Chapter Twenty-Four: Passage
Page (1/3)
Black grease seeped into Cai Zixuan’s skin, merging with his blood and penetrating deep into his marrow.
Crack!
The bandages wrapped around his hands suddenly snapped. His rapidly swelling muscles burst through the fabric and into the open air.
The plaster cast on his leg exploded without warning. The foot that emerged from the fragments was already larger than an adult’s.
The needle was forcibly squeezed from his blood vessel by bulging muscle, ejecting along with it the cationic cleanser injected into his body an hour earlier.
By then, Cai Zixuan’s body had expanded to a height of six feet. Yet he still showed no sign of stopping. He continued to grow, his excessive weight making the hospital bed beneath him groan and creak.
Some instinctive impulse rose from the depths of his mind. Cai Zixuan pressed his palms together, brought them down with all his strength, and twisted.
Boom—
An invisible force spread outward. The metal hospital bed, the cotton blanket, the reinforced-concrete walls, and the glass cup all seemed to be covered by a thin layer of shadow.
A deep-red fissure stretched across the night sky.
The Shadow Realm had opened.
A vast amount of hazy knowledge surged into Cai Zixuan’s mind, and he instantly understood the Shadow Realm’s purpose. Any destruction caused here would not affect the real world, allowing him to avoid immediate detection by organizations such as the Special Affairs Bureau.
It would give him plenty of time.
The only drawback was that supernatural beings within a certain area would also be dragged into the Shadow Realm.
“Why did the lights go out...?”
At the end of the corridor, Cai Yongyuan, who had been staring intently at the countdown on his phone, raised his head in confusion.
Everything around him was veiled in shadow—not only the buildings, but also the doctors, nurses, and patients’ families in the corridor. They passed by him as if they could neither see him nor hear his calls for help.
Outside the windows, visibility had also fallen sharply. Nothing beyond the hospital grounds could be seen clearly.
Before he could figure out what was happening—
Bang!
The wooden door of the single-bed room was violently kicked open from within and slammed against the corridor wall.
A massive giant two meters tall, his entire body swollen with muscle, stooped as he emerged from the room.
Tattered scraps of hospital clothing hung from him. His veins bulged like earthworms, while a hideous, crazed grin had been painted across his face in black grease.
Behind him, the wooden door that had just shattered across the floor rapidly turned to sand. As though time were reversing, the fragments rose into the air and restored themselves upon the doorframe.
“Zi... Zixuan?”
Page (1/3)
Page (2/3)
Staring at the vaguely familiar features on the giant’s face, Cai Yongyuan’s hand trembled, and he dropped his phone.
“Haa... haa...”
The giant did not answer. Hunched forward, he panted heavily and slowly advanced.
“Don’t come any closer! Stay away!”
Cai Yongyuan’s voice sounded like that of a chicken being strangled. Just then, someone was about to take the elevator downstairs, and he immediately rushed into the car after them, shrinking into a corner.
Thud, thud, thud.
The heavy footsteps in the corridor drew closer and louder. Under Cai Yongyuan’s terrified gaze, the elevator doors finally began to close, and the car descended.
Safe...?
The tall giant paused outside the elevator doors for a moment. Then he reached out with both hands, hooked his fingertips into the gap between the metal doors, and wrenched them apart.
The elevator shaft was deep and dark, filled only with the sound of the cables winding and unwinding.
The giant stepped forward and fell straight down, crashing heavily onto the elevator car.
The tremendous impact dented the roof of the car within the Shadow Realm and sent clouds of dust billowing through the air. Yet everyone inside except Cai Yongyuan behaved as though nothing had happened, continuing to chat and scroll through their phones.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Punch after punch, the giant hammered the elevator car, forcibly breaking through the metal roof. Through the opening, Cai Yongyuan’s expression of terror and despair could be seen clearly.
The giant thrust an arm through the split in the roof, seized the hem of Cai Yongyuan’s clothing as he struggled desperately, and hauled him upward.
Thud—
Cai Yongyuan’s back slammed into the roof. His untrained muscles were easily pierced by shards of metal, and blood sprayed everywhere.
“Is the elevator leaking?”
One passenger seemed to sense something. He looked up suspiciously, then reached out and touched his cheek, but found no trace of liquid.
It must have been his imagination.
Ding.
The elevator descended to the first floor. Suppressing his doubts, the passenger followed the others out of the car and entered the lobby of the inpatient building.
At that same moment within the Shadow Realm, the force of the giant’s pull tore Cai Yongyuan’s clothes apart.
He fell to the floor. Without even checking his injuries, he struggled to his feet, limped out of the lobby while clinging to the wall, and reached the parking lot, where he climbed into his Volkswagen.
The engine started. With blood streaming from his thigh, he stamped desperately on the accelerator and sped toward the hospital entrance.
Page (2/3)
Page (3/3)
Boom!
Suddenly, a towering black shadow burst from the lobby and slammed headfirst into the side of the car. The tremendous impact sent the one-point-three-ton vehicle skidding sideways. It rolled several times before crashing into a lamppost, ending upside down with its engine completely dead.
Cai Yongyuan was thrown into a daze inside the driver’s seat. Hanging headfirst, his face covered in blood, he stared through blurred vision at his “son,” who was much taller than he was and approaching step by step.
“Zi... Zixuan,” he stammered. “I’m sorry, son. I shouldn’t have pushed you off the building.”
The giant’s hand seized the doorframe. With one powerful pull, he tore the door away and dragged Cai Yongyuan from the vehicle.
“It was those loan sharks! They pressured me too hard. I had no choice. I was desperate, and that was the only way I could think of to get the payout from your accident insurance.”
Cai Yongyuan was lifted into the air. Tears and snot streamed down his face as he pleaded in terror.
“Please forgive your father this once...”
The giant did not answer. He merely stared into the man’s eyes, as though lost in thought—just as he had three days earlier, during those few seconds after his biological father threw him from the balcony of their home and he plummeted toward the ground.
His left hand gripped the man’s shoulder. His right seized both legs.
He raised him high above his head, then twisted him as though wringing out a towel.
Amid the man’s shrill screams, his bones shattered and tore through his skin. Blood gushed like a waterfall, while his organs dangled loose and dropped into the giant’s open mouth.
Chewing. Swallowing.
The giant devoured the mangled remains of the man’s body. The black paint on his face was not washed away by the blood; instead, it became even more vivid.
It was not enough.
He needed more blood. More death.
The giant casually flung aside the remains and looked toward the inpatient building before pressing his palms together and bringing them down with tremendous force.
Many people inside the building raised their heads in confusion, staring at the lights as they began to flicker erratically. They had no idea that the entire inpatient building was slowly being drawn into the Shadow Realm.
Step.
A figure emerged from the building.
Li Sheng’s gaze was icy. He retained many insect-like traits: both arms were covered in the sharp hairs of ants, while mantis-like bone blades extended from beneath his forearms.
Click—
The bone blade of his mantis arm plunged into the concrete and carved a horizontal line across the ground, barring the way between him and the giant.
No passage beyond this point.
Page (3/3)