Chapter 78: The Headless Man

The sky of the Deep Abyss had no sun, only a slow-flowing river of blood-colored light.

The ruins felt especially oppressive.

Mu Yingying shoved the last piece of compressed biscuit into her mouth, crunching loudly.

“Next time we find a supply point, I’m definitely getting more good food. This biscuit is way too dry.”

“You’re getting picky now. It’s not bad having something to eat in this apocalypse.”

Su Shuang’er pushed the rusty bicycle, not looking back.

White Night floated above the bike basket, not joining the banter.

Her attention was on the wreckage of the tall buildings on either side.

All the windows were shattered.

White Peace walked at the front, her bare feet stepping on broken glass without making a sound.

A three-way intersection appeared ahead.

White Peace closed her eyes and sensed for a moment.

“This path should have the most Ghost Crystals.”

She turned to the right.

Just then, White Night saw it.

Deep in the left fork, by a broken wall, stood a tall, slender figure.

The figure had hair reaching its waist, its face blurry, as if seen through waterlogged rice paper.

The figure raised a hand and pointed to the right—the same direction White Peace had chosen.

“White Night?”

Su Shuang’er stopped and followed her gaze.

“What did you see?”

White Night looked again, but there was nothing there.

Only shattered concrete and twisted rebar.

“I must have seen wrong.”

White Night was a bit confused too.

Who was that figure?

Why could only she see it?

White Night shrank back into the basket, feeling she shouldn’t have misseen.

After all, after her Soul Repair, her mental power was stronger than before. She shouldn’t be having hallucinations.

Could it be that this place was just strange?

A burnt smell hung in the air.

White Peace slowed her pace.

Su Shuang’er pulled the bicycle behind her and pressed her hand on the iron hammer at her waist.

Mu Yingying’s Tang Dao slid from her shoulder, the casual look in her peach blossom eyes vanishing completely.

Ahead, an overturned truck wreck lay across the road.

The rusted cabin looked like the skeleton of a giant beast.

From behind the truck, a figure slowly walked out.

It wore a tattered gray robe, its color blending into the ruins.

Its pace was neither fast nor slow, its hands groping the air in front of it like a blind person feeling the way.

But where its neck should have been was a clean cut.

The surface of the cut showed a grayish-white wood grain pattern, dense and regular, like the rings of an old tree.

“Damn it.”

Mu Yingying gripped her sword hilt.

“What the hell is that?”

White Peace raised her hand, signaling them not to move.

The headless man stopped about seven or eight steps away.

It leaned forward slightly, the cut on its neck aimed at White Peace, who was in front.

A sound came from deep within the cut.

It was like wind moaning through an empty cavity, barely shaped into words.

Dry, slow, fragmented.

An unnatural pause between each word.

“Have… you… seen… my… head?”

“When encountering a Weirdness asking a question, don’t answer first.”

White Peace’s voice was calm and steady.

“This is a Rule-based Weirdness—a headless man.”

“If you answer ‘no,’ it will assume the head is with you.”

“If you don’t answer, it will take silence as guilt. Same result.”

She bent down, picked up a piece of rubble the size of a human head from the ground.

Then she stepped forward, holding it out with both hands to the headless man.

“This is your head. Take it.”

The headless man paused.

It groped and took the stone, raised it above the cut, and slowly lowered it.

Without any support, the stone stayed firmly on the cut.

The gray-white stone and the gray-white wood grain connected, forming a strangely fitting whole.

The headless man hugged that stone head, turned, and walked back the way it came, its steps a little lighter.

“But this only makes it leave temporarily.”

White Peace stepped forward to follow.

“After a while, it will realize the head is wrong and start searching again.”

“A more thorough method is—”

She caught up to the headless man, her right hand’s five fingers pressed together.

A faint black glow flickered at her fingertips, and she stabbed cleanly into its back.

No sound of flesh tearing, just a buzzing like a snapped string.

The headless man froze.

The stone rolled off where the head had been and broke in two.

Light began to shine from within the gray robe.

The light was pale, like the last warmth of dying embers.

Its body started to disintegrate from the edges, turning into gray-white powder that was blown away by the wind.

Just before it completely vanished, a final sound came from deep within the cut.

A sigh, carrying the relief of release.

When the ashes settled, only an empty, tattered gray robe lay on the ground.

“That’s how it died?”

Mu Yingying sheathed her sword.

“I thought it’d be harder to deal with.”

“Its danger isn’t in combat.”

White Peace turned and walked back.

“When you don’t know the rules, and you’re weaker than it, you realize how disgusting this thing is. Once you know them, it’s just a trapped soul.”

She continued forward, her voice unhurried.

“This kind of Weirdness is formed from people who lost their loved ones in the Resonance Catastrophe.”

“In the moment the world was destroyed, those who were searching for their families—their search was twisted.”

“In the end, it turned into searching for their own head.”

“Its head was never lost. What it lost was the person it was looking for.”

“But a soul can’t bear true loss, so it replaces it with something that can be found again.”

Su Shuang’er spoke softly: “So that sigh…”

“Means it doesn’t have to search anymore.”

Silence.

White Night looked down at her own translucent fingertips.

As a Soul Body, she understood better than anyone what it felt like to have an obsession.

Knowing it was meaningless, yet unable to stop.

She thought of that long-haired figure.

Standing by the broken wall, pointing the way for someone it didn’t even know.

Was it looking for something too?

Or was it guiding something?

“The wood grain on that cut.”

White Peace’s voice continued.

“It’s the cross-section left when a soul is forcibly torn from its living foundation.”

“Like a tree that’s been cut down—the rings on the stump forever record every year it lived.”

“That wood grain is everything it lived through as a person.”

She stopped, turned, and glanced at the three of them.

“Every Weirdness in the Deep Abyss is essentially like that.”

“Their behavior follows some twisted rule, and the core of the rule is always the deepest obsession from when they were alive.”

“Find the obsession, and you find the rule.”

“Find the rule, and you can break it.”

Ahead, a subway entrance emerged from the shadows.

The half-collapsed stairway was pitch black, like a toothless mouth.

The steps were littered with broken tiles and twisted metal railings.

“Down there, there are Ghost Crystals, and more things like that.”

White Peace stepped down onto the first stair.

“Stay close.”

Su Shuang’er pushed the bicycle, following.

Mu Yingying took up the rear. As she passed the empty gray robe, she paused for a moment.

She glanced down, said nothing.

Just as White Night was about to enter the shadows, she looked back.

At the end of the narrow street, beside the truck wreck.

That long-haired figure stood there again.

Its face was still blurry, its form still tall and slender.

It faced her direction, motionless.

As if seeing her off.

Then it turned and walked deeper into the ruins.

Its pace was neither fast nor slow, like a person walking home.

After a few breaths, it disappeared among the twisted rebar and shattered concrete.

White Night said nothing.

She didn’t know who it was, nor why only she could see it.

She only knew that the figure stirred some indescribable emotion deep within her Soul Body.

It wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t warmth.

It was like seeing lights on the far shore from across a wide river.

“White Night?”

Su Shuang’er’s voice came from ahead.

“Coming.”

She withdrew her gaze and floated back into the basket.

Deep within the subway, there was a blue light.

The glow of a Ghost Crystal vein.

Wheels rolled over broken tiles, making a crisp, crunching sound.

The four of them slowly advanced into the depths of the darkness.