“Granny Zhang” staggered, moving sluggishly toward the corner of the bedroom.
Then, like a robot that had lost power, she stood still for a long moment. Before their very eyes, her head began to swell visibly, half of her face bloating grotesquely as several threadworms were squeezed out from her brain. They rustled as they crawled out of the old woman’s nose and ears.
Thinking.
Or rather, digging.
The threadworms struggled to extract faint traces of memory from the long-dead brain. After a long while, they bent down, fumbled inside a biscuit tin beneath the coffee table, and finally pulled out a set of keys with great difficulty.
Gan Tang held his breath.
He forced himself not to look at “Granny Zhang’s” completely distorted form and pretended to stay calm as he reached out to take the keys.
But just as he hooked the keys and was about to pull his hand back, the old woman’s arm—the one that had once belonged to Cen Zibai—began to deform before his very eyes.
The young man’s fingers transformed into five wriggling worms, their slightly engorged, reddish bodies greedily licking at the back of Gan Tang’s hand and wrist.
“Mm—”
Gan Tang clenched his teeth so hard he nearly bit his tongue bloody, barely suppressing a scream.
He took a step back, his voice trembling even more violently.
“Let go.”
He commanded.
His other hand slowly moved toward his waist.
Yu Huai’s machete was still hanging there.
Hiss… chitter…
The worms pulsed rhythmically.
Gan Tang could even feel their suction cups clinging wetly to his skin, greedily absorbing the cold sweat that kept seeping from his pores due to fear.
“I said, let go!”
He raised his voice.
But his trembling, fear-filled command seemed to stir something deep within the threadworms—a vague, residual memory from their first host.
“Cen Zibai” became even more excited.
Faint, grotesque bulges surfaced on that monstrous, preternaturally active arm.
On the back of the hand, a shape protruded, rolling beneath the translucent skin.
It was an eyeball.
With a slightly upturned eyelid and dark, dense eyelashes.
Below it, the ridge of a nose took form, followed by thin lips.
…
Through the worms’ grotesque mimicry, fragmented features of “Cen Zibai” emerged clearly before Gan Tang.
If viewed in isolation, the threadworms’ imitation was eerily perfect—every detail identical to the face in Gan Tang’s memory.
But when these scattered features appeared on the gray, lifeless skin of an arm taken from a corpse, they became nothing but a source of boundless horror and nausea.
The threadworms had completely lost contact with the part of themselves that once controlled a human brain.
Though they still possessed an unprecedented level of activity, they could no longer “think” properly to analyze Gan Tang’s preferences.
They only had a vague notion—perhaps, as a human, Gan Tang would prefer to converse with something that had a face.
As for “Granny Zhang”…
Hmm, based on the scattered thoughts they had absorbed from other human brains, the threadworms had a hazy sense that, as an adolescent male, Gan Tang was unlikely to form a close bond with an elderly female.
Gan Tang preferred men.
Young, handsome, powerful peers?
More fragmented memories flooded into the worm colony’s collective mind through the “reflections” of other individuals.
And it was precisely because of this difficult “thinking” process that their movements slowed significantly.
And so, in the very next second, the arm that had sprouted those uncanny human features suddenly felt its body become light—
Bang!
The old woman’s body, which had been forcibly controlled and fused together, collapsed to the ground.
—It had been severed from that shell.
“Granny Zhang’s” loose, sagging skin fell apart like an aged plastic water pouch, disintegrating into fragments the moment it hit the floor.
From the torn remains, countless writhing threadworms burst forth, tangled in the half-digested organs and the putrid stench of rotting blood.
Only a single arm remained…
The arm that had once belonged to “Cen Zibai.”
It was still tightly wrapped around Gan Tang’s wrist and elbow.
Embedded in the back of the hand, the cloudy eyeball blinked, staring unblinkingly at Gan Tang.
A faint flicker of confusion gleamed within its gaze.
“…Tang Tang?”
It murmured softly.
“Did I do something wrong again? Why… why are you unhappy again?”
“……”
Gan Tang did not answer.
The young man simply raised the machete that had been resting at his waist, just as he had done before by the Flesh-Borrowing Well—when he had hacked that tall boy’s body into pieces.
This time, he aimed the blade precisely at that arm.
Once. Twice. Three times…
A few times, he even wounded himself in the process.
Blood gushed out.
Thin threadworms suddenly emerged, curling around the wound, greedily drinking the blood of their lover.
In that moment, Gan Tang’s blood burned hot. The bitter fear and despair tainted what should have been sweet, turning it acrid.
The threadworms wriggled, secreting a viscous fluid with healing properties, trying to cover his small, dense wounds—but the next second, they were sliced into pieces by the sharp blade.
Plop—
The now-mangled arm could no longer cling to Gan Tang’s elbow.
It fell to the ground.
Gan Tang tightened his grip on the keys, now sticky and slick with blood and worm secretions, then turned and shouted toward the wardrobe in the corner.
“Yu Huai—!”
—
Curled up inside the wardrobe, the boy who had witnessed everything through a crack in the door jumped in fright at Gan Tang’s sudden yell. He tumbled out in a panic, landing in a heap on the floor.
“You—you just hacked it up like that—”
Gan Tang panted heavily and tossed the keys to Yu Huai.
“Shut up! Move!”
His expression was terrifyingly cold.
As he and Yu Huai sprinted toward the door, Gan Tang’s foot landed on the still-writhing remains of the threadworms.
The thick sole of his shoe ground against the damp floor, crushing a small worm that was still desperately trying to reach his ankle, reducing it to a smear of thick, sticky pulp.
—
“Fuck—”
After rushing out of the bedroom, Gan Tang heard Yu Huai curse.
Following his gaze, Gan Tang saw something swaying unsteadily in the corner of the room.
It was Uncle Zhang Er.
But the man was clearly no longer human.
His eyes had rolled back, resembling the pale flesh of lychees, with no pupils in sight.
And yet, Gan Tang could feel it—that eerie sensation of being watched.
On the side of his crooked neck, there was a lump of flesh with an unnatural honey-colored hue.
In his panic, Gan Tang barely glanced at it but instinctively recognized it as a piece of the corpse he had roughly thrown into the Flesh-Borrowing Well earlier.
Now, however, that piece of flesh had completely fused with the man’s neck—skin adhering to skin, veins intertwining with veins.
A monster and a human man, tangled together.
…
This, too, was the result of the threadworms’ calculations—
If a young man stood beside Gan Tang, perhaps it would be easier to establish a close bond with him.
Uncle Zhang Er slowly raised a hand. A swarm of worms spilled from his mouth.
The creatures slithered out like an extension of his tongue, or like snakes cautiously emerging from his corpse.
The threadworms’ slender bodies clustered together, once again forming a grotesque imitation of Cen Zibai’s face over the warped flesh.
“Tang Tang.”
“Tang… Tang.”
“I like you.”
“Don’t leave.”
“Please… don’t leave.”
It gazed at Gan Tang greedily, whispering the same words over and over, in the same rhythm, the same inflection—an unsettling, maddening murmur.
Then, he stepped toward him.
Yu Huai sucked in a sharp breath.
“Go start the car!”
Gan Tang shouted furiously before raising his machete and stepping forward to face “Uncle Zhang Er.”
His expression remained cold as he stared at the monster before him.
Logically speaking, he should have been consumed by fear.
But at this moment, he felt nothing but numbness.
In his daze, he suddenly understood why the corpses thrown into the well had to have all their openings sewn shut.
The worms could parasitize any piece of flesh, regardless of whether it was still alive or whether it had once been whole.
…He shouldn’t have hacked “Cen Zibai” into such small pieces.
As this thought crossed his mind, Gan Tang raised his hand and slashed down at the long, slender tongue protruding from “Uncle Zhang Er’s” mouth.
“Yu Huai!”
As countless threadworms exploded into the air once again, Gan Tang shouted his name.
Yu Huai was frantically twisting the key in the ignition, his forehead drenched in cold sweat.
Finally, the rumbling of the three-wheeler’s engine broke through the tense air.
Yu Huai, pale-faced and trembling, gripped the handlebars.
Bang!—
The vehicle jolted forward abruptly, crashing through the wooden fence in front of the shed.
Then, like a headless fly, it jerked backward, slamming into the fence behind it.
After several more chaotic crashes, Yu Huai barely managed to turn the vehicle around, bringing it right up to Gan Tang’s side.
…Another corpse had fallen at Gan Tang’s feet.
Yet even now, the body was still twitching slightly.
Deep within its flesh, a faint, incessant chittering could still be heard.
“What the hell is this?!” Yu Huai shrieked.
“Didn’t you already hack this thing to pieces?!”
But just then, amidst the sickening sound of damp flesh shifting, more writhing masses of worms slowly slithered out, twisting and contorting into another grotesque “flow of insects.”
“It’s useless! No matter how much you destroy them, they won’t die!”
Gan Tang roared, then leapt onto the three-wheeler.
Yu Huai yanked the throttle with all his strength, sending the vehicle hurtling forward, smashing through the wooden gate of Uncle Zhang Er’s backyard.
Bang!—
The gate crashed to the ground with a loud thud.
And in the wake of that sound, the once-silent village seemed to stir awake.
Only… this was no peaceful awakening.
One by one, figures began to rise in silence, swaying unsteadily.
From the depths of darkened bedrooms, from the corners of livestock sheds, from the towering beams of rooftops… shadow after shadow emerged all at once.
Beneath the fresh human skins lay faces of corpses—numb, hollow, expressionless.
Yet at that very moment, their clouded eyes all turned in unison toward the panting, pale-faced Gan Tang, curled up on the three-wheeler.
[“Tang Tang.”]
They spoke in eerie unison, calling his name with the exact same voice.
[“Tang Tang, I love you.”]
[“Don’t be angry anymore.”]
[“Just stay with me forever, like this.”]
