Look How Good I Am to You

The dim lights in the corridor flickered, illuminating stains of blood. "Well, that's rare." A snickering voice drifted out from beneath Xie Lan's collar. "You didn't make a quiet move on them?" A sly, furtive mouse poked its head from his collar and gave a low chuckle. "Did a single Tong family scare you that badly?" "I already have enough materials. No point in making a losing bet." Hands clasped behind his back, Xie Lan walked ahead. "Besides, when you're up against an opponent who's already on guard, the effects of poison and curses take a steep hit. What's the point? Let him go tangle with those Evil Transmutation Cult bastards. I still have to make a living in Yacheng down the road, so why pick a fight with the Security Bureau and the Tong family?" He paused, his smile turning peculiar as he cast a glance back. "Still, he must be feeling pretty disappointed." *** "It's not the theft you fear, but the thief keeping his eye on you." Once the elevator doors opened, Ji Jue let out a sigh, brimming with vigilance. Did he not know Xie Lan by now? Even if he didn't know Xie Lan, did he not know himself? That guy had acted totally indifferent the whole time, but behind that mask, who knew how greedily he was eyeing Ji Jue's haul! Besides, heavenly treasures belonged to the virtuous, damn it! All those living Celestial Chosen—if he ran them through the Dissociation Art, how much would his matrix's progress bar jump, to say nothing of the materials? What a massive windfall that would have been! A crying shame, pearls cast before swine... He'd definitely write an anonymous tip to the Security Bureau later to report him! Just as Ji Jue had used that parting invitation to probe him, Xie Lan had also been probing for intel throughout their conversation. In hindsight, having arrived so much earlier, Xie Lan had probably known the state of the Inpatient Building from the very beginning. That seemingly well-intentioned warning at the end had merely been testing whether Ji Jue knew what was going on—a sneaky attempt to egg Ji Jue and Tong Hua into stepping on a landmine. As for the reason... being busy with research was likely just an excuse, or at best a partial reason. When it came down to it, it was about the Disease of Immortality left behind by the Nine Vices. As someone from the Vortex branch, Xie Lan would have to be out of his mind to rush into the Inpatient Building. It was just like when the Swarm crossed paths with Frenzied Slaughter: they would suddenly become peaceful and zen, their eyes clearer and more innocent than college students. Or how Embers would detour eight hundred li at the faintest whiff of a Stagnant Rot Crucible... Even delivering oneself on a silver platter wasn't played that way. "Guess we can't count on him doing much heavy lifting." Ji Jue sighed, abandoning his original plan. Still, if worst came to worst... and things went south for everyone, why not drag that guy down into the mud too? While his dark little schemes churned away, he heard Tong Hua sigh beside him, deeply worried. "If the ones who ambushed us really are from the Evil Transmutation Cult, this could get ugly. If the Chrono Ruin collapses here in Yacheng, the fallout will be catastrophic." "Don't worry. Don't we still have a live one?" Ji Jue looked down at the bottom rack of the cart, where the crumpled, violently shivering Celestial Chosen was still foaming at the mouth. Still breathing. Quite a tough life. A pity... Ji Jue flicked his fingers, remarking with pity, "His luck really isn't great." *** It felt like a long dream. Whether it was a nightmare or a sweet dream was hard to say. Unprecedented, wild excitement alternated with an unfamiliar, heavy drowsiness within his brain. Torturous agony between stupors spun into euphoric, soaring bliss, until it finally devolved into a despair he had never experienced before. His willpower and sanity had dissolved within the surging wave of chemicals, reduced to a heap of mush. When Kong Yebai finally opened his eyes again, he saw an unfamiliar ceiling smeared with streaks of blood. Lines of crimson spiritus circuits crisscrossed, densely blanketing every inch of the floor, walls, and ceiling. The air was thick with the pungent stench of blood, and piercing wails and terrified screams echoed from behind the walls. It was as if he had arrived in hell. As his scattered consciousness struggled to stitch itself back together, he saw a blood-spattered face smiling at him. "Oh? You're awake?" Ji Jue was still busy at a makeshift workbench assembled from several office desks. Raising a hand to wipe the blood and sweat from his forehead, he offered a faint smile. "Sorry about this. I'm still busy on my end. It'll be your turn in a bit, so please wait a moment, okay?" Kong Yebai's pupils quivered as he strained to widen his eyes and look at the desk. A corpse was already disassembled into fragments. Beside it sat a severed head, its familiar face unmistakably belonging to Wang Ximin, who had been accompanying him not long ago! Right before his eyes, his dead teammate's blood had been drained into storage, her spiritus siphoned into ash, and even her broken matrix thoroughly dismantled. Right in front of him, she was being ground to dust and scattered to the winds. Yet the culprit behind all this kept smiling from start to finish, looking up and softly admonishing, "Eating too much glutinous rice causes indigestion. You should eat less; it's a pain to clean up." "H-Help..." Kong Yebai shook violently, thrashing, but he couldn't break free from the shackles binding him. He hung suspended from the wall, his groggy mind unable to mobilize his spiritus. Even his matrix was dead silent, tampered with by some unknown method. He could only scream and wail on instinct. Before long, however, he couldn't make a sound. "Shh!" Ji Jue held up a finger. "Working hours. Keep quiet." Like a living creature, liquid mercury crawled up his legs, cold and viscous, slithering into his mouth and nose to seal off every cry. Yet it forced his eyes wide open, making him watch every detail of his teammate being milked of all value—flesh and bone included—before being dumped into a basin to feed the ghost fetus. Finally, with a shrill scrape, an office chair was dragged over to him. Ji Jue sat down, studied him for a long moment, and clapped his hands. "This is my first interrogation, so I don't have much experience." Resting his chin on his palm, Ji Jue suggested, "Why don't we start with the easiest thing?" With that, he asked, "How many of you are there in total?" The mercury wriggled, parting slightly to let him breathe at last. He coughed violently, tears and snot streaming down his face. "I... I don't know... Big brother, please, spare me, I—" "Lie." Ji Jue sighed and shook his head in disappointment. "It's your first time lying, so you might not be used to it. You really should have practiced first... That's fine, we can build a better understanding of each other. Let's start with your pancreas." With that, he picked up a scalpel from the cart beside him, making a clean, fluid incision across Kong Yebai's abdomen. The icy bite of metal sank into the belly amidst thrashing screams, and soon, clamped in a pair of hemostats, a bloody lump appeared before his eyes. "Look, this is your pancreas. Pancreatic cancer is a fatal and agonizing disease—a one-hundred-percent mortality rate. Worse still, a person suffers pure torment before dying. But from now on, you won't ever have to worry about that!" Ji Jue beamed. "Look how good I am to you, isn't that right?" "Mmph! Mmph!" Staring at the approaching organ, Kong Yebai felt no kinship whatsoever toward a piece of his own body. His eyes bulged as he recoiled in sheer terror, but it was useless. It was shoved into his mouth and slipped down his throat. "You are what you eat; nourish yourself well," Ji Jue comforted him. "Don't worry, in this Chrono Ruin, losing flesh and organs won't kill you. We can play for a long time yet, so calm down first." He suggested, "Let's start with the simplest thing, how about it? Name?" Kong Yebai's face twitched uncontrollably as he fought to suppress the urge to curse and wail. Finally, he answered in a trembling voice, "...Li, Li Chunchang." Ji Jue raised an eyebrow. "How strange. Who was that 'Old Kong' your teammate cried out for before dying? Does that person not exist? Do you have any recollection?" "I—I don't kno—AAAAAAAH!" "This time, it's the liver." Ji Jue ran a finger over the wound, kindly stopping the bleeding for him, then held the organ up and waved it before his eyes. "You really ought to drink less. Look how brittle it is. Come, have some nourishment." Standing nearby in stealth and acting as a makeshift lie detector, Tong Hua had already taken another step back, terrified the blood might splatter on her. On the other hand, the deeper this bastard Ji Jue got into character, the more demonic he became. *Holy shit, did he just unleash his true nature?* *What kind of cursed feng shui does this damn Yacheng have to breed a closet serial killer like you...* Evidently, replenishing what you ate really worked. Having had his liver replenished and his internal fire cooled, Kong Yebai was far more cooperative. Name, age, sex—he confessed everything crystal clear, leaving Ji Jue, who had originally intended to help him transition, feeling thoroughly disappointed. The man didn't possess an ounce of an unyielding iron backbone. Then again, it made sense. These days, what unyielding man of iron would sink so low as to mingle in a cesspool like the Evil Transmutation Cult? Once a good start was made, Kong Yebai began spilling everything in a smooth, continuous flow without Ji Jue even needing to ask. Kong Yebai, male, forty-one years old, Federation citizen, an Entropy branch Celestial Chosen. Seeking a cure for his condition, he had joined the Evil Transmutation Cult four years ago. Entering the Chrono Ruin this time was also to carry out the cult's mission: obtain a living specimen of the Disease of Immortality and detonate the Chrono Ruin within Yacheng. He followed the Hierophant in a group of nine. Since entering the Chrono Ruin, they had tried every means to get close to the isolation zone of the Disease of Immortality. Through prolonged effort, the Hierophant had already ventured deep into the Inpatient Building for unknown purposes, while they remained in the Main Treatment Building as support and lookouts. On one hand, they lured outside Celestial Chosen into joining to provide materials for the Hierophant; on the other, they eliminated potential threats that might interfere with the plan. With clear divisions of labor, they galloped down a dead-end road with soaring morale. Quite a harmonious bunch. Of course he knew he likely wouldn't meet a good end, but he had long been out of options. Rather than leave the cult and wait for death, it was better to gamble that once the Chrono Ruin blew, the cult's arrangements would allow them to escape Haizhou... As a cult devoted to the Nine Vices that worshipped destruction and chaos, the name of the Evil Transmutation Cult reeked to high heaven. Though the Dragon Cult pursued draconic transformation and the mutation of abominations, they walked a high-end route; even if they stirred up trouble constantly, they couldn't pull off too much, and most of their clashes remained high-level affairs. The Evil Transmutation Cult, on the other hand, loved nothing more than disguising themselves as other sects and organizations to proselytize in secret, inciting abomination worship or corroding the foundations of Sovereign Virtue. Due to their secrecy and disguises, by the time local authorities came knocking, the cultists had literally packed their bags and fled after harvesting their believers. Yet the reason they had managed to thrive over all these years of encirclement, pursuit, and universal condemnation—aside from suspected backing by Celestial-Humans and certain horrors beneath the vortex—was primarily a technique that was practically unique to them. They could alleviate the symptoms of corruption in Celestial Chosen. Turning severe cases into mild ones, and mild cases into symptom-free states. This was an outcome absolutely impossible for any legitimate medical practice today. It was effective, convenient, and fast-acting. As for the side effects and the price... if someone had sunk so low as to collaborate with the Evil Transmutation Cult, they wouldn't care about that. Essentially, every person who accepted their treatment under persuasion eventually joined the Evil Transmutation Cult, often becoming its core and backbone. Just like Kong Yebai now. As early as four years ago, he had developed the side effects of Entropy corruption—elementalization. If not for the Evil Transmutation Cult, he probably would have detonated like a live fuse long ago, rather than still jumping around as a lackey. "Still, by all rights, the Quancheng ruins are ringed three layers deep inside and out right now. Not even a fly could get out... How did you get in?" Keenly spotting the issue, Ji Jue pressed further, "Could it be that yours wasn't the only team that came in?" "I... I..." This time, Kong Yebai, who had previously answered every question, hesitated. He stammered, his expression contorting. "Mercy, big brother, mercy! Dad, you're my real dad... If I tell you, the Hierophant will definitely..." "How strange." Ji Jue let out a bewildered sigh. Looking down at his blood-stained hands, he asked with genuine curiosity, "You're afraid of a Hierophant who can't save you, but you're not afraid of me? Could it be because I look kinder than your Hierophant?" "He... he... I... I..." Kong Yebai's face twisted as tears and mucus poured down. Helplessly opening his mouth, he revealed the emblem branded onto the roof of his mouth—a lock imposed by the Heart Pivot. The moment a secret touched a core issue, he couldn't even form the thought, let alone speak it. If pried open by force, he would likely be reduced to an idiot instantly. "Tsk..." Ji Jue's expression grew darker. *Playing bondage games with your daddy from the Embers? Did you ask my all-purpose Non-Offensive first?* Yet right as he pondered, a strange sound came from outside the door, causing Ji Jue's expression to freeze for an instant. Then, it turned even darker. With a flick of his wrist, he unfastened the shackles on Kong Yebai, forcefully draped a white lab coat over him, and shoved the ravenous, eager ghost fetus into his arms. "Patients face no restrictions when attacking doctors. You know what to say and what not to say." Before his voice even faded, the door was pushed open. Through the gap appeared a stitched-up, smiling face. Dark, bloodshot eyes swept across the room. "So late at night, instead of resting, what is all this racket? Hmm? Why is he here?" Kong Yebai's heart pounded wildly. Looking at that grotesque, chilling face that usually terrified him, he felt no fear at all. Instead, it was like seeing family, bringing him nearly to tears. "I... I..." "Oh, he's here to help," Ji Jue cut him off, glancing back with a warm smile. "He was worried we lacked experience caring for infants and stepped in to lend an enthusiastic hand, right?" In his arms, the infant aptly crawled up to his neck, its maw of sharp teeth hovering right before his throat, poised to strike. Tears truly threatened to spill from his eyes. "Y-Yes... that's right..." "Colleagues showing such care for one another, how wonderful, how wonderful." Director Qian clapped in praise, then instructed, "However, do not neglect official duties. It's time for rounds." "Right now?" Ji Jue hesitated. "Yes. Patients wait for no one, so right now." Director Qian nodded firmly, leaving no room for delay or excuses. Kong Yebai froze, bowing his head to conceal his ecstatic expression. He only saw Ji Jue shoot him a cold backward glance, gesturing for him to wait obediently, before rising to his feet. "...Understood." Ji Jue followed Director Qian out through the door. In the protracted silence, only Kong Yebai was left in the entire office, along with a ghost fetus monster crawling all over the floor... Eyes wide, he looked around in disbelief, terrified it was a trap. Yet the waves of acute pain and anxiety surging through his body could no longer be endured. Instinctively, he moved to stand and approach the door. But before he could step forward, the ghost fetus snapped to attention, turning its bizarre smile and ferocious face toward him. A chill ran through his heart. Deprived of his matrix and the sense of his blessings, with no spiritus to fuel his abilities, he was no match for this monster. Yet in his haze, his thoughts spun furiously, and he suddenly remembered the creature's greed when gnawing on his teammate's bones. Looking back toward the surgical cart, his expression twitched once, then twice. In the end, he gathered his courage and pulled a bone-cutting saw from the cart. He gritted his teeth. "..." His face twisted, then went into spasms. He could barely stifle his screams, but the residual anesthetics in his system numbed the agony to some extent. By the time it was done, all color had fled his face, leaving it stark white. Half an arm dropped onto the desk. Timidly picking up his severed limb, he waved it at the ghost fetus. Detecting that ravenous, thirsty gaze, Kong Yebai couldn't hold back a laugh. A miserable laugh. Abruptly, he hurled the severed arm behind him. While the ghost fetus pounced upon it, he gritted his teeth, scrambled to his feet, and bolted through the door. Sprinting wildly, he vanished into the darkness. Only a choked, sob-like panting echoed through the groaning halls. *Run, run, run!* *Get away!* Kong Yebai had never run so fast in his life, not even caring to tangle with the ravenous patients closing in. Stumbling, he barged through the stairwell door and scrambled upward as though fleeing hell itself. Only when he reached the fifth floor did he finally let out a breath. His footsteps grew increasingly unsteady. Darkness washed over his vision in waves. Yet he didn't dare stop. Like a beast, he squirmed and crawled across the floor, screaming and crying out. "Old Kong?" Inside an office, someone seemed to hear the shrill wailing outside. Opening the door to check, the person froze upon recognizing his face, then hurried to help him up and bring him inside. Under the dim light, his companions clustered around, gasping in shock at his horrific state. "How did you end up like this?" "You came back alone? Where are Ximin and Lao Xiu?" "Quick, quick, contact the Hierophant..." Kong Yebai didn't even care about taking medicine, gripping his companion's hand with white-knuckled desperation. "I need to contact the Hierophant! Right now! Hurry!" That monster, spawned from God knew where, was on the verge of uncovering the cult's entire grand plan! He had to be eliminated, whatever the cost! *** Inside the empty office, the door was pushed open once more. "As expected, he ran?" Having received the message, Ji Jue hurried back, only to find the office deserted. From a chair in the corner, Tong Hua finally phased into view. Having watched the entire spectacle from the sidelines, her expression was completely numb. "Yeah. Exactly as you predicted." Even down to the part where he sawed off his own arm. "Then let's clean up." Ji Jue rolled up his sleeves and began tidying the chaotic office. "Things scattered all over the place—it's an eyesore." "Huh?" Tong Hua asked in confusion. "Aren't you going to hurry up and track him to find their hideout?" Yet even as she spoke, her body obediently got to work helping him clean. Hanging around this guy, she felt her brain was about to regress anyway. "What are these bottles for? Why leave them here like this?" She glanced at the cluster of plastic jugs and containers on the desk, not having noticed when they'd been placed there. "Used up, no more use for them. Throw them out." Ji Jue glanced over and waved dismissively. "Be careful, though. Wear gloves. Nitric acid and concentrated sulfuric acid are corrosive to people. The lead box next to them originally held radioactive material for the hospital's CT scans. The empty warhead... well, an empty warhead is just an empty warhead, leave it there." "Oh." Tong Hua acknowledged, picking up the box. Suddenly feeling that something was off, she bent down sharply and saw a wide-open, empty drum beneath the desk that hadn't been there before. That looked like... a container for glycerin?! In an instant, Tong Hua was struck like lightning! She whipped her head around in shock, staring at Ji Jue in disbelief. "You didn't actually make a bomb, did you?" Ji Jue didn't answer. He merely smiled. Tong Hua swallowed hard, her expression steadily stiffening. "You didn't put the bomb..." Ji Jue remained silent. The smile stayed on his face. Amidst the dead silence, only the countdown on the digital clock in the corner slowly ticked down to zero. Then, a violent tremor hit like a tsunami. Amidst the earth-shaking upheaval, a deafening roar accompanied by plumes of thick smoke and raging flames echoed throughout the Chrono Ruin. "Yes," Ji Jue answered.