To Protect Them, Please Kill Me!

"Hu Weijie, think of your wife, think of your daughter! Wake up!" Standing behind Gong Qian, Yu Xian shouted at the motionless Hu Weijie on the ground. His nose twitched. The scent radiating from Hu Weijie had shifted drastically. If he had smelled like a wild beast moments ago, he now smelled like a person newly revived. "Hu Weijie! Hu Weijie! Hu Weijie!" Yu Xian's eyes lit up as he kept shouting the name. Hu Weijie stirred. He slowly rose from the ground, his body glitching like a bugged model. Flesh and blood flickered and shifted erratically—at one moment a fox's head sprouted from his flank, at another his mouth morphed into a bird's beak, and at another an arm turned into a serpent. Yet his face was beginning to resemble Hu Weijie. He looked at Yu Xian and said, "I am Hu Weijie, but I am already dead." Dead? Yu Xian and Gong Qian both froze, unable to comprehend his words. Hu Weijie was clearly awake right now, so why was he saying he was dead? Hu Weijie gazed at them, his expression neither sorrowful nor joyful. "You're here to investigate 'Pengzu,' right? I'm sorry... I only know his moniker is Pengzu. I don't know anything else." "That is part of it, but your wife and daughter are deeply worried about you. They reported you missing, hoping we could find you," Yu Xian said earnestly, looking at him. He could sense a death wish in Hu Weijie's tone, identical to his father's mindset back when he had been bent on dying. Perhaps because he could empathize so deeply, he instinctively tried to comfort him and awaken his will to live. "They wouldn't worry about me. Don't lie. I'm just a failure, an expendable... superfluous person." Hu Weijie lowered his head, devoid of any desire to live. Yu Xian shook his head and said solemnly, "No, I'm not lying. I don't know why you misunderstand them, but they definitely love you." As he spoke, he pulled out his phone, opened the recording of his earlier conversation with Hu Xian'er and Hu Tu'er, and played their words. As the recording played, Hu Weijie slowly went rigid. Although neither of them said a single word about loving him in the recording—nor had they seemed heartbroken over his disappearance—hearing their words in the context of their daily lives brought him sudden clarity. *Dad is just on the quiet side?* *He's a wandering soul?* *Is that really how they see me?* Hu Weijie felt how his wife and daughter truly regarded him through the conversation. His daughter had simply assumed he was a quiet person and had grown accustomed to his silence; it wasn't that she didn't love him. And his wife viewed him as a wandering soul, which was why she had quietly accommodated him all along, indulging his willful absences rather than lacking love for him. And what about him? He had been trapped in his own world, obsessing over the title of the Seven Heroes. To prove he was worthy of that reputation, he had stopped at nothing, committing one foolish act after another, until he ultimately threw his own life away. Yet it was too late. He understood everything far too late. Black tears streamed from Hu Weijie's eyes. His body suddenly went berserk as a chaotic mess of organs erupted from his lower torso. Looking at Yu Xian in sorrow and despair, he cried out, "Kill me, hurry! This body is a monster—it cannot be allowed to remain in this world!" Just as he said, he was actually already dead. His current body was not his own, but the perfect creature created by that "Pengzu." On the day he injected the serum, the perfect creature had tracked him down. He had been completely powerless to resist and had been swallowed alive. Because he had injected a massive amount of the serum—which contained high concentrations of nutrient fluid—even the perfect creature could not digest him in a short span of time. During that period, the perfect creature devoured the many foxes he had prepared for himself. As a result, it became infected by demonic qi, undergoing drastic morphological changes, and influenced by the demonic qi, it instinctively began seeking investiture. Once it succeeded in seeking investiture, it would become even more powerful and perfect. However, because Yu Xian had assumed the perfect creature was Hu Weijie and kept shouting Hu Weijie's name, something went wrong with the investiture ritual, granting Hu Weijie a chance to awaken instead. Hu Weijie knew very well, though, that the perfect creature was instinctively fighting back. He couldn't hold out for long. Soon, his consciousness would be utterly crushed by the creature, at which point it would become far more terrifying—it might even threaten Silver City. Silver City, where the two people he loved most lived! The perfect creature could not be allowed to live. "Kill me, while you still can!" Hu Weijie plunged an arm into his own chest, wrenched his heart out with brute force, and shouted at Yu Xian and Gong Qian. Yet the moment he threw the heart away, a new heart rapidly grew inside his thoracic cavity, and an utterly callous eye opened upon it. "Die! Just die!" Hu Weijie used both hands to tear at his own flesh, hurling chunks everywhere. But no matter how he ripped at himself, his body regenerated at terrifying speed. A hundred meters away, Yu Xian and Gong Qian watched in stunned disbelief. Shocked, Gong Qian asked, "Why is he hurting himself?" "I... I don't know, but it feels like he's trying to protect something important. I can feel what he's going through!" Yu Xian said with conflicted emotion, watching Hu Weijie. Hu Weijie's gaze was identical to the look in his father's eyes when his father had ALS and was quietly trying to die. *Does he have people he doesn't want to drag down too?* Instinctively, Yu Xian clenched his fists, his eyes turning slightly red. Gong Qian hesitated. "Should we stop him then? The 'Pengzu' he mentioned must be the person we're looking for. If he can draw a likeness of him, our chances of finding him will be much higher." "Kill me! This body isn't mine! A monster ate me—this is the monster's body, and it's waking up!" Hu Weijie roared. An arm sprouted uncontrollably from his back, grabbing the hand that was trying to gouge out his heart. In reality, barely half a minute had passed since Hu Weijie began mutilating himself. Gong Qian and Yu Xian were startled by his words. This body wasn't Hu Weijie's, but belonged to someone else? In a flash of insight, something clicked in Yu Xian's mind. He roared, "Vice Captain, move! Cover me!" With that, he manipulated a flurry of silver threads, swiftly weaving them into armor that covered his entire body. Then, flashing to Hu Weijie's right via a spatial bubble, he yelled, "Hu Weijie, don't let it interfere with me! Help me!" An arm immediately lashed out toward Yu Xian, but Hu Weijie grabbed the rogue limb with another arm. Yu Xian instantly popped open his helmet's visor, baring his fangs as he lunged fiercely at Hu Weijie's neck. Hu Weijie quickly cooperated, softening the skin there. Otherwise, with the hardness of Yu Xian's fangs, he wouldn't have been able to pierce the hide at all. Hu Weijie had no idea what Yu Xian's objective was, but the only people he could trust right now were Yu Xian and Gong Qian. Even as the pain hit while Yu Xian bit him and drank his blood, he gritted his teeth and continued holding off the limbs trying to attack around them. After consuming Pangu's Blood, Yu Xian had gained the rarest ability of a vampire: acquiring a target's memories through blood drinking. Before Hu Weijie died, Yu Xian needed to obtain his memories to learn about Pengzu. If Pengzu wasn't eliminated, tragedies like this would keep happening. Just then, a massive arm transformed into a great serpent, gaping its jaws to bite Yu Xian. Before it could reach him, Gong Qian's fist slammed it into the ground. Landing, she bounced and darted ceaselessly around Hu Weijie, shattering, snapping, and breaking every limb beyond Hu Weijie's control.