Chapter 79: Chimera

The tunnel stretched on in the darkness for an unknown length of time.

White Night noticed something was off. She picked up a scent.

It was a foul smell.

The stench of rot seeped from deeper within the tunnel.

Even her Soul Body could clearly perceive the odor.

“What’s that smell?”

Mu Yingying covered her nose.

White Peace didn’t answer. She just slowed her pace.

The walls on both sides of the tunnel were coated in a dark, greasy sheen, as if something had licked them repeatedly.

Little Frost stopped walking. She leaned the rusty bicycle against the wall, then pulled the Iron Hammer from her waist.

Up ahead, something was pushing up from the ground.

At first, White Night thought it was collapsed rubble, but the thing was moving.

It crawled slowly, like a clump of flesh that had been forcibly torn open.

Countless bloody threads connected the mass to the ground as it ripped itself free. When the threads snapped, they made a sound like tearing wet cloth.

It stood up. Or at least, it was barely standing.

It had two legs—one thick, one thin. The thick leg split at the end into two malformed feet, while the thin one curled and hung in the air.

At the knee of that thin leg, a shard of bone protruded, dangling a withered infant’s hand.

Its torso was an irregular sphere. The skin was a messy patchwork of flesh from different creatures.

The head was on the side.

There were two of them.

One was a human head, with the face attached backward—all its features were squished together.

The other was a dog’s head, most of its fur rotted away, with a clump of curled fingers stuffed into the eye socket.

It also had several arms.

Two were in normal positions, but they were completely different in thickness and length.

A third arm jutted from the lower back, hanging limp, clutching a blackened Ghost Crystal at the tip.

It crawled toward them.

The thick leg kicked against the mucus-covered ground, slipping a little. With each crawling step, a sloshing sound came from inside the torso.

White Night watched it. Her Soul Body felt a violent discomfort.

A wave of chill ran through her.

Every part of it was so real—human skin, dog fur, an infant’s fingers.

But the way it was stitched together violated the basic understanding of life.

“What the hell…” Mu Yingying’s voice squeezed through her teeth. “Is that thing?”

“A Chimera weirdness. This kind is very common,” White Peace stated.

“During the Resonance Catastrophe, the Flesh of different creatures gets crushed together and forms this. It recombines into a twisted form of Life. It’s still alive, but its consciousness is already in chaos. Its mind is a mixture of the lingering thoughts of countless living beings—a mass of pain.”

The Chimera crawled another step closer.

The human face attached backward on its back twisted around, beady eyes locking onto White Night. Its mouth stretched wider and let out a distorted syllable. “Pain.”

From deeper in the tunnel, more voices—high and low, thick and thin—overlapped, all saying the same word.

A dark red light flickered on and off from the fleshy walls, illuminating the scene further ahead.

More Chimeras were breaking free from the ground. Some were smaller, like a mix of infant and cat, dragging fleshy tendrils as they crawled. Others were larger, with half a horse face embedded in the torso, eyes still blinking. Their legs were four human arms, fingers digging into the ground, moving like spiders.

There was one with no torso. It had only one leg and one arm, connected by a twisted spine. At the top of the spine was a woman’s head, her expression serene, as if she were fast asleep. It moved by hopping on its single leg, swinging its arm through the air, bouncing toward them.

“These things aren’t strong in combat,” White Peace raised her right hand, black light gathering at her fingertips. “But there are a lot of them, and their chaotic consciousness has a mental attack effect. Just don’t let them touch you. If you come into contact, you’ll have nightmares.”

The first Chimera lunged. It was much faster than it looked. Its thick leg kicked hard off the ground, launching its whole body forward, reaching for White Peace.

White Peace sidestepped, and her right hand followed through. The black light at her fingertips sank into the Chimera’s soft belly, which had no bone protection.

The Chimera froze.

Black light seeped from every seam of its torso. Its legs, arms, head, and skin began to fall apart simultaneously.

The forcibly stitched parts came loose one after another—human legs, dog head, infant’s hand scattered on the ground.

The last to fall off was the backward-attached human head.

It rolled to White Peace’s feet, the beady eyes still blinking, the mouth still opening and closing.

Then the head began to dissolve, eventually turning into a puddle of gray-white liquid.

In the center of the puddle lay a Ghost Crystal.

It wasn’t like the clean crystals from the sinkhole.

This one was pitted on the surface, its color murky, like glass gravel soaked in sewage.

But it was indeed a Ghost Crystal condensed from the remains after killing the weirdness.

More Chimeras surged forward.

Little Frost moved.

She swung the Iron Hammer, smashing it into the nearest Chimera.

It was a monster pieced together from a human leg, a horse leg, a snake-like spine, and an old man’s head.

The old man’s head sat atop the spine, with sparse white hair, an expression not of pain but of bewilderment.

The hammer struck the crown of the skull.

The sound of bone shattering was dull.

The old man’s head caved in on one side, the confused expression freezing in place.

The entire Chimera then collapsed, parts scattering everywhere.

In the middle of the remains, another equally murky Ghost Crystal rolled out.

Mu Yingying’s Tang Dao cleaved open the third one—the one that moved by hopping on its single leg, with the woman’s head.

The blade entered from the center of the forehead and emerged through the back of the skull.

The woman’s ferocious expression finally changed, turning into a relief as if released from a burden. A long sigh, and then the whole head split in two.

A crystal with an even darker color tumbled out from the center of the head.

White Night stayed in the bike basket, watching all of this.

She could clearly see how each Chimera was pieced together—infant hands, women’s faces, the confusion of old men.

They had all been ripped from their original lives and stuffed into these distorted containers, tortured endlessly.

They couldn’t articulate the reason for their pain, only repeating that single word.

Pain.

More Chimeras appeared.

Little Frost’s hammer crushed a monster made of a pig’s torso and a cat’s head.

Mu Yingying’s blade sliced through a Chimera crawling on its hands, dragging a tangle of intestines behind it.

White Peace’s black light pierced three small Chimeras, mixtures of infants and birds.

The remains piled up on the ground—legs, arms, heads, fur. Once disassembled, they were just quiet pieces of corpses, no longer writhing or moaning.

Completely dead—maybe that counted as release.

Ghost crystals lay scattered among the pieces, their murky light flickering, as if the forcibly stitched souls had finally found peace after being broken apart.

The last Chimera dropped from the ceiling.

White Peace crouched down, pointing a finger at it from a distance.

A flash of black light.

The lump of flesh stopped moving, then pieces fell to the ground.

The tunnel fell silent.

Mu Yingying wiped the slime off her Tang Dao, then rubbed the blade clean on a clean part of the wall.

Her expression wasn’t great, but her hands were steady.

“Can these Ghost Crystals be used?” she asked, her voice a little hoarse.

“Yes,” White Peace stood up, staring at the crystals on the ground.

“The quality is very poor—too many impurities—but they can be used.”

Little Frost put away the Iron Hammer and began picking up the crystals.

She took a cloth from her backpack, wrapped it around her hands, picked them up one by one, wiped off the slime, and placed them into a cloth bag.

She was very meticulous, cleaning each one thoroughly.

White Night watched her bent back.

Auntie Frost has become a lot quieter. It feels like she has something on her mind.

White Peace walked to the edge of the tunnel, reached out, and pressed her hand against the writhing flesh wall.

Black light seeped into it.

The flesh’s writhing slowed more and more, weakening, until the dark red glow gradually dimmed.

Finally, it dried up and peeled off.

“Let’s go,” she said. “There should be more weirdness ahead.”

Little Frost wiped the last Ghost Crystal clean and tucked it into the now heavy cloth bag.

She walked back to White Night’s side, placed the bag into the bike basket, and looked down at White Night.

“Little White Night, are you okay?”

White Night shook her head.

“Auntie Frost, what about you? Did you get hurt just now?”

“Of course not. These monsters are very weak.”

Little Frost finished speaking, pushed the rusty bicycle, and followed White Peace forward.

Ahead, the tunnel returned to its original darkness and emptiness.

Only the sound of the wheels rolling over gravel and the footsteps of four people.

White Night curled up in the basket, looking at the heavy bag of Ghost Crystals.

The murky light flickered through the gaps in the cloth bag.

Each one was ugly, each one had been covered in slime.

Each one had once been part of a Chimera, and each Chimera had once been part of many lives.

They had been mashed together, forced to live, forced to suffer.

White Night didn’t know if this counted as a release.

“If I die too and end up fused together with Little White Night, I’d be okay with that.” Mu Yingying started talking nonsense again.