Xie Xishu stared at Qi Wu, and his heart sank as if it was falling into his stomach.
If Qi Wu really was as “fine” as he claimed, there was no way he would have so crudely and forcefully left a wound on him.
At the very least… he wouldn’t have made him bleed.
Nor would he have caused this kind of pain.
Feeling the sharp pain from his fingertip, Xie Xishu couldn’t help but furrow his brows.
The earlier intense stress had left his face deathly pale, with a faint sickly bluish hue now creeping in. But those flesh masses clinging tightly to him looked to be in even worse condition. Qi Wu’s tentacles felt unusually cold, damp, and sticky, while the force with which they were sucking and gnawing at his wound was so intense, it seemed as though he was losing all sense of reason.
What’s more, as Qi Wu kept telling Xie Xishu how hungry he was, countless wet droplets of saliva continuously oozed from the hideous mouths on the surface of his tentacles.
“Qi Wu…”
The sight stirred a shuddering chill that ran down Xie Xishu’s spine, a sensation so familiar it was like an electric current zapping through him.
“What do you need?”
He asked.
“You…”
Qi Wu whimpered in response, his voice pained and hoarse.
“You smell so good.”
The once shapeless mass of soft, sticky flesh on the creature’s surface slowly began to reveal countless fine, obscene cracks. Unlike the mouths filled with sharp teeth, within the depths of those deep red slits were nothing but slender tongues.
Each tongue appeared slippery and wet, soft and dexterous.
Only when they occasionally tensed up did they inadvertently expose the fine barbs hidden within the mucous membrane’s crevices.
These barbs were translucent, gleaming under the lubrication of mucus, making them both exquisite and terrifying.
They rose and fell, undulating rhythmically.
In this way, they trembled in the air, twitching and spasming, gradually creeping toward Xie Xishu.
“I want to be with you… together forever…”
The mutated boy hissed and repeated the fragmented words.
Even he hadn’t noticed that the tone in which he was now speaking was identical to the voice of the man’s face that had emerged from the Headless Woman’s chest earlier.
“You taste so good, hiss hiss, I really just want… want to… devour you.”
The tentacles entwined around Xie Xishu’s arm multiplied, climbing up from his fingertips, and soon, they had tightly coiled around his wrist and then his forearm.
This scene looked like some sort of monstrous feeding ritual, the only difference being that the creature, while consumed by hunger, seemed lost in a haze of confusion and struggle, making all its movements appear gentle.
Gentle, but greedy.
Xie Xishu quickly realized that while Qi Wu’s tongues licked and coiled around him, the barbs on their tips had already pierced deeply into his skin.
His breathing became rapid, but his body felt as though it had been sedated, completely unable to move. He couldn’t even muster any effective resistance, allowing those soft, slippery tongues to continuously wrap around him, devouring him.
“Ah, Xiao Xie, what… what the hell do we do?”
Xiao Tianming stared in terror at the horrifying scene before him.
“Didn’t you say this guy still has his human mind? But why do I feel like he’s about to eat you up any second now?!”
The man was filled with despair, his voice trembling uncontrollably.
But neither Qi Wu nor Xie Xishu responded to him.
The only sound in the air was the wet squelching of soft flesh rubbing against copious amounts of mucus.
Xiao Tianming swallowed hard, and for a second or two, he looked like he genuinely wanted to rush forward and save Xie Xishu.
But a few seconds later, he just clumsily shuffled away from them… and then even farther away.
By now, nearly half of Xie Xishu’s body was covered by those layers upon layers of writhing “tongues.”
“Ah, crap, this isn’t my fault,” Xiao Tianming mumbled in Xie Xishu’s direction.
“This, this… I’m truly powerless here.”
…
But at that very moment, Xiao Tianming was horrified to notice that a faint human face had begun to emerge from the center of that mass of flesh.
That crooked, grotesque face looked horribly distorted, but the fiery rage burning in those deformed eyes was unmistakable… it belonged to a human.
A human who, despite the pain, was still fighting with all his might.
Qi Wu suddenly opened his mouth and, with teeth sharp enough to be anything but human, bit off the greediest and thickest tentacles wrapped around him.
As blood spurted out, the tentacles coiled around Xie Xishu’s body immediately went stiff. Then, reluctantly, they slowly loosened and slipped off his arm, twitching as they did so.
“Go… go a bit farther…”
Qi Wu’s veins bulged as he hoarsely shouted at Xie Xishu.
“Otherwise, I’ll eat you. I’m so hungry, too hungry. I will completely devour you. I want to eat you. I’m so hungry, so hungry, I want to eat—”
Then, he gathered up all his tentacles, and his whole body—or rather, the whole monster—rushed towards the other side of the road with lightning speed.
“Qi Wu!”
At that moment, Xie Xishu finally regained the ability to move.
The tentacles that had been wrapped around his arm had secreted a large amount of neurotoxin driven by the monster’s greedy and bloodthirsty instincts, leaving his mind blank for quite some time.
However, once he came to his senses, Xie Xishu instinctively wanted to chase after Qi Wu.
After taking just two steps, pain shot through his wrist as someone grabbed him firmly.
Turning around, Xie Xishu saw the pale face of Xiao Tianming.
“Xie… Xie, don’t go. That guy’s not right,” the man said, looking terrified.
“I think when he said he wanted to eat you, he really meant it. Don’t do anything foolish…” Xiao Tianming took a deep breath but still couldn’t hide the extreme fear in his voice. “No matter what your relationship with him was, he’s lost it now. He’s gone mad, with no reason left. If you go after him, you’ll just be giving him a free meal!”
Xie Xishu stared into his eyes for a few seconds.
Then, Xiao Tianming saw Xie Xishu pull out a knife from his waist—the very same knife that had once been pressed against his own back, threatening him to charge a terrifying monster.
Xiao Tianming’s breath caught.
But then he saw Xie Xishu loosen his fingers and toss the knife to the ground.
“We’re not far from the safe zone. With that knife, you should be able to make it there. Go by yourself, whether to the shelter or to seek help from others. But now… let go.”
The boy nodded toward Xiao Tianming’s hand with his chin.
Trembling uncontrollably, Xiao Tianming complied with Xie Xishu’s order and released him.
Without looking back, Xie Xishu, with his slender and fragile figure, immediately followed the trail of blood left behind by Qi Wu and ran into the distance.
“W-wait, hold on!”
In what seemed like an instant, the empty asphalt road was left with only the still-crackling campfire and a man standing in place with a complex expression on his face.
“What the hell is this even?” Xiao Tianming muttered in frustration, stumbling back two steps and then sitting on the ground, cradling his head.
- Meanwhile, on the other side, Xie Xishu quickly caught up to Qi Wu.
Qi Wu had already left the roadside and entered a desolate area full of wild trees beneath the road.
Years ago, during the real estate boom in City A, many developers recklessly grabbed land, only for the market to collapse soon after. These plots in the outskirts were completely abandoned, left unmanaged.
In the hot and humid summers of the south, wild trees and grass grew unchecked. Especially the wild mulberry trees, which had grown taller than a person, lush with branches and leaves, turning this desolate land into a small forest.
Xie Xishu walked through the trees, following the path Qi Wu had forcefully carved out.
Surrounded by the dense, lush foliage, air circulation was poor, but because of this, Xie Xishu could clearly smell the familiar, faintly fishy scent of Qi Wu’s blood and mucus.
Xie Xishu finally found Qi Wu in a corner of the wilderness.
“Hiss—”
At that moment, Qi Wu’s tentacles were impaled in a small, blood-red creature that resembled a skinned little monkey.
He was devouring it in large, violent bites. His entire mouth was stained with wet, fresh blood. As he chewed, pieces of flesh and blood made a sticky, squelching sound between his teeth.
When the monster sensed someone approaching, its mouth abruptly widened, swallowing the remaining half of the creature whole.
Immediately, all its tentacles flared out, writhing aggressively in Xie Xishu’s direction.
“Hisssss—”
Before Xie Xishu could react, the monster lunged like a venomous snake, its heavy, slimy body crashing onto him.
“Ugh…”
Xie Xishu let out a low grunt as he was caught off guard by how quickly everything happened, faster than he’d anticipated.
As he fell to the ground, the moist, sturdy tentacles coiled around his wrists, legs, and neck.
It was as if Qi Wu was performing an ancient, brutal punishment—his entire body was stretched out in a tense “X” shape by the monster’s appendages.
In the center of the writhing mass of tentacles, the mouth that had just devoured the creature slowly opened, revealing tongues lined with sharp barbs.
“So… fragrant…”
The whisper that reached his ears still sounded vaguely human.
But Xie Xishu could tell that it was merely an echo from the monster’s muddled mind. They were words spoken by instinct, parroted unconsciously in a voice that no longer belonged to a rational being.
“Hiss… so fragrant… I’m so hungry…”
Just like the other monsters that endlessly chased after living prey, these words were filled with nothing but endless greed and hunger, devoid of any human reason.
“Qi Wu?”
Xie Xishu’s chest heaved as he looked blankly at the creature just inches from him. For the first time, he clearly realized he was facing death.
Xiao Tianming hadn’t been wrong.
Qi Wu had completely lost his reason.
The battle with the headless woman had consumed too much of his energy, and retaining human consciousness for a monster was already an unnatural state.
In this state, Qi Wu’s only remaining desire as a monster was “to eat.”
Xie Xishu’s arrival was indeed just serving him as an extra meal.
But for some reason, Xie Xishu didn’t feel afraid at all in that moment.
【After all, this isn’t the first time, right?】
That voice in his mind sounded again.
Xie Xishu tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Yeah, it wasn’t the first time… Since he had already decided to be the boyfriend of a monster, wasn’t he supposed to be prepared for situations like this?
He quietly responded in his heart.
At this point, Qi Wu’s tongue was already pressed directly against his chest. With just a light swipe, all of Xie Xishu’s clothes were torn apart by the barbs.
Fine scratches appeared on the boy’s pale chest and abdomen. At first, they looked like mere surface cuts, but soon, droplets of bright red blood began to seep from those marks.
The air gradually filled with a heavy, sweet metallic scent.
Xie Xishu let out a stifled whimper—not from the pain of the wounds, but because all of Qi Wu’s tentacles suddenly tightened to the extreme. In a daze, he even felt as though his joints were about to be forcibly pulled apart.
“Qi Wu… a little lighter… please, you’re hurting me…”
Xie Xishu, fighting to suppress his cries of pain, murmured softly to the mindless monster in front of him.
