Chu He tightened his bathrobe around himself, stood in front of the large bathroom mirror, and let out a sigh. Zhou Hui, yawning and swaying sleepily, walked over, kissed him on the neck, and lowered his head to start brushing his teeth.
He was shirtless, the firm lines of his muscles illuminated with a powerful beauty under the lights. His abs and V line extended perfectly down into the low waistband of his underwear. His hair stuck up in a stylish mess, and his nose was so straight it reflected light—this was a face so handsome that even a groggy, eye-crusted morning photo could easily land on the cover of a fashion magazine.
Chu He looked at his own pale, exhausted, sickly face in the mirror, then looked at Zhou Hui again—and suddenly felt an indescribably strange emotion in his heart.
“What’s wrong?” Zhou Hui asked groggily.
Chu He didn’t answer at first. He poured a glass of warm water, drank half, and then said thoughtfully, “I was just wondering… if someone saw us like this, how much do you think they’d assume I paid to keep you as my sugar baby?”
Zhou Hui burst out laughing. “Darling, anyone would think you were the one being kept by me, the domineering CEO.”
He struck a pose in the mirror, his mouth full of toothpaste foam, clearly pleased with himself.
“…” Chu He suddenly felt like he’d screwed a zoo animal, thinking, I really shouldn’t challenge the thickness of his skin. Why am I such a big mouth…? He sighed and pointed out the window. “Time’s up—you should lift the barrier.”
Zhou Hui was indifferent. “It’s not even dawn yet.”
That was true. In H City, the summer sky should’ve been lightening by now. But outside the window it was still pitch black, thick clouds layered across the sky with no moonlight in sight. It looked more like the middle of the night.
Chu He folded his arms and leaned against the glass counter, his lashes slightly lowered as he stared down at Zhou Hui from above.
At that moment, Zhou Hui spat out his mouthwash and turned his head—only to meet that piercing gaze. He immediately chuckled, “Darling, that look of yours is intense… Do you remember? That’s the same look you had when you descended into the Sea of Blood as the Phoenix King to deliver thousands of demonic souls.”
Chu He raised an eyebrow. “You were there too? Why weren’t you saved?”
Zhou Hui washed his face, fumbled blindly for a towel with wet eyes closed, then laughed after a moment, “…I was jerking off at the time.”
Chu He: “…”
Zhou Hui hummed a little tune and called room service, instructing them to leave it at the door and not bring it in. But a while later, the doorbell still rang—and not just once. It rang persistently, over and over again. Zhou Hui, who had been admiring himself while applying hair gel, finally grew irritated, stormed over to the door, and opened it. “Didn’t I tell you—Old Six?!”
Li Hu stood at the door, one hand pushing a food cart, the other slamming a file folder into Zhou Hui’s face. “Tianqi Construction is your company, right?” she snapped coldly.
“…” Zhou Hui hurriedly caught the folder and looked down. It was a building project approval stamped with the date “Monday.”
His face immediately lit up with fake delight. “Darling! What a lovely surprise! Want some breakfast? Don’t worry about the cart, I’ll pay for it. Toodles, babe!”
He reached out to shut the door.
Li Hu shoved against the door, stopping him. “You bastard! You deliberately sold that land to the Japanese! That project isn’t for residential use at all—it’s clearly—”
“What is it, then?”
Li Hu and Zhou Hui both fell silent
They looked up to see Chu He standing in the living room, barefoot in a white bathrobe, holding a glass of water, one eyebrow arched slightly.
Both their expressions froze. In that split second, they exchanged a look—Li Hu’s face clearly said: “The Earth Born Fetus site’s clearly gone wrong—what do we do?” Zhou Hui’s expression was more straightforward: “No idea. You’re the one who dragged my wife into this mess!”
“What about the Japanese?” Chu He asked with interest. “If you don’t explain, I might assume you two slept together and now Old Six is pregnant.”
Both of them shivered.
Zhou Hui reacted first. He immediately raised his hand like he was swearing an oath.
“Wife, you must believe me! This fox is like my little sister-in-law—no, even more than that! We were just discussing the construction company I started while you were gone, and how I was going to give you all my private savings today—”
Boom!
A bright bolt of lightning streaked across the sky outside, followed by a deafening crash of thunder that cut off Zhou Hui’s speech.
Zhou Hui was dumbfounded.
“It’s just a little cash stashed on the side—is that really worth lightning strikes?!”
Chu He’s mouth twitched. He rushed to the window. Just then, another terrifying bolt of lightning split the sky like a massive S-shaped dragon, crashing down on the outskirts of the city.
BOOM!
At that moment, Li Hu’s phone rang with a sharp tone, startling everyone. The screen showed it was Mayor Huang. As Li Hu reached out to answer, Chu He snatched it from her and picked up.
“Hello?”
“CEO C—Chu?! Goddamn it, where the hell have you been these past two days?!” Mayor Huang’s voice came through, thunder rumbling in the background. “Get out to the construction site now! There’s been an accident—Earth Born Fetus collapsed into a massive sinkhole!”
“…Earth Born Fetus?”
“Hurry! We’re organizing a rescue team! And—your red car is parked right by the pit! Your brother might be trapped inside!”
·
Meanwhile, forty meters underground.
Zhang Shun had lost count of how many times he’d fallen. He collapsed again, slamming his knee hard into a jagged rock. Blood streamed down his leg, but the pain had long since been dulled by the repeated tumbles.
Behind him, the Japanese were cursing and threatening to beat him up, but Yan Lanyu blocked them and pulled him to his feet, coldly saying in Japanese, “Watch your step.”
The deeper they went, the wider the crevice became. At first, they had to squeeze sideways to get through, but now they could walk with arms swinging. Even so, the jagged terrain and sharp, unnatural rocks made the descent treacherous. Not just Zhang Shun—even the Japanese men stumbled often. One of them had sliced his forehead on a protruding stone and was now covered in blood.
Aida had long since taken off his gray suit jacket and was panting heavily. “How much farther?”
They reached a bend blocked by rubble. Yan Lanyu pulled out a short knife from his lower back and pried away several large rocks, finally clearing a small tunnel just wide enough to crawl through.
“We’re here,” the youth said, coughing through the dust, then ducked and crawled in first.
Zhang Shun, with no other choice, followed behind—and immediately froze at the sight inside.
This wasn’t a naturally collapsed cave. The walls and floor clearly bore the marks of man-made carving. When the Japanese lit their chemical flares, they saw intricate patterns covering the stone walls. Years of water seepage had rotted some of them, giving off an indescribably foul smell.
What was even more terrifying was that the patterns extended far into the distance—when they shone their flashlights ahead, they could see the cave was massive, easily the size of a football field.
“Look!” one of the Japanese men shouted. “There are markings on the ground too!”
Zhang Shun couldn’t understand Japanese, but when he saw everyone looking down, he did the same. The floor was indeed etched with the same patterns as the walls. Zhang Shun, having done many lab experiments abroad, quickly recognized that these markings were actually segments of repeating script—linked hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot, forming some kind of eerie, tangled glyph.
“Master Lanyu,” one of the men asked respectfully, “what kind of sigils are these? What do they seal?”
Yan Lanyu shone his flashlight on the ground, staring at it for a long moment before slowly reciting an obscure, ancient phrase. “This is a Grand Sealing Spell,” he said. “It’s Sanskrit.”
“Sanskrit?”
“Yes. All the runes repeat a single phrase.”
He took a deep breath. For some reason, Zhang Shun felt he smiled—but it was a strange smile.
“Something was sealed here. It was condemned by Heaven.”
“There are exactly 99,990,000 repetitions of the Grand Sealing Spell in this place, all repeating the same sentence.”
Zhang Shun shivered.
He wasn’t the only one. The other Japanese men were clearly disturbed as well. The one who asked the question blurted out, “But this place—this enormous space, filled wall-to-wall with the same phrase—who the hell could have carved all this? And why—?”
“It means something terrifying is sealed here. Something so powerful, even nearly a hundred million repetitions of the Grand Seal couldn’t suppress it.”
Yan Lanyu paused and looked around. “As for who carved them, likely the one who built this place. Unlike copying scriptures, carving sutras isn’t something just anyone can do—especially not with Grand Seals in Sanskrit. Only monks of immense cultivation could even attempt it. My guess is that one person carved this entire cave, stroke by stroke.”
Everyone was too stunned to speak. Once the shock faded, some of them pulled out their phones to take photos and document the site.
Aida, clearly shaken, swung his flashlight around. The sheer density of the runes made him visibly anxious. “Then where is it? Where’s the Earth Born Fetus?!”
Yan Lanyu gave that strange smile again and said:
“Above your head.”
Aida instinctively raised his flashlight—and everyone staggered back a few steps.
There, suspended in the dome of the cave, was a coffin.
It was the one they had buried earlier. Somehow, it had been dragged all the way to the bottom of the crevice—and was now open. The corpse inside sat upright on the coffin lid, one hand clutching a knife stabbed into its chest, the other pointing directly east.
Even Zhang Shun, who was no stranger to the supernatural, felt a chill run down his spine. His scalp tingled, and goosebumps broke out across his skin. And yet his eyes were drawn, as if by an invisible force, to follow where the smiling corpse was pointing—toward the east…
He saw a man—hanging there.
It was the same man he had seen in Li Hu’s mirror illusion.
He was suspended about three or four meters above the ground, hands bound, head drooped naturally with his long hair falling around him. He wore a robe of indeterminate era, possibly rotted with age, and it was covered in blood-stained talismans—each one identical to the massive sealing incantations carved into the ground and walls.
They shined their flashlights up at him with trembling hands. At first, no one spoke. Then a Japanese man murmured in awe, “So… beautiful…”
Indeed, the man’s face held a stunning beauty that defied gender—an otherworldly, breathtaking kind of beauty. Even in this eerie, terrifying underground cave, one couldn’t help but forget their fear while looking at him. Zhang Shun had already felt this overwhelming sensation through the illusion, but seeing it in person—face-to-face—he now understood how deeply shocking it was.
But after staring for a while, another feeling began to rise in his chest.
This man wasn’t his brother.
Yes, Zhang Shun grew increasingly certain this couldn’t be his brother. Because slowly, from the man’s face, he began to perceive something else—
·
—Something evil.
Zhang Shun thought he was imagining things. He blinked hard, but that indescribable malevolence and bone-deep chill only became clearer on the man’s features.
With his limited vocabulary, Zhang Shun couldn’t describe the feeling. The face was undeniably beautiful, seemingly sculpted by gods. But from every brow and eye corner, even every pore, oozed a chilling malevolence.
He had seen promo images of villains in online games—blood-red eyes, grotesque grins—that were creepy, sure. But none could compare to this kind of cold, deep-rooted evil that pierced straight into your soul.
Zhang Shun had only seen a similar aura once before—on Demon Lord Fanluo.
He instinctively stepped back.
“Why isn’t it a fetus?” one of the Japanese men finally noticed something was off. But unlike Zhang Shun, he didn’t seem to sense the malevolence at all.
“The Qing dynasty records say Earth Born Fetus are always in fetal form. The rare ones that have emerged from the womb are already peak treasures of heaven and earth. Why is this one an adult?”
Another retorted, “Earth Born Fetus are extremely rare, we don’t really know what forms they can take. Maybe this one just… grew up?”
As they debated, Zhang Shun stood soaked in cold sweat, staring at that eerily beautiful and malicious face. He silently begged, Whatever happens, don’t take it down. Let it stay sealed with those ninety-nine million talismans—this thing is way too damn scary…
“Earth Born Fetus can mature,” said Yan Lanyu suddenly, breaking his silence.
As soon as he spoke, everyone fell quiet, listening intently. Though the man named Aida would scold him, the other Japanese men treated the onmyōji with deep respect and deference.
“Earth Born Fetus are incubated in dragon veins beneath mountains and glaciers for millennia but cannot be born, as they rely only on the natural energies of the land and lack the nourishment of human presence. In the last century, there were discoveries in Xinjiang and Northeast China—most were fetal. One was a baby girl found deep in a cave, three meters tall, fully formed and lifelike. Locals claimed you could even hear her crying at night—likely due to the faint human presence nearby.”
“You mean because H City is densely populated, this one matured faster?” Aida asked, incredulous.
Yan Lanyu answered calmly, “That is certainly possible.”
Aida hesitated, but Yan Lanyu added, “If we’re going to take it down, we’d better hurry—we’re running out of time.”
Everyone flinched in surprise. He shone his flashlight around the cave. Previously, parts of the walls had been dry despite the underground seepage, but now the walls were fully soaked, with some areas literally streaming water along the carved glyphs.
“It’s raining heavily above. The groundwater will flood in quickly,” said the boy onmyōji. Then he added, “And with all the noise we made coming down, someone may already be on their way…”
Several subordinates grew visibly nervous. One of them whispered, “Aida-san!”
Aida, still hesitant—typical of a ruthless but cautious man—knew they couldn’t turn back now. Without the Earth Born Fetus, they’d never escape H City under Zhou Hui’s watch.
“You—bring it down,” Aida said to Yan Lanyu, then pointed at two others. “Help him build a platform.”
The two obeyed without hesitation. Standing beneath the suspended being, Yan Lanyu deftly climbed onto their shoulders. Meanwhile, others set up a pulley system meant to haul the Earth Born Fetus out—though judging by its size, a stretcher would’ve sufficed.
Aida watched as Yan Lanyu reached the side of the Earth Born Fetus, nearly pressing his face to its ear. He pulled a short blade from his waist and started sizing up the ropes, apparently judging how to sever the seal.
—A sudden, intense sense of foreboding gripped Aida’s heart.
Aida was experienced and ruthless—he wouldn’t have survived in the esoteric ranks otherwise. He rarely felt fear, but when he did, it always meant disaster. And when disaster came, at least half the people involved would die.
His eyelids twitched wildly as he gasped, “Wait!”
Everyone turned to look at him.
“Don’t cut it yet—wait—!”
Yan Lanyu turned slowly, gazing at him with a strange, almost amused smile.
“Too late.”
He slashed with the blade—thud—and the Earth Born Fetus dropped to the ground with a heavy crash!
In that instant, Aida felt as if even his blood froze. The cave fell deathly silent. Everyone could hear their own heartbeats.
Ten seconds passed. Then twenty. A whole minute. Nothing happened.
“Mr… Aida…” a subordinate asked nervously. “Are… are you alright?”
Aida’s tongue felt numb. He swallowed hard. “I’m… I’m fine.”
They all exchanged looks. Someone started to say something but was quickly shushed. Meanwhile, the sound of water flooding in from above grew louder. Some brave souls moved to check on the Earth Born Fetus. It had landed awkwardly but didn’t seem dangerous, so they began preparing the pulley system to move it.
Then one person straightened up, frowning. “Do you hear something?”
“No?”
“Hear what?”
Everyone quieted down.
Only the sound of dripping water remained. But just a few seconds later—
“L-laughter… someone’s laughing!”
Zhang Shun, standing nearby, shuddered. Then he too heard it—a faint, chilling laugh—right behind his head.
“Ahhhhhh!”
“Someone’s laughing!”
“What is that?!”
The group fell into panic. One man fell backward, pointing at the Earth Born Fetus like he’d seen a ghost, his voice trembling:
“It—it’s it! It’s the Earth Born Fetus! It’s laughing!”
Everyone turned at once. The Earth Born Fetus twitched—then again—and slowly, it sat up.
Zhang Shun stared at its gorgeous face—buzz!—his mind went completely blank.
It was laughing, mouth stretched so wide the corners nearly reached its ears. The expression was terrifyingly familiar—exactly like the Seven-Smile Corpse.
“…” It seemed to say something, then lunged toward the man still on the ground and bit out a huge chunk of flesh from his neck!
Rip!
Everyone’s expression changed in an instant. Blood sprayed everywhere as the man screamed in agony, “Help! Help! Somebody help me—!”
Aida reacted instantly. He fired his pistol—bang bang bang—but all the bullets ricocheted off the Earth Born Fetus like pebbles!
The creature didn’t even flinch. It swallowed the flesh whole, then bent down and tore off another chunk—chewed noisily and swallowed it too. The scene was so gory that Zhang Shun gagged, his stomach heaving violently.
Some of the Japanese men began to vomit. Others, weapons drawn, rushed forward to attack.
“Don’t—!” Aida shouted, but it was too late.
The Earth Born Fetus didn’t react at all to blades slashing at its skin. It tossed the dying man aside, stood, grabbed another person, and chomp—bit straight through his throat!
“Fall back!” Aida screamed. “That’s not an Earthborn Embryo! That’s a Heaven-Earth Calamity!”
His men hesitated for a split second—just long enough to see two of their comrades meet gruesome ends. They panicked and scrambled to retreat.
But in the chaos, before anyone could escape, the Earth Born Fetus’s figure blurred—and suddenly, it appeared at the cave entrance, blocking the only exit.
It was still smiling—though the smile looked more “normal” now, the sheer beauty of its face combined with its overwhelming aura of evil made it look disturbingly twisted and bone-chilling.
Everyone instinctively took a step back. Aida’s hand, clutching the gun, trembled so violently it looked like it might go off at any second.
“Wh… What is this thing?!”
The Earth Born Fetus turned to look at him. Then, with a bloodstained hand, it casually tucked its long hair behind its ear and tilted its head as it murmured something eerie.
Its voice was unbearably hoarse—probably due to its vocal cords being paralyzed after so many years of disuse—making it almost impossible to understand what it said. But a moment later, it repeated itself more clearly.
Everyone heard it that time:
“Do you… want to know?”
—It could speak human language!
Everyone froze. The entire scene suddenly felt absurd and surreal.
“You… fed me so many poisonous things…”
The Earth Born Fetus’s voice was rough from long-term silence, but it oddly sounded joyful, as it spoke slowly, word by word:
“Don’t you understand? You… were sent down here… by my father.”
Before anyone could react, it tilted its head.
With a crisp crack, its neck bones popped.
“After all these years… finally… real food.”
·
Meanwhile, above ground.
A black Bentley Mulsanne screeched to a halt at the construction site gates, tires hissing in the floodwater.
Amid the pouring rain, the yellow-black police tape had been completely washed away. Officers in heavy raincoats looked like drowned rats.
Mayor Huang was shouting furiously at the city police leadership.
As soon as the car arrived, he shoved his secretary aside, didn’t even bother with an umbrella, and dashed toward the car, rain lashing him like whips.
“C-CEO Chu!”
Zhou Hui stepped out of the car, still smiling, using one hand to shield Mayor Huang from the rain as he asked cheerfully,
“What’s going on, Old Huang?”
Zhou Hui was still wearing his absurdly expensive motorcycle jacket. He took off his sunglasses with flair, his gentle and kindly gaze making Mayor Huang shiver uncontrollably.
“I… I’m looking for CEO Chu”
Chu He stepped out from the other side of the car, his face dark as water.
“Where’s my brother?”
Zhou Hui ignored him, grabbed Mayor Huang’s shoulder, and began lecturing him with fatherly condescension:
“Look at you, big ol’ weasel of a man. Every time something happens, you just holler ‘CEO Chu, CEO Chu’ like a parrot. Aren’t you ashamed? You think CEO Chu is your mom or something?”
“Didn’t I tell you before I left? The moment the seventh corpse turns up, you evacuate the city! You treat my words like background noise?! If you want CEO Chu to be your mom, shouldn’t you at least call me ‘Dad’ first?”
Chu He yanked Mayor Huang away from Zhou Hui and demanded,
“Did your team go down? Have they seen Zhang Shun?”
Before Mayor Huang could answer, Zhou Hui yanked Chu He back with equal force and snapped,
“Is your brother a three-year-old? Can’t drink milk without you around?!”
Chu He’s expression was one of barely-contained fury. Even Mayor Huang could tell: this man—who normally showed no emotion—was now at his absolute limit.
“You deliberately lured the people from Mizongmen down there,” Chu He hissed through clenched teeth. “You knew exactly what Maha was, and you still dared feed him blood?! What, hoping to draw a few more divine lightning strikes while you were at it?!”
Zhou Hui rolled his eyes dramatically.
“Oh, now you suddenly know everything? Weren’t you just playing all innocent a few minutes ago, asking me what’s down there? Quit pretending you’re some kind of saint.”
Their eyes locked.
Chu He’s hand—buried in his pocket—was trembling slightly, whether from cold or rage.
Zhou Hui, meanwhile, was humming a tune and wearing the smug, thuggish expression of someone who’s thinking:
You’ve already slept with me, so now you’re mine—what can you even do about it?
Li Hu stood off to the side, changing into flat shoes with a sigh.
“Ah… same old routine…”
Mayor Huang looked between the two men in confusion.
Something was different.
Last time he saw them, the atmosphere had been icy—like a cold war. One probing, the other defensive. Every sentence was sharp with hidden meaning.
But now… now it felt strangely personal. Hostile, yes—but not distant.
This tension between them was the kind that only extremely close people shared.
It was adversarial, but intimate.
Like no one else could get a word in between them.
“Uh… excuse me…” Mayor Huang raised a trembling hand.
“D-Did the Earth Born Fetus… g-give birth? Can we still send in a rescue team…?”
Zhou Hui and Chu He both turned to look at him.
Poor Mayor Huang’s face twitched so hard it almost locked in place.
Then Chu He said quietly,
“I’m going down too.”
He strode toward the massive crack in the earth—no umbrella, straight into the pouring rain.
Zhou Hui rolled his eyes as if to say, I knew this would happen, and slung an arm around Mayor Huang’s plump shoulders.
“Old Huang, get things ready—I’m heading down too to save the day!”
He paused, seeing Mayor Huang’s stunned expression.
“…What, why are you looking at me like that?”
With an exaggerated sigh, the thug put on a polite smile and said:
“Let me introduce you to the little monster that’s making trouble down there—it’s called Maha. My unfilial eldest son. Dead now, by the way. You think I’d go down there for fun? Please. You think I’m doing this out of noble spirit and selfless leadership?”
