TFOF Ch20

Xie Xishu exchanged a glance with Qi Wu.

Qi Wu had already furrowed his brows the moment the sound rang out. Unlike Xie Xishu, who couldn’t see clearly, Qi Wu, having already undergone a second transformation, could see very clearly. In the farthest corner of the supermarket, there was a door.

It was a very inconspicuous door. At the entrance, there was a sign that read, “For internal staff only, unauthorized personnel, do not enter.” A row of shelves was slanted near the door, seemingly knocked over in the earlier chaos. But now it seemed more likely that someone had done it intentionally.

“Qi Wu… that is…”

A probing question came from Xie Xishu beside him—he knew full well what kind of answer the young man wanted to hear.

When they came to the supermarket earlier to clear it out, his methods were somewhat “violent.” Well, it wasn’t really his fault. After all, at that time, he didn’t have a weak, timid, troublesome human by his side. But precisely because of this, the supermarket that, to Xie Xishu, only faintly smelled of blood, was for Qi Wu a stinking hell. The floors, shelves, and even the ceiling were drenched in the stench of monster blood and flesh.

Even with his heightened sense of smell, it was hard for him to tell whether the being currently hiding behind that door was a monster or a human.

But Qi Wu did hear some faint breathing sounds.

Clouded, heavy, and quickened with fear…

A long tongue flicked out from Qi Wu’s throat, slowly licking across the rows of sharp new teeth growing inside his gums.

His lips moved slightly, and he almost opened his mouth to tell the foolishly hopeful person next to him: There’s only a monster in there.

Yes, you’re mistaken. What’s hiding behind that door is nothing but a few monsters skilled in deception.

The “broadcast” you heard was just a trick they were using to lure you in.

“I don’t know, it stinks too much in here.”

However, when he opened his mouth, Qi Wu was surprised to find that he said something completely different.

“All I can say is that they might be human—what, are you that eager to reunite with your ‘kind’?”

He asked in a chillingly cold tone.

But soon after, he noticed that someone had tightly grabbed his sleeve, and he suspected that Xie Xishu himself might not have even realized the small gesture…

“I, I just want to check.”

For the first time, a faint flush appeared on the boy’s pale, haggard face—an undeniable glimmer of hope.

What irritated Qi Wu the most was that Xie Xishu’s voice had softened even more than usual.

“I really did hear the sound of the radio just now… I mean, I heard an emergency broadcast! As long as there’s an emergency broadcast, that means it’s only City A that’s in trouble, not the whole country… There are still normal people outside. Maybe they’re even preparing to come into the city for rescue! Don’t we need more information? Then we can meet up with others and wait for the state’s rescue with peace of mind!”

Xie Xishu’s expression at that moment reminded Qi Wu of a shipwreck survivor who had finally clambered onto a lifeboat: no one knows what will happen in the future, but at least for this moment, he truly believes that he will be saved and that the nightmarish reality will soon come to an end.

But the very next second, a deep shadow fell across the boy’s face again.

He turned his head to look toward the outside of the supermarket, his expression hesitant.

“B-but if it’s not safe, then maybe we should forget it—”

“Tsk.”

Qi Wu ran a hand through his hair, then gripped Xie Xishu’s hand tightly.

“If you want to confirm it, just go check. You’re dithering over something so small… Do all you geniuses overthink like this?”

Of course, he knew what Xie Xishu was hesitating about. Maybe after opening the door, they’d find a few monsters he had missed hiding inside the staff room—but the thought only made Qi Wu even more annoyed.

With him there, would he really let any other monsters eat Xie Xishu right in front of him?

Xie Xishu really was underestimating him.

Without giving Xie Xishu a chance to hesitate any longer, Qi Wu simply grabbed the boy and headed straight for the dark depths of the supermarket.

“Bang—”

The tall boy kicked aside the shelves blocking the doorway, then reached out. With the sharp sound of the metal latch breaking, he yanked open the iron door of the staff room.

Then he turned on the flashlight he had just gathered from the supermarket and indifferently looked inside.

The decor in the employee break room was quite simple. Along one wall, there was a row of personal lockers, and next to them were some cleaning tools like mops and brooms.

In the middle of the room, there was a small foldable table. On the table were some personal items scattered in disarray: brightly colored plastic buckets, a pair of grayed cotton work gloves, a stainless steel thermos, and a few open boxes of takeout food that hadn’t been finished yet…

On the other wall, there was a whiteboard with a cleaning schedule hastily scribbled on it in permanent marker.

At this moment, the room appeared completely empty.

But just a moment ago, the sound of a radio clearly came from here.

Xie Xishu briefly held his breath, and Qi Wu felt the person’s fingertips lightly move in his palm.

“Heh.”

Qi Wu let out a sudden cold laugh.

“Is anyone here?”

He spoke toward the silent break room in a flat tone.

“……”

No one responded.

“Any humans? Anyone who hasn’t mutated?”

He repeated.

It was still completely silent… until Xie Xishu suddenly tugged on him, signaling him to look at the ground.

Under the beam of the flashlight, beneath the folding table, there was a large puddle of dark, sticky blood, and faintly, it seemed there was a person curled up there, their body heaving violently.

The smell of blood on this person was intense.

But that scent of blood could also have come from a monster…

“Hey, you—”

Qi Wu frowned and took a couple of steps forward, kicking the person on the ground. In the next moment, that person suddenly raised their head, their thin hands gripping Qi Wu’s leg tightly.

“Kill it! Kill this monster!”

Under the beam of the flashlight, the survivor’s face twitched violently. For a brief moment, they even looked more grotesque than an actual monster.

And as the hoarse shout echoed, several figures hiding above the metal lockers and in the corners of the room leaped out from the shadows. Their bodies were trembling, but they raised their weapons without hesitation—machetes from the meat section and iron shovels used for cleaning—madly striking toward Qi Wu and Xie Xishu.

Qi Wu raised an eyebrow and easily flung the first person, the one who had grabbed him, aside with a kick. Despite being the strongest of the group, wearing a wrinkled security guard uniform, the man slammed into the metal lockers, causing all the locker doors to rattle loudly. The clutter piled on top crashed to the floor, shattering.

At the same time, Qi Wu turned off the flashlight.

When the light suddenly goes out, ordinary people experience a brief moment of complete darkness where they can’t see anything.

In that moment, the fissures on Qi Wu’s body burst open, and thin tendrils shot out, effortlessly grabbing the weapons aimed at him and Xie Xishu, flinging them aside.

Screams echoed in the darkness.

“A monster! Don’t be afraid! Kill it, or we’ll all die!”

The security guard on the ground shakily stood up, retreating into the corner under cover of darkness.

But he didn’t forget to keep encouraging the others.

Unfortunately, they weren’t even a match for Qi Wu before he mutated, let alone now. These few trembling survivors, who had somehow avoided mutation by hiding in the supermarket, had no chance against the boy.

By the time the flashlight was turned on again, those former supermarket employees were all lying on the ground, their shoulders dislocated, writhing in pain and groaning.

… This was clearly not what Xie Xishu had hoped to see.

“Um, we… we’re not mutants.”

Xie Xishu, pale-faced, stepped out from behind Qi Wu, stammering his explanation.

He looked at the people on the ground.

Xie Xishu had thought his earlier experiences were terrifying enough, but he had to admit, compared to himself, everyone in this break room already seemed completely insane.

“Mon… monster!”

“Ahh… Monster… It hurts, it hurts so bad, I’m going to be eaten! I’m going to be eaten!”

“Don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me…”

“Monster…”

…

They couldn’t even distinguish the sharp pain in their shoulders, unaware that it was simply dislocation and not that their arms were being torn apart by a monster. Under the flashlight, each person’s eyes bulged slightly in sheer terror. When they saw Xie Xishu… and Qi Wu standing behind him, they all began to cry and howl uncontrollably, with one even wetting his pants.

Their breakdown was so complete that Xie Xishu couldn’t help but glance back at Qi Wu.

Right now, Qi Wu was acting completely normal, showing no signs of anything unusual.

Xie Xishu couldn’t understand why these people were wailing in such fear.

“We mean no harm. We’re just students!”

Xie Xishu stared in disbelief at the mentally broken adults in front of him. Despite trying to communicate again and again, he received no proper response. His expression gradually darkened.

“We just heard the sound of the radio and wanted to check with you—”

Xie Xishu forced out his last bit of energy, trying to sound calm, but this time, he didn’t get to finish his sentence.

“Monster!”

The security guard huddled in the corner suddenly interrupted Xie Xishu.

He stared blankly at the two figures by the door, his face twitching unnaturally.

“You’re clearly a monster. Don’t think speaking like a human will fool us. We won’t fall for it again—everyone, attack! Kill them! If we don’t, this thing will attract the other monsters and then eat us all!”

Xie Xishu took a deep breath.

Ever since the earlier fight, Qi Wu hadn’t said a word, but Xie Xishu could feel the boy growing increasingly irritated. And that made Xie Xishu even more anxious than the threats from the people calling for their death.

Having experienced one of Qi Wu’s breakdowns before, Xie Xishu could only describe it as a nightmare.

And he had no desire to relive that nightmare again.

“If you keep screaming like that, you’ll really attract other monsters… Tch, whatever. Where’s the radio? I just need to check the information on it, and once I’m done, I’ll return it to you.”

After saying this, he simply couldn’t be bothered to deal with the other people in the room and started rummaging around the break room without any further attention to them.

Fortunately, they hadn’t hidden the radio too deeply. Before long, Xie Xishu found it among the clutter. The radio was old, and there was a fresh dent on one corner of its plastic casing.

It seemed that the group had accidentally dropped the radio earlier, turning it on in the process. And in their rush to turn it off, they hadn’t even bothered to find the power switch but had instead pried open the battery cover and removed the batteries.

The constant sobbing and screaming around him made Xie Xishu feel even more irritated and uneasy.

He didn’t even bother looking for the batteries they’d discarded. After grabbing the radio, he quickly returned to Qi Wu’s side and tugged on his sleeve.

“Sorry…”

What came out of his mouth, unexpectedly, was an apology.

“Qi Wu, let’s go. Let’s head outside.”

Then, in a deeply dejected tone, the boy said softly.

Qi Wu pulled the corners of his mouth into a slight smirk and quietly closed up the cracks on his body that had been about to burst open.

However, just as they were about to leave, the security guard began screaming even more hysterically, “Quick! Stop them! They’re summoning other monsters! If we let them go, we’re all dead, dead, dead!”

The man’s eyes suddenly burst with a “pop” in the midst of his own screaming.

Two streams of dark red, filthy blood poured from his now hollow eye sockets. Following that, what pushed out of his eye sockets were clusters of wriggling, crimson flesh.

They slowly formed into some sort of swollen, translucent sacs right in front of Xie Xishu’s horrified gaze.

They resembled the throat pouches of a frog.

Each time the man let out a sound, his “eyeballs” would swell up even more, and his voice, as if amplified by some enormous resonance, became abnormally loud.

【“Monster, monster, monster, die—”】

With a deafening scream, the man staggered to his feet in the corner.

With each step he took, his body became more grotesque. His damp security uniform was quickly corroded by the highly acidic mucus, crumbling into weak strips of fabric that fell at his feet.

“Lao… Lao Li? You… you turned into a monster?”

The group, who had previously been screaming at Qi Wu, now looked at their former “companion” in disbelief.

“That’s impossible… Didn’t you say you hadn’t caught a cold? How did you turn into a monster?”

But “Lao Li,” by this point, could no longer answer any of their questions.

Or rather, “Lao Li” didn’t give them the chance to speak again.

Before Xie Xishu could react, he saw the monster’s arm suddenly elongate, and with its black-and-yellow nails, it grabbed one of its trembling former companions from the ground and stuffed him into its mouth.

With each massive bite the monster took, a torrent of warm, foul-smelling blood sprayed from between its teeth like a waterfall.

“Ugh—”

Xie Xishu hugged the radio tightly to his chest, a whimper escaping his throat as he stumbled backward uncontrollably.

Not… human?

When they first opened the door, wasn’t this man just a regular survivor?

How did he suddenly turn into a monster?

He couldn’t comprehend any of what was happening before him.

After devouring the corpses of its former companions, “Lao Li” swayed for a moment before turning its head sharply towards Xie Xishu. His eyes had long since burst, replaced by those swollen sacs.

Yet Xie Xishu still felt as though it was staring at him.

“You smell… so good… So delicious… Hiss… I’ll eat you… I’m going to eat you… you monster…”

Then it stretched its arms and charged straight toward Xie Xishu.

*

“Qi Wu!”

Instinctively, Xie Xishu let out a scream.

In the next moment, several strands of crimson flesh brushed past his ear, stabbing straight into “Lao Li’s” head.

Though these tendrils appeared soft and flexible, when absorbing the flesh of other monsters, they moved with the ease of a hot knife slicing through butter. Xie Xishu watched as Qi Wu stabbed the tendrils into “Lao Li’s” eye sockets. The tendrils then bent slightly and, with a gentle twist, tore the monster’s head apart.

In its final moment of struggle, “Lao Li” let out a series of muffled gurgles as a long, purple-red tongue flopped out of its mouth, wildly thrashing in the air.

Then, Xie Xishu heard a crisp “snap.”

“Lao Li’s” entire body was torn cleanly in half, blood splattering everywhere, right in front of Xie Xishu.

*

“…Are you okay?”

Xie Xishu didn’t know how much time had passed, but he felt someone pulling him up from the ground.

He couldn’t even remember when his legs had gone weak, causing him to collapse.

Qi Wu’s voice sounded distant, as if coming from the depths of the sea, muffled and distorted.

“Hey, are you really okay?”

Qi Wu waved a hand in front of the boy’s pale face. Seeing Xie Xishu’s vacant eyes and bloodless face, a sinking feeling crept into his heart.

He had to admit that he’d deliberately held back a little—letting the monster get so close to Xie Xishu. As for why, even Qi Wu himself couldn’t say.

But now, Xie Xishu’s reaction was far worse than he had anticipated—yet last night, Qi Wu’s form had been far more terrifying than this low-level monster, and Xie Xishu hadn’t shown this much fear. Why now?

*
“I… I feel… a little sick.”

After a moment, Qi Wu finally heard Xie Xishu’s dazed response.

He quietly let out a breath of relief, discreetly tightening his grip on Xie Xishu’s hand.

“Alright, let’s get out of here first. The stench is getting to me—I’m about to puke too.” As he spoke, he led Xie Xishu toward the door. But in the next second, Qi Wu suddenly froze, an uncontrollable curse slipping from his lips.

“Damn it!”

A sweet, intoxicating scent made Qi Wu’s heart race in fear.

He glanced down to see a streak of wet, vivid red.

It was Xie Xishu’s blood.

Amidst the chaos just now, Xie Xishu’s hand had been cut by the broken edge of the radio. Earlier, the tension in his grip had kept the wound from bleeding.

But now that incredibly fragrant blood was seeping freely from the wound.

Drip. Drip.

Drip. Drip.

…

Qi Wu’s pupils contracted instantly into a pitch-black point.

__

Author’s Note:

The world is falling apart.

And he only has it.

It only has him.

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