They sprinted down the pitch-black corridor, the flashlight beam shaking wildly with every step. Beside Shang Lu’s ear came the ragged breathing of Lin Rui, who had only just become a fusion entity.
On Shang Lu’s back, Lin Rui’s fused body kept drawing in broken breaths, and the newly formed human face let out a pained groan. “…Who… are you?” He seemed like a completely different person, yet his desire to survive remained just as fierce. “Save me…”
Ahead of them, Fang Huan Xing looked back in disbelief. “Keep running. Don’t stop,” Shang Lu instructed him, then explained, “He may have entered stage three of fusion disease. Cases like this are rare. The overlapping counterpart may come from another reality, which is why a complete left leg manifested—and why it has independent consciousness—”
Fang Huan Xing’s expression turned strange. “What the hell is an overlapping counterpart?”
“Strictly speaking, fusion disease isn’t simply a disease,” Shang Lu said. “It’s different-reality versions of the same individual overlapping in the same physical position. The hotel versions compete for space; human versions compete for the body. That’s what’s happening both to this hotel and to fusion-disease patients. Wait. I thought you knew?”
Fang Huan Xing slammed through the door ahead with a bang. “Why would I know?”
They burst into the equipment room. Both of them froze.
The equipment room was actually still running. Power to the construction site had been cut off long ago, yet emergency sensor lights had somehow come on inside the dark basement equipment room.
Flashing red light washed over the entire space, alternately brightening and dimming.
Enormous circulation pump assemblies nearly filled the equipment room of Xianlu Hot Spring Hotel, leaving barely any room to stand. Equipment and piping crisscrossed everywhere. Pump assembly overlapped pump assembly, occupying the same base and feeding into the same inlet and outlet. Just as Shang Lu had said, they were competing for the same physical space.
One set of equipment was still operating. The uninterrupted rush of water, the hum of mechanical vibration, pressure gauges whose needles spun wildly—all of it came from the pump assembly coated in silver anti-rust paint. The warm pipes they had encountered throughout the hotel all connected back to this system. The other set of equipment had already been dismantled. It was battered and decrepit, torn apart along with the rest of the construction work, with bolts and components scattered around its base.
The silver and gray equipment assemblies were fused together without any visible seam, as though they had been manufactured as a single unit. Yet at the same time, they resembled organs that had been born inside a space too small for them, swelling and crushing one another as they seemed to breathe beneath the flashing red light.
Even Shang Lu couldn’t stop himself from swearing. “Fuck.”
His earlier analysis had been correct. The root of the interference really was inside the equipment room. This was the anchor point producing the anomalous state. If they took the correct measures, the interference might stop or at least weaken. But the two systems were fused together so completely that there was no obvious way to deal with them, and they were out of time.
Scrrrape— Behind the door, the mass of flesh was shrieking. Whether it was its nails or the pieces of metal embedded in its body, something scraped against the metal door with a sharp sound that made their skin crawl.
Fang Huan Xing casually picked up a steel bar and jammed it across the door. “What now? Can your watch still find another exit?”
Apparently, even he hadn’t expected the equipment room to look like this. The teenager was no longer as indifferent as before.
There were dead ends both ahead and behind them. Shang Lu still had the incapacitated Lin Rui on his back and answered quickly, “No need to ask her. I saw half the plans. There’s no other exit from here.”
Bang! The metal door suddenly bulged inward. Then everything went quiet again.
The two exchanged a glance. They both understood that the creature had not given up on its prey. It had rolled farther away to build up speed for another charge.
Fang Huan Xing wasn’t afraid of dying. Worst case, they fought. What he hadn’t expected was that the more dangerous the situation became, the calmer Shang Lu seemed to get.
Shang Lu swept his gaze across the room. “See the pipe rack in the middle? Get through it and head between the pump assemblies. Find the narrowest space you can. Move!”
The giant fusion entity’s massive size was a serious disadvantage in a place like this. They quickly stepped over the pipes crawling across the floor and squeezed between the pump assemblies. Working in perfect tacit coordination, the two of them grabbed scattered tools and pieces of metal as they passed and propped them upright—some wedged into the pipe rack, others fixed diagonally in place.
BOOM—! The door split apart, and the mass of flesh rolled inside screaming. But unlike what they had expected, in only a short period of time it had already grown another leg. One arm and one leg now supported the fused mass as it crawled across the floor. Whenever pipes blocked its path, it simply hauled itself over them. It was actually moving faster than before.
Some of the pipes were scalding hot, filling the air with steam, and there were very few spaces wide enough for a person to squeeze through. Fang Huan Xing crawled in first. Shang Lu, right behind him, bent down and unexpectedly pushed the barely conscious Lin Rui toward Fang Huan Xing before entering himself.
Fang Huan Xing stared at him in disbelief. “What are you doing?!”
“Don’t come out!” Shang Lu shouted.
The mass of flesh was already approaching, the furry half of its dog muzzle pulling back to expose its teeth, but Shang Lu seemed to have calculated everything in advance. He reached out, seized a welded support, and actually snapped it loose with brute force. Then, with astonishing precision, he drove it straight into the dog’s mouth.
“AAAAAAAH!” The mass already had metal parts sticking out all over its body. Now the human face at the front actually let out a man’s scream. The dog’s mouth quickly closed and went lifeless, while the human face opened its eyes in its place and lunged directly at Shang Lu.
Shang Lu dodged cleanly. Blood poured from the mass. The steel supports embedded in its body scraped across the piping as bones constantly shifted beneath its flesh. In the blink of an eye, the human face rotated upward. Its arm braced against the equipment, and it rolled toward Shang Lu again. The dismantled gray valve assembly was already wobbling precariously. With a sharp creak, the old circulation pump collapsed and happened to snap the return-water pipe beneath it.
Scalding hot water erupted instantly, and white steam exploded across the room.
Through the mist, the teenager appeared on top of the equipment base, gripping a thick bolt. He leapt down onto the mass of flesh. Pshk! The bolt plunged into the human face.
The creature screamed endlessly and thrashed wildly, trying to throw Fang Huan Xing off. The teenager had completely lost himself in the fight. One hand dug into the dog’s mouth while the other repeatedly yanked the bolt free and stabbed it down again with all his strength. Blood splattered across his face. He looked like a blood-soaked god of slaughter.
Shang Lu had dodged quickly, but half his body was drenched in hot water and his skin had turned red from the burn. He finally managed to grab a long iron rod. When he turned and saw what was happening, his expression changed drastically. “Kid! Let go!”
The needle on the pressure gauge swung wildly. The two equipment assemblies that had originally been embedded into one another were beginning to change. The functioning silver pump assembly shifted to the right while the dismantled gray assembly squeezed toward the left. Under the red light, the two sets of machinery resembled organs awakening, once again fighting to occupy the only available space. The positional overlap had begun again. A muffled boom came from deep within the walls. The entire equipment room lurched violently, light fixtures fell from the ceiling, pipes leading throughout the building began warping and contracting, cold water burst out, and several cracks suddenly tore through the walls. The place was going to collapse!
Fang Huan Xing had no intention of listening. All he wanted was to kill the monster. Enraged, the mass began rolling. The teenager was flung away and plunged into the intersecting streams of hot and cold water, his figure becoming a trembling overlapping afterimage.
The creature clawed at the floor and chased after him. Shang Lu followed closely behind and drove the iron rod viciously through the mass of flesh, impaling it from one side to the other. In that split second, the bloodied rod stopped only a few centimeters from Fang Huan Xing’s shocked face.
The iron rod had completely blocked the path ahead. No matter how many possible trajectories Fang Huan Xing might originally have been able to choose for the moment he was thrown, he first had to return to the Reaper’s back.
Yet within those few short seconds, reality had sealed off every possibility. No matter how he returned, he would be impaled together with the creature by Shang Lu’s iron rod.
The mass collapsed heavily into the water, throwing up a splash half a meter high. Blood quickly stained the water around them red.
“Kid! Get up!” Shang Lu waded toward him. “Give me your hand!”
Fang Huan Xing’s backpack was jammed tightly between the pipes. He tried to rise but couldn’t.
The situation underwater was too tangled to see clearly. Shang Lu nearly fell in the waist-deep water himself and snapped in panic, “Forget the damn backpack!”
Fang Huan Xing ignored him.
Anything else could be abandoned. Not this bag.
He quickly slipped the backpack straps off his shoulders, held his breath, and dove beneath the water, trying to yank it free.
At that exact moment, the basement wall being dragged and compressed by the shifting pipes finally reached its limit. BOOM—! Everything went black.
So hot.
The water level kept rising. No matter which direction Fang Huan Xing swam, he couldn’t find even the smallest pocket of air, and his consciousness gradually began to fade.
The feeling of being completely cut off from the world was not unfamiliar. Fang Huan Xing had long since grown accustomed to being alone.
Even the continuing collapse of the walls and the faint mechanical rumbling seemed to grow quiet. He could no longer hear the monster screaming or anyone shouting anxiously. The only sound left was his own heartbeat. That guy from the Anomalous Case Department should’ve gotten away by now. Hopefully he wasn’t stubborn enough to drag that curly-haired guy along too.
Escaping from the apartment had already given Fang Huan Xing a little extra time to live, and he had also managed to keep his promise. At the very least, even at the end, he was still holding the backpack tightly against his chest.
Warm water surrounded him like a return to the womb. He felt no fear of death.
Perhaps he never had. There had even been times when he thought dying would be a kind of release.
Floating weightlessly, he slowly sank.
So this day had finally come.
Glub, glub, glub… Something was continuously rising from below. The flashlight had somehow ended up shining faintly from a distant corner, but the light was too weak to make out what was approaching. Fang Huan Xing could only distinguish an enormous black shadow.
The Reaper was still alive! There was a hole torn through its body, exposing human ribs, and blood continued pouring into the water. From the opening, clusters of insects crawled out from beneath its skin, attaching themselves to the surface of the flesh and becoming new living organisms that drove it forward.
A Reaper was formed from several kinds of organisms fused together. Driven by extreme hunger, they possessed astonishing vitality. It could not truly be considered dead unless every living organism fused into it was killed.
The building was still collapsing. The underwater space was extremely cramped, and the Reaper came toward him aggressively, moving much more freely underwater than it had on land. Fang Huan Xing struggled upward as the grrrk, grrrk, grrrk of grinding bones came closer and closer. Suddenly, a hand seized the creature’s newly grown left leg. Its attention shifted, and the mass turned around.
In the dim, indistinct light, Fang Huan Xing saw a malformed face with two faces overlapping one another.
It was Lin Rui.
The face that still showed signs of life had its eyes stretched wide. Its lips were forming words. From the shape of his mouth, Fang Huan Xing could tell what he was saying.
Run.
Lin Rui held a piece of metal in one hand and clutched the creature’s leg with the other. The Reaper blocked Fang Huan Xing’s view. A cloud of blood spread through the water. There was no telling who attacked whom.
BOOM!!!
BOOM!!!
Muffled impacts came from beyond the wall. A massive hole suddenly opened. The water surged toward it in an instant, and the wall collapsed with a deafening crash.
Cough, cough, cough—! Fang Huan Xing was swept out of the cramped space, coughing uncontrollably.
Someone grabbed him and hauled him upright. It was Shang Lu! The investigator from the Anomalous Case Department had come back. A sledgehammer lay abandoned beside him. He was soaked from head to toe, though it was impossible to tell whether the water running off him was water or sweat. With one hand, he grabbed Fang Huan Xing’s backpack, and with the other, he seized Fang Huan Xing himself. He shouted, “Run!” and the two sprinted toward the section of corridor that had not yet collapsed. Water, bricks, and the ceiling falling apart behind them—the entire building was shaking. A section of ceiling had collapsed at an angle ahead, and without hesitation, they climbed straight up it and reached the first-floor lobby.
By the time the collapse finally stopped, most of the flooded basement had been buried, and a massive depression had appeared in the floor.
If they had stayed even half a minute longer, or if Shang Lu had broken through the wall even a little later, none of them would have made it out alive.
“Seriously, can you stop worrying about this damn bag from now on?” Shang Lu braced his hands on his knees and gasped for breath. At last, the young man looked genuinely wrecked, soaked in mud and water like a homeless man.
Fang Huan Xing looked no better. Panting as well, he immediately snatched the backpack back. “Give it to me.”
Shang Lu laughed once, then quickly stopped smiling. “We didn’t manage to save the content creator who wanted to report us.” Whether it was guilt or regret, even Shang Lu himself might not have been able to say. He fell silent for a long time.
Fang Huan Xing put the backpack on again and said nothing either. There was still almost no expression on his face, but he quietly watched the surface of the water.
Shang Lu straightened and ruffled Fang Huan Xing’s hair. “All right, kid. Your brother saved you again. This time, you’re coming back to the Anomalous Case Department with me without causing trouble.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
This guy really wasn’t afraid of dying. In every possible sense.
Or maybe there really was something wrong with him.
Who in their right mind escaped with their life and then turned around to rescue someone else? Being a bleeding heart wouldn’t win him a prize.
Shang Lu looked around. The building’s main structure was actually very sturdy. Most of what had cracked and collapsed in the basement were lightweight partition walls, with only portions of the ceiling brought down along with them. Everything else remained intact. This lobby did not appear to be the first floor they had entered through, but it also didn’t resemble the fully furnished alternate version. More precisely, the two versions were intersecting and overlapping. Now they only needed to find the correct exit, and they could leave.
Fang Huan Xing had clearly reached the same conclusion. He suddenly said, “Look.”
Shang Lu followed his gaze and saw a long pipe lying there, half submerged in water. A dusty gray human face appeared on its surface, with gray eyes and gray lips, slowly moving along the pipe.
The pipe led toward a large door. Without question, that was the direction they needed to go.
Before leaving, Fang Huan Xing stopped. As though he had spent a long time preparing himself mentally, he unzipped his backpack and took out a soaking-wet apple.
Shang Lu was genuinely starving by now and didn’t bother being polite. “Half each—”
Fang Huan Xing raised his hand and tossed it. The apple landed squarely in the water and struck the pipe.
The human face immediately sped toward it. Its dull tongue shot out and curled around the apple as its mouth expanded until it was almost as wide as its entire face. It swallowed the apple whole.
Chew, chew, chew.
Shang Lu: “…”
That was really unnecessary.
Police vehicles surrounded the hotel construction site. Even Shang Lu was startled by the scale of the response. The morning car chase and gunfight, followed by news that the Anomalous Case Department was handling a case here, had drawn intense attention from the Xueping police. On top of that, several hours after Team Leader Shang entered the construction site, part of it had collapsed. By now, the area outside was completely surrounded by police and packed with people.
“Wait here for a minute.” Shang Lu had a headache just looking at the scene. He explained the plan as he went. “I’ll tell them what happened, find somewhere to shower and get something to eat, then borrow a car and head back to Fog Harbor.”
He turned around, only to find Fang Huan Xing standing rigidly in place, his entire body visibly on guard. If anyone so much as walked over and spoke to him, there was absolutely no doubt he would perform another disappearing act on the spot.
Shang Lu was genuinely developing PTSD from this by now. After thinking about it, he walked back and seriously called the kid by name. “Fang Huan Xing. Promise me that I won’t turn around and find you gone.”
Fang Huan Xing refused to promise. He didn’t have time. He was busy trying not to look at the license plates—or at the police officers walking toward them.
“There has to be a basic level of trust between people, you know?” Shang Lu pulled the handcuffs from behind his waist. “Otherwise, I would’ve cuffed you a long time ago.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
You can try.
Shang Lu thought about it, folded the cuffs together, and stopped pretending. “Fine. I admit I probably couldn’t keep you cuffed anyway.”
Fang Huan Xing lifted his eyes, his gaze calm and unreadable. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that whether it’s the extra limbs you can call on or that ability of yours that’s practically teleportation, neither would make you easy for me to restrain,” Shang Lu answered honestly. “But I’ve had plenty of chances to try.”
The teenager’s dark eyelashes trembled.
“I saw you stab that foreign guy in the eye. I also saw you use your ability twice. I don’t understand exactly how it works, but you aren’t very good at hiding it.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
He’d seen it that early?
Shang Lu wasn’t saying any of this to threaten him. He was making the teenager a promise. “I’ll keep you safe. And I promise I won’t send you to the Containment Center. Try trusting me once.”
The Xueping police had already approached. “Hello, Team Leader Shang…”
Shang Lu turned to meet them with a professional smile. Even covered in filth and looking barely presentable, he somehow still managed to carry himself with effortless composure.
In that instant, countless ways of killing Shang Lu flashed through Fang Huan Xing’s mind.
There were steel pipes at the construction site behind them, perfect for fulfilling his fantasy of smashing an enemy’s brains out.
The officers ahead had guns. Considering Shang Lu had saved him, Fang Huan Xing could put a bullet through his forehead and at least make it quick.
Or perhaps once they reached somewhere deserted, he could explain the reason first and then strangle him, so at least Shang Lu would understand why he was dying.
Forget it. He could be merciful. Maybe he could find some sleeping pills and make Shang Lu take them. Television dramas said dying that way didn’t hurt.
“Here.” Shang Lu’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “What’s with that expression?”
Shang Lu had already finished speaking with the police. He was holding a neatly wrapped, untouched wrap. “Some poor officer got called out halfway through breakfast and never had a chance to eat this. It’s gone a little cold, but you can have it for now so you don’t starve.”
Fang Huan Xing: “…”
He accepted the wrap and took a bite.
Fine. I’ll eat first. Then I’ll kill him.
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