Yin Chen did not struggle very violently.
Like a shark that had suddenly tasted blood, no matter what situation he was in, appetite would always seize control of his mind. He wanted a taste, wanted a lick, wanted to swallow the delicacy dangling before him as quickly as possible.
Not to mention, Song Zang’s current attitude of “trying to suffocate him” was exceptionally forceful.
The little snake soaked in blood was wet all over. His cold scales were warmed until they burned against Song Zang’s flesh, and he quickly chose to behave for the time being.
He drew his taut tail into the flesh as well, twisted his body, and slowly swam around to adjust his position until he was wrapped tightly around Song Zang’s injured heart. Song Zang’s breathing caught. The corner of his lips quietly lifted, and the faintest flush spread at the ends of his eyes.
The sensation of forcibly containing a foreign object deep inside his own flesh sent Song Zang’s emotions surging.
Perhaps it was merely a side effect of the near-death sensation on his brain, but Song Zang genuinely loved it. He was even inexplicably excited.
Unfortunately, this was not a good time to play happily with Yin Chen. There were too many people in the villa. Under so many eyes, a person still had to behave… somewhat positively and healthily.
Song Zang suppressed his breathing and gave the yellowed teeth a simple polish, grinding away the filthy dust and grime on the surface to expose their pure white base.
He evenly smeared blood from the knife tip across the centers of the teeth. Without stopping, Song Zang changed the angle and lightly drew the blade across his wrist.
In addition to heart’s blood, he still needed blood from the fingers, which were said to connect to the heart, and blood from the wrist artery. The three bloods combined, linked by the soul, would awaken the artifact’s power and bind it completely to the owner’s blood and soul, allowing it to be controlled as easily as one’s own arm.
This was a crude evil art Song Zang had once looted from the corpse of a ghost cultivator in a closed-beta game instance.
The Three-Blood Soul-Nurturing Vessel.
As layer after layer of warm blood accumulated with careful precision, the white vessels began to tremble almost imperceptibly. More miscellaneous residue peeled away. They gradually grew scorching hot and emitted a dim crimson glow.
Song Zang steadied his mind and carefully balanced the concentration of blood among the several objects so none would be favored over the others.
It was at that moment that sudden understanding struck him, and he abruptly realized that he seemed to have… become stronger?
He could simultaneously sense subtle energy feedback from several teeth, and when he soaked them in fresh blood with special significance, the oxidized material peeled away extremely quickly, the reaction almost violently intense. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
Song Zang closed his eyes and seriously focused inward, confirming it again. At least judging by what he could feel right now, he really had become considerably stronger.
In a world where 【Soul】 existed as a setting, the strength of his soul had inexplicably reached a crushing level.
For a more concrete example, if the current Song Zang were placed back aboard that violently shaking airplane from before and looked down directly at the Earth Mother Goddess’s enormous single eye and her vast, rotting, pus-filled true body… he absolutely would not start shedding tears of blood from the mental damage.
He could even pick up binoculars, leisurely zoom in, and carefully examine the structural details of the false god’s body.
This so-called soul strength was closely tied to an individual’s Resistance stat. The awkward part was that Song Zang could not see his own Resistance at all.
Song Zang only knew that his mental condition had always been excellent. His resilience and adaptability were both strong, and he was not easily broken by being too rigid. Although he became unstable once in a while, in the vast majority of situations he could resist all kinds of horrifying entities.
Even if he suffered temporary damage, all Song Zang had to do was enjoy a good sleep and he would wake up refreshed as ever.
Song Zang had assumed he would spend his whole life maintaining the resilient state of 【Rapid Recovery】… but now, things seemed a little different.
No one could damage him mentally anymore. Not even fried skewers made from the flesh of Happiness Community!
No one understood Song Zang’s body better than Song Zang himself. He could genuinely eat an entire basin of those fried skewers now and guarantee nothing would happen, his mood remaining peaceful and stable.
Becoming stronger was naturally excellent news. The problem was, how exactly had he become stronger? There should have been some concrete source of energy and a process of improvement, yet Song Zang had no clue what had changed inside his brain.
He could not help thinking of the strange light flowing through Xu Qing’s eyes before death, then of Yin Chen recovering his memories and keeping him trapped in the bedroom all night, and finally of Yin Chen knocking him unconscious with his tail without so much as a warning after his shower, all because Yin Chen wanted him to sleep…
It was ridiculous. Every single part of it was ridiculous.
Those three events were the most unusual and were, to some degree, probably connected to his changes.
Song Zang narrowed his eyes and stopped dwelling on it, because he more or less had an idea already.
He borrowed a lighter from Officer Sun and held the bloody, burning-hot teeth over the flame, rapidly tempering them one layer after another. Flames flowed across his pale palm, smoking the once-white soul vessels until they became pure, pitch-black objects that looked anything but benevolent.
Song Zang looked around to make sure no one was paying attention before lowering his voice and uttering three obscure, ancient syllables from another world.
The next instant, the message window frantically flooding the laptop screen suddenly froze into deathly stillness.
Two muddled forces of unequal strength visibly trembled and mingled. Drawn outward by the fully activated soul vessels, they were helplessly pulled from the dark gaps deep beneath the keyboard.
The teeth in his hand grew hotter and hotter, while a sharp pain that seemed to stab directly into his soul shot through his mind. Clearly, the two forces were resisting, struggling, desperately trying to escape their restraints.
Unfortunately for them, Song Zang was exceptionally formidable today.
His head hurt, but the violent impacts from the two forces were meaningless. They could not break through his defenses at all. It was like rubber balls slamming bang-bang against a padded mat: the noise sounded impressive, but the mat remained completely unharmed.
Song Zang carelessly played with the nearly molten tooth-shaped soul vessels, lazily took a sip of iced Coke, and let the somewhat familiar force continue chaotically stirring through his mind.
Before long, the stronger of the two forces abruptly stopped. It froze in place as though it had suddenly realized… the person it was resisting was Song Zang.
Because it stopped resisting first, the weaker force instantly lost the support it had been relying on. In the blink of an eye, it was completely absorbed by the soul vessels, forcibly sealed away, and left with no possibility of escape.
That made the presence remaining in Song Zang’s mind suddenly stand out as even more… familiar.
Song Zang had already formed a suspicion, so when he truly recognized its identity, he was not surprised.
“Xu Qing, would you like to become my food?” His lips curved as he spoke softly, almost coaxingly.
The instant the words fell, Officer Sun, whose back was turned to Song Zang, shuddered violently.
It was as though he had realized something terrifying. His lips trembled uncontrollably, his face slowly drained white, and his tense hands nearly crushed the glass bottle he was holding.
But he was too frightened to move at all. He stood rooted to the ground like a dead stone statue, both legs rigid.
Song Zang ignored him. Reclining comfortably in the lounge chair, half smiling, he spoke in a soft voice. “Xu Qing, you can’t run away anymore. This is what you wanted too, isn’t it?
“If you can’t keep me, then come with me instead. Become part of my soul and body, lifetime after lifetime, never to be separated. There could never be a relationship more intimate or more pathological than that.”
Those words were already more than stimulating enough for a humble, desperate admirer. Song Zang did not dare say anything more in case Yin Chen tightened his grip… and crushed his heart outright.
The stabbing pain quickly began to fade. The terrifying unknown force tried hard to soften and become gentle, obediently flattening itself across the layered folds of Song Zang’s cerebral cortex, almost like starlight making him feel more comfortable.
Song Zang could not understand what it was made of either. No matter how hard he thought, he could only distinguish the faintest clues.
Xu Qing’s consciousness was neither clear nor awake. Yin Chen had already swallowed most of his “body.” What remained after escaping had been fragmented into stiff, mechanical pieces of consciousness that acted only on instinct.
Of course, Song Zang himself knew very little about energy structures, so all he could do was rely on instinct and try to… devour it.
Song Zang did not know why the idea of devouring this power came to him at all. His instinctive response was 【Consume】, not 【Destroy】.
Perhaps during those two years he had lost, he had taken a similar gamble before, only for the traces to become impossible to find now. Regardless, if he truly had the ability to turn this power into his own, then he had to be bold enough to swallow a few bites and try it first.
The brave get to enjoy the world first!
Xu Qing did not resist in the slightest. Like a sticky, slick, transparent jellyfish, he spread himself open and excitedly went limp deep inside Song Zang’s mind.
It was a little disgusting. A chill of revulsion passed through Song Zang. He had not expected his brain to suddenly become so sensitive that it inexplicably developed sensations almost identical to taste.
He was clearly only absorbing foreign energy, yet Song Zang felt as though his brain had somehow grown a tongue and taste buds and begun eating a slightly gamey, soft-bodied sea creature.
Raw, without seasoning. Sticky and stringy in texture, accompanied by countless tiny, almost imperceptible microorganisms surging up with it.
The system notifications that followed left him even more confused.
【You consumed ***, Resistance +???】
【You consumed ***, Life +???】
Song Zang: …
Before he could even make sense of the system notices, an even stranger unfamiliar sensation surged over him like a tide, nearly drowning his consciousness completely.
His brain wildly chewed and digested the “jellyfish.”
His brain seemed to come alive.
The sensation was nothing like an immortal pouring enlightenment into one’s mind. It was more like… noise. Incredibly complicated, clamorous, alien, horrifying noise.
Impossible to fully comprehend, impossible to receive smoothly, impossible even to try to block out.
Inexplicable knowledge flooded into his mind, tracing backward to the details of the Big Bang. Dazzling scenes in every color flashed before Song Zang’s eyes, followed by deep, boundless, despairing darkness and nearly blinding pure white.
The universe, universes beyond the universe, unfamiliar spaces, colossal tentacles spanning space, bizarre flying birds, enormous many-legged arthropods circling planets like bands of light… Every kind of unimaginable horror unfolded before Song Zang’s eyes.
He saw an extremely unusual existence.
A Collective of countless minds gathered into one tiny microscopic particle and pierced through a deep-blue star hundreds of millions of times larger than the sun at faster-than-light speed.
They were brutally scorched by lethal heat, forced to disperse as they screamed in agony.
But the blazing blue star was badly wounded as well. In the blink of an eye, it withered and weakened, like an enormous watermelon gnawed by maggots and sucked dry of energy. Rot and decay spread outward from its core as it slowly exhausted itself, until it finally collapsed with a roar and became shattered debris drifting through the universe.
The Collective rapidly healed its injuries. Having captured tremendous energy, it swelled several times larger, then deliberately compressed itself inward until it once again returned to its former microscopic form, tiny as a mosquito.
This existence formed by countless coexisting consciousnesses resembled an invincible ant-army legion: cold, resolute, unanimous, putting collective interest above all else.
Its only difference from an ant colony was the absence of a supreme leader. Every individual was the true body. Every consciousness followed an extremely unified mode of thought, without distinction between self and other, coexisting in perfect unity.
They leaped through time and space, wandering endlessly in search of a suitable home and mercilessly absorbing every power they could devour. No matter how disastrous a battle became, they felt no fear. No matter how cruel the method required to grow stronger, they showed no mercy, even if it meant draining every organic life-form on an entire planet.
Sometimes they provoked higher-dimensional beings that should never have been touched. Then the microscopic particle could no longer maintain its tiny form and abruptly became extremely unstable.
Its consciousnesses would be forced to split apart and scatter, or the whole thing would suddenly swell enormous, forced to expose more of its strength and transform into a vast mass of indescribably twisted, viscous life. It would collapse in some dark corner of space and be furtively corroded and gnawed by predators wandering nearby.
Yet no matter how severe the damage, in the end they could always work together, gather, recover, recombine, and swiftly embark once again on their cold and brutal campaign of predation.
Song Zang watched in complete fascination, his head buzzing. He could not even tell which images were real experiences belonging to the Collective and which were fantasies or hallucinations somehow born from his own brain operating at extraordinary speed.
More importantly, what the hell was this thing?
Were Xu Qing and Xu Ming part of this strange creature too?
Yin Chen had said long ago that he wasn’t human. Was his true form somehow connected to them as well?
If Yin Chen was part of the Collective, why would he be so hostile toward Xu Ming and Xu Qing, to the point that they were utterly incompatible?
They should share the same interests and remain perfectly united, unaffected by any outside force, each containing the others and the others containing each… No. Absolutely not.
Song Zang could barely imagine that possibility. The revulsion in his heart only deepened.
He knew perfectly well that Yin Chen was different. Yin Chen had feelings. Yin Chen could reflect on himself and was willing to change.
Song Zang wanted only Yin Chen. Everyone else could get lost. Hm… or they could become nourishment that made Yin Chen stronger. That would be acceptable too.
Deep in thought, Song Zang bit down on his straw and sucked for a long while without getting a single drop.
He focused and realized he had unknowingly finished his Coke ages ago. Helpless, he released the bottle and rubbed his aching temples.
It was fascinating. His thoughts were exceptionally active right now, one idea after another appearing in rapid succession. Fortunately, he could still control them fairly well and showed no risk of abruptly descending into chaotic madness.
By Song Zang’s own assessment, receiving such an enormous mass of information in such a short period would previously have caused severe damage to his mental state.
Even if he had not fainted outright, he should at least have started bleeding from all seven orifices.
Yet now Song Zang was mentally fine. Even the faint migraine was completely tolerable.
He even had the leisure to open a delivery app and order himself an entire box of nama-chocolate ice cream before handing Guo Jian Chun’s phone to Officer Sun.
“Mr. Song, this is…”
“I’ve cracked all the passwords. Give it to the professionals and let them keep digging. There’s a lot of useful material hidden inside.” Song Zang smiled faintly and deliberately put on a mysterious, unfathomable air to frighten him.
To be fair, he was not lying. Guo Jian Chun’s phone was packed with material, including concrete evidence that the Jiang family had conspired to conduct living foundation sacrifices, along with proof of her assistance in child trafficking and bribery of municipal officials and hospital administrators.
Song Zang could not quite understand what this woman had been thinking.
Guo Jian Chun had worshiped her husband without limit while also hating him deeply. She had done a great deal to benefit and support the Jiang family, continually gathering healthy backup heirs for them, yet in secret she had also frantically collected every piece of evidence that could bring the family down.
The private app containing huge numbers of PDFs had not been opened in years.
Perhaps Guo Jian Chun had eventually abandoned the idea, but she had never once thought to delete it.
The PDF files included many double contracts, double-entry account books, high-resolution scans of physical evidence, dense lists of criminal suspects, and the names of senior officials who had accepted bribes.
Because she had never deleted any of it, everyone now had a chance to be thoroughly brought to justice. Excellent.
Officer Sun was already drenched in sweat, but he did not dare delay. He hurried away with the phone to find the public-security technical personnel.
“Remember to bring me another Coke!”
Song Zang tilted his head and called after him.
Officer Sun’s steps faltered, his left foot nearly tripping over his right. He nodded in a daze and ran away even faster.
Song Zang continued smiling as he leaned back in the lounge chair, pressing his temples and telling himself to calm down quickly.
He had already devoured Xu Qing’s broken power. The existence trapped inside the tooth-shaped soul vessels was colder and more oppressive, though its resentment was not especially intense.
After rubbing the rapidly cooling vessels between his fingers and probing them as their owner, Song Zang quickly determined that the presence was Yang Mei’s resentful spirit.
And somehow, it was an upgraded version.
Yang Mei should not originally have died. But she had carried an obsession and resentment, unaware of her son’s whereabouts or the truth, then died suddenly and inexplicably. Becoming a resentful spirit was almost inevitable.
She had probably been killed and used by Xu Qing’s dispersed energy. The two had intertwined and blended, each helping form a more stable spiritual structure.
Xu Qing had managed to continue lingering in this world, while Yang Mei had also been infiltrated and altered by threads of mysterious power, becoming a far more formidable resentful spirit. She could beguile people’s minds, induce them to commit evil acts, and even directly possess them.
Guo Jian Chun had most likely already been viciously punished by her. No wonder Yang Mei’s resentment was no longer especially strong. Under Xu Qing’s influence, she had even used Guo Jian Chun’s reader account to send Song Zang endless nonsensical messages of gratitude…
A resentful spirit without much resentment left, its consciousness muddled yet still powerful and far more obedient, was an extremely convenient long-range weapon.
After thinking it over, Song Zang placed the teeth inside his storage space and decided to save them for use in the next instance.
As for what exactly had happened inside the Jiang residence last night, it was difficult to investigate in detail right now. Guo Jian Chun was the killer, but perhaps she had not acted alone. What interested Song Zang more was where Guo Jian Chun’s corpse had gone.
He was not good at searching souls, but he was excellent at dismantling electronic devices. Having confirmed that Yang Mei’s mind was completely muddled, Song Zang abandoned any further hope and simply removed the laptop’s back panel.
Crash!
A tremendous amount of white powder poured out like torrential rain, instantly coating half of Song Zang’s body until he looked like a snowman.
The surrounding police officers saw the commotion and immediately reacted as though facing a mortal enemy, shouting at Song Zang not to move.
“Alert!! What’s going on?! Is that drugs?!”
“Fuck, I thought it was some kind of dust bomb. I nearly planned out my next reincarnation on the spot…”
“T-This much powder? If that were really contraband, everyone here would be looking at at least a second-class merit award. I don’t believe it.”
They argued among themselves, but because of Song Zang’s special “confidential division” identity, nobody dared approach before he spoke.
Several younger officers had guessed correctly. It was not poisonous powder. It was cremated bone ash.
Song Zang had not spoken because he was holding his breath while examining the computer. He had been forced to smell the concentrated scent of bone ash just now, and he was now completely certain that every speck of the white powder was finely ground human ash.
It smelled extremely fresh and had all been packed into the computer’s delicate motherboard and drives, perhaps serving as an energy source.
The instant the ash spilled out, the entire computer crashed and short-circuited beyond recovery, unable to boot again.
Song Zang was unsurprised. He turned his head and gave several deliberately weak coughs, then hoarsely ordered one of the suited men to come take the computer.
“It’s fresh bone ash. The deceased is very likely Guo Jian Chun herself.”
“What?!”
The suited man looked astonished and objected without thinking. “The nearest crematorium is thirty kilometers away. There wasn’t enough time. Besides, with so many deaths these past few days, every funeral home in Xinjiang City is completely full. The suspect couldn’t possibly have reduced her body to this state within half a day…”
Song Zang tugged at the corner of his mouth, his face abruptly turning cold. “Why don’t you taste some right now and find out whether it’s bone ash? I dragged myself here injured to clean up this mess for you, and this is how you waste everyone’s time? No value, no efficiency. You might as well die.”
The merciless rebuke dropped over the back garden, and complete silence followed.
The suited man broke into a sweat. His somewhat rigid gaze slowly shifted toward the open collar of the white shirt beneath Song Zang’s trench coat.
The once-clean white shirt was already stained red. The blood was gradually oxidizing darker but remained glaringly wet. Anyone with experience could see that Song Zang had suffered a deep stab wound to the left side of his chest and that it had been bleeding not long ago.
The fact that he had forced himself to come help at the villa despite that condition already made him seem dedicated beyond reason.
Although no one present knew Song Zang… quite a few had seen him at the police station, where they had personally watched Xu Qing walk half a step behind him before following Song Zang into a car.
His manner was simply too natural and too imperious, reinforced by Officer Sun’s obedience and constant attendance. Somehow, nobody dared underestimate Song Zang’s status anymore.
Even if they speculated privately, they only dared imagine identities of even higher rank.
Song Zang did not care about the awkward silence at all. Looking impatient, he urged the forensic technicians to hurry over and collect the ash scattered across his clothes.
Once they finished, he coldly accepted the first-aid kit the suited man brought over as an apology. He took out bandages and iodine disinfectant and, under everyone’s eyes, skillfully put several stitches into himself.
After all, Song Zang’s through-and-through “old wound” on the right side of his chest was exceptionally intimidating, even more horrifying than the new injury. One glance made him look like a high-risk special operative who routinely survived murder attempts.
Song Zang thoroughly enjoyed the performance.
His state of mind was extremely steady. After theatrically wrapping himself in bandages, he picked up his iced Coke again and ordered Officer Sun to drive him back to Happiness Community.
This whole act of impersonating a high-ranking special agent happened to consume some of the excessive energy currently flooding his mind.
Officer Sun did not dare refuse, but he did not dare agree either, until Song Zang brought up the major traffic disaster outside Happiness Community that had occurred less than an hour ago.
Nearly twenty people had died, roadside vehicles exploding one after another when struck by the heavy truck. The scene had been horrific.
“The truck losing control wasn’t an accident. Someone deliberately arranged an interception to kill me and stop me from investigating the Jiang family. Can’t you see that?” Song Zang tilted his head. “Sun Ling Yun, if you don’t want to handle security for the special division, I can always replace you with someone else…”
“No. I can do it!”
Sun Ling Yun was afraid of dying, but even more afraid that innocent colleagues might die because of him.
In a panic, he agreed, gritted his teeth, ushered Song Zang into the dedicated official car, stomped on the accelerator, and sped away.
The black car with special plates passed smoothly through the cordon and returned to the old district.
The car was so silent it was nearly suffocating.
Officer Sun secretly watched through the rearview mirror and saw Song Zang absorbed in playing with his loose bandages. His dark eyes were lowered, thick black lashes trembling like raven feathers, while a faint smile lifted his lips just enough to reveal half a dimple, making him look extraordinarily innocent and harmless.
Afternoon sunlight poured through the window and scattered dreamy fragments of gold across his beautiful, delicate, pale profile.
Sun Ling Yun stared until he lost himself.
He bit the tip of his tongue and forced himself awake from the demon’s seduction, then hardened his resolve. “Mr. Song, I don’t know who you really are, but I’m willing to cooperate with your work. I only want to know one thing. Who was the killer behind the Anning District mass-suicide case?
“My colleagues never did anything wrong. They were ordinary neighborhood officers serving the community. They shouldn’t have died for no reason without even understanding why.”
“You want revenge? Then blow up Happiness Community. And stop staring at me. My baby will kill me.”
Song Zang was not lying.
The little snake had been mischievously sewn deep inside his knife wound and could not get out for the moment. At any time, Yin Chen might crush his heart.