“Dead bodies that have been dead for a long time have dried flesh, deep brown skin, all moisture long evaporated. Only fresh corpses that haven’t been dead long still drip water.”
“These three haven’t been dead for more than two days.”
“It’s been years since the Doomsday. There haven’t been fresh, unidentified corpses on the streets for a long time.”
“I’d like to ask you: in the past two days, where did these fresh dead bodies come from?”
The man’s lips moved, but he couldn’t utter a single word.
Mu Yingying stabbed forward with her knife.
The Tang Dao was fast, the tip aimed directly at his throat.
But half an inch from his neck, the blade stopped.
It wasn’t blocked—Mu Yingying stopped herself.
She stared at the man’s face.
The skin on his face began to crack.
Not from the knife cut, but from the inside.
A thin slit ran from his forehead down the bridge of his nose, extending to his chest and neck.
The skin split open like an overripe eggshell, peeling away in pieces.
Something crawled out from that slit.
Countless thin, rusty hooks squeezed out of his body.
Hook after hook, multiplying, bursting through his human form.
Each hook carried something—strips of meat, hair, or a severed finger.
Soon, the man collapsed.
His skin fell to the ground like an ill-fitting coat, soft and limp.
What crawled out of the skin was a humanoid figure made of hundreds of hooks.
It had no face.
Its head was a tangled mass of hooks, tips congealed with dark red blood droplets.
Its arms and legs were bundles of hooks.
It stood motionless, like a broken machine.
Then it started screaming.
The sound didn’t come from a mouth—it had no mouth.
The noise came from the hooks scraping against each other, like someone dragging a fork across a blackboard.
It lunged at White Peace.
Mu Yingying swung her blade horizontally, intercepting its charge.
The edge clashed against the hooks, sparks flying.
The Weirdness was knocked off balance and slammed into the wall.
The hooks made a chaotic crashing sound as they hit the wall, sending a shower of dust.
Little Frost circled to the side and swung her hammer.
The hammerhead struck where its chest should be, and the cluster of hooks scattered.
Broken hooks mixed with fragments of flesh flew several meters.
But the scattered hooks quickly gathered back toward the center.
The Weirdness began to reassemble, charging forward again.
White Peace raised her hand.
Black Light spread from her fingertips, like a bucket of ink splashed outward.
The black light enveloped the Weirdness, pinning it in place.
It struggled.
The hooks clashed against the edge of the black light, producing a sizzling sound, like water hitting hot oil.
It couldn’t move, but it could make noise.
Gradually, words could be discerned from the scraping of the hooks.
“I… I didn’t mean to… I didn’t want to become like this…”
“When I was alive… I wasn’t like this…”
Its voice was a superposition of several voices—a man’s, a woman’s, an old person’s, a child’s.
“In my life, I seriously opened five stores.”
“But one after another, all five ended up losing everything.”
“My wife thought I was useless. She took my only son, grabbed whatever little money we had left at home, and ran.”
“Creditors came to my door every day, blocking me. They even broke two of my ribs.”
“I had no way out. At night, I shrunk into the attic of my rental room and hanged myself.”
“I hung on the rope for an entire night. The pain made me scream until my throat was raw, but no one came to save me.”
“By the time the Doomsday came and the Tide of Abnormalities swept the city, I had been hanging on the beam for three days, long cold.”
“I was hungry… ever since I was alive, I was always hungry…”
“When I was alive, I was so poor I couldn’t even get a full meal. No one cared about me, no one would give me a bite to eat.”
“After I died and turned into this monster, I had to feed myself. What’s wrong with that?”
“When I was alive, I had nowhere to turn. No one was willing to lend me a hand.”
“Why? Why?”
It spoke faster and faster.
The scraping of the hooks grew sharper.
“Why could others open stores and thrive, while every one I opened failed?”
“Why did every bit of bad luck in the world have to fall on me?”
“Why wasn’t I even allowed the right to live decently, only to end up hanging myself?”
“Why?!”
“Tell me, why?!”
Mu Yingying looked at it.
The knife she had raised lowered slightly.
She had seen people like this when she was a child.
Middle-aged men who went bankrupt, lost their wives, owed a mountain of debt, and finally went mad.
When she used to rent in the urban village, the boss of the pancake stall downstairs was just like that.
He didn’t go mad enough to eat people.
He hanged himself on a utility pole next to his stall, still reeking of oil smoke when he died.
Mu Yingying took a deep breath.
She raised the knife and swung it down at the Weirdness’s head.
Where the blade passed, hooks were sliced clean off, clattering to the ground.
Little Frost followed up with a hammer blow, smashing its waist.
The Weirdness struggled and disintegrated within the black light.
When it was finally destroyed, a heart protruded from the pile of hooks.
It wasn’t the Weirdness’s heart.
It was a human heart, shriveled to the size of a fist.
It hung on the tip of the central hook, like a pinned specimen.
White Peace’s black light contracted.
The heart turned to ashes, and from the ashes formed a Ghost Crystal.
This Ghost Crystal was greasier than the previous ones.
Its surface had a layer of dark red film, with patterns like fine shreds of meat.
Little Frost fished a thick cloth from her backpack, picked up the Ghost Crystal, and wiped it with another cloth. But the filth wouldn’t come off.
Mu Yingying stood at the entrance of the warehouse and looked inside.
The warehouse full of corpses was still hanging.
The light was dim.
Water was still dripping.
Drip.
Drip.
“What do we do with these bodies?”
She asked.
“They’re already dead. Their souls have long scattered. Nothing can be preserved.”
White Peace said.
“Whether we deal with them or not, it makes no difference to them.”
Little Frost paused in wiping the Ghost Crystal.
She looked up at the hanging corpses.
She looked for about five seconds, then spoke softly.
“…Let’s burn them. Let them find peace and not be desecrated anymore.”
White Peace didn’t object.
Mu Yingying didn’t say anything. She turned and walked out of the store.
She rummaged through the rubble outside.
She found something.
The shop next door was a half-collapsed pharmacy.
From the cabinet, she pulled out three bottles of high-concentration medical alcohol and half a bottle of bug spray.
Enough.
Mu Yingying carried the alcohol back into the store.
She stood at the warehouse entrance, took a deep breath, and walked in.
She walked between the rows of hanging corpses.
She poured the alcohol onto the plastic sheets, the chopping board, and the smoker.
She also poured it at the feet of the three still-dripping corpses at the back.
As she passed, she didn’t look up at the hanging people.
Little Frost watched from outside.
“Yingying, come out quick. It’s too smoky in there. Let me handle it.”
“No, I’ll do it myself.”
Mu Yingying’s voice was a little muffled.
“Let me finish this myself.”
She finished pouring the alcohol, walked out of the warehouse, and pulled out a lighter.
The lighter was from before the Doomsday, used for a long time, its casing worn.
She paused at the warehouse entrance.
She glanced at the full warehouse of corpses, just a quick look.
Then she pressed the lighter and tossed the flame in.
With a whoosh, the fire roared to life.
The flames danced on the faces of the three women.
Little Frost stood with her back to the warehouse, blocking the bike basket, trying to shield White Night’s view.
But White Night still peeked through the gap between Little Frost’s arms.
The bodies in the warehouse slowly curled up in the fire.
The smoke-dried skin caught fire instantly, making a sizzling sound.
The smoke had a strange smell, like roasted meat.
White Night shrank back into the bike basket and didn’t want to look anymore.
Mu Yingying stood at the shop entrance, the fire blazing behind her.
“In this world, there are plenty of people who suffer and have no one to help them when they’re alive. Not everyone can use that as an excuse to commit acts of cannibalism.”
Mu Yingying said.
She turned around and walked toward White Peace and Little Frost.
The fire stretched her shadow long across the street, casting it onto the collapsed wall opposite.
Little Frost handed her the dirty Ghost Crystal.
White Peace took it and put it into her own Ghost Crystal bag.
The group set off again.
After walking a few dozen meters, Mu Yingying looked back.
The Small Beef Jerky Shop was completely ablaze.
Flames leaped from the roof, devouring half of the hand-painted red sign.
The little yellow ox painted on the sign was half-burned.
Its round body was still there, but the head was gone.
Mu Yingying only glanced once, then turned her head back.
“Come to think of it, that little ox on the sign was actually drawn pretty cute.”
“That topic shift was way too abrupt, with zero lead-in.”
Little Frost said.
“Had to shift. If I kept thinking about it, I’d really throw up.”
Mu Yingying exhaled.
“That scene just now—my stomach is still churning when I think about it.”
After walking a while, White Night poked her head out of the bike basket and spoke softly.
“Auntie Ying.”
“Hmm? What is it, Little White Night?”
Mu Yingying replied.
“The meat jerky in that shop… did people actually buy it before?”
Mu Yingying froze.
She hadn’t thought about that question.
Little Frost hadn’t either.
She stopped, turned, and looked back at the burning shop.
The fire was still going, a tall column of smoke shooting straight into the blood-red sky above the ruins.
“Probably, yes.”
Little Frost said.
White Peace walked ahead without turning around or stopping.
But her voice carried back.
“That shop has been open for more than just a day or two.”
“Since it dared to put up a sign offering free samples, it must have done business with living passersby more than once.”
“Just now, I saw two cash boxes under the counter.”
“One was empty. The other had several pieces of broken Ghost Crystal inside.”
“That kind of broken Ghost Crystal can’t be formed by the Weirdness itself. It can only be payment from customers.”
Mu Yingying’s steps faltered for a moment.
She didn’t ask any more.
Those people who bought the meat jerky might now be corpses among the ruins.
Or they might be running some other small shop with a new signboard.
Who knows.
She started walking again, came up next to Little Frost and White Night, and reached out to ruffle White Night’s hair.
“Alright, Little White Night. Don’t think about those awful things. It’s all over now.”
“Mm.”
White Night replied.
The fire burned behind them for a long time.
It wasn’t until the next morning that the smoke cleared from that street.
Nothing was left in the ashes.
Only a half-burned wooden board, with twisted handwriting still visible.
Little cow…
The two characters after that were burned away.
The little yellow ox was gone too.
Everything was in that pile of ash.
A gust of wind blew, and the ash scattered.
The ruins remained ruins.
The group had long since moved on.