Lin Xing swore that in all his life, he had never seen anything this outrageous.
Yin Chen had mentioned before that Sister Pudu really had swallowed a man’s… reproductive organ whole.
But hearing something secondhand and experiencing it firsthand were two completely different things.
Sister Pudu was like a savage beast that had lost all reason, the most primal greed and hunger churning in her eyes.
She used no weapon. Relying entirely on the fingernails she normally kept neatly filed, she frantically tore at his white cotton-linen trousers.
Lin Xing stared in disbelief while still remembering to cooperate by screaming.
“Are you sick?! A nun can’t touch a man! You’re sick! The Lord won’t forgive you!!”
Sister Pudu could not hear a word he said. It did no good when Lin Xing raised his leg and kicked her hard, either. The woman was unbelievably strong and seemed incapable of feeling pain. Even with her internal organs nearly ruptured, she refused to let go.
Saliva and streaks of blood wet the corners of her mouth, while low, coarse laughter rolled in her throat.
After shouting for ages without receiving a response, Lin Xing numbly gave up on communication. He twisted and struggled, unwilling to simply let her do as she pleased.
As a thick-skinned, tough-bodied player, even if the nun came at him with a knife, the worst she could do was cause some superficial wounds. But Sister Pudu truly treated him as nothing more than a piece of food. The actual danger was low, but the humiliation was off the charts.
“Heavens, I’m about to become impure! No wonder I was born without a wife, boohoo…”
“God, where the hell are you? Come control your psycho believer! Otherwise tomorrow I’ll tattoo Satan on my back, beat the hell out of your pope, hang the cross upside down, and if you keep pissing me off, I’ll go seduce your mother!”
Lin Xing yelled at the top of his lungs. He failed to snap Sister Pudu out of it, but he did wake Charlie, who had been lying unconscious on the floor.
Charlie leaned weakly against the wall. After a dazed moment, he suddenly realized that Sister Pudu had gone mad.
“Hh, hh…” Two terrified gasps escaped him, as though his throat had been stuffed with a wet rag. His already ugly complexion turned even paler than paper, and fear made his whole body tremble.
Lin Xing, who had been shouting nonsense a moment ago, immediately stopped struggling. He kicked the nun off the bed and used his knee to block her next attack. Tilting his head, he watched Charlie’s expression with great interest. “You’re really scared of her. What, did she already eat your balls?”
The red-haired man’s expression twisted sharply. He shrank into the corner with hatred and fear, but no matter how angry he became, he did not dare approach.
Lin Xing burst out laughing and kept mocking him. “Well, well, well. She really ate them? Coward. You’ve got a gun and you still don’t dare get revenge? Can’t you just shoot her?”
“…What do you know? What do you know?! I’ll kill you!!”
Bloodshot veins bulged in Charlie’s protruding eyes. Provoked past endurance, he raised the gun and chambered a round with a click, aimed at Lin Xing’s head with trembling hands, and pulled the trigger with a roar.
Bang!
After the deafening blast, choking black smoke curled into the air.
The bullet never fired, because this exquisitely constructed, lavish-looking rifle had actually exploded in Charlie’s hands.
Charlie already had a crippled right leg. Now the blast ripped it open into a bloody mess. He threw back his head and screamed in despair, “Why?! Lord, I’ve done so much for that madwoman! I’ve been her dog, coming whenever she calls. Isn’t that enough to atone for my sins?! Why can’t you let me go?!”
“Atone for your sins?” Lin Xing narrowed his eyes, sensing a clue surfacing. Thoughtfully, he asked, “Charlie, did you do something bad to the nun?”
“Fuck off! Fuck off! You damned lunatic! I curse you to be eaten by wild dogs!”
One hand clutching his wound, Charlie raised the ruined rifle that was still spewing black smoke with the other and hurled it hard at Lin Xing’s head.
Smack!
Lin Xing abruptly broke free of the restraints around both wrists and caught the rifle flying straight at his face. He weighed it in his hand. Not bad. It had some heft.
He kicked Sister Pudu off the bed when she lunged at him again, then ignored her and opened the gun chamber to inspect it. Blowing away the gunpowder residue and soot packed inside the barrel, he said with interest, “Not bad. It can actually still be used. Thank heaven for the gift.”
Then Lin Xing raised the rifle with a smile and pointed it at Charlie. “Talk. What did you do to Sister Pudu?”
Before Charlie could say anything, Lin Xing fired an experimental shot at him.
He aimed at the nearly useless right leg. The gun did not explode this time, and the bullet shot out with remarkable smoothness.
Charlie screamed as though his heart were being torn apart, the sound especially shrill inside the cramped confinement room.
It seemed the “Lord’s” meaning was perfectly clear. Lin Xing could torment Charlie however he liked, but he was not allowed to kill Sister Pudu.
Lin Xing scoffed. “Your Lord really does seem to hate you. Looks like you’re definitely a bastard. A scumbag.”
Charlie, still screaming, broke down even further. Laughing and crying at once, he shouted, “It was clearly this lecherous □□ who willingly betrayed her vow to serve God for the rest of her life! She looked down on me and insisted on having an affair with some other wild man. She gave birth to a son in the basement and secretly raised him there! I was carrying out Heaven’s justice. What was wrong with drowning that bastard?!
Elio’s Note: The □□ is already in the Chinese source. The missing word was censored or lost there, so I’m leaving the gap intact instead of guessing what the author originally wrote.
“The priest tacitly approved of what I did back then too. So why does he still get to sit high and mighty as a priest now, while the Lord puts all the blame on me?! Tell me, what did I do wrong?!!!”
The longer Lin Xing listened, the stranger his expression became.
He did not really believe Sister Pudu was the type to secretly have an affair with a man.
Compared with wanting men, she probably wanted to kill every man in the world much more.
Whatever the reason for her pregnancy, as a Catholic she could not attempt an abortion by any means. Otherwise, according to doctrine, she would fall into hell after death, beyond redemption, and endure eternal torment.
How much unspeakable pain and madness had that child’s birth and death brought her?
Lin Xing could not help making a bold guess. Sister Pudu’s true obsession was actually… making every man lose the ability to reproduce.
And the “Lord” had permitted her madness.
That meant Sister Pudu should have been an innocent victim when it came to the pregnancy and childbirth. Only then would the “Lord” have granted her compensation and protection.
If so, what terrible thing had happened back then?
What beast had gotten her pregnant?
Lin Xing looked at the nun roaring like an animal, sighed, and simply raised the rifle and blew Charlie’s head apart.
Pink-white brain matter mixed with blood scattered like fireworks, landing on the cold white hospital bed, on Sister Pudu’s wrinkled black veil, and on her trembling eyelashes damp with involuntary tears.
The confinement room abruptly fell silent.
Sister Pudu suddenly stopped moving and sat silently at the foot of the bed. She wiped some of the hot, fresh brain matter from around her body with a finger, closed her eyes, and slowly put it into her mouth, as though savoring an unparalleled nectar.
“Sister, I already helped you kill this piece of shit. How’s that? Feel good? You still want to pull down my trousers now?”
Propping himself halfway up against the headboard with one leg bent, Lin Xing asked with a careless air.
Sister Pudu opened her eyes. Her gaze was numb and cold, her voice hoarse from prolonged screaming. “I threw your woman into the rats’ nest. She’s dead by now, gnawed into a mangled mess.
“If you want to hate me, then keep hating me. Stop fucking trying to cozy up to me, you filthy thing.”
＊
The rear courtyard on the first floor.
Countless wheel tracks had been pressed into the stone-paved path beneath the thick winter snow.
Their so-called after-dinner stroll to aid digestion actually consisted of Song Zang sitting in a wheelchair with a snow-white mink-fur scarf around his neck while Yin Chen pushed him around.
An oil lamp hung from one side of the wheelchair’s handle, swaying back and forth in the bleak evening wind. Its flickering flame illuminated the glaring whiteness of the snow.
Song Zang studied the overlapping wheel tracks in the snow and discovered that Yin Chen had actually begun secretly going in circles without saying a word.
For nearly ten minutes, the two of them kept circling around the potato field piled with dead branches, looking like a pair of lunatics…
“Lord Capet, do you really want to be alone with me that badly?” Song Zang could not resist saying sarcastically.
Yin Chen did not feel guilty in the slightest. With a half-smile, he deliberately played along in a grand, respectable tone. “I wish to spend time alone with the patient under my care, observe you over the long term, and cure your madness as soon as possible. Is there a problem?”
“Stop taking detours and search properly!” Song Zang glared at him.
“All right.”
Yin Chen curled his lips, turned the wheelchair around, and headed toward the remote corners they had never explored before.
The West Wing, where the female patients lived together.
According to intelligence generously provided by Mr. Butler, the rear kitchen and laundry room each had a door leading underground.
The two avoided the orderlies patrolling nearby. To keep from alerting anyone, Yin Chen temporarily stored the wheelchair in his storage space.
Dim candlelight flickered in the rear kitchen. Several women cheaply hired by the asylum were working inside, cleaning, washing plates, and preparing for the next day’s breakfast.
They complained quietly about the petty troubles of daily life, their rough hands reddened by the icy well water.
“Too many people,” Song Zang mouthed silently.
Yin Chen nodded in agreement. Without needing to discuss it, they decided to check the laundry room first.
Their footsteps made no sound as they crossed the narrow, chilly corridor in silence. Behind the empty laundry room was, sure enough, an inconspicuous wooden door with a half-open brass lock hanging from it.
Yin Chen pushed the door open. Waves of cold, damp air blew toward them. A long spiral staircase descended gradually into bottomless darkness, carrying a trace of ominous foreboding.
The first basement level, where the asylum’s rumored confinement rooms were located, did not seem to be an entirely sealed underground space.
Song Zang quietly hooked a finger around Yin Chen’s fingertip and squeezed slightly.
Yin Chen turned his hand and securely clasped Song Zang’s. He asked in a low voice, “Scared?”
“Mm.” Song Zang’s face was pale. He wished he could hang his entire body off Yin Chen.
The instant the wooden door opened, a dense sense of unease surged over him like an undertow.
The whispering voices floating in the air seemed almost hallucinatory, rustle, rustle, buzzing restlessly beside his ears. A moment later, they abruptly vanished when he took the initiative to hold Yin Chen’s hand.
What exactly was down there? Why was he the only one being affected while Yin Chen noticed absolutely nothing?
Song Zang’s nerves tightened, his heart pounding. He lit up the system screen with one hand while holding Yin Chen with the other, absolutely refusing to let him go downstairs no matter what.
【Song Zang: @Zhang Ming Shen, Brother Zhang, are you free to do a divination? Yin Chen and I are about to go down to the first basement level. Will it be dangerous? Sorry to trouble you.】
【Zhang Ming Shen: 111】
【Zhang Ming Shen: Very dangerous!】
【Zhang Ming Shen: @Li Ming, you’re in even more danger!】
Zhang Ming Shen was usually a man of few words. Sending several messages in one burst this time was enough to show how serious things were.
“See!”
Song Zang tightened his grip on Yin Chen’s hand, his voice trembling faintly.
Yin Chen, however, had never known how to write the word “fear.”
He pinched Song Zang’s cheek and considered the problem. “You hide here. I’ll go down and take a look by myself.”
“No. Then I’d rather we go together. I don’t trust you to go alone.”
Remembering those fine whispers of mental contamination, Song Zang was genuinely worried. He clutched Yin Chen’s arm.
“Then hold on tight.” Yin Chen did not pull away. Instead, his mood became inappropriately cheerful, his voice warm as spring. “I can protect you.”
Song Zang: …
He truly had no idea what Yin Chen was so happy about.
The rough stone staircase had no handrail and was steeply constructed. With the two of them descending side by side, it felt even more cramped.
One careless step could easily send them tumbling all the way down. So they cautiously slowed their pace, held tightly to each other’s hands, pressed close together, and crept downward.
Song Zang leaned on his slender cane studded with gemstones, while Yin Chen carried the swaying oil lamp.
“I really wish this staircase would never end.”
“…Why would you say that? Getting trapped in a ghost loop is terrifying.”
“I like how this feels. Your heart’s beating so fast,” Yin Chen answered honestly.
Song Zang quietly explained, “That’s because I’m scared.”
“I know. The suspension bridge effect. I heard it gives you a sensation like being in love.”
“Huh??”
Yin Chen lowered his long lashes and suddenly seemed a little dejected. “Too bad my heart doesn’t seem to be beating very fast right now.”
“Yin Chen, you’re so dumb. That’s not what the suspension bridge effect means.” Song Zang paused, then could not help laughing helplessly.
Thanks to him, after exchanging a few lines of such ridiculous nonsense, Song Zang really was not as nervous anymore.
“If you think I’m dumb, then keep teaching me and keep me under control.” Yin Chen chuckled too, then added in a darkly threatening tone, “If you don’t control me, I’ll do whatever I want.”
“…It’s not like I’m abandoning you.”
Song Zang was helpless. He was a grown man. Why did he still act like a little kid?
While silently complaining to himself, Song Zang suddenly seemed to hear a baby crying. His footsteps stopped at once.
“Did you hear that?” he asked Yin Chen in a lowered voice.
Yin Chen frowned slightly and nodded. “Stay behind me.”
The baby’s cries were very faint, drifting upward in broken intervals like the whimper of a sick kitten. Yet in the silent underground space, they sounded particularly eerie and distinct.
Song Zang bit his pale lips and obediently hid behind Yin Chen.
They did not turn back. Instead, they continued downward one behind the other until the narrow passage gradually opened up.
The comfortable temperature that permeated the asylum vanished completely, and the two were enveloped by the cold, uncanny underground air.
At the end of a bend in the corridor, several clusters of light flickered in and out. Oilcloth torches swayed in the cold wind.
Someone had probably been here.
“My son!”
Sure enough, a shrill woman’s voice suddenly rang out.
Sister Pudu’s desperate, frantic shout cut off the faint sound of the baby’s sobbing.
Bang!
The door to a confinement room was kicked open. Sister Pudu, her body still spattered with dried brain matter, rushed out and nearly collided with Yin Chen and Song Zang.
“Lord Capet? You shouldn’t be here.”
Sister Pudu was serious for only a single instant.
Before Yin Chen could speak, she suddenly realized… the baby’s sobbing had abruptly disappeared. The underground space was deathly silent, with no trace of where it had gone.
Sister Pudu immediately lost her reason again. Anxiety made her gulp down breath after breath uncontrollably, until she nearly fainted.
Then her strength gave out and she collapsed to her knees. Without any explanation, she hugged Yin Chen’s black leather boots. She looked every inch a despairing mother trapped in boundless agony, desperately clinging to her last lifeline before drowning. “Why have you come here? Were you guided and called by the Lord?
“Do you know where my child is?! You all heard him crying for help, didn’t you? He’s crying, he’s dying! My merciful, compassionate Lord, please save my poor child… It’s so cold, the snow is so heavy…”
Yin Chen frowned and was just about to ask what had happened when a rough male voice came from the confinement room.
“Your son is already dead. Charlie, that animal, drowned him in a basin many years ago. Accept reality!”
It was Lin Xing.
He himself seemed completely unharmed, though his expression looked terrible. Wearing a pair of ragged cotton-linen trousers, he leaned against the doorway and mercilessly exposed the truth.
Sister Pudu shook her head desperately, covered her ears, and roared that she refused to listen. She began shrieking the Nicene Creed, repeatedly muttering its final line.
“I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come… I look forward to the resurrection of the dead…”
Song Zang weakly cut in. “Brother Lin, are you okay?”
“At least I wasn’t fed to man-eating rats.” Lin Xing tugged up his torn trousers and sneered. “This woman is pitiful, sure, but she’s genuinely insane! Do you know what she’s been doing? She keeps forcing me to recite the Bible, and she even makes me copy out an entire one with a quill pen. I’m not allowed to leave until I finish!”
“…Huh?”
Song Zang and Yin Chen exchanged a glance, both rather confused.
Even if he did not want to hurt Sister Pudu, it should not be difficult for him to dust himself off and simply leave, right?
Lin Xing rubbed his head in pain, clearly understanding the confusion on their faces.
He explained numbly, “The most ridiculous part is that God really is protecting this madwoman. No matter what the hell I do, I can’t kill her. I can’t even hurt her. The moment I feel enough killing intent or malice toward her, I instantly get unbelievably unlucky…
“Fuck! My underwear just rotted apart by itself, so there’s a draft on my ass. I somehow twisted a testicle while copying the Bible, and a huge patch of perfectly healthy hair fell off my head. Hahaha, bet you didn’t see that coming? Now I’ve got fucking patchy baldness!!”
The more Lin Xing spoke, the closer he came to breaking down. He looked ready to kneel down and kowtow back and forth with Sister Pudu. Grabbing a fistful of the nun’s robes, he begged miserably, “Sis, just let me go. I really can’t copy that much in one night. Starting today, I’ll convert to Catholicism. I’ll never seduce married women again. I’ll never randomly go crazy again…”
Unlike Song Zang, who was watching the spectacle with an expression caught between laughter and tears, Yin Chen’s face gradually turned cold.
Watching these two act like lunatics made him increasingly irritable and uncomfortable.
He hated noise, and he hated crying that did not belong to Song Zang even more. Man or woman, old or young, anyone who made too much noise only stirred the killing intent churning inside him.
Annoying. He really, really wanted to kill someone.
“I don’t believe it.”
So Yin Chen coldly interrupted the noisy scene before him.
He took the ebony cane from Song Zang’s hand and raised it several inches. The incomparably hard tip lined up perfectly with Sister Pudu’s face.
“I’ll kill you right now. God, why don’t you let me taste a little bad luck too?”
The instant the words left his mouth, the ebony cane stabbed forward at tremendous speed, plunging straight into Sister Pudu’s wide-open right eye.
The heavy floor tiles that had endured for a century split into several fissures in an instant. Even the hardwood could not withstand the force of the impact. Cracks spread inch by inch from the tip until it crumbled into powder across the floor.
Song Zang saw it clearly. Yin Chen had absolutely not held back. He had used at least eighty percent of his strength.
If he stabbed an ordinary person like that, their entire skull would shatter into pieces in the blink of an eye.
“Hh, hhh… urgh…”
Yet Sister Pudu was still alive.
She did not scream as the three of them expected, nor did blood pour from all seven orifices.
The woman remained very much alive, her whole body convulsing as she opened her mouth impossibly wide and dry-heaved painfully as though on the verge of suffocation.
At some point, her throat had swollen outward in a full ring, rapidly puffing up like an inflating balloon.
Blue and red blood vessels resembled wildly growing vines rooted along both sides of her swollen throat, every one of them raised and starkly visible.
It seemed as though something terrifying and ominous was about to be born from inside her body and break out through her mouth.
Song Zang’s face turned white as paper. Trembling all over, he grabbed Yin Chen’s clothes. “Yin Chen, run. Listen to me, we need to get far away. I’m hearing strange sounds again…”
Yin Chen froze for half a second. Without asking a single question, he obediently slung Song Zang over his shoulder. He also grabbed Lin Xing by the collar on the way and turned to run without hesitation.
Waaaaaah!!!
Immediately afterward, the piercing, shrill wail of a newborn baby tore through the cold, silent underground air.
The temperature plummeted without warning, turning from ordinary winter cold into a terrifying frost that chilled straight to the bone.
Yin Chen was simply too fast. He moved like a gale, and before Lin Xing realized it, both his feet had left the floor.
Lin Xing struggled with the collar being forcibly tightened around his neck and gulped desperately for air. Then he discovered… the beard around his lips and philtrum was rapidly frosting over. In the blink of an eye, it had become a thick barrier blocking him from getting oxygen.
As he fought to breathe, Lin Xing’s heart suddenly lurched for no apparent reason, as if a massive stone were pressing down on it. He unconsciously glanced back toward Sister Pudu, and his pupils contracted sharply.
“Fuck, why am I still the unlucky one?!”
A completely naked ghost baby was chasing the three of them at terrifying speed, sticking to them relentlessly.
Its tiny body was insubstantial and translucent. Dense, vicious pinch marks and a cold bluish-purple sheen covered its nearly transparent pale skin. Its round, grape-like eyes were pitch-black without even a trace of white, horrifying to behold.
Lin Xing shouted between coughs, “Bro, run faster! There’s a ghost!!”
Song Zang, sprawled over Yin Chen’s shoulder, could see it just as clearly. His ears began buzzing again too, the baby’s wails mixing with bizarre whispers until the noise made him nauseated, dizzy, and sick.
Amid the frightened, astonished shouts of orderlies and guards, the three had already escaped the first basement level and fled the West Wing, where the air was heavy with yin energy.
Elio’s Note: Yin energy (阴气) can refer to a cold, eerie, ghostly aura. Here, the narration deliberately drops that Chinese supernatural vocabulary into this very Western-looking setting.
Even after they reentered the warm interior lit brightly by candlelight, the ghost baby did not begin to weaken like an ordinary ghost. Its strength was completely unaffected. It kept chasing them at tremendous speed, bit one of Lin Xing’s shoes clean off, and refused to stop hounding them.
“Song Zang, try shooting it. Use the gun I gave you,” Yin Chen suddenly said.
His tone was perfectly calm. He was not flushed or even breathing hard. Crossing several hundred meters in a second looked as easy as strolling over flat ground.
“Okay.”
Song Zang took a deep breath and, hands trembling, pulled the ornate handgun from his pocket.
He aimed at the ghost baby behind them, which wore no expression despite wailing at the top of its lungs. Shaking, he repeatedly released the safety and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Bang!
“…Did any of you hear gunshots?”
Li Ming stopped praying, sounding somewhat frightened.
“What do you mean? Are you trying to profane the sacred evening prayers? Get down. You don’t deserve to lead us!”
Unexpectedly, Sister Rachel’s attitude was exceptionally overbearing. She did not seem to have immersed herself wholeheartedly in the holy cleansing of the scripture at all.
Once again, she snatched Li Ming’s rosary away and roughly shoved her into the other nuns.
“Ah!” Li Ming cried out. Red-rimmed eyes lowered, she knelt on the floor and did not dare resist.
Because the other nuns would never stand up for her.
It was as though every single one of them hated her to death.
Without the slightest suspense, Sister Rachel openly stole her position. Looking down from above with her chin raised, she slowly curved her lips.
A complicated, obscure sneer spread across her face. She wound the rosary around her wrist, stroked the bone-chilling golden cross, and murmured softly, “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…”
Li Ming stared blankly at her and froze in place. Her eyes widened involuntarily, and her expression became more terrified little by little.
Because Sister Rachel’s belly had suddenly begun swelling madly, rapidly bursting through her black robes and bulging into an impossibly eerie curve.
Like a woman carrying a child to full term, moments away from giving birth.