Hand of Isis

Words failed to describe such an expression. Across the dark skin crept the pale, drained pallor of a corpse, yet bloodshot eyes glared fixedly at him as the corners of the mouth slowly split open. A soundless, manic grin. The smile was too exaggerated, far too horrifying—the corners of the mouth parted toward either side, stretching outward without end. Then, right from the center of the lips, gory flesh peeled outward, suddenly ballooning! The bizarre sight of mangled flesh and bone bloomed like a bouquet of flowers. Four writhing mouthparts lunged forward! Crash! Tu Sihai shrieked instinctively, stumbling backward only to trip over a wine bottle. He tumbled to the floor and scrambled backward on all fours. Instinctively, he tried to reach back toward the head of the bed, groping frantically, but he couldn't find his gun. Crack! The porthole shuddered violently as blood smeared across it and cracks webbed outward. Crash! The mutated, warped figure slammed itself into the window once more with all its might, instantly bursting into a pulp of mangled blood and flesh. Like a puddle of rotten muck. D-dead? Gasping violently in a daze, Tu Sihai gripped the gun that had fallen to the floor with white knuckles, unable to believe his eyes. Yet very soon he saw it: behind the shattered glass, the puddle of bloody fluid snaked forward as chunks of mangled flesh squirmed like living things, squeezing through the cracks and into the cabin. Amidst the converging flesh and blood, grotesque faces overlapped one another, squirming as though wailing in agony. Hundreds, thousands of eyes snapped open, glaring fixedly at him. Tentacles bristling with jagged shards of bone formed abruptly, lashing out and coiling like an octopus, wrapping tight around his body and rapidly constricting— A shrill shriek rang out, followed by gunshots and bursting muzzle flashes. Yet everything remained locked inside the cabin. "H-help... Save me!" Tu Sihai struggled desperately, firing blindly. Drawing upon strength from who knew where, he miraculously tore free from the coils, lunging for the door, only to find it would not budge. He could only pound frantically on the window, trying to attract the attention of the others. Entangled by tentacles and grotesque faces, he struggled in vain until hurried footsteps suddenly echoed across the deck—someone was coming! Yet before he could even feel relief or joy, he saw more pale faces emerge behind the bloodstained, crack-riddled window, radiating that same ecstatic hunger, drawing closer step by step in eager anticipation. Pressing against the glass, they stared fixedly at his despair-twisted face. They grinned soundlessly. "Hehe, found you—" "Found you... Found you... Found you—" Beneath the dim, pale moonlight, human shadows swelled. Amidst hair-raising ruptures and cracks, bizarre shapes branched outward, utterly swallowing the last vestiges of light. The screams were drowned in the darkness. And slowly died away. *** "Sir, you really are..." Isis remarked coldly, "...quite bored." "How is this boring? It's damn fun, okay!" Sitting before the screen and watching the grand drama he had directed, Ji Jue's face lit up with excitement. "Add some more special effects here—yeah, yeah, right there. Turn it into his henchmen, twist them more, make them weirder. Right, and add some lines! Let me think, let me think! "'Honey, one night as man and wife brings a hundred days of love?' No, no, no. How about: 'It's so dark and cold down here, I'm scared'? Hmm... 'Why didn't you save me?' Isis, which one do you like?" Isis remained silent for a moment before saying impassively, "If you wish to torment your fellow men, projecting your own face and words from the underground assembly line should be more than sufficient." "Mm, true, but you're wrong on one point." Looking down at that twisted, fractured face on the screen, sinking into inescapable terror, Ji Jue sighed with regret. "'Fellow men'? Not necessarily." "It seems you have finally awakened to your own vile nature and dark side?" "Ah, no need to remind me of that. I still possess some self-awareness, you know." Ji Jue shook his head indifferently, then suddenly chuckled. "Still, that's not quite what I meant. "Sometimes, certain things can hardly be called human." He watched the hellish torment on the screen with cold detachment, devoid of pity or hesitation. "There are always such things in this world. Clearly able to feel pain and joy, clearly born of human flesh, clearly knowing the full weight of suffering and torment—yet with airy indifference, under flimsy pretexts and hollow disguises, they brazenly push others into hell for petty gains and absurd amusements. Some revel in it, some remain incorrigible, and some are even proud rather than ashamed..." Ji Jue paused, then asked abruptly, "But that's wrong, isn't it?" Isis stayed silent. "It shouldn't be like this." Ji Jue tapped his fingers against Prosperity's railing, looking up toward the distant sea fog and the deathly quiet fishing boat farther beyond. Perplexed, he said, "If they were truly of the same kind, how could they not cherish one another?" Isis remained quiet, offering no reply. Only Ji Jue's soft chuckle broke the air. "Then there is only one answer... "They aren't human. "They are parasites draped in human skin to hide their ugliness, monsters masquerading as humans to conceal their beastly nature, aberrant mutants lurking among us. Even if they speak the same words, share the same faces, perceive the same world, and possess the same soul and life—it is merely a coincidence, a sheer accident, that they happen to bear the semblance of mankind. "Against such monsters, one must eradicate them without mercy, by any means necessary. No matter how cruel the torture inflicted upon them, it is merely applying the very tricks they used on others back onto themselves. Only when they experience everything they have done firsthand can they understand that this is the fate vermin like them deserve—reaping what they sow, paying for their own sins!" Only dead trash was good trash. Only scum reduced to ash was good scum. Apart from that, any other method of disposal was utterly wrong! The world was too large and the trash too plentiful for Ji Jue to manage it all. But Xinquan was his carefully cultivated garden, the foundation he had worked so hard to establish. His garden had no room for such pests. And in the nurseries bordering his garden, it was best there were none, either! "So, let's add a bit more seasoning." Ji Jue retrieved a canister sealed tight with Solid Alchemy from the Doomsday Train's storage repository. He shook it, and faint wails surfaced from the thick, bloody fluid inside. Those were the dregs stripped from the life extracted from fish scales. Beside that, there were fallout dust, crystals of Frenzied Slaughter, and even the marrow of the Abyssal Depths. A triple dose of Great Sins to entertain a bunch like you—could such a blessing possibly be small? In the sea breeze, Ji Jue popped the lid open. At once, wisps of rotting deep violet, ravenous crimson, and pure abyss-black billowed up. As if grasped by invisible hands, they drifted across dozens, even nearly a hundred li, fluttering downward into the distant nest disguised as a fishing boat. Truth be told, Ji Jue had still overestimated the caliber of these pirates. At the very least, there wasn't an Aether or Embers practitioner among them; otherwise, they wouldn't have failed to notice the minor tampering Ji Jue had casually slipped in. Tu Sihai had indeed thrown away the box, but the crux of the matter was: who said the box was the only thing compromised? And who gave them such overflowing confidence to stride boldly into the domain surrounding Ji Jue's workshop, armed with only a pathetic speck of capability? The materials they touched, the car they drove, the cup of tea they drank, even the very air they breathed... everything was within Ji Jue's grasp. Not only had he established a link through resonance between Aether record tomes, but there was also trace vaporized quicksilver in the air they breathed, and developing fluid concealed in the tea they drank. If he truly wanted to spike them with something, there were far too many ways to do so without triggering any warnings from the alchemical devices on them. Besides, they weren't anywhere near high enough in rank to possess autonomous defensive alchemical creations. After leaving the workshop, they had driven in circles like clowns, completely unaware that they were under Isis's surveillance the entire time. Who told Ji Jue to have a hobby of scattering surveillance cameras across the wilderness whenever he had free time? Cameras were getting cheaper and cheaper these days. After applying Deus Ex Machina to the server room at Haian Industries, he had it autonomously encode and link the camera feeds together. A few sweeps by large agricultural drones later, everything within a hundred li of Xinquan fell completely under Ji Jue's watchful eye. Consequently, by the time Tu Sihai had barely scrambled up the gangway, Ji Jue was already aboard Prosperity, arriving in the adjacent waters. Shrouded by the dense sea fog, Prosperity drifted silently with the waves, drawing closer before dropping anchor forty nautical miles away. No waiting around for doom, only bagging the whole lot! No trading blows back and forth, only total extermination! Ji Jue couldn't be bothered with standard tropes, sitting around waiting for enemies to surround and besiege him. Who the hell had the time to play offense-and-defense games with a bunch of nobodies? Since they dared to poke their heads out, every single one of them was going to die! Not just them—anyone who dared cross him would die! And this sea fog, so dense one couldn't see one's own hand before one's face, was the finest weapon. The instant they drew near, wisps and specks of silver light rose from Prosperity, drifting into the distance along with the sea breeze—filaments of quicksilver so fine as to be nearly imperceptible to the naked eye! No, calling them threads was too crude; it was an ethereal mist of quicksilver hovering between being and nonbeing! Substance of Iron and Gold and Form of Utmost Resilience—the alchemical creation finally perfected through the synthesis of twin blessings now displayed terrifying variations far beyond Ji Jue's expectations. Under a precision control that surpassed Ji Jue's own by tens to hundreds of times, the solidified quicksilver was dissociated into fine mists invisible to the naked eye. Bearing vast volumes of mercury vapor, it silently expanded, riding the sea breeze to effortlessly cross a distance equivalent to nearly a hundred li on land! By now, those microscopic, near-invisible filaments of quicksilver had linked together the immense mercury vapor like a skeleton, constraining and regulating the contours of this silver mist through fine, intricate material property interference. Tens of millions of quicksilver threads acted like tens of millions of imperceptible palms. And thus, the alchemical creation christened by Ji Jue as the Hand of Isis slipped in with the wind, arriving on the fog!