When he woke up the next day, a bright, dazzling sunlight was just shining onto Xie Xishu’s eyelids.
The summer sunlight was warm, and even with his eyes closed, Xie Xishu’s vision filled with a soft, warm red glow.
His head hurt.
In the sealed room, without any air conditioning running, the sunlight quickly heated the space, causing the air to simmer and the stench to linger.
Xie Xishu felt as if he were deeply submerged in a sea of mucus and red flesh, his consciousness slowly rising from the depths of the ocean, yet his senses remained sluggish, as if coated in a layer of sticky secretion.
“Ugh…”
The boy let out a painful groan, his body curling into a ball involuntarily.
Then, he laboriously lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the overly glaring sunlight.
Every muscle in his body was sore, and his neck and chest were covered in a thick layer of dried mucus, bringing an unpleasant sticky feeling.
This made Xie Xishu feel even worse.
He was so tired.
So exhausted.
In his dazed state, he almost believed that this was another morning of waking up drained after a high fever. But the rough, unfamiliar feel of the blanket wrapped around his body quickly pulled him back to reality.
And the smell filling his nostrils made his senses instinctively tense.
He didn’t like the smell, but he had no choice but to accept it.
Because…
Because this was Qi Wu’s scent.
And it was the only scent that could mask the deadly “fragrance” on his own body.
The scent that had allowed him to escape the monsters’ pursuit.
Wait, monsters—
Monsters.
Qi Wu.
【Qi Wu!】
With that name flashing suddenly in his mind, Xie Xishu shuddered violently, jolting fully awake.
He abruptly sat up in bed, only to be met with the sight of a completely unfamiliar room.
The hotel room he had glimpsed yesterday under the moonlight now looked even more old and rundown in the daylight. After being sealed off all night, the air had grown even more stuffy and foul.
One corner of the room seemed to have a leak, with the outdated wallpaper showing clear signs of water stains under the sunlight, and a large patch of dark moisture on the carpet.
Xie Xishu stared at that corner, his eyes open so wide that they began to sting.
He could vaguely remember that it was in that corner that he had been completely… completely consumed by the out-of-control Qi Wu.
He could even recall how he had been wrapped layer by layer, unable to break free from Qi Wu’s “tentacles”, completely engulfed inside his body, how the half-fluid soft flesh had filled his nose and mouth.
Everything back then felt like a drowning nightmare, tiny teeth constantly gnawing at him, drinking his blood.
At the time, Xie Xishu truly believed he was going to die.
But now, here he was, sitting safely and soundly on the hotel’s pink round waterbed, covered by a blanket that carried a faint musty odor, his body aching so much that even breathing hurt… but he hadn’t lost any part of his body.
And that monster named Qi Wu had long since disappeared.
*
Had he turned into a monster and left?
Or was he just temporarily not in the room?
Or, perhaps there had never been a Qi Wu at all, and it was all just a dream?
…
Xie Xishu’s head throbbed painfully as he rubbed his temples. The nightmare and his memories seemed to completely overlap, making his entire mind feel especially chaotic.
The room after Qi Wu’s departure was so quiet it made him uneasy.
Everything within sight, except for those damned water stains, seemed utterly ordinary.
The overly peaceful reality, along with the bright sunlight outside, made Xie Xishu’s experiences from yesterday seem like some kind of delusion from a mentally disturbed person.
【If only it was all just a delusion.】
“Beep—beep beep—”
Just then, a somewhat abrupt car horn sounded from outside the window.
Xie Xishu’s body jolted. Without thinking, he jumped out of bed and staggered toward the hotel window.
Carefully, he pulled aside a corner of the curtain and looked outside…
He saw a living nightmare.
*
The weather was nice today.
But for Xie Xishu, it was almost too nice—there was no mist shrouding the world like yesterday. After the sudden mutation, the city was fully exposed before him.
The once tidy, bustling, and orderly city now resembled the corpse of a long-dead madman, with wounds where countless maggots squirmed. Everything Xie Xishu could see was in utter disarray: ruins, corpses, garbage…
The cars on the street were all piled up in a chaotic mess. Judging by the charred metal frames left behind, Xie Xishu could guess that a terrible chain collision must have occurred. But compared to the other tragedies on the street, the car crash seemed like a minor issue.
All the stores along the roadside had been completely destroyed. Rolling shutters or simple iron bars were nothing more than toys to the mutated monsters. In their nocturnal frenzy, they tore open tightly sealed doors, smashed glass, and ripped apart everything within reach. Some even climbed up to the second or third floors of the buildings, ripping open the flimsy security bars and dragging the terrified, confused humans out of their rooms through the windows to feast on them.
With the sunrise, perhaps the monsters had returned to a state of “calm.” But the remains of their victims—like a small segment of a spine, cleaned of all flesh, or skulls licked clean of skin, along with less desirable organs—were left hanging on the deformed security bars, gently swaying in the breeze.
Amidst the wrecked cars, misshapen furniture, and scattered trash, a few “people” were wandering aimlessly, their expressions vacant.
One wore a filthy coat, his feet walking over dried bloodstains and excrement. At first, Xie Xishu thought it was just a terrified, deranged survivor, walking alone among the monsters. His heart clenched with worry for that person.
But in the next moment, as another monster approached, the “normal person’s” back suddenly split open, revealing a hideous, gaping mouth inside.
With one bite, it swallowed the monster whole. The enormous crack in its back closed again, leaving only a large hunchback-like tumor.
Through its stretched, semi-transparent skin, Xie Xishu could vaguely see the monster still struggling inside its body.
Blood, along with the monster’s feces, spurted from the gaps in its skin, splattering onto the “person’s” hands and feet.
Of course, many of the monsters had long since torn through their clothing due to their physical mutations. The colorful scraps of fabric were now mere rags, barely hanging on. One “man,” for instance, was parading his grotesque body around, giggling as he wandered the street. Whenever he saw a hole, he would rush toward it and start thrusting wildly. His final choice was the manhole cover on the ground.
From the manhole, a black and purple mass suddenly emerged, biting into the man’s groin and ripping it off.
Dark red blood gushed out from the man’s wound like water from a broken faucet. Even as a monster, he let out a shrill scream.
In the next second, all the monsters on the street, having heard the scream, froze in place. Their previous aimless and dazed behavior stopped completely. They turned their heads, eyes glinting with greed as they stared at the “man.”
Then they all pounced on him.
Even from this distance, high up in the building, Xie Xishu could clearly hear the sound of chewing.
Right until that “man” was devoured down to the last piece of rotting flesh, his scream never ceased.
It seemed that after becoming monsters, their vitality became remarkably tenacious.
At the same time, they grew incredibly ravenous.
Xie Xishu stood in a daze by the window, watching everything unfold on the street. When he saw monsters ripping open the charred frames of cars and pulling out the twisted remains inside to devour, he could no longer hold back and covered his mouth.
That car horn he had been so thrilled to hear earlier? It was probably just a random monster, accidentally honking while dragging a corpse out of a partly intact vehicle.
Just picturing the scene made Xie Xishu gag uncontrollably.
Perhaps because his scent was too strong, Xie Xishu suddenly noticed that one of the monsters had stopped chewing. Its entire face split open, and from deep within its dark skull, a thin, constantly twitching sensor emerged. The monster’s deformed neck swayed as it spun its eyes around, as if confused, trying to pinpoint the source of the smell.
Xie Xishu suddenly crouched down beneath the windowsill.
He tightly covered his mouth with his hand, not daring to make a single extra sound.
He was terrified of being noticed by those monsters.
…
However, as fate would have it, just as Xie Xishu was holding his breath in fear, a pale hand suddenly pressed against the outside of the windowpane above his head.
“Crunch—”
In the center of the hand was an eye, already deformed.
Xie Xishu felt his eye sockets grow moist.
He had never been one to get emotional easily, but after everything he’d been through, he realized that when some people are scared out of their minds, they might indeed uncontrollably shed physiological tears.
He didn’t dare make a sound. He crouched on all fours, and while the eye on that hand hadn’t spotted him, he swiftly crawled along the edge of the curtain, back into the room.
“Click-click—clack—”
From behind the curtain came the harsh sound of the window latch being turned.
Xie Xishu bit his lip hard, barefoot on the soft floor of the room. After scanning the room in a panic, he didn’t hesitate and ran straight towards a door left ajar in the corner.
*
Inside the door was the bathroom of the room.
Xie Xishu, trembling with fear, gently closed the bathroom door. At the same time, he helplessly prayed that after catching a whiff of the scent Qi Wu left behind, the monster, like the undeveloped ones before, would retreat.
But the moment he turned his head, what he saw directly froze him in place.
At that moment, even the invader just outside the door seemed a little less terrifying.
Blood, mucus, chunks of flesh…
Xie Xishu’s vision was completely filled with these grotesque things.
The hotel bathroom was far from spacious, and those bloodied, mangled things had nearly filled every corner of the small space.
Xie Xishu could clearly see lifeless, slightly bluish chunks of flesh. They were covered with purple veins and red nerves, interwoven like the roots of a tree, bulging slightly beneath the skin.
He could also see the pale white intersecting stripes across the skin that had long ceased moving. He even saw the wide-open, lifeless “mouths,” their once-deep red membranes now a cold purplish hue, with the tongues soft and limp, dangling lifelessly among the rotting flesh and mucus.
Xie Xishu no longer cared about making noise and being detected by the monsters outside.
He gasped in horror, a whimper escaping him.
He really didn’t want to admit that what he was looking at was Qi Wu, but he could smell the familiar scent.
And besides, the characteristics of Qi Wu were all too obvious on these things.
*
So, Qi Wu wasn’t going berserk last night—he was on the verge of death?
Instinctively, Xie Xishu reached out toward the pile of bloody, mangled flesh, wanting to check on “Qi Wu’s” condition.
However, just before his fingertips touched that mass of bloody, slimy flesh, his hand trembled uncontrollably and pulled back.
Once he realized that this might very well be Qi Wu’s corpse, he found that his entire body was trembling uncontrollably.
He didn’t dare touch it.
With his back against the bathroom door, tears streaming down his face, Xie Xishu stared at “Qi Wu” for quite some time. Finally, steeling himself, he reached for the disposable toothbrush placed on the hotel sink, cautiously using it to poke at the soft mass of flesh.
The sensation was extremely odd.
Odd enough that Xie Xishu felt a tingle from his fingertips all the way to his scalp.
Poking Qi Wu’s corpse felt nothing like what its wet, squishy appearance suggested. It was very loose, like a pile of old sponge that had long since weathered and lost all elasticity.
“Qi—Qi Wu.”
With a slight sob in his voice, Xie Xishu stared unblinkingly at the small piece of purplish-red flesh he had just poked. Desperately, he prayed in his heart that Qi Wu would give him some response—any response, no matter how small.
But there was none.
No twitching, no spasms, no reflexes of any kind.
“Qi…”
Xie Xishu’s tears finally rolled down his cheeks.
“What are you doing?”
Then, at that very moment, a deeply annoyed and grim voice came from behind the boy: “Why are you looking for me?”
…
…
Xie Xishu froze in shock and turned around, utterly dumbfounded.
The bathroom door had somehow already been opened, and Qi Wu was standing there, arms crossed, leaning against the doorframe with an expressionless face, staring at Xie Xishu.
The boy looked just the same as before—tall, brooding, exuding an aura of being difficult to deal with.
“You’re… you’re still alive!”
“What else?”
Qi Wu replied coldly, his thick black brows furrowing slightly, a hint of irritation creeping into his tone.
“Just now, I asked you to help me open the window, and you ran faster than a rabbit…” As he spoke, his gaze suddenly locked onto the toothbrush in Xie Xishu’s hand. “What are you doing with that?”
Then, Qi Wu followed the direction of the toothbrush to the pile of lifeless flesh in the bathroom—the discarded waste he had just shed the night before.
He was utterly incredulous.
“Xie Xishu, you thought I was dead—and you poked me with a toothbrush?!”
Xie Xishu quickly put the toothbrush back on the bathroom sink.
“No!”
He swallowed hard, replying dryly, “I just thought… I just thought another monster had gotten into the bathroom, and you killed it. I wanted to check if it was dead, but I was afraid it might have digestive fluids that could be corrosive.”
At first, his words sounded stiff, but by the end, they flowed more naturally, as if he had genuinely believed this all along.
Xie Xishu had no idea whether Qi Wu actually believed his nonsense—
Vaguely, he felt that while he was speaking, Qi Wu seemed to glance at his face.
Then, the boy with a livid expression gradually softened, snorted coldly from his nose, and said, “You better be telling the truth.”
Right after that, he turned and left, but not before grabbing Xie Xishu by the collar, yanking him out of the bathroom like he was a trash bag.
“…It’s just a pile of dead meat. If you’re so scared, why didn’t you run? Why were you squatting there poking at it? If it had been some other monster and it made a final death lunge and swallowed you whole, crying then would be useless.”
While he was saying these things, Qi Wu kept his back to Xie Xishu.
Xie Xishu couldn’t see his face, but he could barely deduce that Qi Wu’s last few words… might have been out of concern for him?
Well, at least on the surface, it seemed like this crisis had passed without any further incident.
*
Qi Wu’s reactions afterward were just like his usual self.
It was almost as if the chaos and near-madness from last night, when he was on the verge of unraveling, were all just figments of Xie Xishu’s imagination.
But Xie Xishu knew it wasn’t just in his head—he could clearly sense that something about Qi Wu had fundamentally changed.
…
“It’s just shedding skin.”
Qi Wu shrugged, explaining flatly.
“Once a mutation occurs, if there’s a life-threatening situation and you survive it, a second developmental stage automatically kicks in.”
His voice was hoarse and indifferent, casually glossing over the fact that he had almost collapsed while dealing with the headless woman.
Although, given the circumstances, if Qi Wu had only been concerned about saving himself, he could have easily managed. But shielding Xie Xishu, someone so “irresistibly sweet” in front of a fully developed monster, came at the potential cost of his own life.
Yet that wasn’t the real reason Qi Wu nearly broke down yesterday.
The true agony, pushing him to the brink of madness, wasn’t just hiding Xie Xishu’s presence from a high-tier monster, but forcing himself to maintain human rationality after exhausting every ounce of energy.
That delectable, fragrant “food,” so mouthwatering even just to sniff at under normal circumstances, was right within his grasp. Yet Qi Wu still suppressed the primal urges raging within his body with torturous willpower.
Until this fool Xie Xishu, at the very moment when his willpower was hanging by a thread, directly threw himself into his arms—
At that point, Qi Wu genuinely thought he would lose to the beast within, surrendering to the disgusting, bloodthirsty madness of a monster.
…
But he didn’t.
In fact, even now, Qi Wu couldn’t fully explain what had happened that night.
The miracle may have come from the offering Xie Xishu unknowingly gave him—the nectar formed from blood, tears, sweat, and other fluids. It was far more satisfying than any other time he’d ever fed.
The frenzied hunger and monstrous instincts screaming inside him, everything—were reduced to fleeting illusions in the overwhelming pleasure.
The moment he “tasted” Xie Xishu, Qi Wu’s human rationality snapped back into place.
The ravenous hunger that had been tearing at his insides, threatening to hollow him out, vanished instantly. He didn’t need to devour the tender, pale boy before him, only to sip a little of the sweet liquid, and the monster inside him was sated, even to the point of overflowing with power.
After that, he curled up in the small, cold bathroom, listening to the boy outside breathing steadily in his sleep. Somehow, irrationally, he was filled with sweet happiness as his body shed its limp, useless flesh and entered the next stage of the monster’s evolution.
…
Of course, Qi Wu would never tell Xie Xishu any of this.
Even though he could see clearly that there was curiosity written all over Xie Xishu’s face whenever he looked at him.
“…There’s nothing to explain.”
Qi Wu lowered his eyes, pretending to be completely indifferent, avoiding the boy’s speculative gaze.
“I just got a bit taller.”
The boy muttered offhandedly.
“And stronger than before.”
Then, he raised his hand and tossed a bulging plastic bag at Xie Xishu.
“Alright, enough talking—these are for you.”
Xie Xishu was startled by the plastic bag. Looking at the food packages spilling out of it, he was dazed for a few seconds before it clicked.
“Wait, did you go out just now to… to get food for me?”
He was a bit shocked.
After everything they’d been through, not to mention Qi Wu being a monster, even Xie Xishu himself had been so terrified that he’d completely forgotten about eating.
In fact, if it hadn’t been for seeing those snacks, Xie Xishu wouldn’t have even realized how close he was to passing out from hunger.
Qi Wu said nothing.
But Xie Xishu couldn’t care about that now. He quickly picked up a small chocolate cake, tore it open, and shoved it into his mouth.
The overwhelming sweetness, which would have been too much for him on a normal day, now felt like the best thing he’d ever tasted.
Xie Xishu never really liked sweets before.
But now, without realizing it, he grabbed package after package, from the small cakes wrapped in plastic to the bread stuffed with artificial flavors and cream. He even ate several bags of the peanut butter candies he normally hated.
By the time he noticed, he realized he was gorging himself, wolfing down the food without any regard for manners.
Half of the plastic bag Qi Wu brought back was unknowingly emptied, leaving only a mess of torn plastic bags on the carpet.
As his stomach filled with enough energy, Xie Xishu finally regained some of his normal thinking ability—
Then he noticed that throughout the whole time, Qi Wu had just been sitting calmly at the edge of the bed, looking down at Xie Xishu as he feasted alone.
When Xie Xishu, due to low blood sugar, couldn’t even open a package, Qi Wu would just snort coldly, looking impatient as he reached out to help tear open the plastic packaging.
Qi Wu hadn’t touched any of the food himself.
Xie Xishu’s face flushed red in an instant.
“Sorry.”
He mumbled through a mouthful of sachima.
Then, in a fluster, he pushed the pile of food in front of him toward Qi Wu.
“I… I was too hungry.”
Xie Xishu muttered.
“You brought this stuff back, so really, you should’ve eaten first.”
As soon as he finished speaking, Xie Xishu saw Qi Wu shoot him a very strange look.
“I don’t need to eat that kind of thing.”
After a long pause, Qi Wu sighed and said each word slowly to Xie Xishu.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve already had my fill—otherwise, I wouldn’t have been able to bring this stuff back.”
Xie Xishu: …
Qi Wu indeed didn’t need to eat human food to fill his stomach anymore.
Xie Xishu belatedly realized.
But once he understood what Qi Wu’s real “food” was, Xie Xishu suddenly felt like the food in his mouth didn’t taste as sweet anymore.
Yet he could only force himself not to think about what exactly Qi Wu had eaten to get “full.”
Barely managing to finish all the food he needed, Xie Xishu gradually felt his blood sugar return to normal and finally regained a bit of energy.
“I’m full, thanks.”
However, just after he finished thanking him and looked up, Xie Xishu met Qi Wu’s gaze directly.
Qi Wu’s face showed no expression, and he didn’t say anything.
In fact, they had often fallen into awkward silences before, but perhaps because of the saying “you owe someone when you take their handouts or food,” this time, Xie Xishu felt the dead silence between him and Qi Wu was strangely uncomfortable.
“So, what do we… what should we do next?”
Xie Xishu pursed his lips and casually started a conversation.
Qi Wu glanced at him again before looking away.
The tall boy shrugged, his attitude completely relaxed: “Go back to my house first.”
He said.
“But before going home, we need to stop by the supermarket.”
Xie Xishu: “Yeah, stocking up on supplies is definitely necessary—”
Qi Wu: “Seems like you eat more than I thought.”
Xie Xishu: “Huh?”
__
Author’s note:
Xie Xishu: (Favorability -10)
