Piercing cries, accusatory voices, and desperate pleas echoed through the air, leaving all the staff present with looks of sympathy and sorrow.
Seeing Song Nanxing frozen and motionless, the few workers who had been sawing the tree earlier gritted their teeth and shouted loudly, “Don’t listen to them—they’ve been dead for a long time.”
Song Nanxing responded with a simple “Hmm,” showing none of the agonized suffering others had expected.
On the way here, Li Hao had already received the test results for the banyan tree sample. Within that small piece of wood, the DNA of eleven people had been detected—the missing eleven from the two families.
Song Nanxing lowered his eyes, firmly and steadily pressed the chainsaw forward. The sharp blade pressed against the notch cut earlier, roaring loudly.
The massive banyan tree, too large to be embraced by three men, was completely severed after half an hour of work.
The giant banyan’s cries, pleas, and curses had failed to make Song Nanxing pause even once. In the end, it was forced to resort to desperate survival by sacrificing its trunk above ground, leaving behind a stump and the roots buried deep underground.
The enormous banyan tree crashed down with a thunderous sound, silencing the mentally tormented voices. Everyone breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Song Nanxing removed his protective suit, stained with red sap, and asked Li Hao, who was busy recalibrating the data, “Can current technology measure underground roots? I have a bad feeling about leaving this stump behind.”
Li Hao pointed to a strange-looking device held by a nearby worker and said, “We’re already measuring, but the situation doesn’t look good.”
Just then, a staff member reported, “No luck. The roots run too deep. Completely clearing them out will be difficult.”
Li Hao asked, “What about using chemical agents to neutralize them?”
The worker shook his head, “We’ve tried. It’s ineffective.”
“Then the most primitive method: digging out the stump along with most of the roots?”
The measurement staff replied, “That’s the last resort. But the roots can’t be fully cleared, and the consequences are uncertain.”
At that moment, Cheng Jianning trembled slightly and raised his hand, “I-I can try.”
Song Nanxing recalled how he had once absorbed those monsters and looked at him with concern at his pale face. “Are you sure you can do it?”
Cheng Jianning took a deep breath and walked over to the stump. “I’ll try my best.” He cracked a joke that wasn’t really funny, “I haven’t gone vegetarian yet.”
The data cable hidden inside his clothes slid out slowly, wrapping tightly around the stump. Suspended above the stump, the hesitant cable swayed for a moment before decisively plunging into the center of the stump.
The cable began to wriggle slowly.
Cheng Jianning stood beside the stump, quietly slipping his clenched fist into his pocket.
Many of the staff present were police officers. Those from the containment center, having faced similar scenes, remained relatively calm. But the officers who usually only cleaned up crime scenes wore expressions tinged with fear.
As the cable wriggled faster, the stump visibly began to wither.
But the stump was too huge; the rate of decay was painfully slow.
Everyone waited tensely, when suddenly a sharp alarm blared.
Song Nanxing was startled and looked toward Cheng Jianning—the sound was coming from him. Li Hao reacted faster, lunging forward to pull Cheng Jianning back. “Enough, Cheng Jianning, your contamination level is exceeding the limit!”
Cheng Jianning shook his head as if drunk. The cable suddenly retracted back into his clothes, and he rushed to the wall, bending over to vomit.
His wrist pressed against the wall was exposed, showing a metal bracelet.
Song Nanxing remembered—it was the one Chu Yan had placed on him that day beneath Cheng Jianning’s apartment, supposedly to prevent further emotional breakdowns.
Song Nanxing fetched a bottle of water from the car and handed it to him. “Rinse your mouth. How do you feel? Do you need to go to the clinic?”
Cheng Jianning rinsed, his face deathly pale as he turned to say, “Sorry, it’s just too nauseating. I can’t do it.”
Thinking back to those cries earlier, he had the unsettling feeling he was devouring people.
Li Hao patted his shoulder, “It’s not your fault. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You rest here for a bit, and we’ll try other methods.”
Li Hao immediately ordered a small excavator to dig out the stump.
The floor tiles were lifted, and they used the excavator to dig a deep pit around the stump, which was over two meters in diameter. When the tangled roots beneath the stump were exposed, everyone gasped.
If the banyan tree above ground had been somewhat of a facade, then the twisted, human-shaped roots buried underground laid the brutal truth of death bare before everyone.
Several workers donned protective suits and descended with shovels to clear the roots. But after an hour, though the pit had grown enormous, the root system extending deep underground seemed endless.
The workers climbed out, gasping, “No good, it’s too deep. We can’t reach the end.”
Ultimately, they resorted to using the excavator to dig out the stump along with as much of the root system as possible. The mechanical arm lifted high then slammed down, its sharp teeth biting through the roots, extracting the stump and roots together.
But before they could rejoice, they saw the roots and stump inside the bucket wither and decay rapidly, while those roots still in the soil, twisted like human figures, frantically burrowed deeper, vanishing in an instant.
Li Hao’s eyes widened, whispering, “It’s already like this—how can they still run?”
Cheng Jianning couldn’t sit still either. He walked to the edge of the pit, disbelief on his face as he peered inside. “Their vitality is insane. They won’t just regrow somewhere else, will they?”
His question made Li Hao’s face even paler.
Song Nanxing said, “We need to inform Captain Chu immediately—the stump can’t be dug out.”
*****
Because the roots burrowed into the soil and escaped, Song Nanxing only wrapped up the chaotic work on Chunfeng Road late into the night before heading home.
By then, a drizzle had begun to fall. He glanced at the time, sighed in exhaustion, and started the car.
Cheng Jianning leaned pitifully against the passenger window and asked, “Can I come to your place?”
The nausea hadn’t passed; his face was still ghostly pale.
Song Nanxing said, “There’s only one bedroom in my place, so you’d have to sleep on the couch.”
“The couch is enough.” Cheng Jianning was content, wiping the pitiful look off his face as he happily got in and buckled his seatbelt. “You don’t know, except for Captain Chu who occasionally stays, I’m the only one living in the containment center dorm.”
He rambled on about life at the center for a while, then grew a little somber. “I don’t know why. At first, I was pretty happy when I went in, but over time, I started to feel lonely. Some of the staff look at me differently, even though they try really hard to be careful…”
Just like earlier, when the officers’ faces had flickered with fear.
Though he knew it wasn’t intentional or personal—just an instinctive fear of the unknown—Cheng Jianning couldn’t help but feel isolated.
He frowned, gesturing as he said, “I think I’m starting to understand why Captain Chu dislikes people calling themselves ‘God’s Chosen’ or ‘Extrasensory.’ It feels like drawing a line between yourself and ordinary people…”
“Do you really feel that way?”
Song Nanxing shook his head. “I’ve never thought I was any different from ordinary people.”
Cheng Jianning turned to look at him, pondering his words.
After a long moment, he suddenly said, “You’re right. I used to always think I was different, so I’d overthink every extra glance from others… From now on, I want to be like you—just consider myself ordinary.”
Song Nanxing 😕
Though unsure how Cheng Jianning had drawn such a profound conclusion from his simple answer, he saw the radiant look on his face and decided it was better to say nothing.
The two returned to room 401.
Song Nanxing opened the door, and Cheng Jianning followed like a fledgling bird just out of the nest, turning his head in awe as he exclaimed, “Your place feels so warm and cozy. It really feels like home.”
Song Nanxing ignored him and handed over new toiletries and disposable slippers. “All new. There are drinks and beer in the fridge. Instant noodles in the kitchen. If you get hungry, just help yourself. No need to be polite. I’m going to take a shower first.”
Cheng Jianning said “Oh,” and, like a schoolboy, wandered around the living room.
He was first drawn to a small blue octopus in the fish tank, curiously peering closer as he loudly asked Song Nanxing, “Is that an octopus? What kind is it? I don’t think I’ve seen one like this before…”
Song Nanxing said something, but Cheng Jianning didn’t catch it.
He tapped the glass, trying to get the octopus’s attention.
The little octopus floated to the surface, eyes gleaming mischievously. Its eight arms slowly crawled up the tank wall.
Cheng Jianning, acting like a naïve country boy, exclaimed, “Song Nanxing, your octopus is climbing out!”
He carefully reached out a finger, trying to poke the octopus back inside.
The octopus’s arms instantly stretched out and slapped his hand away. Then, like a territorial emperor, it climbed down the shelf, its enormous body propped up on eight arms as it coldly scrutinized Cheng Jianning.
“Stranger.”
“Get out.”
“No, a guest of Xingxing.”
“Xingxing is angry.”
Voices echoed in his neural ring one after another, before being suppressed by a dominant will.
Shen Du slowly waved his arms, his expression displeased as he eyed Cheng Jianning slumped on the sofa.
Cheng Jianning clearly hadn’t expected the once cute little octopus to instantly transform into a deep-sea behemoth taller than himself. He shivered and glanced nervously at the bathroom. “Song Nanxing, your octopus ran out…”
So big. It’s going to eat me.
But water splashed in the bathroom; Song Nanxing evidently hadn’t heard his plea.
Cheng Jianning had no choice but to cautiously raise his hands in surrender and greet the deep-sea giant. “Brother, I-I didn’t mean to offend you. Please don’t hold a grudge…”
Shen Du stared coldly for a moment. Though unhappy about a stranger trespassing his territory, he spared Cheng Jianning for Song Nanxing’s sake and turned back toward the master bedroom.
Cheng Jianning’s tense body relaxed, and he let out a huge sigh.
But just as he turned, his eyes met with a pair of pitch-black eyes beside the sofa.
Cheng Jianning: “…”
Damn it, that puppet’s here too.
Recalling its brutal, man-eating scene, he forced a stiff smile and greeted it awkwardly, “Hi, we’ve met before in dreams. You remember, right?”
The puppet’s black eyes fixed on him with no response, only baring its teeth in a sinister grin.
Cheng Jianning maintained his fake smile and cautiously scooted his butt to the other side.
If he’d known this, he might as well have gone back to sleep in the dormitory!
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