There used to be a person, now just a lump of flesh in the shape of a human. Dense blood vessels sprouted all over this lump, like the plants of a vine, and the sound of a heartbeat also emanated from there—the entire human-shaped lump had beco a ’heart’.
Not far away, there was once a dog whose condition was the sa as the human’s, and it produced a heartbeat that was in perfect unison.
What’s even more disgusting is the sensation he felt underfoot when walking on the ground, stepping on the dense ’capillaries’. The thicker parts of these vessels were like water pipes with flowing water, while the smaller parts were much more fragile, and they would bleed when broken...
"Can’t it be less disgusting?" Zheng Yichen’s black spear stabbed into the ’dead body’ at his feet, or rather, into sothing that had transford into another form of a ’live body’, which withered rapidly. Breathing a sigh of relief, Zheng Yichen remained highly vigilant.
It seed that these beating ’hearts’ and the blood vessels that erged from the ground were different, at least in the state of their blood. The forr contained rotten blood that had been dead for a long ti, while the latter seed normal. But overall, the feeling was much of the sa.
With two ’hearts’ gone, the blood vessels that had grown inside the small house dried up quickly, while so maintained their normal state. Zheng Yichen had observed that the parts that remained normal were fused with the external blood vessels.
Pushing aside so blood vessel curtains that still retained ’activity’, Zheng Yichen tried pressing the power button of the computer only to find there was no electricity.
He left the house and took out a Converter from the motorcycle. Nowadays, motorcycles no longer needed Converters, but he still carried it, thinking it might co in handy in other situations. The computer’s power cable in the room was connected to a power strip.
After plugging the power strip into the Converter’s interface, Zheng Yichen rubbed his fingers and pressed them against the Converter, now charged with electricity. A stable current passed through the power strip, and this ti the computer booted up successfully.
Not only that, but the lights on the router also turned to normal operation. Could there still be internet?
Holding the Converter in one hand, he generated a gust of wind with his other hand, clearing off the desk and cleaning up the tiny blood vessels.
"Really, they’re everywhere..." Looking at the black lines resembling capillaries inside the computer screen, Zheng Yichen took hold of the mouse and began to operate, thinking that since there was internet, he might as well look up so information.
Perhaps due to the blood vessels extending into the computer screen, the entire screen’s color turned a dark red, and the text displayed pulsed like writhing insects.
He opened the web browser and, using the search engine, found a local novel website—not that he had a craving for reading.
He used the most recent update tis of the novels on the site to determine how long this world had been dood.
As for the fact that the website could still be accessed in a world like this, Zheng Yichen couldn’t care less. Getting into the page spared him a lot of trouble.
The last update on the novel website was two months ago. There was a certain discrepancy in ti, but the discontinuation of most serialized novels was very uniform. Subsequent updates were no longer about the content of the stories but were pleas for help.
However, these pleas for help also stopped completely three days later.
Zheng Yichen went to other websites to look, and the vast majority of information stopped two months ago. Websites related to the official world mixed up a bit, with most lasting about a month and a half longer.
On a video website, Zheng Yichen found an official channel and clicked on the last video. A middle-aged man dressed in a suit looked seriously into the cara: "Don’t go online! No matter how you’ve obtained electricity, do not touch the network!!"
The serious middle-aged man scread the last sentence, his skin beginning to lt like a candle. Underneath the flaking skin were twitching muscles, and his eyeballs popped out like a tape stuck on a loop as he scread.
The video was brief, lasting less than ten seconds. As it played to the end, it kept ’playing’ on a loop.
Amidst the repetitive screams, the image on the screen also began to distort. The middle-aged man, now devoid of skin, lunged at the cara. His skinless fingers scratched at the lens, marking the screen with streaks of blood.
The computer screen began to bleed.
Zheng Yichen didn’t know if the part of the video after it had finished playing was recorded normally, but what he saw was indeed horrifying. He punched the router to smithereens, only to find that the network on the computer was still operating normally, with the person in the video still screaming.
At the sa ti, Zheng Yichen was speechless, yet he felt a bit of anticipation. Would the person in the video co out?
After a while, aside from the intensified noise, he noticed no significant new changes. The man recording the video did not erge from it.
However, the computer case seed to co to life, and a hand reached out toward Zheng Yichen. He kicked it off with his foot. The strength level of this world was very high, and so was his power. How strong? From his body’s perspective, he could kill a fire dragon with one punch.
In this world, a fire dragon would certainly have to be adjusted by Environntal Adjustnt, so make that three punches.
He moved the mouse, trying to change the page. He had expected the mouse to lose control, but to his surprise, it still worked. After he closed the page, the computer screen, save for so additional blood and a greater number of blood vessels inside, appeared to have returned to normal.
But on the top of the case, there were so squirming blood vessels, and so of the internal wiring had also turned into blood vessel-like substances.
"What fleshly ascension..." He checked the network connection—despite the router being smashed to pieces, the internet was still functioning normally. He switched to a video of a beautiful woman dancing. As expected, the video started out normally, but as it continued to play, the dancing girl turned into a dancing ’bloody corpse’.
The sound of music gradually turned into that noisy sound. The video hadn’t finished playing when the ’bloody corpse’ in the video lunged at the screen. The forceful impact made the monitor tremble slightly and cracks appeared. The damage was enough to completely wreck the screen, yet it still stubbornly worked.
Zheng Yichen decisively closed the page and picked up a novel instead. Similar to the video, the normal text gradually twisted, turning into wriggling insects, so of which directly burrowed out from the cracks of the screen.
Those tiny ’insects’ quickly jumped towards Zheng Yichen but were wrapped up in a gust of wind, writhing within. He took a closer look at these insects—creatures he had never seen before—bare of anything but mouthparts.
The insects were shredded by the whirlwind. He changed to a social dia app and discovered he could still register an account. The whole process went rather smoothly. He picked a chat room at random, and before entering, he could see people were inside—even though it wasn’t certain if they were actually human.
But Zheng Yichen went straight in. These things needed to be understood; how to confront the enemy without knowing what kinds of changes had occurred in this world?
What if there were still live bodies out there?
Inside the chat room, Zheng Yichen typed a very standard hello and included a deathly smiley face.
Hello [Smile]×N.
The sa response imdiately flooded the screen. Zheng Yichen seriously counted the replies, which perfectly matched the number of people in the chat room. He smirked, and a gust of wind scraped the keyboard that had beco slippery with blood vessels.
He continued to type.
"Can we video chat?"
"...You go first."
"No, you first."
Then soone started a video chat. There were no sudden scares or horrific faces. The person who opened the video chat seed fairly normal; he even saw a cutely dressed pretty girl. These people had animated expressions and were quite curious about Zheng Yichen.
But it wasn’t long before those in the video chat began to change. Their expressions stiffened, and like their ’predecessors,’ their skin began to lt. After their skin lted away, vine-like blood vessels erged from their bodies, spreading outwards and quickly covering the entire screen.
Crackling sounds of fragntation arose, and the persistently functioning monitor was finally done for. The wriggling blood vessels erged outward. Although these blood vessels were not very aggressive, the part of the case began to generate a heartbeat sound.
Zheng Yichen looked over at the computer case that was making heartbeat noises, tore off the power cord from the Converter, but part of the computer screen was still lit, and the speakers emitted a noisy sound.
The black spear stabbed into the case, and Zheng Yichen spat in disgust twice. Then, pale green flas ignited on the computer. The flas spread along those tiny blood vessels, charring any they touched to cinders that turned to black ash with a light touch.
Under the cleansing of the pale green flas, every fleshly part inside the small house was incinerated, and the rising black ash was swept away by his gust of wind.
Having repeatedly strengthened his fishing rod, he had better control of the Hellfire he released, careful to avoid setting the entire house afla.
"Nothing outside, right?" Zheng Yichen poked his head out to ask his motorcycle.
Lilith, in her miniaturized form on top of the motorcycle, replied, "There are no anomalies detected outside, but I did monitor unusual energy fluctuations inside."
"That’s fine then; continue to stand by." Zheng Yichen finished speaking and continued to search the house, where he found so other things. Snacks were not sothing to hope for. Opening a non-transparent bag of chips, several fleshy tentacles erged—chips with legs.
A photograph, the people in it were blurred, turned into an Aberrant creature resembling a bloody corpse. From the arrangent, it appeared to be a family of three, a ’peacefulness’ pervaded with a strange and insane vibe.
He pinned the photo to the table and continued to search other places. Apart from finding a handwritten ledger, Zheng Yichen found no more and left the place.
Reviews
All reviews (0)