He Denghong could not only feel his own body now, but he could also perceive the girl’s physical sensations and vision. The amount of information his brain received suddenly doubled in that moment.
“Zhee-gugu. Allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Chiwu Rabbit, and my class is ‘Exploiter.’ My primary duty is to assist the Eshu in stripping away ‘anomalies’ and slowing the process of the material and consciousness worlds overlapping.”
“Even though I only have a preliminary understanding of your civilization, I know that the Eshu our civilization is familiar with are conceptually not much different from the ‘magical girls’ in your civilization’s fantasies.”
“Oh, do magical girls get paid?”
He Denghong and the girl spoke in unison once again. After all, he was currently penniless, and his top priority was definitely his own survival.
“No. I’m not a money printer, so where would I get money for you? I haven’t been here that long, and the first person I happened to meet was you. I actually thought you were one of those human girls with short hair.”
“If there’s no salary, then forget it. In the end, you just want me to be free labor.”
As He Denghong spoke, he and the girl stepped forward with their left legs at the same time, preparing to return to his apartment for a nap.
“Don’t be in such a hurry!”
Chiwu Rabbit’s body suddenly broke apart, transforming into a gust of black wind that blew onto He Denghong’s head before reconsolidating. “If you don’t act as a proper Eshu, who will save the people of the world?”
“Listen closely. My next words involve the truths of the universe that you humans have never known until now. In fact, there are two universes: one is the material world, and the other is the consciousness world.”
“In the material world, matter determines consciousness. In the consciousness world, consciousness determines matter. These two universes, which possess entirely different properties, are both relatively independent and interconnected. One is constantly increasing in entropy, while the other is constantly decreasing.”
“However, we discovered through certain means that these two universes are beginning to overlap. If no influence is exerted to hinder the process, they will annihilate each other prematurely!”
“As these two universes overlap, their natural laws and principles begin to intertwine, gradually becoming neither one thing nor the other. You should have heard of similar things, right?”
“For instance, in this material world where matter supposedly determines consciousness, the presence or absence of an observer has somehow become a variable that affects experimental results. Meanwhile, in our world, it manifests as the inability to verify truth through any method other than practice.”
“The existence of the Eshu is specifically to hinder this process and extend the lifespans of these two universes that are about to overlap and annihilate. You are meant to ‘banish’ or ‘eliminate’ the biological and non-biological entities that ‘permeate’ from that universe into this one to prevent assimilation.”
“The people here should have recorded those few ‘anomalies’ that permeated this planet thousands of years ago, right? Those legends of demons, ghosts, and the like—those monsters actually came from the consciousness world.”
He Denghong and the girl did not stop walking, only responding casually at the same time:
“The way you talk makes you sound like some low-tier, hack webnovel writer—the kind of self-righteous idiot who thinks he can get famous by creating a new genre and just pulls a world-building concept out of thin air.”
“Whether the universe is going to be destroyed or whatever is too far-fetched for a freelancer like me. I’d rather just find a job. Regardless, I don’t want to work for free.”
“Wishful thinking,” Chiwu Rabbit said, the corners of its mouth curling up disdainfully. “The Skeletal Core has already been forcibly implanted into your body. Even if you wanted to have surgery to remove it, it would cling tightly to your flesh and couldn’t be pulled off.”
“Even if you cut off the piece of meat the Skeletal Core is attached to, it would quickly transfer to another piece of your flesh. Furthermore, I’ve already created the ‘vessel’ for you. Your connection with this double is now inseparable.”
“Inseparable… what do you mean?” He Denghong and the girl spoke at the same time, their voices overlapping to create an eerie echo.
“It means,” Chiwu Rabbit said, shifting into a more comfortable crouching position on top of his head and speaking lazily, “this ‘Eshu’ double has become your other shell. If she is injured, you will feel the pain. If your original body dies, she will dissipate along with it.”
“Now you two are truly a community with a shared fate, zhee-gugugu! However, unless your original body dies or the Skeletal Core is destroyed by an extraordinary impact, this double will not die, no matter what injuries she sustains.”
“This double is the only way to safely host and use that Skeletal Core. Without her, the Skeletal Core would soon lose control and go berserk inside your male body. I don’t need to explain what the consequences would be, do I?”
He Denghong looked at the girl Chiwu Rabbit called a double. The girl also looked in the same direction at the same time, but there was nothing there.
“Then you should have looked for a woman. Why go through the trouble of making a double? Your civilization should be the type in light novels where girls are more beautiful and powerful than boys, right?”
“That’s right, but didn’t I say it earlier? I accidentally got your gender wrong. I haven’t been here that long, after all. That’s why I had to make a double to serve as a container for the Skeletal Core,” Chiwu Rabbit said with a helpless tone.
In the dim night of Yulin City, there were not many pedestrians in the alleys between buildings.
While He Denghong was talking with Chiwu Rabbit, there happened to be a passerby ahead of them.
Hearing the people behind him talking about such nonsensical topics, the passerby couldn’t help but look back. He saw a girl in strange clothes and a man with a rabbit on his head.
Suddenly, the passerby felt as if something had wrapped around his neck. It felt cold, icy, and had a viscous texture.
Just as the passerby tried to reach out and touch it to find out what was on his neck, he felt a sharp pain. The scene before him began to spin.
Immediately following that, a strong sense of weightlessness flooded his heart.
He felt his perspective being pulled backward. Due to the effects of perspective, the man, the woman, and the rabbit suddenly shrank before his eyes.
His eyes inadvertently caught a glimpse of an extremely bizarre sight—a headless man with a wound the size of a bowl on his neck, which was surging with blood like a beautiful fountain of tomato juice.
By the time he belatedly realized what situation he was in, his entire head had already been pulled into the body of a transparent “frog.”
This “frog” looked very similar to a glass frog. One could easily see its internal structures, such as its heart, liver, and digestive tract, right through its skin.
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