Fengjing Village wasn’t particularly large.
After escaping from Uncle Zhang Er’s house, there was still a short distance to the meeting place Gan Tang had arranged with his grandmother earlier.
Yu Huai drove the three-wheeler like a race car, speeding forward like the wind. Yet, when Gan Tang heard the monsters’ greedy, synchronized calls, he suddenly felt like a tiny insect that had fallen into pine resin—trapped, frozen in something sticky and deadly. Time, space, his soul, or perhaps something else entirely—everything seemed to solidify around him.
His grandmother had already come out of the house, supporting Yu Huai’s father as they struggled toward the vehicle. That frail, hunched figure was clearly within Gan Tang’s sight, yet he felt as though an impassable chasm lay between them.
“…Gan Tang!”
Thankfully, Yu Huai’s sharp scream jolted his mind back from the brink.
The young man gasped, like a drowning person being dragged onto dry land, and suddenly snapped back to his senses.
Gan Tang looked up. The three-wheeler had already stopped at the entrance, and his grandmother, her face full of panic, was desperately trying to drag the dazed, wailing man onto the vehicle. Even though it was only a few steps, cold sweat had already seeped into the wrinkles on her forehead.
“Grandma!”
Gan Tang jumped off the vehicle and rushed over to grab Yu Huai’s father’s other arm. He couldn’t worry about anything else right now—he just needed to get the man onto the three-wheeler as fast as possible.
【“Tang Tang…”】
From across the road, ghostly silhouettes of the former villagers began to emerge.
They swayed unsteadily, like crude, clumsy puppets, manipulated by the threadworms as they stumbled toward Gan Tang.
And the moment Gan Tang touched Yu Huai’s father, the madman suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream.
“Get away—get away, get away! Monsters! MONSTERS! WAAAH—THE MONSTERS ARE GOING TO EAT ME! THEY’RE GOING TO EAT MY BRAIN!”
His eyes bulged with terror, his fear so overwhelming that it seemed as if his eyeballs might pop out of their sockets at any moment.
Though he had been locked up at home for years due to his insanity—his malnutrition leaving him as gaunt as a mummy—when he started thrashing in blind panic, both the unprepared Gan Tang and his frail grandmother struggled to restrain him.
With a sudden wrench, Yu Huai’s father broke free from their grasp and let out a shriek, about to flee back into the house.
“Dad—!”
Yu Huai, sitting in the driver’s seat, turned his head. The moment he saw his father’s struggling figure, all color drained from his dark-skinned face.
Just as Yu Huai instinctively moved to jump down and grab him, Gan Tang had already darted forward and seized Yu Huai’s father by the collar.
Perhaps it was the surge of adrenaline in this moment of crisis, but Gan Tang felt an unnatural strength explode within him.
He locked his grip onto Yu Huai’s father’s shoulders and dragged him straight toward the three-wheeler. The man continued to thrash wildly, his screams long since losing all coherence, reduced to meaningless shrieks.
…Though it was an impolite thought, at that moment, Gan Tang was reminded of the time he had spent New Year’s in the countryside and witnessed the slaughter of a pig.
Pigs were, in fact, incredibly intelligent animals. When they realized they were about to die, that they would soon become nothing more than food on a human’s table, they would struggle desperately, letting out terrified, gut-wrenching squeals unlike anything else.
And now, as the man lay on the bed of the three-wheeler, his body overlapped in Gan Tang’s mind with that of a livestock animal, forcibly pinned down on the bloodletting rack.
“Hold on tight, Gan Tang! We’re leaving! Help me keep my dad still—don’t let him fall off!”
As Gan Tang forcibly hauled Yu Huai’s father onto the vehicle, his grandmother, her face ashen, staggered aboard as well.
With his knee pressing against Yu Huai’s father’s back to stop him from thrashing, Gan Tang barely managed to hold him down. Meanwhile, Yu Huai, on the verge of tears, twisted the throttle desperately, his fear nearly suffocating him.
But while the three-wheeler was technically designed to carry cargo, at the end of the day, it was just a simple, modified little vehicle.
Now that there were suddenly two extra people on the back, its speed was significantly slower than before. Even with the throttle fully twisted, the vehicle moved at an agonizing crawl.
So slow that it felt as though, at any moment, the “people” inching toward them would be able to lunge forward and leap straight onto the vehicle.
“Faster, faster—!”
Yu Huai’s voice cracked with panic, as though he might burst into tears at any second.
Thankfully, the worst didn’t happen.
In the end, the three-wheeler still managed to start up smoothly. However, the village roads were far from even. As Yu Huai pushed the vehicle to its maximum speed, the entire cargo bed began to shake violently, making it difficult for both Gan Tang and his grandmother to stay steady—they nearly got thrown off by sheer inertia.
Not to mention, beneath Gan Tang’s knee, Yu Huai’s father was still wailing, sobbing like a frightened child—“The monsters are going to eat me!”—struggling non-stop.
Gan Tang had no time to worry about anything else. He clung tightly to his grandmother with one hand, afraid that she wouldn’t be able to hold onto the railing and would fall off.
At the same time, he lowered his body, pressing himself down to stabilize his center of gravity.
With his other hand, he firmly pressed down on Yu Huai’s father’s neck, trying to keep the man under control.
At that moment, everything was so chaotic, so terrifying, so urgent. Gan Tang’s thoughts shattered into pieces—he couldn’t think at all. He only knew that his ears were filled with the madman’s screams and the howling wind, beneath him was the rickety three-wheeler that felt like it could fall apart at any moment, and behind them… behind them were those eerie, looming figures—those nightmarish monsters that made his blood run cold.
So, at that moment, Gan Tang truly thought—it must have just been his imagination.
Something long, slender, icy cold, and damp… a hand… or perhaps… a worm…
As he desperately struggled with Yu Huai’s father, something softly brushed against his sweat-drenched neck.
【“Tang Tang.”】
A strange, low whisper swept past his ear, blending into the rushing wind.
“Mmph—”
Gan Tang jolted in alarm and whipped his head around, but the monster he had imagined wasn’t there.
Instead, all he saw was his grandmother’s face—still pale with lingering fear.
“Tang Tang, it’s okay now. We got away. They didn’t follow us, it’s okay. Grandma’s here.”
Perhaps it was because Gan Tang’s face was still stricken with terror, but when his grandmother looked at him, even though she herself was still trembling uncontrollably, she still forced herself to reach out, trying to comfort him.
“I… I’m fine too. Grandma, don’t move. Hold on tight to the railing.”
For just a fleeting moment, Gan Tang’s heart finally settled. He hurriedly reassured her.
When he turned his head again, the eerie, shadowed village of Fengjing had already been left far behind. The corpses controlled by the worms hadn’t chased after them like the zombies in a horror movie.
That chilling touch he had felt just now… it must have just been a hallucination caused by fear, right?
Realizing this, he felt all the strength in his body drain away like water.
Not good.
Gan Tang quickly turned to check on Yu Huai’s father, afraid that he no longer had the strength to restrain him.
Fortunately, Yu Huai’s father had gone quiet as well.
After all, he was just a malnourished madman. His frenzied screaming and struggling had already drained him completely. Now, he was curled up in a hunch beneath Gan Tang, occasionally letting out muffled, incoherent whimpers.
“Monsters… monsters… please… don’t eat me… don’t eat me, sob sob…”
His bloodshot eyes, however, still carried the muddled chaos unique to the insane.
Gan Tang shuddered under that gaze, an unsettling discomfort crawling up his spine. Seeing that Yu Huai’s father had truly lost all strength, he cautiously loosened his grip and slowly slumped onto the narrow cargo bed of the three-wheeler.
Yu Huai’s father didn’t move.
Gan Tang gasped for breath, his whole body instantly going limp.
His grandmother reached out and pulled him into her arms.
“Don’t be afraid.”
The old woman trembled as she spoke.
“Don’t be afraid, Tang Tang. It’s over now.”
—
Yu Huai drove the little three-wheeler non-stop along the winding mountain road.
Later, the little three-wheeler ran out of fuel.
By then, they had already put nearly twenty kilometers between them and Fengjing Village…
But the nearest county town was still more than ten kilometers of mountain road away.
When the vehicle sputtered to a stop, both Gan Tang and Yu Huai nearly broke down on the spot.
Especially when Gan Tang discovered that even after escaping this far, his phone still had no signal—his entire mindset nearly collapsed.
“How is this possible…? There should be signal here! I was playing on my phone when I came this way—how can there be no signal now?!”
Desperate, he kept tapping at his phone’s screen, repeatedly dialing 110, but the device remained unresponsive—nothing more than a useless brick.
His tears finally burst forth, uncontrollable, streaming down his face.
“The monsters are here—”
At that moment, a strange, raspy whisper cut through the night.
Gan Tang snapped his head around.
Yu Huai’s father was leaning against a tree, his hands bound with a strip of tattered cloth—a piece of Yu Huai’s own shirt, torn off to restrain him, just in case he went into another violent fit like before.
It was a moonless night.
Aside from the faint glow of his phone, the mountain road was swallowed in inky darkness, thick and suffocating.
In the pitch-black surroundings, Yu Huai’s father was nothing more than a hazy shadow.
Only his eyes reflected two dim, flickering points of light.
“Hee hee hee… The monsters’ bio-waves interfere with all electronic devices… it’s useless… the monsters are right here…”
The man chuckled softly, but his words sent a chilling shiver down their spines.
Somehow, what he said sounded disturbingly plausible, and in that instant, every hair on Gan Tang’s body stood on end.
But then, the next moment, Yu Huai’s father’s words turned into incoherent, nonsensical ramblings.
“They’re here—ahhhhhh—they’re here! They’re in my head—they’re eating me—they’re eating me! I’m going to turn into a monster—sob sob—I don’t want to turn into a monster! My head—my head—AAAHHH—”
Gan Tang was still on high alert, wary of any insectoid creature that might emerge from the darkness. But in the next second, he saw Yu Huai’s father suddenly throw himself toward a tree at the side of the road.
Yu Huai wasn’t quick enough to react and failed to stop him.
A moment later, there was a thud—a heavy, muffled impact as the man’s forehead slammed into the tree trunk.
The faint scent of iron slowly seeped into the air.
“Shit—Dad, you—!”
Yu Huai jumped up, grabbing onto his father just in time to stop him from ramming into the tree again.
Gan Tang fumbled for his phone, lifting it to shine light onto Yu Huai’s father’s face—
And suddenly, in the dim glow, a bloodied face emerged.
A deep gash split across his scalp, fresh blood spilling down in streams.
If Yu Huai hadn’t acted so quickly to restrain him, the man might have cracked his skull open completely, spilling his own brain matter onto the ground.
The wound was far worse than expected.
Gan Tang involuntarily shuddered at the sight, a phantom ache creeping over his body.
No… maybe it wasn’t just a phantom pain.
The scent of blood in the air suddenly reminded him—his whole body hurt.
Pain throbbed from all over, a deep, relentless ache.
Especially his stomach…
He pressed his hand against his abdomen, feeling the slight twitching of his strained muscles.
Must’ve pulled something while escaping earlier, Gan Tang thought.
