"What the hell?"
Caught completely off guard, Ji Jue felt his chest tighten, nervous tension knotting in his stomach.
A burglar?
Now that was a rare novelty!
After all, his place was dirt poor. Any thief who broke in would probably leave in tears. If the burglar had even an ounce of conscience, they might leave a couple hundred bucks on the table before walking out, telling the poor kid to study hard and stay in school.
Beishan District sat on the outer edge of Yacheng. When it came to high-tech or sophisticated things, it had absolutely nothing; when it came to being filthy, chaotic, and run-down, it had never lost to anywhere. Undocumented migrants, gangs, smuggling, and murder... In addition to utter bedlam, its homicide count had stably topped the charts among all of Yacheng's districts for years. Its ranking was so rock-solid that even if the governor came in person, he would have to salute its seniority!
As for Ji Jue's ancestral home, calling it "weather-beaten" was practically high praise. It leaked rain on cloudy days and let in drafts in the summer. Water dripped during the day and wires shorted out at night. It suffered from every ailment under the sun and never got better. Even if someone looked at it with their heels, they wouldn't mistake it for a wealthy household. Over the years, on the rare couple of occasions when petty thieves did wander in, they had only needed one look at the bare four walls to say "sorry to disturb you" out of sheer pity and turn right around.
Ji Jue bent down, pulled half a piece of rebar from under the bed, and tread cautiously across the creaking floorboards. He crept down to the ground floor and peered left and right, acting more guilty than an actual thief.
Yet aside from a ruined doorknob and a set of footprints that crossed the living room into the kitchen, he saw nothing at all.
"Hey! Come out! Buddy, you got the wrong place! There's no money here!"
Aside from a fragile college kid who slept more, ate more, and slacked off more than you, there was literally nothing!
Ji Jue poked his head into the kitchen. Both doors of the refrigerator had been yanked wide open, exposing a heartbreaking sight of leftover dishes. The fluorescent bulb inside flickered weakly, hanging on by a thread just like the thirty-odd-year-old appliance itself.
Ji Jue was struck as if by lightning!
He nearly burst into tears.
Fine, thieves never left empty-handed, but how could this bastard steal the half plate of poached chicken he had brought back from Mother Lu's just two days ago?! He had been planning to treat himself for his birthday in a couple of days!
"Have some damn humanity, diu lei lou mou!"
Staring at the black fingermarks left behind on the plate, he could no longer hold back his curses. But taking in the empty kitchen and the window standing wide open toward the street, he knew the thief had long since bolted, leaving him thoroughly infuriated.
If he had known this sinister scum was after the cold chicken in his fridge, he would have swung the rebar to do battle right from the start! Why the hell had he spent all that time trembling with fear?!
And to top it off, they had trashed his refrigerator!
Yet right at the moment his hand touched the fridge door, amid the motor's heavy, bovine hum, an unexpected voice sounded: "Watch your back."
In that split second, Ji Jue whipped his head around.
Through a foul, reeking gust that hit him square in the face, he saw a pair of blood-red eyes.
Staring right at him.
Ravaged with hunger...
Right above the kitchen doorway, wedged in the gap between the ceiling and the wall, a grotesque, hunchbacked figure crouched like a spider. It squirmed, its mouth crunching and grinding through the last remaining chicken bones.
Sharp teeth gleamed like knife blades, chilling him to the marrow.
The moment he got a clear look at the figure's face, Ji Jue could not hold back a scream.
"Y-You're that old geezer from yesterday?!"
Who else could it be?!
He remembered that wrinkled face all too clearly!
It was the suicidal old codger who had pedaled a tricycle straight into him, almost sending him through the standard protocol of reincarnating into another world... The scene had been total chaos back then, so nobody noticed when the old man slipped away, and Ji Jue hadn't thought much of it. But who would have guessed the bastard would dare break into his home?!
Except his appearance looked vastly more bizarre than it had yesterday.
He was barely even mimicking a human being.
Who knew what kind of bad medicine he had taken.
"Fine, you actually dared to show up again! Think you can just walk all over me, huh?!" Ji Jue roared in fury. "You're not leaving until you pay for the damages! Get the hell down off my wall!"
The old geezer was remarkably compliant.
Extraordinarily open to persuasion.
The instant Ji Jue told him to get off the wall, he—flung! himself! straight! down!
He was too fast.
Just like a spider or a mantis striking its prey, the stench-laden wind swallowed Ji Jue in an instant. By pure reflex, Ji Jue stumbled back, using the refrigerator door as a shield. In the next breath, he watched as that heavy door—on a fridge good for nothing except being big, bulky, and crude—was torn open with a gaping hole by the old geezer's claw-like fingers. Razor-sharp nails grazed Ji Jue's cheek, slicing open a gash.
Panicking, Ji Jue threw a kick, but his foot couldn't budge the man. Instead, the recoil shoved him back several paces. He scrambled around the dining table, taking advantage of the split second the old man took to wrench his hand free to sprint to the kitchen doorway.
Just like that, he watched the old bastard tear his refrigerator door completely to shreds.
Hunched like an ape, the bizarre old man curled atop the fridge's mangled remains, rummaging through the interior. He even seized the porcelain plate Ji Jue had dropped and shoved it into his mouth, crunching and chewing it to bits.
His blood-red eyes were drowned in chaotic madness.
"Eat, eat, eat... so hungry..."
The corners of his mouth, sliced open by the porcelain shards, parted and shut. Blood trickled out, only to be slowly licked away by a long tongue. The old man lifted his head, staring straight at Ji Jue, drool dripping down his chin. "Sweet... you smell so sweet..."
"All right, save the speech. When one side's in trouble, everyone pitches in, right?"
Without hesitation, Ji Jue dug into his pocket, slapped his only spare change—forty-eight yuan and nineteen cents—onto the table, and said, "Old man, that's all the money I've got. Take it and go get morning tea... I recommend the place north of Liupu Street, the shaomai is cheap and the portions are—"
*Boom!*
The dining table was shredded by the screeching, roaring old man, along with the cupboards right behind where Ji Jue had just been standing. Battered pots and broken bowls crashed across the floor, echoing with sounds that broke Ji Jue's heart.
Crap, did he not like shaomai?
Ji Jue scrambled on hands and knees out of the kitchen, his mind totally blank: *If you don't want shaomai, the seasoned rice noodles are good too!*
Yet no matter how blank his brain was, Ji Jue understood that this old bastard didn't want shaomai, potstickers, rice noodle rolls, soup dumplings, or claypot rice...
He wanted to eat *him*!
When the rancid stench swept toward him once more, Ji Jue gritted his teeth, gripped the rebar in his hand, and swung it with all his might straight at the old man's forehead!
To hell with respecting the elderly!
A deafening crash erupted.
The rebar flew from his grip, the shockwave violently jarring his arm as though he had struck a concrete barrier at full strength.
A piece of rebar heavy enough to shatter several old men's skulls had merely left a single gash across the geezer's brow. In return, two knife-like claw marks were ripped across Ji Jue's arm.
Blood welled up and splattered.
Droplets landed on the old man's face, only to be swept clean by his long tongue. Savoring it like fine vintage wine, the old monster shivered from head to toe, letting out a shriek of ecstasy.
"Sweet! Sweet! You smell so sweet!"
"Sweet my ass, you freak!"
Stumbling backward, Ji Jue grabbed whatever water bottles and mugs were on the cabinet and hurled them blindly before wheeling around to sprint for the front door.
Having tasted a hint of Ji Jue's blood, the old man fell into a frenzy, scrambling after him on all fours, shivering with excitement.
Little did the monster expect that as Ji Jue blew past the staircase, he would suddenly halt.
Reaching out, Ji Jue yanked on the ornate staircase railing he had repaired just a few days ago, ripping a sharp iron rod right out of the barely patched concrete. He spun around and slashed it straight across the old man's face!
*Thwack!* The iron rod plunged into the monster's eye socket. The old man stumbled, and in the next heartbeat, Ji Jue launched a flying kick that sent him tumbling out the front door, rolling like a gourd across the muddy yard.
Before the creature could scramble to his feet, Ji Jue leaped into the air, bringing all his strength and body weight crashing down upon his neck!
*Crack!*
The snapping bone sounded like a thunderclap, ringing sharply in Ji Jue's ears.
Before he could even breathe a sigh of relief, an ear-splitting shriek rose from beneath his foot.
It was like the dying wail of a wild beast, yet also like a roar of starved fury.
With half the iron rod still embedded in his eye socket, the old bastard flailed his limbs, clawing and writhing so violently that he overturned a nearby electric scooter.
Even with his neck broken, that twisted face still burned with a terrifying crimson light.
His mouth snapped open and shut in a frenzy, trying to tear flesh.
The only thing Ji Jue could do was pour every ounce of strength into holding down the iron rod, pinning the old man's head against the ground. But his grip was already slipping.
The monster was simply too strong!
He felt like he wasn't pinning a dying old man, but rather some beast wearing human skin. The moment he let go, he would be torn to pieces in an instant.
He could feel the nauseating, heavy stench pouring from the old creature's eyes, ears, and mouth—even from deep inside his body—and catch the faint glimmer of crimson light.
A fatal wound seemed to mean nothing to him.
He was still bursting with ferocious life!
The snapped cervical vertebrae were even knitting back together at visible speed... Ignoring the iron rod impaling his eye socket, he crept forward millimeter by millimeter...
Yet for a fleeting second, the old creature's strength seemed to slacken, only to turn even more frenzied immediately after. In his ceaseless biting, thick, dark blood sprayed from his mouth, splattering across Ji Jue's hands.
It was bitterly cold.
[Active external aberrant spiritus detected. Initiate extraction?]
From deep within his soul and consciousness, a message from the wristwatch suddenly surfaced. Overjoyed, Ji Jue roared with all his might, terrified the watch wouldn't understand him:
"Yes! Yes! Yes! YES! YES!! YES!!!"
Before his voice had even faded—before he could even form a smile—a crisp sound chimed from within the watch.
*Tick!*
Faint light emerged from the watch face, tracing along Ji Jue's palm and fingers to outline a complex matrix totem. Like glowing circuitry, it traveled down to his fingertips and extended along the iron rod, plunging downward.
In that single instant, it felt as though flesh was no longer flesh, a hand was no longer a hand, but had undergone a metamorphosis into an instrument beyond even Ji Jue's control.
Along the fissure in the eye socket, it drove straight into the old monster's skull!
Then—unseen gears began to turn. A terrifying gravitational pull unfolded like a black hole, and a siphon potent enough to suppress any aberrant spiritus sprang into motion!
The piercing screech cut off abruptly.
In its place came a boiling roar, like a kettle shrieking over a blazing furnace. Dense, bloody light erupted from the old monster's eye socket, tracing the matrix and draining into the wristwatch.
The twitching, spasming old body began to wither at visible speed.
Only the viscous red radiance squirmed and fought like frenzied maggots as it was yanked from his body, sucked completely dry by the wristwatch in one clean sweep!
The numbers on the watch face climbed wildly, reaching 59 in a heartbeat.
In just a matter of seconds, it had nearly matched the total spiritus reserve Ji Jue had accumulated over many long years!
Sprawled on the ground, the convulsing old man finally stopped moving. Or rather... it was as though he had reverted to his original form. Stripped of that bizarre power, he lay there clinging to his last breath.
A flicker of clarity appeared in those eyes once filled with chaos and hunger.
As if awakening from an endless nightmare, he stared blankly at the scene before him, bewildered and lost. After a long moment, as though remembering something, his lips parted slightly, seeming to murmur a name.
A muddy tear slowly tracked down the corner of his eye.
It fell into the mud.
Just like that, he gradually collapsed, dissolving into ash.
Aside from a pile of tattered clothes, nothing of him remained.
Chapter 5