“Tang Tang, don’t be like this.”
Under the relentless stabbing of the scissors, “Cen Zibai’s” face and eyes had already been reduced to a bloody, pulpy mess.
Yet even now, Gan Tang could still hear that severed head chattering incessantly at him, its voice even sounding gentle and aggrieved.
“If I did something wrong, you can tell me. I’ll listen to you. Look, you’ve hurt yourself.”
Even though its eyeballs had turned into nothing but bloodied mush, the monster seemed to have found another way to observe Gan Tang.
And only after hearing its words did Gan Tang finally notice the sharp, piercing pain in his palm.
He lifted his hand to look at it—only to realize that in his frenzied attack, even his own palm had been torn open.
Bright red blood seeped from the wound, drop by drop.
No wonder the scissors had felt so slippery in his grip just now.
At that moment, something at the jagged break of “Cen Zibai’s” severed neck stirred slightly.
Dark red, soft flesh wriggled out from the wound—just like before—eagerly reaching out, as if trying to lick the blood from Gan Tang’s hand.
“Tang Tang, it hurts me to see you like this.”
“I really, really like you.”
“Tang Tang, I love you.”
……
The monster murmured in a muddled voice, whispering like a constant, insidious presence burrowing into Gan Tang’s mind.
The muscles on Gan Tang’s face twitched uncontrollably.
“Shut up—”
He clutched the scissors and let out a low growl at “Cen Zibai.”
“Shut up, shut up, shut up—”
In the end, he simply reached out, grabbed the wet, crimson tongue inside that head, and sliced it off with the scissors.
A thick, putrid-smelling blood gushed from the severed tongue.
“Mm…”
“Cen Zibai” let out a muffled groan.
At last, its incessant rambling stopped.
Gan Tang gasped for breath.
Then, he staggered to his feet, reached into the monster’s blood-soaked, slick hair, and grasped it tightly.
Holding onto “Cen Zibai’s” head, he swayed as he walked toward the kitchen.
He fumbled with the old-fashioned stove, clumsily lighting the fire inside.
The flames burned a bright red, thick black smoke billowing upward.
The scent of burning wood and rising heat rushed toward him.
But Gan Tang seemed oblivious to it all.
He simply furrowed his brows and, without hesitation, shoved “Cen Zibai’s” blood-smeared head straight into the blazing stove.
Since it was just a worm, this was the only way to deal with it.
Gan Tang thought to himself, his mind eerily calm.
He watched as the flames instantly licked at the monster’s hair and skin.
A foul stench filled the air—the unmistakable reek of burning flesh.
From the stove came the crackling sound of fire consuming its prey.
The once-handsome face of the boy was quickly covered in large, swollen blisters.
Countless pale, writhing “threads” gushed out from the orifices of the head, tangled with half-coagulated blood clots—only to be devoured by the fire in an instant, charring into blackened clumps that crumbled into the ashes below.
“Tang…tang…”
Yet, even as its flesh burned away, even as its tongue charred black, “Cen Zibai” still began to murmur once more.
From the depths of that head, the monster called out to Gan Tang again—
Its voice was like something crawling out of a nightmare.
“Don’t… do this…” it struggled to speak.
Strangely enough, even now, its tone remained so harmless, tinged with a hint of weakness and reluctance.
“If I’m destroyed… it’ll be very… dangerous… for you…”
“They like you too much. We all like you too much…”
“But no… their thoughts all come from… my reflection…”
“They will be much more… brutal than me…”
“They are too greedy…”
“They… will stop at nothing…”
“They will hurt you… Tang Tang…”
“Let me out… Tang Tang…”
“Only I can protect you…”
“Tang Tang…”
“Tang…”
……
As the fire roared higher, the head turned blacker and blacker.
Slowly, gradually, its whispers faded into the crackling flames.
Gan Tang stared unblinkingly at “Cen Zibai.”
Under the intense heat, the air inside the stove began to shimmer like rippling water.
And that head—now stripped of all soft tissue, revealing the bare contours of a skull—looked as if it was grinning at him.
The scorching heat burned Gan Tang’s eyes and cheeks, making his skin sting unbearably.
Yet, he refused to look away.
As the monster gradually lost its vitality, Gan Tang’s heart also grew lighter. Unnoticed, exhaustion and drowsiness surged over him like a rising tide, swallowing what little remained of his already teetering consciousness.
Even he realized that, at last, he had curled up in front of the burning stove and closed his eyes.
He had a dream.
And the contents of that dream came from the future that the monster had carefully painted for him—a future straight out of hell.
He dreamt of the Borrowed Flesh Well.
In the dream, his body was wet and slick, impossibly soft.
For a human, the well’s opening would require every bone to be shattered before they could barely be squeezed through. Yet, for him, sliding inside was effortless.
The narrow entrance was merely an illusion.
The deeper he went, the wider the well became.
Before long, any trace of human excavation vanished into the darkness.
What the Borrowed Flesh Well connected to was a labyrinthine underground cavern system, as intricate as the nervous pathways of a colossal being…
The air here was damp, freezing cold. Silence reigned, unbroken except for the distant murmur of an underground river flowing eternally beyond the rock walls…
Gan Tang crawled forward.
He could feel himself moving without hesitation, with a deep, homesick longing, slipping ever deeper into the embrace of the earth.
He had no sense of how long he had been traveling—time had lost all meaning in this dream.
In the darkness, he had no way of distinguishing direction. Yet, something unseen was guiding him, urging him forward, driving him toward that ancient homeland.
……
At last, he arrived at his destination.
It was a nest—carefully tended, comfortable, and abundant.
Flesh.
Food.
Bodies.
Pale forms lay in tangled heaps, wrapped in a mucus as thick and transparent as amniotic fluid, clinging to every inch of the cavern’s rock walls.
Some of them still bore faint traces of what they had once been on the surface.
But once they had descended underground, those features inevitably began to dissolve.
The lush fur they had once worn as animals—gone. The hair and body hair they had possessed as humans—shed completely.
All that remained was pale, translucent skin, barely containing the liquefying muscle, organs, and fat beneath…
And yet, they were still alive.
Inside their bodies, spores wove through them, crisscrossing like roots, sustaining them in the depths where no other life could survive.
“Gan Tang” took a deep breath, “gazing” at them with satisfaction in the darkness—this was the storehouse that would nourish him, his mate, and his offspring for many years to come.
Then, his vast, writhing body moved, inch by inch, toward the smooth stone hollow at the heart of the cavern.
There, nestled motionless, was a body.
Eyes shut tight, stark naked, drained of all color, utterly still.
If not for the faintest rise and fall of his chest, from any angle, he would appear to be nothing more than a lifeless corpse.
And yet, his skin was soft and slick, his limbs firm and delicate—he had been raised with great care.
“Gan Tang” quickly noticed that while “he” had once been swollen with eggs before leaving, his belly had now flattened.
Below the stone nest, in a groove meticulously smoothed by “Gan Tang,” was a mound of soft, snow-white eggs.
Immediately, “Gan Tang” slithered closer.
With his tail, he pushed the eggs—now piled into a small mountain—to the side.
During this process, the tiny black specks within the eggs had already begun to wriggle on their own.
But “Gan Tang” paid them no mind.
His heart was focused only on his mate, weakened to the brink of collapse from laying eggs.
An overwhelming tenderness and protectiveness surged within him, as if it could take form, seeping like mucus from the depths of his cold body.
Carefully, reverently, he coiled himself around the unmoving figure, enveloping him completely.
Then, he pierced his mouthparts into the food he had already prepared beside the egg-laying platform.
The half-transparent body of the food convulsed for a moment.
But soon, he began to draw out the warm, nutrient-rich fluids from within.
Then, he lowered his head, pressing the deep red feeding tube directly against his mate’s pale lips.
He felt the boy’s weak resistance at the tip of his tongue and slowly forced the feeding tube into that small, delicate mouth, then into the constricted throat, and finally down into the stomach, the intestines…
“Mm… mm…”
In the darkness, “Gan Tang” heard the faint sound of weeping from the person in his embrace.
Just like always.
So pitiful.
He thought.
Then, he wriggled his body, tightening his coils around the other even more.
But even so, the child continued to cry uncontrollably. Left with no other choice, he hastily forced the food pulp into his mate’s cavity, then withdrew the feeding tube.
Lowering his head, he gently rubbed against his mate’s cold cheek.
[“Tang… Tang…”]
He heard himself utter a low murmur—halting, unfamiliar, as though the name had become foreign to him.
[“It’s okay… You are happy…”]
[“You will be happy.”]
The reproductive tube slid gently into his mate’s body cavity.
Injecting new substance into the hollow abdomen.
As the reproduction progressed, the neurotoxin designed to soothe nerves and weave dreams seeped into his fragile mate’s body.
The once-anxious aura gradually faded. The boy in his arms trembled slightly, letting out an unconscious moan of pleasure.
“Gan Tang” extended his tongue, licking up the sweet sweat from the boy’s body, feeling utterly satisfied.
In the darkness, the countless sensory organs across his form opened their “eyes,” and at last, amidst the thick, ink-like blackness, Gan Tang saw his “mate.”
It was a body, as if completely bleached—skin devoid of the slightest hint of color. Underneath, dark blue veins branched out like the delicate limbs of a tree.
It was a boy, his limbs limp like a broken puppet, head lolling weakly in the monster’s embrace. His abdomen, which had only just settled, now began to swell once more with the next cycle of reproduction.
That boy had a face Gan Tang knew all too well.
A face he saw in the mirror every day.
It was his own face.
Gan Tang could no longer control himself.
A bloodcurdling scream tore from his throat.
