Gan Tang had originally planned to continue on foot for the next stretch of the journey.
The terrifying scene in Fengjing Village, where the nematode puppets had called out to him in unison, was still fresh in his mind. No matter what, he couldn’t afford to waste time.
However, without the illumination of a city, the mountain road was far too dark—so dark that even the glow of his phone felt weak, barely lighting up the small area directly in front of him.
To make matters worse, the road leading from Fengjing Village to the county town had been built along the edge of a cliff in many places.
Some sections didn’t even have guardrails.
Under the dim light, the uneven mountain rocks sometimes appeared to be nothing more than shallow depressions in the ground. Meanwhile, what seemed like a solid path covered in thick vegetation could actually be loose soil—one step, and the brittle roots of wild grass would crumble beneath the pressure, sending everything tumbling into the abyss below.
Gan Tang hadn’t had a proper rest in a long time, nor had he eaten a proper meal. The constant tension, the relentless fear—it had all drained him. By now, he was running on nothing but sheer willpower, a bowstring stretched to its limit.
And then, in a single moment of miscalculation—
He stepped into empty air.
His body lurched. Before he could even cry out, he was already falling.
At that moment, everyone was utterly exhausted, their reactions dulled by fatigue. They stood frozen in place, watching as Gan Tang nearly plummeted off the cliff—
But then, in that split second before disaster, his frail, aging grandmother suddenly lunged forward, grabbing his arm with astonishing speed.
Gan Tang’s breath caught.
The shock of survival didn’t last long.
A chill ran down his spine.
“Tang Tang, hold on. Hold on tight, okay?”
His grandmother’s voice came from above—hoarse, but steady.
“G-Grandma…”
Gan Tang called out.
His phone had long since slipped from his grasp, lost to the darkness below.
No moon. No stars.
They had fallen into absolute darkness.
Gan Tang lifted his head, eyes wide open—but the only thing he could see was a blurred, indistinct shadow.
His grandmother’s hand was cold.
Cold, yet strong.
Her fingers were long and powerful, clamping down on his flesh like iron shackles.
It hurt. But of course, he didn’t dare let go.
With all the strength he had left, he clung to her arm.
A few seconds later, Yu Huai finally snapped out of his shock and let out a startled yell. Carefully, he crouched down at the edge of the mountain path and grabbed hold of Gan Tang’s other arm.
With their combined effort, Gan Tang was slowly, painstakingly pulled back up.
“Hah…”
The moment his feet touched solid ground again, his legs nearly gave out.
Before he could even recover from the terror of what had just happened—
His grandmother wrapped him in a crushing embrace.
“You scared me to death, Tang Tang… How could you be so careless? We’ve come so far already… If you had fallen… If you had fallen, how could I go on living? Tang Tang…”
She was hugging him so tightly that he couldn’t breathe.
Instinctively, Gan Tang struggled—but he couldn’t break free.
The arms encircling his back were far too strong, pressing him down with an unnatural force.
“G-Grandma… I’m fine now. Really, I’m fine.”
Something about this felt off.
Gan Tang couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something was wrong.
Still, he could only whisper helplessly in his grandmother’s embrace, searching for an opening to slip away.
Her strength was… too much.
That thought stuck in his mind.
It took a long while—too long—before she finally, slowly released him.
Just as he pulled away, in that brief moment, he thought he saw—
A thin, elongated shadow slithering into the back of his grandmother’s neck.
“Grandma!”
Gan Tang let out a sharp cry.
“What’s wrong, Tang Tang? Are you still feeling unwell?”
His grandmother’s voice came from the darkness, filled with worry.
Still the same—gentle, aged, familiar.
No.
A small voice whispered in the depths of his mind.
That’s impossible.
You must have seen it wrong.
“See? You’re too tense. Too paranoid. That’s why you had such a strange hallucination.”
“How could Grandma possibly have grown a third hand?”
“She’s your grandmother.”
“She’s been acting completely normal this entire time. The fear, the panic, the love she has for you—all of it is real.”
“If she were actually possessed by something, there’s no way she could have behaved like that…”
—
“Bugs! They’re all bugs! We’re surrounded! They’re coming to eat us—they’re coming, they’re coming—”
Father Yu’s shrill scream ripped Gan Tang back to reality.
Maybe it was because of the earlier accident—Gan Tang nearly falling off the cliff—that had once again triggered something in the madman’s unpredictable mind. Father Yu had become hysterical, his excitement spiraling out of control.
Even with his hands still bound, he was charging back and forth along the narrow, perilous mountain path, where a single misstep could send him plummeting into the abyss. Yu Huai was struggling with everything he had, nearly on the verge of tears, before he finally managed to wrestle the man back to his side.
—
One crisis after another.
No phone for light.
A lunatic they couldn’t restrain.
Gan Tang, trapped in panic and hallucinations.
His grandmother, silent but visibly exhausted.
They had no choice.
In the end, the group had to stop, terrified, settling in a small, sheltered spot along the mountainside to rest.
“Once the sun comes up, we’ll keep moving,” Gan Tang told Yu Huai.
“…Yeah.”
Yu Huai let out a low hum, his voice unsteady.
“At least… I already drove twenty-something miles ahead of those things… Those bug monsters… There’s no way they could’ve caught up to us this fast, right?”
His words were meant to be comforting, but his tone was far too uncertain—too lost.
Gan Tang didn’t know how to respond.
He was exhausted. Cold. And completely hopeless.
The shadow he had glimpsed before—the arm that had slithered out from behind his grandmother’s neck—kept resurfacing in his mind. A persistent, corrosive dread gnawed at his thoughts.
At first, Gan Tang was convinced he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
There were too many things to fear, too many things to worry about. His mind was a chaotic mess, a bomb ready to explode.
But in the end, he underestimated just how fatigued he was.
He remembered leaning against the rough, jagged mountain rocks—just thinking.
And then, in the next second—
Darkness.
He plummeted into a cold, black dream.
—
He was underground again.
Deep. Dark. Silent.
The monster…
The monster wearing Cen Zibai’s skin had grown massive—a grotesque, towering presence.
Now, only its head retained the face of the cold, handsome boy it had once been.
From the neck down, its body had transformed into a writhing, monstrous insect, stretching dozens of meters long.
【“Tang Tang.”】
【“Why are you crying? Ah… Did the children disturb you? Did they bite you?”】
The creature let out a low, hissing hum, its voice carrying a strange, metallic timbre.
Yet the moment that melodic whisper reached his ears, Gan Tang understood.
He understood every word.
Children?
But… Gan Tang had no idea what the monster was talking about.
And then—
A sharp pain pierced through his chest, a stabbing, burning sensation that shattered the suffocating stillness of the dream.
Slowly, he looked down.
His chest—
Something was wrong with his chest.
A thin, pale worm was latched onto his bloated, distended torso, greedily sucking away at him.
There was no light in this dream.
And yet, somehow, he could see everything clearly—like his vision had gained a new kind of clarity.
He watched the creature’s tube-like body contract and expand in rhythm, its translucent skin revealing a visible digestive tract.
Inside, that digestive sac was already swollen full—filled with a strange, milky-white fluid…
Cen Zibai loomed closer.
His mouth opened.
And in the next second—
His thin, crimson tongue pierced straight through the worm.
A spray of milky-white liquid burst from the larva’s ruptured body.
Its suction cup, which had been clamped tightly to Gan Tang’s chest, began to loosen and peel away.
Cen Zibai coiled his tongue around the writhing larva—and flung it far away.
But the liquid…
The liquid kept gushing out of Gan Tang’s body.
Cen Zibai gazed down at him, eyes filled with eerie, tender pity.
He leaned in.
—
“No—no no no no—”
Gan Tang woke with a jolt.
He woke up with a start, his mouth still letting out low, pained murmurs.
He opened his eyes—
And immediately locked gazes with a pair of blood-red, trembling pupils.
His vision blurred for a moment. His mind was still drowning in the terror of that nightmare, but his body had already moved on its own—an instinctive reaction to danger.
The moment he saw those eyes, he jerked his head to the side.
“Clang!”
A sharp metallic scrape rang out near his ear—the sound of metal grinding against stone.
—
The one standing before him was none other than Father Yu.
Somehow, this lunatic had managed to free himself from his restraints.
No one knew how he did it, but the cloth that was supposed to bind his hands had already been torn apart.
And now—
His hands were clamped tightly around a jagged piece of metal—a twisted fragment that looked like it had been ripped from the mudguard of a tricycle.
Somehow, Father Yu had wrenched it off and even roughly sharpened the edges.
A tool like this wouldn’t be much use for cutting through solid objects.
But in the hands of a raving madman, it was more than enough to slice open Gan Tang’s carotid artery.
In fact—
If Gan Tang hadn’t woken up at that exact moment—if he hadn’t instinctively dodged—
He would already be lying on the ground, clutching his gaping throat as blood sprayed uncontrollably from the wound.
—
It all happened in a flash.
The instant he registered Father Yu’s face—and the jagged metal shard—Gan Tang snapped into full consciousness.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
He screamed.
—
“…Bugs. You’re a bug. You’re all bugs. Monsters.”
“I can smell you. I can smell you.”
“You’ll eat us. You’ll infect us…”
“No. No, no, no—I have to kill you.”
“Chen Qiao said—better for everyone to die here in the mountains than to let things like you make it to the city.”
“Kill. I have to kill you all. Kill every last one.”
“…I’ll kill you!”
Father Yu’s pupils were utterly vacant, a swirling mess of madness.
He wasn’t thinking—his mind had been consumed by delirium.
But his lips never stopped moving, mumbling the same horrifying words over and over.
