Evil As Humans, page 158
The gap was torn open for the umpteenth time, and this time it stayed open for half a second longer than before.
There was no direct road to another world inside the gap. On the contrary, it was dark inside, with countless large and semi-transparent cavities that looked like enlarged pomegranates.
Each cavity was blurry, with different scenery shadows visible inside. Those shadows constantly twisted and squeezed each other, and the colors mixed together, forming a dim compound eye that made people nauseous.
This immature gap led to a strange space close to the human world but was absolutely deserted.
No one knew where a mature gap would lead, and those who entered it never returned.
At this moment, Yin Ren only had this gap that was about to collapse. It was shallower than an immature gap, and the countless colorful masses inside it were like unopened “passages.” On the other side, perhaps it was already in a deeper, more untouchable place.
Even if he could open a path, where should he lead Mr. Qiu?
Numbly, amidst the excruciating pain of flesh and blood bursting, Yin Ren thought to himself.
If Mr. Qiu’s body was the same as Qi Xin’s, and damage wasn’t fundamental, what should he do? He had to prepare for the worst and choose a battlefield that was inaccessible…
Not far away, Lu Xiaohe’s device suddenly emitted a pleasant beeping sound.
It was Zhong Chengshuo’s hamster device that was just cracked!
Yin Ren stopped thinking instantly and hurriedly ran to Lu Xiaohe’s device. Unfortunately, the device was too complicated. His fingers were groping in a hurry, and he didn’t know how to start it. He wanted to press randomly, but he was afraid of mishandling it and destroying the hard-earned data.
Fortunately, in less than three minutes, Lu Xiaohe, with disheveled hair and a dirty face, rushed in with the laptop in her hand.
“Get out of the way!” she shouted with the typical arrogance of a science post, rushing towards the screen like a cannonball, almost leaving afterimages of her fingers.
Countless obscure and difficult-to-understand data instantly filled the screen. Lu Xiaohe’s eyes moved quickly, and the screen scrolled down one by one. Yin Ren was nervously staring at Lu Xiaohe’s expression, feeling helpless for a while.
Lu Xiaohe’s expression went from excitement to confusion, and finally settled into “worry”.
Yin Ren’s hopeful red eyes dimmed, and he remained silent.
“…The positioning result has indeed come out.” Lu Xiaohe cleared her throat twice. “But the coordinates are very strange… I have calculated it several times, and they are all coordinates that should not exist in the world. There is always an additional correction parameter… I’m sorry, this explanation is hard to understand, isn’t it?”
She thought for a while.
“Simply put, if Zhong Chengshuo’s algorithm is correct, the hamster pendant is in a space that does not exist in the world.”
“Zhong Chengshuo’s algorithm won’t be wrong.”
Yin Ren answered very confidently.
“His algorithms especially can’t be wrong now.”
Wait a minute.
A space that doesn’t exist in the world.
The Other Side was a space that didn’t exist in the world. According to Shian’s information, dead objects couldn’t enter The Other Side. That meant the hamster pendant was in a place between “this world” and “The Other Side”.
It neither existed in this world, nor was it truly in The Other Side… For example, it could be in an immature or already decaying gap.
Yin Ren stared fiercely at the now-closed huge gap. His gaze penetrated through the darkness and looked towards the countless blurred images revealed when it was opened.
“Very good,” he said.
“I know where the battlefield should be now.”
Evil As Humans Ch144
Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
* * *
Chapter 144: Desperation
Time reversed to the morning of that day.
In an underground location, Zhong Chengshuo held onto the front of the human guard’s clothing tightly.
The zombie guard lay on the side, watching helplessly. Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t use magic, but he was skilled at tearing off the corpse talisman with his nails, just like King Yama, the King of Hell.
With its movement and vocal nodes destroyed, the zombie guard turned into a crude humanoid canvas, lying on the wall corner, at Zhong Chengshuo’s mercy.
The human guard, who was caught by the collar, was anxious. Zhong Chengshuo didn’t care about his thoughts. He tightened his fingers, and asked again, “Where are the personal items of the corpses stored?”
Dead people always hated having their things taken away, and this was a universal truth.
The human guard closed his mouth, having given up on running away. He would occasionally glance at the door, hoping someone would notice the broken light—
This thing, which he didn’t know what it was, only used physical attacks and Sunken Society certainly had the numbers to overwhelm it!
But the hands of this thing were so cold, it made him uneasy.
After asking his question, Zhong Chengshuo froze in place like a statue, silently waiting for thirty seconds. Just as the thirty-second mark passed, he extended his other hand and began to remove the human guard’s uniform.
The human guard instinctively protected his chest and exclaimed, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Otherwise, it will be stained with blood later,” Zhong Chengshuo replied calmly, slowly unbuttoning the uniform as if he were skinning an animal.
The human guard: “……”
The human guard: “Your personal belongings will be classified and stored in the relic warehouse for seven days and nights. After confirming that there are no problems, they will be packaged and sent to the research department outside for identification. Do you need me to guide you to the relic warehouse?”
He didn’t even dare to take a breath halfway through, and by the end of his sentence, he barely had a whistle in his voice.
Zhong Chengshuo stopped unbuttoning the uniform.
“Okay.”
He stared at the human guard with Minister Zou’s dull eyes.
“Then give me the personal belongings of this person first.”
The human guard tremblingly took out Minister Zou’s phone and then nervously handed over his own phone. Zhong Chengshuo put both phones in his pocket and lifted the zombie guard with one hand, placing it back at the entrance to the underground corpse vault while it was still dark.
The zombie guard let out a sigh of relief. It dutifully stood in place, decorating the area with the original “peace” that was there before. Before the corpse talisman was repaired, it couldn’t speak or move, which meant it would be mostly his unlucky colleague who would be held accountable.
It looked at Zhong Chengshuo and the human guard walking away with an almost sympathetic look.
Hopefully, this guy was just a lonely ghost who wanted to retrieve his private belongings, or else this matter wouldn’t end well.
The pale lamps gradually retreated. Zhong Chengshuo and the guard walked shoulder-to-shoulder through the dim corridor that was similar to a tomb due to the low ceilings towards the underground corpse vault exit. The nearby corridors were complicated like a spider’s web, and the guard deliberately chose the “proper” main roads.
Zhong Chengshuo could see the desire in his eyes. The guard most likely wanted to trigger an alarm to notify Sunken Society, so he followed quietly, noting all the scenes along the way. Whenever this guard wanted to walk the same path again, he would stop quietly and stare at the uniform buttons of the guards without expression, causing the guard to almost stumble over his own feet.
Click clack.
The sound of two pairs of footsteps, one light and one heavy, echoed in the corridor. Zhong Chengshuo kept puffing his chest, but he didn’t really breathe. In contrast, the guard’s breathing became increasingly heavy and rapid.
“How much further is it to the relic warehouse?” Zhong Chengshuo asked as if chatting.
“We have to change zones,” the guard said hoarsely. “This area only stores individual bodies and specimens. I’m not lying to you…”
“I know, some practitioners’ personal belongings may react with their bodies and cause problems,” Zhong Chengshuo continued to answer with a leaky throat yet his tone was calm enough to make one’s hair stand on end. “But considering convenience, the warehouse and the morgue can’t be too far apart. At least not more than thirty minutes of a straight-line distance.”
The guard hung his head and dared not say a word.
This evil thing that came out was not only strong but also very difficult to fool.
It had decisively killed Minister Zou and disabled the zombie guard. The guard thought it would create a commotion at the entrance of the underground corpse vault, relying on its strength, but who knew this evil thing was exceptionally calm and completely untrickable…
Making a big fuss was certainly cool, but Sunken Society could easily block it using crowd tactics.
This guy not only wanted to retrieve his own belongings but also wanted to escape.
The guard’s plan to escape in the chaos was ruined, and he didn’t dare to intentionally provoke this evil thing. At this point, he could only hope that the people of Sunken Society would discover that something was wrong on their own.
Perhaps some strange god heard the guard’s thoughts, as the next moment, Minister Zou’s phone rang.
Zhong Chengshuo slowly took it out and was relieved to find the face recognition unlock option.
He declined the call directly and quickly replied with one hand.
It was an internal communication group called “Technical Department Two~Five”.
[Technical Department Two—Zou: I’m caught up with something. It’s not convenient to talk.]
[Technical Department Two—Han: The boss is coming for a meeting this morning. Hurry up. It’s important.]
[Technical Department Two—Zou: Okay.]
‘Time’s running out,’ Zhong Chengshuo thought.
According to the guard, after the items here were confirmed to be okay, they would be “transported out”.
He had been here for less than seven days, so the hamster phone charm must still be here. But the fact that they had to pack and transport it was enough to make him smell that something was off.
Sunken Society could easily take defensive and protective measures and build a separate laboratory near the corpse vault. Insisting on building the laboratory outside could only mean that there was something fishy about this place.
In other words, it was hard to escape from here.
He couldn’t go to the so-called boss meeting. At most, his colleagues would notice something was wrong with Mr. Zou after half a day.
Zhong Chengshuo’s footsteps became heavier, causing the guard to jump in place. He led Zhong Chengshuo up and down, turning probably eighteen corners, until they finally arrived at a new area.
Compared to the dim and gloomy corpse vault, the walls here were painted light green, giving it a somewhat hospital-like feeling, and there were fewer messy fork roads.
There was a fenced wall with an open gate between the two areas, and a detector beside the gate flickered with a bright green light.
Zhong Chengshuo stopped cautiously.
“This is the storage area, and we guards have permission to be here.” Seeing Zhong Chengshuo’s gaze, the guard quickly explained his necessity, “The relic warehouse is as big as a maze, and it’s hidden deep. It’s hard for you to find it alone.”
Zhong Chengshuo supported Minister Zou’s heavy head and said, “Let’s go.”
Just as the two of them passed through the narrow gate of the fence and stepped into the storage area, the bright green lights in the corners they couldn’t see suddenly went out.
This scene was being projected in real-time on a display screen in another underground building. Perhaps due to poor signal, the image flickered and blurred.
Wei Huaqian sat at the end of a long table with three other people sitting sparsely around it.
One of them was thin and sweating, wiping his face with a tissue over and over again.
“Minister Han, is this what you called ‘no problem’?” A woman with round and gentle features spoke. Her voice was strangely mixed with coquettishness and contempt. “The meeting is about to start, and he followed a guard to the storage area?”
“He said he…was caught up in something. Maybe he’s just looking for something.” Minister Han was like a fish out of water. His mouth opened and closed, unable to suppress the guilt in his voice.
“Come on, isn’t he still walking? Is the situation that urgent that he’s using Sunken Society’s property for private use?” The woman sneered.
“Boss Qu is so sharp. You’re able to guess there might be something wrong right away.” The only old man at the table didn’t forget to flatter.
Wei Huaqian didn’t even look at the old man. His eyes were fixed on the bloated figure on the screen.
The other three ministers didn’t know that Minister Zou had begged and pleaded to get into this meeting. The mistake during the Gengsheng Town incident was too big, and before they could fix it, Mr. Qiu caused a disturbance that disrupted Shian, indirectly dragging Sunken Society into trouble.
At this critical juncture, Minister Zou planned to use Zhong Chengshuo’s corpse to make a comeback and present an important plan—there was no time to waste, so they were counting on him.
The meeting had just started for half a minute when Wei Huaqian immediately ordered surveillance near the corpse vault to be accessed.
“Evil things don’t just appear out of thin air. Perhaps the employees under Lao Zou’s command made an operational mistake.” The middle-aged woman was the first to react. “There are two dangerous corpses stored there for over three hundred years. I remember their characteristics…”
Wei Huaqian: “The night is long and full of dreams. Isolate the storage area and use magic to destroy it.”
The other three fell silent instantly.
“That’s… quite severe.” Minister Han was the first to react.
Valuables had long been transferred to the closed area, so the items sent in the past seven days were all low-value personal items. The value of the corpse vault was much higher than that of the storage area, so the urgent matter was to eliminate any anomaly as soon as possible.
He quickly pulled out his phone and gave instructions.
Wei Huaqian had been staring at Minister Zou on the screen the entire time, tapping his fingers on the desk from time to time.
Less than ten seconds after Minister Han hung up the phone, the screen suddenly switched. Thick metal plates dropped on both sides of the gate, completely separating the relic warehouse from the corpse vault.
On the other side of those flashing, blurry colored blocks, Zhong Chengshuo and the guard stopped in their tracks.
The guard let out a sob.
As a guard at the Sunken Society Haigu Branch, he had at least figured out the various hidden rules of the organization. Now that all escape routes had been completely blocked, Sunken Society had no intention of letting him go back alive.
Next, there would definitely be a “great purge”.
Zhong Chengshuo sighed. “Faster than I thought.”
As he spoke, the pale green walls around them suddenly lit up, casting an ominous glow that made the hallway look like day time. Zhong Chengshuo kicked the guard, who was as still as a statue, and pounced on him.
The green light covered both of them from head to toe, shining brightly and continuously.
Even though Zhong Chengshuo managed to block most of the light, the guard’s limbs were still exposed to the green light. He made an inhuman groaning sound, and when he moved slightly, his limbs were left behind like decorations made of sand, instantly turning into flesh-colored powder.
There was no blood from the cut. The guard twisted his body in confusion, as if commanding his now disappeared limbs.
He didn’t even realize that half of his head had been cut off, leaving only a fragmented wound covered in powder.
“Ah… Ah…” the guard murmured. “Why… I’m only half a cultivator… Why is it so serious…”
He turned his remaining eye around in desperation. “Why… are you fine… Why…”
Before he could finish speaking, the guard began to cough violently. Flesh-colored powder mixed with blood splattered on the ground.
Zhong Chengshuo was like a dead umbrella, silently propping himself up on the guard’s body, creating a small patch of shade in the green light.
“I’m leaving,” Zhong Chengshuo said calmly. “You can tell me the direction of the relic warehouse or you can remain silent.”
The guard looked at him in fear and despair with tears overflowing from his remaining eye.
“The guards of Sunken Society’s corpse vault are usually ordinary cultivators who have been in the organization for at least ten years. You know they experiment on people, but you still want to help guard it. A miserable death is a common outcome.”
Zhong Chengshuo lowered his eyes, looking directly at the muddy pupils of the corpse, revealing a thick darkness. His voice was becoming softer, with a sound like liquid seepage, almost as if he was trying to soothe a crying baby to sleep.
The guard shook his head desperately, like a leaf in the wind, causing the missing pieces of his head to fall like sand.
Fear.
Zhong Chengshuo quietly chewed on his fear, frozen in place like a plant. Time ticked by slowly until he finally bent down and whispered something into the guard’s ear.
The guard’s tears gushed down as he too muttered a response. After speaking, a miracle-like calmness washed over the guard’s once hopeless face.
……
Outside the screen, Wei Huaqian narrowed his eyes and stopped tapping his fingers on the table. They could only see Minister Zou slowly standing up, but he didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he stood there silently. The guard, now without limbs and only part of his head, was completely exposed to the light. He writhed like a salted slug, and in less than a minute, a living person was turned to dust amidst the magical radiance.
There was no direct road to another world inside the gap. On the contrary, it was dark inside, with countless large and semi-transparent cavities that looked like enlarged pomegranates.
Each cavity was blurry, with different scenery shadows visible inside. Those shadows constantly twisted and squeezed each other, and the colors mixed together, forming a dim compound eye that made people nauseous.
This immature gap led to a strange space close to the human world but was absolutely deserted.
No one knew where a mature gap would lead, and those who entered it never returned.
At this moment, Yin Ren only had this gap that was about to collapse. It was shallower than an immature gap, and the countless colorful masses inside it were like unopened “passages.” On the other side, perhaps it was already in a deeper, more untouchable place.
Even if he could open a path, where should he lead Mr. Qiu?
Numbly, amidst the excruciating pain of flesh and blood bursting, Yin Ren thought to himself.
If Mr. Qiu’s body was the same as Qi Xin’s, and damage wasn’t fundamental, what should he do? He had to prepare for the worst and choose a battlefield that was inaccessible…
Not far away, Lu Xiaohe’s device suddenly emitted a pleasant beeping sound.
It was Zhong Chengshuo’s hamster device that was just cracked!
Yin Ren stopped thinking instantly and hurriedly ran to Lu Xiaohe’s device. Unfortunately, the device was too complicated. His fingers were groping in a hurry, and he didn’t know how to start it. He wanted to press randomly, but he was afraid of mishandling it and destroying the hard-earned data.
Fortunately, in less than three minutes, Lu Xiaohe, with disheveled hair and a dirty face, rushed in with the laptop in her hand.
“Get out of the way!” she shouted with the typical arrogance of a science post, rushing towards the screen like a cannonball, almost leaving afterimages of her fingers.
Countless obscure and difficult-to-understand data instantly filled the screen. Lu Xiaohe’s eyes moved quickly, and the screen scrolled down one by one. Yin Ren was nervously staring at Lu Xiaohe’s expression, feeling helpless for a while.
Lu Xiaohe’s expression went from excitement to confusion, and finally settled into “worry”.
Yin Ren’s hopeful red eyes dimmed, and he remained silent.
“…The positioning result has indeed come out.” Lu Xiaohe cleared her throat twice. “But the coordinates are very strange… I have calculated it several times, and they are all coordinates that should not exist in the world. There is always an additional correction parameter… I’m sorry, this explanation is hard to understand, isn’t it?”
She thought for a while.
“Simply put, if Zhong Chengshuo’s algorithm is correct, the hamster pendant is in a space that does not exist in the world.”
“Zhong Chengshuo’s algorithm won’t be wrong.”
Yin Ren answered very confidently.
“His algorithms especially can’t be wrong now.”
Wait a minute.
A space that doesn’t exist in the world.
The Other Side was a space that didn’t exist in the world. According to Shian’s information, dead objects couldn’t enter The Other Side. That meant the hamster pendant was in a place between “this world” and “The Other Side”.
It neither existed in this world, nor was it truly in The Other Side… For example, it could be in an immature or already decaying gap.
Yin Ren stared fiercely at the now-closed huge gap. His gaze penetrated through the darkness and looked towards the countless blurred images revealed when it was opened.
“Very good,” he said.
“I know where the battlefield should be now.”
Evil As Humans Ch144
Author: 年终 / Nian Zhong
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
* * *
Chapter 144: Desperation
Time reversed to the morning of that day.
In an underground location, Zhong Chengshuo held onto the front of the human guard’s clothing tightly.
The zombie guard lay on the side, watching helplessly. Zhong Chengshuo couldn’t use magic, but he was skilled at tearing off the corpse talisman with his nails, just like King Yama, the King of Hell.
With its movement and vocal nodes destroyed, the zombie guard turned into a crude humanoid canvas, lying on the wall corner, at Zhong Chengshuo’s mercy.
The human guard, who was caught by the collar, was anxious. Zhong Chengshuo didn’t care about his thoughts. He tightened his fingers, and asked again, “Where are the personal items of the corpses stored?”
Dead people always hated having their things taken away, and this was a universal truth.
The human guard closed his mouth, having given up on running away. He would occasionally glance at the door, hoping someone would notice the broken light—
This thing, which he didn’t know what it was, only used physical attacks and Sunken Society certainly had the numbers to overwhelm it!
But the hands of this thing were so cold, it made him uneasy.
After asking his question, Zhong Chengshuo froze in place like a statue, silently waiting for thirty seconds. Just as the thirty-second mark passed, he extended his other hand and began to remove the human guard’s uniform.
The human guard instinctively protected his chest and exclaimed, “What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Otherwise, it will be stained with blood later,” Zhong Chengshuo replied calmly, slowly unbuttoning the uniform as if he were skinning an animal.
The human guard: “……”
The human guard: “Your personal belongings will be classified and stored in the relic warehouse for seven days and nights. After confirming that there are no problems, they will be packaged and sent to the research department outside for identification. Do you need me to guide you to the relic warehouse?”
He didn’t even dare to take a breath halfway through, and by the end of his sentence, he barely had a whistle in his voice.
Zhong Chengshuo stopped unbuttoning the uniform.
“Okay.”
He stared at the human guard with Minister Zou’s dull eyes.
“Then give me the personal belongings of this person first.”
The human guard tremblingly took out Minister Zou’s phone and then nervously handed over his own phone. Zhong Chengshuo put both phones in his pocket and lifted the zombie guard with one hand, placing it back at the entrance to the underground corpse vault while it was still dark.
The zombie guard let out a sigh of relief. It dutifully stood in place, decorating the area with the original “peace” that was there before. Before the corpse talisman was repaired, it couldn’t speak or move, which meant it would be mostly his unlucky colleague who would be held accountable.
It looked at Zhong Chengshuo and the human guard walking away with an almost sympathetic look.
Hopefully, this guy was just a lonely ghost who wanted to retrieve his private belongings, or else this matter wouldn’t end well.
The pale lamps gradually retreated. Zhong Chengshuo and the guard walked shoulder-to-shoulder through the dim corridor that was similar to a tomb due to the low ceilings towards the underground corpse vault exit. The nearby corridors were complicated like a spider’s web, and the guard deliberately chose the “proper” main roads.
Zhong Chengshuo could see the desire in his eyes. The guard most likely wanted to trigger an alarm to notify Sunken Society, so he followed quietly, noting all the scenes along the way. Whenever this guard wanted to walk the same path again, he would stop quietly and stare at the uniform buttons of the guards without expression, causing the guard to almost stumble over his own feet.
Click clack.
The sound of two pairs of footsteps, one light and one heavy, echoed in the corridor. Zhong Chengshuo kept puffing his chest, but he didn’t really breathe. In contrast, the guard’s breathing became increasingly heavy and rapid.
“How much further is it to the relic warehouse?” Zhong Chengshuo asked as if chatting.
“We have to change zones,” the guard said hoarsely. “This area only stores individual bodies and specimens. I’m not lying to you…”
“I know, some practitioners’ personal belongings may react with their bodies and cause problems,” Zhong Chengshuo continued to answer with a leaky throat yet his tone was calm enough to make one’s hair stand on end. “But considering convenience, the warehouse and the morgue can’t be too far apart. At least not more than thirty minutes of a straight-line distance.”
The guard hung his head and dared not say a word.
This evil thing that came out was not only strong but also very difficult to fool.
It had decisively killed Minister Zou and disabled the zombie guard. The guard thought it would create a commotion at the entrance of the underground corpse vault, relying on its strength, but who knew this evil thing was exceptionally calm and completely untrickable…
Making a big fuss was certainly cool, but Sunken Society could easily block it using crowd tactics.
This guy not only wanted to retrieve his own belongings but also wanted to escape.
The guard’s plan to escape in the chaos was ruined, and he didn’t dare to intentionally provoke this evil thing. At this point, he could only hope that the people of Sunken Society would discover that something was wrong on their own.
Perhaps some strange god heard the guard’s thoughts, as the next moment, Minister Zou’s phone rang.
Zhong Chengshuo slowly took it out and was relieved to find the face recognition unlock option.
He declined the call directly and quickly replied with one hand.
It was an internal communication group called “Technical Department Two~Five”.
[Technical Department Two—Zou: I’m caught up with something. It’s not convenient to talk.]
[Technical Department Two—Han: The boss is coming for a meeting this morning. Hurry up. It’s important.]
[Technical Department Two—Zou: Okay.]
‘Time’s running out,’ Zhong Chengshuo thought.
According to the guard, after the items here were confirmed to be okay, they would be “transported out”.
He had been here for less than seven days, so the hamster phone charm must still be here. But the fact that they had to pack and transport it was enough to make him smell that something was off.
Sunken Society could easily take defensive and protective measures and build a separate laboratory near the corpse vault. Insisting on building the laboratory outside could only mean that there was something fishy about this place.
In other words, it was hard to escape from here.
He couldn’t go to the so-called boss meeting. At most, his colleagues would notice something was wrong with Mr. Zou after half a day.
Zhong Chengshuo’s footsteps became heavier, causing the guard to jump in place. He led Zhong Chengshuo up and down, turning probably eighteen corners, until they finally arrived at a new area.
Compared to the dim and gloomy corpse vault, the walls here were painted light green, giving it a somewhat hospital-like feeling, and there were fewer messy fork roads.
There was a fenced wall with an open gate between the two areas, and a detector beside the gate flickered with a bright green light.
Zhong Chengshuo stopped cautiously.
“This is the storage area, and we guards have permission to be here.” Seeing Zhong Chengshuo’s gaze, the guard quickly explained his necessity, “The relic warehouse is as big as a maze, and it’s hidden deep. It’s hard for you to find it alone.”
Zhong Chengshuo supported Minister Zou’s heavy head and said, “Let’s go.”
Just as the two of them passed through the narrow gate of the fence and stepped into the storage area, the bright green lights in the corners they couldn’t see suddenly went out.
This scene was being projected in real-time on a display screen in another underground building. Perhaps due to poor signal, the image flickered and blurred.
Wei Huaqian sat at the end of a long table with three other people sitting sparsely around it.
One of them was thin and sweating, wiping his face with a tissue over and over again.
“Minister Han, is this what you called ‘no problem’?” A woman with round and gentle features spoke. Her voice was strangely mixed with coquettishness and contempt. “The meeting is about to start, and he followed a guard to the storage area?”
“He said he…was caught up in something. Maybe he’s just looking for something.” Minister Han was like a fish out of water. His mouth opened and closed, unable to suppress the guilt in his voice.
“Come on, isn’t he still walking? Is the situation that urgent that he’s using Sunken Society’s property for private use?” The woman sneered.
“Boss Qu is so sharp. You’re able to guess there might be something wrong right away.” The only old man at the table didn’t forget to flatter.
Wei Huaqian didn’t even look at the old man. His eyes were fixed on the bloated figure on the screen.
The other three ministers didn’t know that Minister Zou had begged and pleaded to get into this meeting. The mistake during the Gengsheng Town incident was too big, and before they could fix it, Mr. Qiu caused a disturbance that disrupted Shian, indirectly dragging Sunken Society into trouble.
At this critical juncture, Minister Zou planned to use Zhong Chengshuo’s corpse to make a comeback and present an important plan—there was no time to waste, so they were counting on him.
The meeting had just started for half a minute when Wei Huaqian immediately ordered surveillance near the corpse vault to be accessed.
“Evil things don’t just appear out of thin air. Perhaps the employees under Lao Zou’s command made an operational mistake.” The middle-aged woman was the first to react. “There are two dangerous corpses stored there for over three hundred years. I remember their characteristics…”
Wei Huaqian: “The night is long and full of dreams. Isolate the storage area and use magic to destroy it.”
The other three fell silent instantly.
“That’s… quite severe.” Minister Han was the first to react.
Valuables had long been transferred to the closed area, so the items sent in the past seven days were all low-value personal items. The value of the corpse vault was much higher than that of the storage area, so the urgent matter was to eliminate any anomaly as soon as possible.
He quickly pulled out his phone and gave instructions.
Wei Huaqian had been staring at Minister Zou on the screen the entire time, tapping his fingers on the desk from time to time.
Less than ten seconds after Minister Han hung up the phone, the screen suddenly switched. Thick metal plates dropped on both sides of the gate, completely separating the relic warehouse from the corpse vault.
On the other side of those flashing, blurry colored blocks, Zhong Chengshuo and the guard stopped in their tracks.
The guard let out a sob.
As a guard at the Sunken Society Haigu Branch, he had at least figured out the various hidden rules of the organization. Now that all escape routes had been completely blocked, Sunken Society had no intention of letting him go back alive.
Next, there would definitely be a “great purge”.
Zhong Chengshuo sighed. “Faster than I thought.”
As he spoke, the pale green walls around them suddenly lit up, casting an ominous glow that made the hallway look like day time. Zhong Chengshuo kicked the guard, who was as still as a statue, and pounced on him.
The green light covered both of them from head to toe, shining brightly and continuously.
Even though Zhong Chengshuo managed to block most of the light, the guard’s limbs were still exposed to the green light. He made an inhuman groaning sound, and when he moved slightly, his limbs were left behind like decorations made of sand, instantly turning into flesh-colored powder.
There was no blood from the cut. The guard twisted his body in confusion, as if commanding his now disappeared limbs.
He didn’t even realize that half of his head had been cut off, leaving only a fragmented wound covered in powder.
“Ah… Ah…” the guard murmured. “Why… I’m only half a cultivator… Why is it so serious…”
He turned his remaining eye around in desperation. “Why… are you fine… Why…”
Before he could finish speaking, the guard began to cough violently. Flesh-colored powder mixed with blood splattered on the ground.
Zhong Chengshuo was like a dead umbrella, silently propping himself up on the guard’s body, creating a small patch of shade in the green light.
“I’m leaving,” Zhong Chengshuo said calmly. “You can tell me the direction of the relic warehouse or you can remain silent.”
The guard looked at him in fear and despair with tears overflowing from his remaining eye.
“The guards of Sunken Society’s corpse vault are usually ordinary cultivators who have been in the organization for at least ten years. You know they experiment on people, but you still want to help guard it. A miserable death is a common outcome.”
Zhong Chengshuo lowered his eyes, looking directly at the muddy pupils of the corpse, revealing a thick darkness. His voice was becoming softer, with a sound like liquid seepage, almost as if he was trying to soothe a crying baby to sleep.
The guard shook his head desperately, like a leaf in the wind, causing the missing pieces of his head to fall like sand.
Fear.
Zhong Chengshuo quietly chewed on his fear, frozen in place like a plant. Time ticked by slowly until he finally bent down and whispered something into the guard’s ear.
The guard’s tears gushed down as he too muttered a response. After speaking, a miracle-like calmness washed over the guard’s once hopeless face.
……
Outside the screen, Wei Huaqian narrowed his eyes and stopped tapping his fingers on the table. They could only see Minister Zou slowly standing up, but he didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he stood there silently. The guard, now without limbs and only part of his head, was completely exposed to the light. He writhed like a salted slug, and in less than a minute, a living person was turned to dust amidst the magical radiance.
