runes.
“It’s what you’re thinking.” Huang Jin saw through Ge Tingting’s chaotic thoughts. “Do whatever you want!”
Ge Tingting stopped.
She turned around, put her hands on the wall of flesh closest to her, and closed her eyes. She was short of breath, and her thin body fluctuated violently.
Huang Jin subconsciously slowed down. He hesitated for half a second…
“Damn it!” He stomped his feet, turned his head, and ran to Ge Tingting’s side.
Under the light of the phone, the cockroach rushed towards them with its mouth quickly twitching.
Huang Jin endured the nausea and forcibly opened his eyes. “One, two, go!”
At this moment, Ge Tingting didn’t need a translator. She could understand the meaning of that roar.
Black and red blood needles pierced out of the bloody handprints and pierced straight into the cockroach. Unfortunately, the cockroach’s body was stained with a layer of corpse fluid and was about to slide past the tip of the needle.
The “wall” moved.
The evil qi around Ge Tingting exploded, and all the nearby flesh walls concave into a bowl shape under her command, semi-fixing the cockroach in place. In just a moment, four sharp blood needles pierced the cockroach’s body, nailing it to the carrion like a specimen.
The cockroach’s legs were still moving, but its body stayed in place.
Ge Tingting swayed. She looked like she was about to sit down on the ground. Perhaps considering the materials of the ground, she staggered a few steps but managed to stay upright with determination. Huang Jin finally let out a sigh of relief and gave her a forced smile.
In the next second, the two of them hung their heads to one side and vomited.
As soon as Hu Tao turned the corner with the Yandu pair, she witnessed this scene of “a man and woman vomiting in front of a cockroach specimen”.
Hu Tao: “…Fuck!”
It turned out the hostility had been resolved. What a pity.
“Hu Tao?” Seeing the familiar ghost, Huang Jin’s eyes lit up, and he raised his voice. “…Yin Ren? Zhong Chengshuo?”
If those two were there, the cockroach definitely wouldn’t survive for over five seconds. Regardless of whether it was an evil or King Yama, at least those two didn’t have cockroach tentacles, so they wouldn’t cause such great mental damage.
However, the next moment, he noticed a paper chain on Hu Tao’s body.
Huang Jin staggered and took… a half step back. The cockroach behind him was still kicking its legs, so he had to retreat with great restraint.
“Haigu’s supplementary combat force,” Auntie Tao said indifferently. “They are not the core partners. One is too young, and the other has a criminal monitoring anklet. Both of them should have criminal files.”
Ge Tingting wiped her mouth and took a step back.
“We’re not very lucky.” Fu Tianyi looked around gloomily and said, “A spirit smith without a shirt and a corpse servant who can’t speak. I know all their techniques. Whether they come or not makes no difference.”
“It sounds like you’re choosing vegetables at a farmer’s market,” Huang Jin muttered.
“We want to act with you.” Ge Tingting’s AI voice sounded first. “The two of us can take care of each other, and you’ll also have more combat power.”
The benefits of AI were highlighted. Though Ge Tingting’s face was sweaty, causing her hair to stick to her face, and she hadn’t caught her breath, her AI voice was gentle and calm, with plenty of confidence.
Fu Tianyi glanced at her lightly. “That’s fine.”
Are you scared?
Huang Jin subconsciously turned his head and read her thoughts.
[Fu Tianyi is a master of the Fu family and also an excellent member of the special investigation team of the Yandu branch. He’s definitely a strong combat force, so it’s safer to act together.]
Ge Tingting turned her face toward Huang Jin, and her thoughts were turning steadily.
[Their attitude towards Miss Hu Tao isn’t good. They are probably forcing her. Once she has an opportunity, she can take us to Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo.]
[In summary, I think it’s better to temporarily act together.]
Just after killing the cockroach, the blue veins on Huang Jin’s head were still pulsating. Seeing this bunch of rational thinking, he was a little stunned. “You don’t care…”
Don’t you care about their contempt?
[I know what you want to ask. I have been working outside for some time, and I’m used to this attitude.]
Ge Tingting’s thoughts remained stable.
……
34 centimeters away.
Messages in the Coffin Nail app flashed frantically.
[Hu Tao: @Yin Ren, @Yin Ren, @Yin Ren]
[Hu Tao: Fu Tianyi is too much!!!]
[Yin Ren: Were you intercepted by him?]
Finding that Hu Tao hadn’t returned for a while, Yin Ren quickly had a guess.
[Hu Tao: Yes, but I found Xiao Ge and Da Huang, and now we’re acting together.] Although she also ran into the cockroach, it wasn’t easy to tell the boss this kind of thing.
[Yin Ren: That’s enough. Take good care of Ge Tingting and Huang Jin. We’re not in a hurry here.]
[Hu Tao: Where’s Xiao Lu?]
[Yin Ren: Grandpa Lu has gone back to see his grandson.]
[Hu Tao: …I hate this so much!]
Yin Ren empathized with Ms. Hu Tao’s failure to get off work, but she could only endure her grievances for a while longer.
Lu Xiaohe found a stronghold for herself. Considering her physical condition, this decision was quite wise. Ge Tingting and Huang Jin were acting with the people from the Yandu branch for the time being. Even if the sky was falling, with Fu Tianyi there, things should be safe.
Yin Ren turned off his phone and felt a sense of emptiness in his stomach.
Lord Ghost King was now in a very mysterious state—hungry but without appetite.
He approached Zhong Chengshuo and sniffed the refreshing scent on him, as if trying to revive his numb sense of smell. If Zhong Chengshuo wasn’t here, he would have wished his nostrils would simply die.
“You better call the other ghost back,” Zhong Chengshuo said as he floated beside him.
Yin Ren: “Then won’t our two-person world be gone?”
“Oh, yes.” Zhong Chengshuo contemplated for half a minute. “…But it’s more appropriate to call it back. Fu Xingchuan stuffing us in here isn’t just so we can ‘win the game’.”
“Mm, he’s testing us, or is using us to test something.” Yin Ren had thought about Fu Xingchuan’s motives earlier.
Zhong Chengshuo nodded. “I’m afraid it’s more than that. He will be curious about what exactly is going on with me, the ‘Zhong Chengshuo’ who fell in love with an evil. Next, there may be special attacks capable of targeting you and me.”
“Makes sense.” Yin Ren looked away a little uncomfortably.
Not to mention anything else, this corpse was enough to target him. Standing here, Yin Ren couldn’t help being upset.
Thousands of years ago, Yin Ren had seen many human corpses. It was better to say that the only thing he could touch “during his lifetime” was human corpses. At that time, they were just the concept of “corpses” to him.
But now it was different.
Yin Ren couldn’t help but glance at Zhong Chengshuo beside him.
Healthy body, smooth skin, clean hair, good smell.
He didn’t care that Zhong Chengshuo’s face would get old or that his skin would become something else. If Zhong Chengshuo minded, he could grow old with him—for an evil, changing his appearance was easy.
But Zhong Chengshuo would eventually die.
At some point in the future, his dear partner would stop breathing and become as cold as this corpse. Zhong Chengshuo’s body would swell due to corruption, and his fair and strong skin would fester and emit a human’s least favorable stench.
Or before that, it would be burned into crumbling ashes.
How long could they live together? …Fifty years? Sixty?
Yin Ren shook his head vigorously, trying to get rid of the cobweb-like distractions—as the time when they determined their relationship became longer, these annoying thoughts appeared more frequently.
He instantly called out Lu Tanfei. Grandpa Lu had just returned from getting off work to take care of his grandson. When the old man appeared, he was still holding a children’s book in his hand.
Lu Tanfei looked blankly at what was in front of him.
“Those things” came from rotting flesh with a dozen or so “legs” resembling the hyphae of a sticky fungus. Some of the filaments had completely broken away from the decaying flesh, free from the contaminated fluid. The wriggling hyphae emitted a slightly translucent white color.
The human eye-like structure was embedded in the hyphae, like a vine budding. Transparent liquid dripped from those eyes and fell to the ground in drops.
“Someone… is waiting… Someone… want to see… Don’t want to die…” The thing crawled on the rotting flesh and made a thin, human-like voice seemingly from nowhere.
“Don’t want to die…”
“Don’t want to die…”
“Don’t want to die…”
More voices whispered in the darkness. Seeing Yin Ren suddenly behaving abnormally, Zhong Chengshuo turned his head curiously. Obviously, he was oblivious to those strange ravings.
[Siren: Be careful.]
[Siren: It’s the weak that can’t eat.]
Yin Ren put away the vibrating phone and moved his wrist.
These things weren’t oppressive, and they were much the same as those things crawling around in the Archive. He just had to be careful…
“Don’t want to die…”
As if seeing through his thoughts, those white monsters no longer squirmed like snails. After a brief stagnation, they suddenly rushed forward. The dirty white hyphae twisted into waves.
Ignoring Zhong Chengshuo, who was close at hand, they rushed to Yin Ren.
Yin Ren retreated instantly. Unfortunately, since this place was a hellhole, space was limited. Unless he gave up hiding his identity and transformed into an evil brand drill, he couldn’t escape the wave-like attack that was incoming.
“Shit, Fu Xingchuan, that bastard—”
A strand of hyphae touched his bare toes, causing Yin Ren’s mind to become suddenly dizzy. If the distracting thoughts he had before were just a spider’s silk, at this moment, they began to turn into an inescapable web, gradually enveloping his thoughts.
I don’t want to see Zhong Chengshuo die…
I don’t want to see Zhong Chengshuo disappear…
I don’t want Zhong Chengshuo to become such a corpse…
After just a moment’s pause, more hyphae climbed onto Yin Ren’s feet.
Yin Ren’s thoughts were as if they had been soaked in sour wine. He forgot all the words he hadn’t finished, and his heart overflowed with trance and warm fondness. His reason was still able to suppress the Evil Force, but waves of emotions washed through his heart.
Yin Ren stretched out his hand towards Zhong Chengshuo uncontrollably.
…With a hint of twisted desire.
The author has something to say:
Thanks to writing on JJ, I found a lot of knowledge that I didn’t want to know in my life (……
In the small basement, the walls were covered with a layer of cold light.
“Xiao Fu, your proposal this year is a bit tougher.”
The chubby Zhou Gong took a bite of an egg cake in the face of the rotten and swollen corpse on the autopsy table.
It was nearly naked; a male corpse. He was left with only decaying rags, barely resembling an ancient-style outfit. Twisted and circling roots drilled out of the corpse’s eyes, nose, and mouth, and the head was propped up and deformed.
“The ‘corpse cage’ is very precious.” Qiao Shang, who was known as a “Priestess”, agreed.
Fu Xingchuan smiled and said nothing.
The corpse cage technique was a special ability of Fu Wuya. This ancient “Charon” was strong enough to disturb space, causing small-scale spatial disruption. He couldn’t turn beans into soldiers, but he could shrink people down to the size of a sesame seed.
However, just like other special abilities, Fu Wuya’s ability was limited. He could only create spatial chaos with dead bodies full of evil qi, and the right corpse had to be prepared in advance, like preparing a spirit weapon, then they had to set up magic arrays to pull people into the corpse.
This was where the “corpse cage” came from.
Long ago, the corpse cage could contain thousands of troops within a dead body. When the time came, whether it was to use fire to cremate those people or release them, it all depended on the former director, Fu Wuya.
After Fu Wuya turned into an evil tree, hundreds of well-preserved corpse cages were still stored in his trunk. He originally wanted to use it as a valuable weapon to protect his children and grandchildren, but unfortunately, modern humans preferred to fight with hot weapons, and there were rarely any real battles where thousands of troops and horses would appear on the battlefield any longer.
Nowadays, it had more research value instead.
“Such a corpse cage alone can fetch up to eight figures.”
Since the “Evil Smith” included the corpse servant profession, Zhou Gong wasn’t shy about the smell of corpses. He swallowed the remainder of his egg cake in two bites and turned to Fu Xingchuan curiously.
“I heard that Shian won’t reimburse for this kind of thing… yet you’re using it to scare these kids. Is there any consideration?”
“Isn’t this good? It’s all under our noses. Even if Sunken Society wants to do something, they won’t even be able to watch them.” Fu Xingchuan guarded the corpse as he reclined on an ergonomic chair.
Zhou Gong was taken aback. “You’re saying someone is watching these kids?”
“Intuition.” Fu Xingchuan smiled. “Let’s just say it’s my imagination. Anyway, there are two big shots here, so nothing will happen to this group of little brats.”
In the Bai Yongji case, Yin Ren was attacked by an unknown sniper in an abandoned amusement park. In the Guo Laifu case, while in the Archive, Yin Ren went out of control and an unconventional sense of peeping appeared. In Gengsheng Town, Qi Xin, whose origin was unknown, also confronted Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo.
Knowing that Yin Ren was most likely Zhong Yi, the series of events couldn’t be summed up to simply “bad luck”.
There was a force that was watching Yin Ren.
Fu Xingchuan didn’t know how much that force was paying attention to him—if he pretended nothing happened and let this guy wander around the city, it was hard to say if something would happen.
“Rarely confused” wasn’t his style.
The Fu residence on Dongshan was guarded by Fu Wuya in addition to himself and two other top masters. The scope of activity was in such a small room underground.
Regardless of whether that force would make a move or not, he could test it.
Two steps away from Fu Xingchuan, Qiao Shang crossed her arms tightly and was silent.
She looked at the muddy and collapsed face of the corpse and occasionally moved her gaze to Fu Xingchuan, showing a contemplative expression.
“Protective custody and prohibition?” She mumbled without asking further questions.
…..
“Okay, Fu Xingchuan.”
Yin Ren looked at the writhing, white, and fat thing in front of him expressionlessly as his red eyes turned gray.
He was willing to call it a fly larva in the modern way with respect to circumventing its more common name.
“Judging from the touch, texture, smell, and current situation, we’re in a human corpse.” Zhong Chengshuo’s voice drifted a bit.
He was also a bit erratic.
A few minutes ago, seeing Comrade Xiao Zhong jump step by step, Yin Ren couldn’t help but recall the modern fairy tale <The Little Mermaid>—the so-called knife-like pain of every step probably referred to this situation*.
*Clarity: In the story, written by Hans Christian Andersen, when the Little Mermaid got her feet, they caused her excruciating pain whenever she moved, as if she were walking on two sharp knives.
Stepping on the sticky and smelly ground, Zhong Chengshuo’s face was wrinkled like an orange.
This person could selectively forget about cleanliness when fighting, but unfortunately, Shian’s game wasn’t considered a “battle” no matter how he thought about it. The sense of the existence of the dirty environment had become particularly strong.
Yin Ren raised his hand and cast a levitation spell. He then grabbed Zhong Chengshuo’s nylon straps and let him float behind him for the time being.
Just looking at this scene, it was difficult to tell who the science post was.
With rich life experience, Yin Ren had a general judgment of their environment. When he saw the group of fly larvae drilling everywhere, his judgment was clouded.
Wow, this enemy doesn’t even want to fight.
Lord Ghost King politely changed his route.
“This may be some kind of spatial dislocation.” Zhong Chengshuo took out his cellphone. He turned his body around and tried to photograph the… small animals crawling not far away.
It seemed that this person’s cleanliness was only effective by contact as Yin Ren couldn’t bear to look at it.
“The decay isn’t so serious yet. I suspect this is an escape mission by trying to find a safe route to escape,” Yin Ren said. “As time goes by, they may artificially increase the difficulty.”
“Nn.”
“Well, look on the bright side. Didn’t Qi Xin tell us to be careful?” Yin Ren tried to comfort himself amidst the smoky smell. “Looking at the decay of the corpse, it must be in a low-temperature environment and not in open air. Since we’re here, it’ll be hard for the sniper to attack us like last time.”
“Mm.”
“…Don’t ‘Mm’, brother. Don’t you usually like these inferences the most?” His boyfriend didn’t want to brew a serious atmosphere with him, so Yin Ren’s plan to distract himself completely failed.
Zhong Chengshuo: “I was just thinking, ‘It’s suitable for couples to take pictures together in special places’… The sight just now was very impactful. I just didn’t find the right angle.”
Yin Ren: “……”
Thank god. Otherwise, they probably would have a conflict over the topic of “why you need to delete those precious photos”.
Based on Zhong Chengshuo’s straightforward personality, wouldn’t it be fun if he set that photo as the wallpaper for his phone? Yin Ren sighed and walked in the direction of human breath, while Yellow Millet also followed suit.
Dog Thing suddenly shook.
Yin Ren stopped and checked his phone curiously.
[Siren: Don’t go further.]
Yin Ren: “Oh, it’s rare for you to speak up.”
[Siren: The aura of the house in front is getting stronger.]
[Siren: But this isn’t home.]
This line looked familiar. Why did everything look like a home to it? Yin Ren groaned but still obeyed Dog Thing’s warning. While this thing was stupid, Qi Xin’s incident fully proved that its ability to judge crises was still good.
Yin Ren only thought for half a second before, at the next moment, two black shadows full of cold air appeared beside him.
“Hua Tao, Lu Tanfei, proceed carefully. I’ll see how your evil qi changes.”
He didn’t want them to risk their lives. In any situation where something was wrong, the influence on ghosts was much more obvious than living creatures with entities.
It was fine for Lu Tanfei. His mind was full of his grandson, and he didn’t care about the surrounding situation. Yin Ren suspected that even if he called Grandpa Lu to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, the old man wouldn’t even blink.
Hu Tao turned around, and a question mark appeared on her face—in order to fully express her shock, Comrade Hu Tao moved her eyes, nose, mouth, and brows fully and formed them into a question mark.
The scene was filled with gloom for a while.
Yin Ren consciously explained, “This is a joint exercise competition of Shian.”
“Isn’t Shian a regular institution? Can’t this game be played under the sun? I thought you had defected to Sunken Society.” Hu Tao covered her chest. “I was watching a food romance drama, and now that title has been tainted by the smell of maggots.”
She stubbornly stood still and didn’t move while also holding Grandpa Lu from moving forward.
Yin Ren was helpless. He carefully divided a little evil qi and stuffed it to the two ghosts. Hu Tao sniffed the evil qi while her mouth continued to act as the dot of the question mark. “What about the last time? This concentration is strange and tasteless.”
“Shian is watching.” It wasn’t appropriate to directly use Evil Force. Let alone Fu Xingchuan, there were two other “number ones” watching.
“Tsk.”
Hu Tao returned to her normal facial features. She passed Lu Tanfei and flew a few steps in the direction Yin Ren had just moved towards. “So?”
Yin Ren hissed.
Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t see the ghost, so he could only poke Yin Ren’s shoulder curiously.
“It’s interesting. They have become smaller.” Yin Ren clapped his hands and told the two ghosts to fly back. “This isn’t a simple corpse cage—if you go in the wrong direction, you will continue to get smaller.”
The so-called “right direction” may not necessarily lead to a path.
Shian had a few tricks, and it seemed that it wasn’t possible to get out of this place by distinguishing the internal structure of the corpse. If they kept going in the wrong direction, this corpse would eventually become an “infinite labyrinth”.
Yin Ren quickly squeezed the talisman in his hand. A red light flashed, and a hole was cut in the wall in the distance. The corrupted tissue fluid and odor gushed out in large quantities, revealing almost liquefied stinky flesh.
“Stop attacking.”
Zhong Chengshuo struggled to move his body as he grabbed Yin Ren’s wrist.
“If you use your full strength, you’ll definitely be able to blast it away. But if the corpse is deformed, it’s hard to say what will happen to the others.” Zhong Chengshuo pushed up his glasses. “Based on Shian’s style, not to mention not getting a high score, this may lead to being disqualified.”
“Okay, I’ll give it a try.”
Yin Ren cracked his joints and finally regained some brilliance in his eyes.
“Zhong Ge, this game is getting fun.”
Five centimeters away from the depths of the rotten flesh that Yin Ren had cleaved into…
Something gathered up the dark silk floss that was stuck to the rotting flesh, and it struggled a few times between the sticky flesh. In the darkness, a dozen crimson eyes instantly lit up.
“Ah… Ah….”
In the darkness, there was a small murmur. A little bit of Evil Force seeped out of the gaps in the carrion, and slowly dissipated in the cavity.
The mycelium-like limbs tore apart the carrion and squeezed in the direction where Yin Ren and Zhong Chengshuo were.
“Ahhh… Ah… Don’t want… to die…”
The thing let out a thin cry in human-like language.
Kinky Translations 