The puppet stared at the hand about to grab it. Its pitch-black eyes lifted, and without hesitation, it opened its mouth wide and bit down hard.
A shrill, piercing scream rang out from the entrance.
Song Nanxing turned his head and saw that Ji Jiajia’s right hand had been severed at the wrist. Blood dripped steadily from the clean-cut wound.
But her expression showed more rage than pain. Her entire face contorted in fury, and her neck stretched to an unnatural length. Three large mouths full of sharp teeth protruded from her otherwise smooth face.
She looked grotesque beyond words, making Song Nanxing frown. However, the company employees didn’t seem to find it unusual. Hearing the commotion, they all rushed to the entrance to watch the scene unfold.
Song Nanxing remained seated at his desk. His view was completely blocked by the crowd, so he could only hear Ji Jiajia’s voice still screaming furiously, her tone cracking from the rage:
“Ahhhhhh! I’m going to kill you!!!”
The puppet glanced at her and spat out a few bits of broken bone with a couple of dry heaves.
This completely set Ji Jiajia off. The three gaping, tooth-filled mouths on her face snapped together with a series of sharp clicks. Drooling and snarling, she lunged at the puppet.
The puppet sat in the corner, nowhere to run. It lowered its head and clumsily scratched and scribbled at the ground with its uneven wooden fingers.
At that moment, Ji Jiajia’s massive mouth reached it—and bit its head clean off.
But the puppet’s wooden head was sturdier than she expected. Her furious bite didn’t crush it—instead, her own teeth shattered.
A muffled groan of pain escaped her throat. Ji Jiajia spat out the puppet’s head, her mouth full of blood.
The puppet’s head rolled several times across the floor before stopping beside its headless body.
Its two wooden hands picked up the head, dusted it off, and placed it back where it belonged.
Then, it lowered its head again and continued scratching symbols on the ground.
Ji Jiajia’s face twisted with rage. The remaining two mouths clamped shut, grinding their teeth together in a nerve-wracking screech. But she no longer dared to act recklessly.
Just then, the puppet finally finished its strange drawing. It looked up at Ji Jiajia, and in its dark, hollow eyes, a faint red glow flickered ominously.
Ji Jiajia stared at it blankly, when suddenly—her legs began to itch in a strange, disturbing way, as if something was crawling slowly up from her feet.
She looked down—and what she saw made her blood run cold.
The ground was crawling with bizarre, twisted symbols. They surged toward her like a dense swarm of insects. In the blink of an eye, her lower legs had been gnawed clean, leaving behind only gleaming white bones.
“Ahhhhhhhhh! Get off! Get off!!!” Ji Jiajia screamed in another piercing shriek, frantically clawing at her own legs, trying to tear the “bugs” away.
But they weren’t insects at all. They were part of the puppet’s curse.
Those writhing black and red symbols burrowed into her flesh and bones like parasites, devouring her from the inside out with ruthless hunger.
By the time the cleaning lady arrived after receiving the alert, Ji Jiajia had been eaten down to a single head. Everything below was now nothing but a pale skeleton.
And the puppet?
It still sat curled up in the corner between the door and the wall, its hollow eyes scanning the crowd of gawking employees. It seemed disappointed when it didn’t spot Song Nanxing among them.
The cleaning lady took a long look at the puppet, then at the blood-soaked, scattered remains across the floor. Her expression grew darker as she turned her glare toward Ji Jiajia.
“How many times do I have to tell you?” she said, voice low and cold. “Don’t. Dirty. The. Floor. Don’t dirty the floor! Don’t dirty the floor!”
Ji Jiajia, terrified by the cleaner’s furious expression, let out a frightened shriek from one of her remaining mouths. That mouth suddenly detached from her face and leapt onto the face of a nearby onlooker.
The cleaning lady just kept repeating her mantra—“Don’t dirty the floor”—her voice rising to a fever pitch. Her mouth stretched wider and wider to either side. Then, with a sickening crack, her head split clean in two. Gleaming, jagged teeth flashed in the gap.
And with one powerful bite, she chomped down and swallowed Ji Jiajia’s head whole.
Only after she chewed Ji Jiajia’s skull to bits with loud, crunching gnaws did the cleaner calm down. Her flat face darkened again, and she silently began mopping the floor.
As for the puppet in the corner—it was completely ignored.
The crowd of spectators instantly scattered like startled birds.
All that remained of Ji Jiajia was a single mouth, now clinging parasitically to a colleague’s face. In a trembling voice, it muttered, “Good thing I ran fast…”
The colleague scowled. “Get off my face, you freak!”
Ji Jiajia just giggled, deliberately snapping her teeth with loud “click click” noises.
But then her gaze fell on Song Nanxing, who was still sitting calmly at his workstation—and her laughter abruptly stopped.
If it hadn’t been for Song Nanxing, she never would’ve messed with that ugly little puppet!
The mouth swelled angrily from the colleague’s face. With venom in her tone, Ji Jiajia snarled, “You must be real happy right now.”
Song Nanxing: ???
He looked confused and innocent. “Ji Jiajia?”
Ji Jiajia snapped, “I’m not done with you. I’ll remember this!”
Song Nanxing hesitated. “…I don’t think I ever did anything to you…”
It wasn’t like he turned her into this.
But clearly, Ji Jiajia had already developed a grudge. Her rows of teeth ground together with a furious creeeak-creak.
The coworker hosting her mouth had finally had enough and began slashing at his face with a box cutter.
Silently, Song Nanxing dragged his office chair a bit farther away.
Fortunately, Cheng Jianning returned not long after. He had perfectly missed all the chaos. Seeing coworkers shouting and wrestling with Ji Jiajia, he let out a hiss and quickly edged aside. Spotting Song Nanxing still at his desk, he grabbed the armrest of his chair and dragged him over.
In a hushed tone, he warned, “You better keep your distance when they fight. Ji Jiajia’s nuts—and that mouth of hers is lethal. Just don’t provoke her.”
Song Nanxing caught sight of Ji Jiajia biting off one coworker’s ear and thought to himself, I guess “lethal mouth” is pretty literal here.
Then he turned his gaze back to Cheng Jianning—and recoiled in shock. “What happened to you?”
Cheng Jianning used to resemble a mobile mountain of fat. If you didn’t look closely, it was hard to tell where his head was. But now… he looked like a deflated, cancerous balloon. The hundreds of pounds of fat were gone, replaced by loose, sagging skin. Tangled data cables snaked out from under his flesh and coiled around his limbs, making him look like a grotesque, cybernetic android.
Cheng Jianning glanced down at himself and grinned. “How do I look? Much better, right?”
He seemed quite satisfied with his state and chattered non-stop, dragging Song Nanxing into his excitement. “I ate way too much before. Obesity’s bad for your health. So Dr. Zhao installed these data lines for me—they help flush out excess fat.” He spoke of Dr. Zhao with great admiration. “He’s amazing. Though I have to say, replacing these cables is incredibly painful…”
Song Nanxing observed him calmly and indeed noticed yellow clumps of residual fat around the connectors.
Cheng Jianning sat down at his workstation. As soon as he booted up his computer, he paused, turned around, and said with a puzzled look, “Weird… I feel like I’m forgetting something really important.”
Song Nanxing thought back. “You said you were going to see Dr. Zhao, and then pick up a resignation form from Wang Xiaorui.”
“Resignation form?” Cheng Jianning blinked. His thin face lit up with joy—but just as quickly dimmed.
“Right, I haven’t found her yet…”
“Resignation form?” Cheng Jianning froze. A look of joy briefly flashed across his delicate face, but it quickly dimmed again.
“I haven’t found a replacement yet. Wang Xiaorui won’t sign my resignation form if I haven’t found someone to take over.”
Song Nanxing raised his eyebrows slightly and stared at him for a moment. “Then are you still planning to keep looking?”
“Of course.” Cheng Jianning nodded without hesitation. He glanced around, then leaned in closer to Song Nanxing, shielding his mouth with one hand and whispering, “I’m only telling you this because you’re new, but if you’ve got another option, you should get out of here sooner rather than later. I don’t think there’s something right about this company.”
Song Nanxing glanced sideways at Ji Jiajia, who was currently locked in a bloody brawl with a colleague. Isn’t the ‘not right’ part written all over the place already?
But Cheng Jianning seemed to be stuck in some kind of preset narrative. He rambled on, “Ever since I came to this company, I haven’t gone home once. I really miss my grandma. I send all my wages back every month, but she’s getting old. I don’t know if she’s doing okay on her own at home. Once I resign and go back, I’m definitely going to spend more time with her…”
Song Nanxing’s expression flickered slightly. “How long have you been here?”
Cheng Jianning counted on his fingers. “Not that long. Just a little over three months.”
But Song Nanxing remembered the job-seeking post he saw on the forum—that was posted seven or eight months ago.
After speaking, Cheng Jianning eagerly returned to his work. The glow of the computer screen reflected the hope on his face.
Song Nanxing recalled the beginning of that post: Cheng Jianning said he had just graduated from university.
That would make him around twenty-two or twenty-three years old.
Song Nanxing sighed, got up with the excuse of getting water, and walked toward the pantry.
Cheng Jianning had mentioned in his post that the top salesperson, Wu, often cursed people out in the pantry. It was worth checking to see if there were any clues there.
Song Nanxing picked up a disposable cup and strolled casually over.
On the way, he noticed that there were only about twenty or so people scattered across the workstations, each with their head buried in work, faces indistinct.
Once in the pantry, Song Nanxing didn’t rush to get water. Instead, he opened the fridge and cabinets one by one, searching them carefully.
As he was rummaging around, he suddenly felt an intense gaze on his back.
Song Nanxing froze, then spun around sharply—just in time to catch a round object quickly ducking behind the coffee bar counter.
“…”
That thing looked… familiar.
Song Nanxing shut the fridge door and walked over to the bar counter. Looking down from above, he saw the puppet curled up beside the counter, limbs drawn in, clearly trying to hide but with nowhere to go.
When it realized it had been seen, the puppet’s pitch-black eyes dimmed, and its head drooped in defeat.
Busted.
Song Nanxing studied it, recalling Ji Jiajia’s miserable condition. He had previously assumed the puppet wasn’t particularly dangerous, but now it seemed he had underestimated its capabilities. It might look clumsy and dumb, but when it bit, it bit hard.
Song Nanxing hesitated for only a moment before making a decision. He bent down slightly and gave the puppet a friendly smile.
“This spot’s a little cramped. Want to come sit with me at my workstation? There’s a free seat next to mine.”
The puppet looked up at him, its two hollow black eyes widening in shock.
Inside the neural link that Song Nanxing couldn’t hear, its voice rang out in pure delight and satisfaction:
“He talked to me, he talked to me, he talked to me, he talked to me…!”
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