Chapter 20: The Storm
The aurora didn’t last long.
Akhe withdrew its domain, and Xiang Er’s consciousness plummeted from the heights, falling into unconsciousness.
Cold air brushed against her cheeks, a tingling, aching sensation. Her senses gradually returned, her mind stirring.
She forced her eyes open and saw the familiar, old ceiling.
And four or five familiar dark red tentacles.
Seeing her awake, the tentacles immediately swayed towards her, attempting to slide beneath her and lift her up.
But Xiang Er waved them away:
“No, I can do it myself.”
She pushed herself up from the floor with her still-weak arms, carefully avoiding touching the tentacles. The tentacles swayed gently beside her, not forcing their assistance, but surrounding her protectively.
Xiang Er stood up, staggering slightly before regaining her balance. She took a deep breath and looked around.
All traces of the monster were gone, everything was clean and fresh, the air clear, no unusual smells. The floor was so clean it looked like someone had mopped it thoroughly, not a trace of the filth or black blood, not even a speck of dust.
The stains on the sofa and cushions were also gone, as if someone had called a cleaning service while she was unconscious, leaving everything sparkling.
Xiang Er was surprised. She thought for a long moment, then turned to the tentacles:
“Did you clean this up?”
The tentacles remained motionless, their tips still, seeming dignified and imposing, as if saying: How could you even ask?
It made sense. Tentacles were part of a god, not cleaning ladies.
But besides herself, there were only the tentacles here…
Forget it, Xiang Er decided not to dwell on this question.
She took out her phone and called Li Wan, but the number was out of service. A mechanical female voice said, “Sorry, the number you dialed is not in service…”
Could she have gotten the number wrong? She frowned, then texted her landlady, lying that she had forgotten her key and asking her to call Li Wan and find out where she was.
The message was sent successfully, and delivered instantly. It seemed to have gone through without a hitch.
Xiang Er sat at her desk, restless. She wasn’t good at handling these kinds of situations. A man had disappeared from her apartment, and if anyone asked, how could she explain it? Li Wan had run away too, and she didn’t know where she had gone. Logically, Li Wan should be the one dealing with all this.
Unable to figure it out, her gaze naturally drifted towards the sculpture.
The serpentine body coiled around the wooden column, topped with a large, irregular eye, watching Xiang Er. The long, thin tendrils carved from wood behind the eye swayed softly in the air, like Medusa’s snake-like hair.
Xiang Er felt a chill. She knew the Evil God resided within the sculpture, but she didn’t want to see these writhing tentacles all day long. It was a very unsettling visual experience.
She asked softly:
“Can you retract your tentacles?”
As soon as she spoke, the tentacles froze, and in the blink of an eye, they turned back into wood, identical to the original sculpture.
Xiang Er was slightly taken aback. Akhe was actually listening to her?
The sculpture had returned to its normal, wooden state, looking like an ordinary ornament. The room and living room were spotless, the mushrooms were gone.
It was almost evening, and the clouds finally parted, revealing a sliver of sunlight, painting the edges of the vast, dark clouds with a splash of color.
Everything seemed to be improving. The sunlight even shone generously on the sculpture, creating a small rainbow. Xiang Er gently extended a finger and touched the rainbow on top of the sculpture.
She couldn’t help but smile.
Her phone buzzed with a new message notification. She opened it and saw that it was a reply from her landlady.
Scanning the message, Xiang Er’s eyes narrowed, a chill running down her spine.
“Who’s Li Wan? I don’t know anyone by that name. Did you send this to the wrong person?”
Ignoring the chill on the back of her neck, Xiang Er quickly typed:
“Li Wan is your tenant. I’m her roommate, she introduced me to the apartment. Don’t you remember?”
The landlady replied quickly this time:
“No, you’re my only tenant. You’ve been the only one for the past six months. The previous tenants were a young couple, no one surnamed Li. You must be mistaken.”
Xiang Er stared at the messages, her fingers trembling, the color draining from her face, a wave of coldness creeping up her spine, chilling the back of her neck.
She didn’t understand what was happening.
Li Wan… what had happened to Li Wan?
How could she have… disappeared from the landlady’s memory?
It was impossible! Li Wan was the one who had signed the lease with the landlady; she was practically Xiang Er’s sub-landlady. How could the landlady not remember her?
Her hands shaking, Xiang Er rushed to her desk and frantically searched for her copy of the lease. It should have Li Wan’s signature on it!
She opened the lease and carefully checked every page, but… she found nothing.
Her name, the landlady’s name, their ID information, everything was there, but there was no sign of Li Wan’s signature, nowhere at all.
Cold sweat trickled down Xiang Er’s forehead.
How was this possible?
She even remembered the pen Li Wan had used to sign! She remembered it clearly!
She messaged the landlady again, but the landlady insisted that she didn’t know anyone by that name, and finally, annoyed by the persistent questioning, stopped replying.
Xiang Er’s legs went weak.
She ran next door. Unable to open the locked door, she resorted to brute force, grabbing a small hammer and smashing the doorknob!
Li Wan’s belongings, her boyfriend’s belongings, they were all still in this room, they should be evidence!
After a loud crash, the lock on the master bedroom door finally broke.
The door creaked open, the golden light of dusk streaming in, dust motes dancing in the light.
The floor was covered in a thick layer of dust. The bed frame, the desk, the dressing mirror, all were old and worn. The mattress was bare, covered only with a plastic sheet. The wardrobe doors were open, empty, the bottom also covered in dust.
The hammer fell to the floor, and Xiang Er collapsed onto the ground.
Why… why? The room was empty, not a single trace of human habitation?
Where… had Li Wan’s and her boyfriend’s belongings gone?
Or… had Li Wan’s boyfriend, even Li Wan herself, never existed?
Monday morning arrived, the weather turning colder, the air damp and heavy, the sky dark and ominous.
The weather forecast warned of unusual weather patterns, more severe than in previous years, advising citizens to dress warmly and avoid deserted areas.
A large supermarket issued a statement urging people to shop rationally and avoid panic buying, assuring them of sufficient supplies. A chain restaurant went bankrupt, the reasons unclear. A famous fitness influencer died, rumors circulating that he had suddenly become violent and attacked people before his death. A celebrity, after getting divorced, aged rapidly, becoming ghost-like, only venturing out at night.
The world seemed to be undergoing many strange changes, but Xiang Er didn’t care.
She didn’t care about anything anymore. She had spent the entire weekend lying in bed, not eating a single bite.
The apartment was eerily quiet. The walls seemed to be closing in on her, suffocating her.
For the past two days, only she and the sculpture had been together, but the sculpture, perhaps sensing her state of mind, had been unusually inactive, even the tentacles only appearing occasionally before quickly retreating.
Xiang Er had been thinking. She had realized a few things… for example, the Evil God could alter human perception, so were her thoughts, her experiences, everything she had seen and heard while surrounded by the Evil God, real?
Could it be that everything she had witnessed so far was fake? The tentacles, the monsters, her roommate… Did they even exist, or were they all just a hallucination, a dream induced by the Evil God’s influence?
But from another perspective, if she believed her own perception, believed that Li Wan and the others had been real, then they, along with her boyfriend, had been devoured by the Evil God, even their traces erased by It.
But this was even more unacceptable. She had begged the Evil God for help, and It had killed the monster to save her, and perhaps, in doing so, had also killed Li Wan.
Even if Li Wan had been difficult, even if her boyfriend had been problematic, Li Wan herself hadn’t done anything wrong, she hadn’t turned into a monster, she didn’t deserve to die!
If this were true, then Xiang Er felt like she had Li Wan’s blood on her hands!
She couldn’t coexist with the Evil God anymore. Although she was weak and exhausted, having barely eaten or slept for days, she still put on her clothes and went to work.
Before leaving, she looked back at the sculpture and smiled faintly. It was a self-deprecating smile, mocking her own momentary delusion, the hope that she could coexist peacefully with the Evil God.
How could that be possible? She had been so naive.
She closed the door firmly behind her, stepped out into the cold, biting wind, wrapped her coat tightly around her, and lowered her head, walking away.
By the window, a thin, dark red tentacle clung to the frame, extending towards her, then hesitating like a child who had done something wrong, before retracting back into the room.
She went through the workday like a sleepwalker. When she left work, dark clouds churned in the sky, and a torrential downpour began.
She didn’t have an umbrella again. She walked downstairs, watching people leaving in pairs under their umbrellas, and suddenly burst into laughter, hysterical, manic laughter.
“Hahaha… hahahahaha!!”
Passersby moved away from her. Xiang Er saw their strange looks, but she didn’t care. She was cold and drenched, but she felt a sense of exhilaration. In this world, she was, for the moment, free, her mind clear!
She took a taxi home, and as soon as she arrived, she collapsed onto her bed, falling into a deep sleep, her body burning as if consumed by fire.
The rain intensified, the thunderclouds roiling angrily, the wind and rain battering everything. The camphor tree outside her window thrashed wildly, its branches slamming against the windowpanes.
Amidst the torment and nightmares, Xiang Er heard a knock on the door. She thought, could it be Li Wan?
She got up and stumbled towards the door, reaching out. The doorknob turned on its own, but she didn’t notice.
In the hazy darkness, amidst the torrential rain, a figure in a red dress stood at the doorway, the streetlight casting a soft golden glow around her, the wind and rain whipping her long hair, her shadow flickering on the corridor floor.
The corridor was awash with dark rainwater. The woman’s figure swayed alluringly in the downpour, but the golden streetlight illuminated her face, highlighting her watery eyes, eyes filled with emotion, more profound and beautiful than any lake in the world.
The woman was drenched, water dripping from her hair, eyebrows, and ears. Her clothes clung tightly to her body, outlining her curves in the dim light, water streaming down her clothes, the whiteness of her skin almost glowing through the fabric. The interplay of rain and the deep red, almost black fabric created a painterly contrast of light and shadow, like a statue of Venus brought to life.
The woman stood there, slightly bent over, her jade-white arm extended towards Xiang Er’s face, so close, yet hesitating. Her blood-red lips parted slightly, but she didn’t speak.
Xiang Er’s eyes widened, a name she had repeated countless times escaping her lips:
“Shen Yuhe?”
But her fever made her voice slurred, almost a loving murmur.
“Boom—” A clap of thunder rolled through the clouds, the ground trembling, rain splattering on Xiang Er’s face, her vision distorting, the world fading away.
Xiang Er collapsed, falling into the cold, soft embrace of the woman before her.
She lost consciousness.
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