Chapter 81: The Twisted Monster with a Distorted Mind

The woman’s voice was pleasant.

She set down the half-folded towel in her hands, stood up, and smiled at the doorway.

“Ladies, what treatments are you looking for?”

Her gaze swept over White Peace, then Little Frost, then Mu Yingying.

Mu Yingying was pushing her bicycle, standing in the hallway.

But she didn’t look at the scalp-less man outside the door.

“We offer a full range of scalp care here.”

“Our massage techniques are very authentic. Your whole body will feel relaxed afterward.”

She bent down, pulled a laminated menu from the lower shelf of the cart, then walked over and handed it to White Peace with both hands.

“Take a look. We have gold scalp massage, revitalizing root packages, deep scalp cleansing…”

“We’ve got a special promotion right now. Choose any three-for-one package for just—”

“No.”

White Peace didn’t take the menu.

The woman paused.

Her smile didn’t waver. She withdrew the menu and took half a step forward.

She shifted direction and offered the menu to Little Frost.

“Miss, your hair quality looks excellent.”

“A scalp treatment would give it even more shine.”

“Otherwise, with all the sun and wind out in the apocalypse, it’s easy to damage—”

“No, thank you.”

Little Frost spoke.

Her hand rested on the hammer’s handle, her tone calm.

But her eyes were fixed on the edge of the menu.

The lamination corner was pressed into a curve, like a mark left from repeated gripping.

The woman took back the menu again, tilted her head, and looked at Mu Yingying in the hallway.

Mu Yingying spoke first.

“I don’t need my hair done.”

“But the condition of your scalp…”

“I said I don’t need it.”

Mu Yingying interrupted her, her gaze direct.

The woman stopped.

She placed the menu back on the cart and picked up the half-folded towel again.

She lowered her head and continued folding, her movements meticulous.

As if the conversation just now had been nothing more than a failed ordinary transaction.

The room fell silent for a few seconds.

The humidifier continued spraying mist, emitting a faint lavender scent.

White Night noticed a dark red stain on the edge of the towel that wouldn’t wash out.

The stain flipped between the woman’s fingers.

“That gentleman outside,”

The woman spoke again, her voice still calm.

“He came to me before.”

“I know,” White Peace said.

“Then his current condition…”

The woman sighed, with a professional sort of regret.

“It really wasn’t the outcome I wanted.”

“Some customers leave in such a hurry that they end up leaving their scalps here…”

“He escaped.”

“We’re a legitimate massage parlor. Why would he need to escape?” the woman countered.

“He escaped, and I didn’t chase him. That deal was off.”

“But you see, in his situation, if he’d come back to me for one more treatment, maybe he could have improved—”

“You’re still making excuses! You peeled off his scalp and now you’re spouting nonsense to fool ghosts?”

Mu Yingying stepped into the room from the hallway.

The woman didn’t directly answer the question.

She lowered her head, folded the last towel, placed it on the rack, then raised her eyes to look at White Peace.

“You’re not here for a massage?”

“No.”

“Then what are you here for?”

“To kill you.”

White Peace’s tone was icy.

The woman was silent for a moment.

Then she smiled.

It wasn’t a professional smile, but one tinged with bitterness.

She turned and walked back to the chair by the window, sat down, and resumed a relaxed posture, her hands resting on her knees.

“Then let’s talk first,” she said.

“You probably want to know what I am.”

“Not interested,” White Peace said coldly.

Mu Yingying’s blade was still in its sheath, but her hand never left the hilt.

The woman scanned them, as if confirming something, then fixed her gaze on the void.

“I’ve been in this line of work,” she said, “for a very, very long time.”

“At first, I never thought about taking anything from anyone.”

“I just lived inside my own skin. Every morning I’d wake up, stand in front of the mirror, and stare for a long time.”

“No matter how I looked, it was the same face, the same hands, the same utterly meaningless life.”

“My father ran away; my mother died; then I died.”

“After I died, I realized I was different.”

“I could take someone else’s scalp and wear it on my own.”

As she spoke, her gaze shifted to the neatly stacked towels, a hint of reminiscence in her expression.

“The first time, I used the scalp of a stranger.”

“I don’t know her name, but her hair was long—the kind grown since childhood.”

“The ends were slightly split, meaning she hadn’t cut it in a long time.”

“I put on her scalp and stood in front of the mirror.”

“I spoke a sentence with her mouth.”

She paused.

“I said, ‘Hello there.’”

“In that moment, I felt it.”

“How many times had she said ‘hello’ in her life, to whom, with what tone?”

“When she was little, her mother held her hand and took her to school. When the teacher called roll, she stood up and said, ‘Good morning, teacher,’ her voice still soft and thin.”

“She fell in love three times. The third time, she met someone she truly liked. She called to ask if he’d eaten, couldn’t hold back her voice, and laughed out loud.”

“She had a secret she never told anyone. She kept it hidden in her heart for years, and in the end, she took it alone to the grave.”

In the hallway, Little Frost didn’t move.

White Night curled up in the bike basket, feeling a chill even in his soul form.

The woman continued: “For the first time, I learned that living could be like this.”

“That other people’s lives were all so happy, so enviable. I wanted to become someone else—”

She paused.

“My first customer was an ordinary, happy woman.”

“Her life wasn’t long, nor was it earth-shattering.”

“But inside it, there was one afternoon when she sat on the windowsill, soaking up the sun, casually flipping through a book.”

“The sunlight came in from the side, and she was warm all over.”

“Just standing in front of the mirror, I could feel that afternoon.”

“I had never felt anything like that in my own life.”

Mu Yingying’s fingers tightened, then loosened.

She didn’t speak.

The woman’s gaze swept over Mu Yingying’s face.

“Do you think I’m ridiculous?”

Mu Yingying didn’t deny it.

“I think you’re a lucky freak,” she said.

“You felt someone else’s afternoon sunshine. Then what?”

“What happened to that woman?”

The woman paused for a second.

“She died.”

“Without a scalp, she died quickly.”

“There you have it,” Mu Yingying said.

“You freak. You felt someone else’s sunshine, but she died.”

“What you felt—you killed.”

“You couldn’t extend that afternoon for her. You’re nothing but a thief, a murderer.”

The woman looked at her, then after a moment, smiled.

“I know,” she said.

“I never thought that was really me.”

“I put on those scalps, imitated their speech, learned how they walked.”

“In front of the mirror, I reenacted those moments from the past.”

“But I knew it wasn’t my life.”

“Yet it was the only way I could feel happiness.”

The hallway was quiet for a while.

On the steps, the man whose scalp had been peeled sat hunched over, clutching the box that held his scalp.

He never came inside, just crouched on the top step, able to hear the voices through the half-open door.

White Peace stood still, her expression unchanged.

The woman looked at her.

“Your scalp—those white hairs are beautiful. I want it.”

“You can try to take it,” White Peace said with a cold laugh.

The woman lowered her head and stared at her neatly folded towels for a long time.

On the rack, everything was perfectly arranged. Each towel folded into a square, corner to corner, edge to edge.

“Actually, I’ve been waiting,” she said.

“Waiting for a happier scalp.”

“But after all that waiting, I realized that skin doesn’t exist. A perfectly happy scalp doesn’t exist. So I can only collect more and more, piece them together to make myself happier.”

She lifted her head and looked at White Peace.

“I feel like you’ll be a powerful scalp.”

White Peace didn’t attack immediately.

She looked at the woman for a few seconds.

“How long have you been hiding inside that man’s body?”

The woman was startled.

“You know!?”

“I knew the moment I saw him. You shady little rat.”

The woman was silent for a moment.

“When I entered him, he wasn’t dead yet. He thought he’d just had his scalp peeled off—he didn’t know I was inside.”

“He kept struggling to live, trying to escape, begging for help. In the end, he really did get away.”

“But his scalp is still here, so he hasn’t fully died yet.”

She glanced at the figure on the step outside the door.

“He’s the one who wanted to live the most in all this time.”

She said this very flatly.

Not like a judgment, more like an observer’s record.

“When I was inside his body,” she paused, “I also felt something in him.”

“He had a family. He was a happy man. A wife he loved, a son who loved him—”

In the hallway, Mu Yingying’s gaze at the woman grew even colder.

On the steps, the man’s hand clutching the box tightened once more.

The woman took one last look at the rack of towels, at the humidifier, at the ruined street bathed in bloody twilight outside the window.

“Alright,” she said. “That’s all.”

She placed her hands on her knees, leaned back in the chair, and closed her eyes.

White Peace raised her right hand.

Black light leaped from her fingertips.

The scalp-less man was instantly annihilated.

Nothing remained. Just a Ghost Crystal, falling to the ground.

Mu Yingying walked over and picked up the Ghost Crystal.

She didn’t use a cloth bag—she held it directly in her palm.

This crystal was colder than all the others.

And the woman who had just spoken turned into a bloody scalp, which landed on the floor with a wet slap.

White Peace walked out the door.

Little Frost pushed the bike with White Night and followed.

Mu Yingying was the last to leave.

The door swung shut with the wind, making a soft sound.

The pothos was still by the steps, its leaves a lush green.

The red sign, against the gray-black ruins, now looked blood-soaked.

White Night curled up in the bike basket and glanced back.

A chill ran through him.

‘This world is really full of freaks.’