Chapter 11: Heterogeneity
The world spun. A damp, fishy wind blew in her face. In the dim light, Xiang Er even saw shreds of flesh and blood clinging to the man in black’s neck.
He had just eaten someone… This thought surfaced in Xiang Er’s mind.
She should have run. She should have bolted, fleeing far from this place, out of the residential compound, out of the shadow of the camphor trees, out of this cold, damp city, into the boundless freedom of the open world.
But she couldn’t move. She had never experienced such direct danger before. Her untrained body reacted slowly, frozen in place, as adrenaline surged through her veins, suppressing the scream in her throat!
A faint buzzing sound echoed in her ears, indistinct, the world around her seemed to be changing, but she couldn’t see clearly. Her consciousness, along with her mind, froze. All she could see was the giant paw of the black dog.
And beyond her terrified gaze, a dark red tentacle appeared beside her face. It wriggled its small body with suckers, raising its tip like a comical little whip, and lashed out.
In that instant, a fissure appeared in the air before her, the order of spacetime disrupted, like a piece of paper torn open, revealing a deep, yellowish alternate space. That was… the god’s domain.
It was just a tiny tentacle, barely the size of the black dog’s claw tip, its strike seemingly without force. Yet the monster with the long neck and mouths let out a bestial howl, an expression of unbearable shock on its face, and fell backwards!
“Aowuuuuu…”
The howl ripped through the air, like a final lament. The monster merged into the fissure, the tentacle vanished, but the fissure closed in, gently enveloping Xiang Er.
A foul-smelling wind blew against her face. With a “thud,” something fell to the ground, followed by a gurgling sound, like flowing water.
Xiang Er wasn’t sure what had happened. Her vision was filled with a yellowish darkness. She looked down towards the source of the gurgling sound.
It was the black river she was familiar with.
Xiang Er’s heart leaped. Even the near-miss with the claws hadn’t made her heart pound this hard.
She was back in the god’s domain!
The black river churned and seethed with countless eyes, tentacles, slippery, grotesque body segments, and mouths filled with sharp teeth. The fine, dense teeth protruded from the mouths, emitting dizzying screams and roars.
The sky was a sickly yellow, the ground an endless black river.
From where Xiang Er stood, the monster that had attacked her was now lying on its back in the river, bound by thick tentacles.
Xiang Er didn’t want to look closely. She just wanted to escape quickly. She remembered what had happened the last time she was here, bound by tentacles, forced to look into that eye. It was incredibly painful, and she didn’t want to experience it again…
But she had no way to escape.
A strange sound came from ahead. Xiang Er looked up. The monstrous man lying in the river was being torn apart and devoured by mouths filled with sharp teeth, and many eyes were gathered around his body, curiously watching the execution.
The man was completely bound by thick tentacles, his mouth stuffed with them. He was conscious, whimpering in agony as his dog-paw hands were ripped apart, the skin on every part of his body torn open, his flesh and blood flowing away and dissipating in the water. His white skeleton lay exposed in the river, surrounded by gleefully pulsating blood-red eyes.
Xiang Er’s body went cold. She watched as the man’s flesh was completely torn away, devoured, dissolved, leaving behind only a gruesome skeleton, a skeleton that was still alive, still twitching!
This scene was completely beyond human comprehension. Her legs went weak and numb with the horror of it. Her joints buckled, and she fell to her knees, but just as she was about to touch the black water…
A pale hand caught her.
The hand was strong, firmly supporting her waist and abdomen, helping her stand upright.
“Huh?”
Xiang Er gasped in surprise. Where did this hand come from?
She looked closely. The hand was pale and delicate, almost identical to her own, just slightly longer. Its fingers were slender and well-formed, but bloodless, like… a hand freshly sculpted in a wax museum, before being painted.
She reached out to grab it, but the hand vanished.
Her vision blurred, the world twisted, a brief sensation of dizziness like motion sickness washed over her. When she looked up again, she was back in the real world.
She was still standing under the streetlight, but the monster was gone.
Xiang Er stood there in a daze.
A damp night breeze brushed against her face. It took a while for her dizzy head to clear. She looked down, and could still vaguely see large dog paw prints on the ground, and a few drops of blood.
But… the man, at least six feet tall, with a mouth on his neck, had completely disappeared, as if he had never existed.
A small leaf from the camphor tree fell, landing on the paw prints. The flickering streetlight illuminated Xiang Er’s pale face.
She slowly turned, searching around, but found nothing.
There were very few traces left. The monster had left almost nothing behind, no clothes, no blood. The small tentacle was also gone.
Had it been used up? Was it a one-time use tentacle?
In any case… it seemed that the god had protected her. And she had entered the god’s domain and returned unharmed.
Perhaps the god’s appetite had been sated by the monstrous man today, and she had escaped another disaster.
Xiang Er took a deep breath, her lungs filling with the damp scent of grass. She finally felt a bit more at ease.
She picked up her bag and walked on, her steps unusually light, treading over the broken stone path, looking up at the dark, starless sky.
Even if the world had gone mad, living another day was still worth celebrating.
Pushing open the apartment door, Xiang Er frowned.
The smell of cigarette smoke filled the air. The living room cushions were thrown on the floor, small objects out of place.
She walked into the apartment, frowning, and heard a woman’s giggle coming from the master bedroom:
“Oh, you’re so bad… heehee… here… don’t touch me there…”
Xiang Er raised her voice and coughed twice towards the master bedroom:
“Ahem!”
The sounds in the master bedroom stopped. After a while, Li Wan opened the door, half of her body visible, wearing a revealing nightgown, and greeted Xiang Er:
“Xiang Er, you’re back. I was a bit scared, so I asked my boyfriend to come over. We won’t disturb you!”
Behind her, a thin man poked his head out, looking Xiang Er up and down, his eyes clearly lighting up. He waved:
“Hello hello, my name is…”
Before he could finish, Xiang Er had already turned indifferently, walked into her own room, and slammed the door shut.
Clearly, she didn’t want to interact with them, but… this was completely unlike Xiang Er’s usual behavior.
Li Wan and her boyfriend exchanged glances. Li Wan was puzzled and a little scared:
“She’s been acting strange these past few days… Forget it, let’s not bother with her. It’s good enough that you’re here with me, hubby. I won’t be scared tonight…”
Her boyfriend glanced at Xiang Er’s room a couple more times before closing the door and embracing Li Wan.
Xiang Er stood inside her room, taking a deep breath. A faint sweet fragrance and fishy smell lingered in the air, the familiar scent of the Evil God.
For some reason, now that she was used to it, the smell gave her a strange sense of peace.
She immediately looked at the wall.
Fortunately, the breathing human skin was gone. The wall looked completely normal.
The soft moonlight, like a thin veil, fell upon the wall, casting faint blue shadows. It was her own shadow. The wall was cold and hard, as if the breathing human skin had been merely her imagination.
But Xiang Er knew she wasn’t prone to such vivid hallucinations. It had all been real. She looked towards her desk.
The sculpture on the desk was facing sideways, bathed in the dim moonlight. The shadows merged with the sculpture, the tentacles around the large eye seeming to come alive, swaying gently.
Xiang Er looked at the floor, then at the ceiling. The trails of slime were gone, everything had returned to its old, familiar state.
For some reason, she felt lightheaded, her mind unable to focus. She should have been scared or angry about many things, but she couldn’t muster any emotion. She felt like she was drunk, light and airy, as if she could float up to the ceiling.
She even smiled, a slightly reckless smile, as she walked straight towards the sculpture on the desk.
She reached out and picked up the sculpture. The cold, hard wood pressed against her palm, but she didn’t seem to notice, just staring at the sculpture intently.
She was a little crazy, she knew it, but she couldn’t control herself. Looking at the sculpture’s wooden, grayish-red eye, she began to speak:
“Akhe… why did you save me?”
She murmured to herself, looking at the bluish windowpane. Outside, a sliver of the pale moon was visible in the cloudy night sky, appearing and disappearing behind the thick clouds.
The room was very quiet, as if she were truly alone. But Xiang Er knew that wasn’t the case. The god was always there.
She chuckled softly:
“Do you want to keep your food fresh? Is that why you’ve started protecting your food?”
The sculpture didn’t answer. The wooden body, warmed by Xiang Er’s hand, pressed against her palm.
Xiang Er stared at It, at every detail, every roughly carved corner, every chipped paint mark. She wanted to know more, but she also didn’t want to know too much. She was curious about this god, but she also knew how dangerous this curiosity was.
It could cost her life, but before that happened, she would understand It.
“What was that hand?”
Xiang Er asked.
Naturally, she received no answer.
Perhaps fearing her questions in her dreams, Xiang Er slept soundly that night, without dreaming at all.
Under the cover of darkness, a black shadow, like a female figure, tall, slender, and curvaceous, stood by Xiang Er’s bed, looking down at her sleeping face, etching every inch of her features into the god’s soul.
The black shadow moved around the room, peeling a large piece of white human skin from the wall, draping it over Itself like a beautiful veil. It then picked up Xiang Er’s pearl necklace from the desk with a tentacle, adorning Its head and neck.
It looked at Its newly acquired skin-covered head in the small mirror, then back at Xiang Er’s sleeping face.
Black mist swirled, tentacles coiling around its head… until a faceless human skull gradually took shape.
Beneath that blurry face, on its slender white neck, Xiang Er’s favorite pearl necklace shimmered.
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