Chapter 237: Facing Death
A clean, swift cut, the head slid horizontally from the neck and dropped without a spin, landing perfectly between the legs of its forr owner.
Thud!
The sound was almost like a full block of tofu hitting the ground.
This was the first ti since arriving in this world that Yi Chen had to watch a companion die right before his eyes, and he was utterly powerless to stop it.
“Barry…”
He whispered the na under his breath, but this ti, no reply ca. Even though not a single drop of blood had splattered onto him, his vision was stripped of all color, leaving only black and white.
Across from him stood Barry’s body still upright and muscular gazing silently down between its own legs where the severed head now lay.
Yi Chen stood frozen. Not because he didn’t want to run. But because, from the mont his toes and nose tip had been sliced off,
he already understood — the Vice Director had never once exaggerated his abilities.
As long as one was inside the hotel, there was no escape. Forget fleeing to the far-off Sunshine General Hospital several blocks away — that was pure fantasy.
His enemy's range, precision, and sheer destructive force were far beyond what Yi Chen could match.
None of his current tools or strategies would get him out alive, let alone allow him to strike back.
[A No-Win Scenario]
Hoo—
Yi Chen took a long breath.
He stepped around to the front of Barry, crouched before the fallen head, and gently closed the eyes behind him.
He stowed away his exposed chains and needles.
The axe and firearm were neatly returned to the suitcase. Even the battle-worn coat was swapped out for a presentable suit.
One hand adjusted his tie,
the other picked up the suitcase,
and he calmly walked toward Vice Director Ewart.
Though Yi Chen’s deanor appeared completely harmless almost docile Vice Director Ewart didn’t lower his guard one bit.
He rembered how Yi Chen had tricked him in the elevator before… and more importantly, he had witnessed the pain buried deep in Yi Chen’s body — that lingering tornt from the Old World.
He had no intention of capturing Yi Chen alive anymore. If Yi Chen dared make one wrong move, he’d be eliminated imdiately.
With a flick of a finger!
Surgical threads sprang from the floor and wrapped tightly around Yi Chen’s neck, suspending him beside the other corpses hanging in the grand hall.
Just to be sure,
once the noose had stabilized, Ewart switched to his Sensory Line, planting a cross-shaped death sigil deep into Yi Chen’s consciousness.
Faced with certain death, Yi Chen accepted his fate with eerie calm.
If there's no hope left…
then better to face death head-on.
As the death sigil etched itself vividly in his brain, the Death Plague, an uncontrollable, pathological force surged into every corner of his mind.
In that instant, the pain of strangulation turned strangely euphoric, even comforting.
He no longer wanted to free himself from the cord —
he welcod it.
“So this is what it feels like… No wonder the infected are so eager to kill themselves. It’s like a man crawling through the desert for days suddenly finding an oasis there's no way he'd resist drinking.”
“Co to think of it… I never feared death. ‘Death’ had always been my silent companion, the only thing I could truly rely on when I escaped the orphanage and stepped into adulthood.”
By now, the Death Plague had invaded his hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for mory. An invisible pathogen began a full-scale infect-transcription, rewriting everything stored in those neural cells.
This process was vital. It allowed the plague to reconstruct a replica of the deceased’s mories.
Until the infection was complete, the pathogen would keep the brain alive to preserve the integrity of mory retrieval.
With this "last breath," all mories would be taken at once.
But then, as the plague dug deeper, darker mories began to surface.
And by “dark,” it was no taphor.
Streams of black liquid oozed from the core of his hippocampus, rging and reacting with the Death Plague.
...
Outside.
Yi Chen’s suspended body gradually faded into unconsciousness.
Just as both eyes went completely dark—
RING RING RING!
The blaring sound of an alarm clock shattered the silence,
snapping Yi Chen’s twelve-year-old body awake.
He jolted upright from the bed,
threw on a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers in under ten seconds,
and with a flick of his wrist, silenced the alarm as his hand slid from his sleeve.
It had been exactly two years since he escaped the Black Mountain Orphanage.
While investigating the father he never t, he had once slain a terrifying inhuman woman in tro Line 13, an encounter that led him to a mysterious organization.
That sa organization, as it turned out, had once been his father’s ho.
Only then did Yi Chen learn: his father was no murderer.
Those late-night subway rides weren’t for pleasure
they were hunting missions.
Hunting creatures hiding among humans, cloaked in flawless human skin — the Aberrations.
Many of these entities lived among society under the guise of ordinary people, so even had families of their own.
So naturally, when they were hunted, news of their disappearance would make the rounds.
Over the past two years, Yi Chen had been maintaining discreet contact with the Organization through special ans. Every month, he’d receive anywhere from one to three assignnts. So involved directly eliminating these aberrations, while others were simpler tasks—surveillance, tracking certain individuals, or screening for abnormal behavior.
Once the Organization confird a mission was complete, a hefty sum would be transferred to Yi Chen’s personal account—more than enough for personal spending or even to settle in a big city and live comfortably.
Yet he chose to rent a cheap apartnt on the outskirts of town. His diet remained strictly based on the weekly al plans from the orphanage, precisely asured intakes of vitamins and protein.
Every extra penny was saved.
The rest of his ti was dedicated to rigorous training, ensuring his body stayed in optimal condition. Until the orphanage was completely eradicated, Yi Chen refused to let his guard down for even a second.
Because he was still only a "temporary worker," he had no authority to inquire about any internal matters. He could only passively accept tasks assigned by the Organization—and had thus never asked about the orphanage’s status.
But today was different.
After two years of careful evaluation, the Organization had finally accepted the 12-year-old Yi Chen as a full-fledged mber. With an impressive task completion rate of 91.3%, he had earned the right to report to one of the Organization’s operational bases.
There was still one important thing to do before he left the house—makeup.
This was a daily necessity. He had to apply a convincingly realistic “corpse makeup” to cover up the mottled discolorations on his face... and the most jarring, gaping bullet wound.
If anyone saw him without it, panic would be unavoidable.
After two years of practice, Yi Chen's makeup skills were impeccable. If he weren’t working for the Organization, he could’ve easily gotten a job as a mortician.
Everything ready, he slung a rather heavy backpack over his shoulders, tugged his hoodie over his head, and stepped out of the cheap apartnt he'd rented in the urban village.
He followed the instructions written on a slip of paper to a small newspaper stand at the street corner, bought a freshly printed copy of Story Club from the vendor, and boarded Bus 107 at a nearby stop.
“Final stop: Lushan Psychiatric Hospital. Thank you for riding Bus 107. We wish you a pleasant day! Please collect your belongings and exit the bus in an orderly fashion.”
Continuing along a winding mountain path for several hundred ters, a fully enclosed psychiatric hospital ca into view—built into the mountainside, its exaggerated gate structure looked like it was ant to welco so kind of ancient mountain god.
Yi Chen stopped at a small shrine to the Earth Deity next to the main gate, tore a page out of the Story Club magazine, and slipped it into a hidden compartnt.
The shrine slid aside, revealing a concealed passage leading straight into the main building of the hospital.
After half an hour of navigating the secret tunnel, Yi Chen erged between two bookshelves in what appeared to be an office.
Sitting at the desk was a woman in a white lab coat, wearing round glasses, calmly reviewing a stack of docunts. Her silky black hair cascaded over the desk, and from her flawless side profile, it was impossible to tell her exact age—she could easily pass for anywhere between 20 and 35.
She was the sa woman who had recruited Yi Chen at the subway station two years ago, one of the Organization’s "Connectors."
“There’s a cup and so tea that suits you on the desk. Help yourself,” she said.
Yi Chen had never been much of a tea drinker. But the mont the faint, decayed aroma of the leaves hit his nose, sothing stirred inside him—he felt instantly revitalized.
He quickly brewed a cup and drank it down in gulps. His dry, ravaged throat felt miraculously soothed, almost as if he were reborn.
He even made a ntal note to ask about the tea, what it was, and where he could get more.
The comfort spreading from his throat made him instinctively rub his neck.
But as he did, he seed to feel the sensation of a taut surgical thread biting into his skin, almost like a noose. The illusion of being hanged surged through his senses—but vanished the mont he focused his mind.
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