The two stared at each other, the very air seeming to freeze solid. Xu Xiye, very graciously, had stopped and waited for the other man to come over and speak to him. He Sui, for all his casual, languid posturing, was on high alert.
Time passed, but neither moved.
Xu Xiye: “…”
He Sui: “?”
He Sui withdrew his hand, turned, and walked away. He had no time to waste here.
Xu Xiye: “!”
What was the meaning of this? He was so tired, and yet he’d still waited for him to speak. And he just walked off without a word? Why had he even looked at him then? Wouldn’t it have been better to just keep walking from the start?
The black blob visibly swelled up, furious, but quickly deflated again. Such a bad temper. No wonder he got beaten up.
Xu Xiye decided to ignore him too. He continued his slow drift towards home. One day, one day he would find a way to install Blue Eyes inside his own house!
He Sui lifted a long leg and stepped over the barrier gate. After only a few steps inside, a repelling force surged toward him.
He lacked the identity for an authorized entry.
He Sui stepped back and knocked on the duty room door. Inside, it was pitch black, and no one answered. The door was unlocked, and a gentle push swung it open. He Sui found the registration book inside and wrote down his visiting information. When he walked back in, the repelling force was gone.
On the square behind the office building’s back entrance, Jiang Wuning was still leaning against the flowerbed, her eyes closed, a hard candy in her mouth. The artificial fruit flavor spread across her tongue—she couldn’t call it delicious, but this cheap sweetness soothed her. The curve of her lips was unreadable, yet as she worked the candy with her tongue, it seemed to carry a hint of sarcasm.
Wang Xiaodian and Little Li were huddled together. Wang Xiaodian would mutter from time to time, Little Li listening and occasionally responding. Lu Neng and Li Qing stood off to the side, constantly watching their surroundings, especially the direction of the side entrance.
None of them were in great shape, but their condition wasn’t so bad they couldn’t leave. Among the bunch, Li Qing had made the call. She’d described the terrain, and if He Sui was coming, he’d naturally arrive from that side entrance.
He Sui had said he’d come, and he would. But he was taking a while, and the two waiting couldn’t help but grow anxious.
Crunch.
Jiang Wuning bit down on her candy, opened her eyes, and looked toward a spot ahead. A man had appeared there at some point without her notice—tall, handsome, his gaze falling on them with directness.
He Sui.
If not for that completely unveiled stare, Jiang Wuning wouldn’t have detected his arrival so quickly. The fact that Lu Neng and Li Qing were still staring at the entrance showed just how unfathomable He Sui’s strength was.
“Looking for me?”
The man’s voice was deep and pleasing. With no attempt to hide his footsteps, Lu Neng and Li Qing finally realized he was there, a beat too late.
“Cap-Captain He!”
“Captain He!”
“I don’t lead a team,” He Sui said, not falling for the flattery. His tone was flat. “He Sui is fine.”
Having said that, he looked to Jiang Wuning, his gaze sweeping over the huddled pair of Wang Xiaodian and Little Li in passing.
Wang Xiaodian and Little Li both stiffened, not daring to speak or move. Such a strong presence, so much pressure. It was just a casual glance, but you couldn’t relax for a second.
Jiang Wuning stood up. “Sorry to trouble you to come to the rescue, Captain He.” She also called him Captain He.
It was true; He Sui didn’t lead a team. But since he was there to bail them out, upon arrival, he was the de facto chief. His orders took priority. He wasn’t the captain, but he was above the captain.
Call him He Sui? No one dared; it wouldn’t be appropriate.
Call him Brother He? Forget the age difference, were they even close enough for that?
After speaking, Jiang Wuning added, “Or should we call you Boss He instead of Captain He?”
It made him sound like some mafia boss. He Sui clicked his tongue. “Forget it. Just tell me. Where is the source?”
“8th floor. The only open office. The Pollution Source’s main body is inside. It’s the owner of the company. The contamination is very strong, but once you get inside, it should be easy to kill.” Jiang Wuning recalled the tactile sensation under her feet again—the soft, springy walls of flesh, the endless flow of blood water… it felt like a blood vessel.
A vessel connected to a heart.
The office was that closed heart, a heart that only opened at night. An incredibly soft heart. You could easily kill it once you stepped inside, but Jiang Wuning hadn’t had the ability to step inside at the time.
“Alright.” He Sui didn’t say more and immediately prepared to leave.
Jiang Wuning suddenly added another sentence: “There should be an Anomaly up there.”
He Sui said nothing, just looked at her.
Jiang Wuning was silent for a moment, then thought of a word. “It’s a good one.”
He Sui left. Wang Xiaodian let out a sigh of relief but couldn’t help worrying. He whispered to Little Li, “The boss didn’t say anything when he left. He wouldn’t be so ruthless as to kill my Shifu too, would he?”
They both knew the Anomaly Jiang Wuning meant was Xu Xiye.
Little Li shook his head nervously. “I don’t know. He’s a bit terrifying.”
He hadn’t really dared to look at his face, his gaze staying fixed on the hem of his clothes. Though the fabric was black, you could see one spot was a much deeper shade. A faint whiff of blood clung to it, as if he’d just been through a slaughter, bathed in blood. He was dangerous.
Jiang Wuning overheard their conversation. She thought it over and said, “He probably won’t take the initiative to attack.”
He Sui’s status was unique. No one could guess his true attitude toward Anomalies—sometimes tolerant, sometimes violent, it seemed to depend entirely on his whim.
Inside the office on the 8th floor, as Xu Xiye had left, Feng Dun’s condition was visibly deteriorating.
His sanity was being swallowed.
He was about to forget his true self.
Excitement and madness surged. He seemed to have only one thought left: Spread. Occupy. Let us be everywhere.
Some of Feng Dun’s eyes turned venomous and insane. Others turned evil and disgusting. And a few, in their murkiness, stared down at his own feet.
Countless blood vessels, some thick, some thin, extended from the floor, connecting to his body. He tried to tear them off, but even more vessels grew back, faster.
He couldn’t leave this place.
His gaze finally fell on that pinkish-white card, the 5th rule: If any patient does not wish to trouble us or others, they may also kill themselves. Upon which, we shall retrieve and accommodate your remains (if any).
Feng Dun had already tried to kill himself once. Now he wanted to do it a second time.
But how did an Anomaly kill itself? Feng Dun didn’t know yet.
He raised a hand and touched his own chest. He could no longer find his heart.
Perhaps he could take off his own head?
He felt for his neck. His head was removed and placed on the desk, facing him. It was a face with disheveled hair and no features.
Feng Dun stroked that face. Something was thumping wildly. He didn’t know where the sound came from, only that he felt excitement.
No face.
Don’t want a face.
Someone is coming. He wants to take their face.
No one gets a face.
He put his head back on. Something flickered through his mind. Was there something he still had to do?
~
He Sui came up by elevator. As he walked out towards the office, the other elevator door happened to open. No one was inside, only a pair of old black cloth shoes.
He Sui’s expression remained completely unchanged. His pace didn’t falter. He just left a remark as he passed: “If you don’t want to die, get lost.”
Sister Liu: “?”
Even someone as indifferent as Sister Liu couldn’t help but be taken aback. This young man, what a fiery temper. Is he here to collect a debt? Forget it, forget it, I’m leaving.
The moment he entered the polluted zone, He Sui’s Sanity Value wasn’t just high, it was impossibly stable. The corridor that had felt like a heavy trudge to Jiang Wuning was perfectly ordinary for him. With long strides, he reached the boss’s office door in no time. He knocked twice at random, then walked right in.
The office was pitch-black, no lights on. He Sui didn’t bother to find the switch. He walked unhindered to the back of the desk, nudged the boss’s office chair aside, and, when the center spot was clear, he stood there and turned on the computer. He also found the boss’s cellphone on the desk.
In short, he was acting completely like he owned the place.
The boss’s face now was different from the one Xu Xiye had seen. It was swollen and smooth, where you could barely make out one set of features. His mouth opened and closed, producing slurred, indistinct sounds.
He Sui connected the phone to the computer. His long, powerful fingers flew across the keyboard. He also casually remarked to the boss, “You’re about to die. After you die, your assets disappear. Might as well transfer the money to my card before that. What’s the password? If you can talk, just tell me directly. Saves me the time of cracking it.”
Boss: “@！#%&……”
He Sui: click-clack-click-clack.
Things in the Inner World had really no technical sophistication whatsoever. He Sui found cracking them exceptionally easy. The only obstacle was the layer upon layer of mental contamination that came with doing it, but even then, He Sui didn’t so much as frown.
Unlike everyone else who entered the Inner World and could only get temporary identities, He Sui was born in the Inner World. He was the sole person with an official identity there.
Identity in the Inner World wasn’t proven by an ID card or a family registry. It had its own rules for recognition, and He Sui was the one who fit those rules.
So, while others survived by temping for meal tickets, He Sui’s account had long since held huge sums of money.
It was a simple thing, just like now: before eliminating the Pollution Source, you transfer the Pollution Source’s money into your own card.
Because the sums were so large, he couldn’t be bothered to check how many zeros were in the boss’s account balance, nor to go to the finance office to find the company account.
After a flurry of operations, the boss’s phone and He Sui’s phone received a text message almost simultaneously. One was a debit notice, the other, a credit notice.
Seeing this, the boss seemed to recall something. Before his sanity completely vanished, he managed to force out two words with difficulty: “W… wages…”
He Sui didn’t catch it, nor did he care. He was in a hurry to clock out.
He put his phone in his pocket, stared at the boss for a moment, then did a lap around the office. As he walked, silver lightning spread like a living creature from the corners along the walls, across the ceiling, onto the floor, until the entire room was blanketed. He Sui walked out and pulled the door shut behind him.
The instant he was out, the sound of a violent explosion detonated inside the room. He Sui didn’t look back. The moment he took the elevator down to the ground floor, the entire building began to shake. The elevator doors opened, He Sui stepped out, and his figure vanished into the air.
The office collapsed. The heart ruptured. The building itself was soon to follow.
“Go. Find any random door and push it open. At the same time, imagine your identity and your origin in your mind.” Jiang Wuning spoke as she led the others towards the nearest doorway. She pulled open a door but didn’t go in right away, letting Wang Xiaodian and Little Li go first. “You’ve been missing for days. No telling what’s happened to your circumstances back in reality. Someone will find you to deal with the related affairs. Also, what’s remembered persistently will echo. If you don’t want to be pulled in again, it’s best to forget it all, cleanly.”
She stepped aside, gesturing with an inviting sweep of her arm, a most standard customer-service smile on her face. “Alright. Remember what I said. Go on through.”
Wang Xiaodian stood at the front, a little nervous, hesitating. Seeing this, Li Qing stepped up and demonstrated. With no hesitation, she walked through the doorway. It was no different from passing through any ordinary door, but in the next second, she vanished entirely.
Wang Xiaodian: “…She’s gone back?”
Lu Neng: “That’s right. Don’t be nervous. As long as you have a clear understanding of your identity and where you come from, you’ll pass through safely.”
“Oh, oh, I get it. Thank you, Sister Ning, Brother Lu.” He was about to leave but then remembered his stomach. “But this…”
Lu Neng, who’d been afflicted by the same thing as Wang Xiaodian, could still feel the thing in his gut, but he was very calm. “When the Pollution Source completely vanishes, the contamination will vanish too. It’ll be fine.”
Wang Xiaodian was relieved. He took one last look at the skyscraper, stepped into the door, and disappeared.
After Wang Xiaodian came Little Li, then Lu Neng, and finally Jiang Wuning.
BOOM! The sound of collapse rumbled outward. Many heard it. Some cared, some didn’t.
Xu Xiye heard it faintly. He didn’t care.
By then, he had reached his residential complex’s gate. As he drifted, he started plummeting straight toward the ground. A hand, formed of rough tree bark, caught him.
It was the complex’s Gatekeeper Grandpa.
“Ho ho… it’s little Ye ho ho whoosh,” Grandpa said, wobbling his branches to make his palm a bit bigger, so he could better hold the black blob in his hand.
The grandpa’s vocalizations were strange, like the sound of wind blowing through a hollow tree, huffed and wheezed. Non-locals found it very hard to understand. “Little Ye, don’t you hate crawling on the ground the most? Why were you just falling now, hm? Did you trip on something?”
Xu Xiye had grown up here. He was very familiar with Grandpa. Seeing he didn’t need to exert himself, he simply sprawled out in the old tree’s hand. “Grandpa, I don’t want to move.”
Grandpa looked at him affectionately. He produced two apples from who-knows-where and offered them. “All tuckered out, are we? Here, have some fruit. Grandpa just picked them. Fresh.”
This time, Xu Xiye didn’t stand on ceremony. The apples rolled into his pitch-black body. A few crunch-crunches later, it was silent.
“Finished.”
“Want more? If you want more, Grandpa will get you some.”
“Don’t want any.”
“This child… how did you get so tired?”
Ah. Xu Xiye sighed. Working a day job and freelancing at night—freelancing which involved talking to mental patients—how could he not be tired?
He was too tired to explain, just lay there, not moving, in Grandpa’s hand.
Grandpa didn’t press him. His roots anchored at the complex gate, and his branch-woven arm began stretching into the residential area. “Grandpa will take you home.”
Xu Xiye rolled over and gave a soft “Mm.”
He actually felt much better, but he usually loved crawling around in the trees anyway when he went out, so now he wasn’t going to say he’d go by himself.
The branches grew rapidly, winding around any obstacles they met. Grandpa didn’t take the elevator or stairs, reaching upwards directly, planning to send Xu Xiye in through the window.
Grandpa said no more, and Xu Xiye stayed quiet too. Suddenly, a rattling sound arose, like a marble rolling across the ground. Wherever they moved, the sound followed.
Grandpa reached out a branch to sweep the thing aside, but it dodged nimbly, bouncing up from the ground. This time, the sound it made wasn’t glass striking the floor, but a springy boing-boing.
The object’s bouncing height was always exactly level with Xu Xiye. It was clearly coming for him. Xu Xiye extended a Tentacle and grabbed it. He squeezed it in his grip—ice-cold, soft, and bouncy. Not a glass marble, but an eyeball.
This was Uncle Yan’s eyeball from downstairs. Xu Xiye held it up in front of him, and the eyeball even rolled around at him.
Xu Xiye squeezed hard, and the black orb in the center was squished out with a pop, landing on his body.
Xu Xiye: “…”
Uncle Yan’s eye was totally different. That part was an iris, a disk-shaped membrane, not a round bead. He’d learned that in school, and he’d looked at his own and his classmates’ eyes. Everyone was the same. Only Uncle Yan was different.
Probably because of this, Uncle Yan’s eyes, even when plucked out, retained their brightness, never losing their luster. It was just a pity that Uncle Yan’s eyes were black like his own. He had no interest in them.
If only Blue Eyes could be like this too.
He’d heard Uncle Yan had become this way after eating a bug with eyes all over its back. Should he catch one and feed it to Blue Eyes?
Xu Xiye was lost in thought when the eyeball spoke, the round pit where the orb had been opening and closing: “What’s the matter?”
Grandpa said, “Little Ye is tired. Don’t you bother him.”
The eyeball said, “I was just having a look.”
Grandpa had already reached the front of their building. Xu Xiye picked up the black eyeball that had fallen on him and fit it back into place. He squeezed it and said, “Uncle Yan, I’m fine. Thank you, Grandpa. I’m going inside now.”
By now they were right at the fifth floor. He squeezed in through a crack in the window. Dawn was approaching. He still had to go to work tomorrow.
