Chapter 18
Ji Chuyao left him his address in Jiangchuan.
His house was located in a well-known wealthy area of Jiangchuan District. Because it is very difficult to get the qualifications to purchase a house here, it is no longer something that can be simply measured by price.
Si Chen rejected the other party’s proposal to take him home. He got on the bus alone, children’s literacy book in hand.
Despite the evening rush hour having already passed, there were still quite a few people on the bus.
Si Chen looked around at the people nearby. Everyone looked unfamiliar. Indifference and exhaustion were writ on everyone’s faces. Taking a second look, you could see the end of their lives.
There was news playing on the bus.
“The Alliance has introduced the latest policy to encourage having children. Families with five or more children can receive 100,000 credits worth of subsidies and 2 bottles of RH-type gene medicine every year.”
“In the past week, a total of 146 Space Folds occurred around the world. Among them was one Level 5A and nine Level 4A. It is reported that the Level 5A Space Fold occurred in the ocean. There have been no reported casualties.”
Hearing this, Si Chen raised his eyebrows.
He turned on his phone and found his conversation with Ji Chuyao.
– Wasn’t there a High Dimensional invasion in Jiangchuan recently?
– There was. But in order to avoid unnecessary panic, it has not been made public.
Ji Chuyao explained: The High Dimensional invasion lasted only for a short time but the amount of destruction was very high. Fortunately, the scope of the impact was small and there were comparatively few deaths. The frequency of High Dimensional invasions in Jiangchuan District has not exceeded 1. There are 40 million people in Jiangchuan District so for the sake of public security, concealing this news is actually more appropriate than disseminating it.
For most people, it was far better to live in ignorance than to constantly wait anxiously for disaster to strike.
Si Chen made no reply to that. The last piece of news for the day was being broadcasted.
“A vicious murderer who has been on the run for 12 years was found in a capsule apartment at No. 107 Chang’an Street, Jiangchuan District. It is reported that he h has killed 17 children using brutal methods…”
Si Chen was a little surprised.
When the bus arrived, he stepped onto the platform. The station was called Chang’an Station.
Knowing that Xie Yunyang was following him, Si Chen deliberately chose a path that was less traveled. There were no surveillance cameras and the patrolling security police robots didn’t pass by here.
There was a disgusting smell in the alley, like rotting domestic waste mixed with sewerage.
Si Chen remained vigilant. He twirled a knife that he used for experiments between his fingers, waiting for a one-hit kill at any time.
“Guruu”, a round thing rolled over from a distance.
The stray cat squatting on the trash can let out a hoarse meow. Si Chen lowered his head and found that what had rolled to his feet was an eyeball.
It was very small; not like a human eyeball.
Si Chen frowned and walked away.
He managed to make it out of the alley without encountering anyone. He had to put the knife back in his pocket.
Before entering his apartment complex, Si Chen glanced at the number plate hanging on their gate.
Capsule Apartments No. 107.
…
Xie Yunyang or rather, the Eyeworm, were it to engage in a direct confrontation, would surely be pushed to the ground and rubbed out of existence.
Its specialty was mental pollution.
So long as an intelligent creature is alive, it will think and that was where the Eyeworm finds its opportunity.
The moment Si Chen had locked eyes with it in its water tank, the mental pollution had already begun.
Subsequent contact only strengthened the initial suggestion.
Xie Yunyang followed Si Chen. He had no plans of doing anything; after all, he didn’t need to.
All he had to do was wait for Si Chen to die himself.
He quietly watched Si Chen walk into Capsule Apartments 107. The eyeball on the back of Xie Yunyang’s hand protruded like a goldfish’s. Blood red tumors covered where it connected with the flesh.
“It’s here where he’ll see his worst fears…”
Xie Yunyang had an eerie smile on his face.
Slowly, the Eyeworm’s body separated from the back of Xie Yunyang’s hand. It jumped out of his flesh and together with the red threads hanging from its body, began to climb along the wall of the apartment complex like some strange vine.
…
He didn’t know if it was just his imagination but the temperature today seemed colder than usual.
When Si Chen put away his umbrella, his fingers were red from the cold.
He took the elevator up to the 66th floor. The resident of Room 01 had a dog and it was still barking in the middle of the night. The man in Room 02 was playing songs from the last century. Room 03 was Si Chen’s room and Room 04 next to his was cordoned off. The rusty door was locked tight.
Si Chen was taken aback. He opened the property’s group chat to take a look. It turned out that the fugitive who was arrested that afternoon had lived next door to him, Room 6604.
Although he has been here for more than half a year, Si Chen has had little communication with his neighbors. He only remembered that his next door neighbor was somewhat chubby, fitted with metal prosthetic limbs and only came out at night. He liked playing online games in the middle of the night with his voice chat on.
Sometimes, when Si Chen gets up early to go to work, he would be just in time to see him come back from who knows where. His eyes were always narrowed into slits. The way he looked at him was always sticky and wet, very unlucky.
Si Chen turned on the desk lamp, preparing to read the book and then head to bed. Then the phone hanging by the door suddenly rang.
This was the access control system installed in their apartment complex for visitors.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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Ktfgf kjr j cblrs rajalm rbecv ogbw atf qtbcf, ilxf la tjv yjv rlucji. Pc jvvlalbc, atfgf kjr j tfjns ygfjatlcu rbecv, ilxf atf qjcalcu bo rbwf kliv jclwji.
Finally, a picture appeared on the screen.
It was a man with disheveled hair. His eyes were almost entirely white and his face was stained with fresh blood.
He asked Si Chen, stressing each word, “Can, I, visit, your, home, as, a, guest?”
It was his hardly-seen next door neighbor.
Si Chen frowned. Was the law and order situation so bad that a murderer could just run out of the prison?
He sat on a chair on his balcony, twirling the knife.
Si Chen wanted to think, but his brain felt foggy, like he had a fever.
He opened the children’s book, turned to the first page and said to the Eternal Life Abyss, “Come out, I’ll teach you how to read.”
The Eternal Life Abyss didn’t respond.
Si Chen’s expression turned confused. “Little Abyss…?”
He got up, came to the mirror and touched his left prosthetic eye.
Si Chen held open his eyelids and dug out his eyeball. He’s been wearing the prosthetic eye for long enough that he’s become quite proficient in plucking it out.
But this time, bright red blood overflowed from his left eye socket. The pain hit suddenly and Si Chen closed his eyes. The whites of his eye was stained red with blood.
He looked down at his palm. The eyeball felt very real to the touch. There was even bloody flesh sticking to the back.
Si Chen was lost in thought. He seemed to have dug out his actual real eyeball?
“Where’s the Eternal Life Abyss…?” Si Chen murmured, inserting his fingers into his empty eye socket. Warm flesh wrapped around his fingertips, blood dripped down his palm. But there was nothing inside.
The pain blurred Si Chen’s vision.
He had on no expression but the person in the mirror slowly curved its lips into an exaggerated smile.
The doorbell then rang. The person at the door was very polite. “Knock, Knock, Knock”. He knocked three times.
Si Chen put his eyeball back. His vision returned to clarity. Fine red veins appeared on his functioning eye.
Blood slid down the corner of his left eye like meandering tears.
At some point, cold sweat had broken out on his temples.
Was the Eternal Life Abyss not there? Why wasn’t it there?
Si Chen massaged his throbbing temples with his fingers. He could feel the blood congesting there through a layer of flesh.
He felt like his brain was about to explode.
It was probably because Si Chen still hadn’t opened the door after so long, the knocking turned hurried, like a drumbeat.
It was the middle of the night. His neighbor’s dog was no longer barking. This knocking, the only sound that could be heard, was deafening.
Si Chen picked up the knife and stood by the door.
There was a “buzzing” sound outside.
Si Chen squatted down slowly beside the refrigerator by the entrance. He placed a small vanity mirror opposite, placed at just the right angle for him to see the scene at the door.
The gear of the chainsaw slowly sank into the wood of the door, the sharp edge emerging, sparks flying.
Si Chen looked at the small knife in his hand and then at the saw-toothed edge spinning rapidly as it sliced slowly through the door. He felt like he’d just be dealt life’s poison.
The man cuts a boxy rectangle from the middle of the door.
He knelt down and looked into the room through the new hole. Si Chen was nowhere to be seen in the narrow room.
“I know you’re home.” This neighbor, who was practically a complete stranger to Si Chen, pleaded, “I haven’t updated my collection in so long. Do you know hard it’s been? Enduring all these years? My room is full of your photos but you won’t even say a word to me. Pity me, Si Chen.”
A man’s eyes appeared in the mirror. There are wrinkles around his eyes, like a piece of dry bark.
The man reached out, fumbling for the doorknob, preparing to open the door.
Si Chen rushed forward without hesitation and stabbed the knife into the man’s hand.
The man outside howled. He made to take back his hand but Si Chen grabbed hold onto it tightly.
His neighbor’s strength was great. Veins protruded on his arm, his muscles stretched taut, hardening like stone. He flung his arm backhanded, trying to twist Si Chen’s arm.
Si Chen pulled out the knife and sliced down at the man’s comparatively thin wrist.
His hand was sliced clean off. The cross section of his arm was smooth as a mirror, each muscle appeared distinct.
This would have been difficult to accomplish with an ordinary knife.
But the knife Si Chen used was one they used for their experiments at the company. It was particularly useful in cutting up certain High-Dimensional Creatures with rough skin and thick flesh.
He yanked the door open and kicked the person standing by the door.
His neighbor fell to the ground, the chainsaw he was holding skittering far away.
By the time Si Chen realized it, his knife had already pierced the man’s abdomen.
His body pushed heavily against the man. The other person struggled violently, like a fish desperate for water.
The blood was hot.
Liver, kidney, stomach, heart. Si Chen stabbed them all. Afraid that the knife wouldn’t go deep enough, he made sure to twist it in a circle.
The body’s struggle was getting weaker and weaker.
He was probably dead.
Si Chen didn’t feel at ease until he’d cut his trachea. Only then did he slowly stand up.
He was covered in blood. The sticky liquid soaking his white shirt.
“This needs to be disposed of… completely. Utter garbage.” Si Chen lowered his head and muttered to himself.
Then, I’ll just put it in the refrigerator.
A sick smile appeared on his face.
Si Chen dragged his neighbor by the collar like a dog. He came to the refrigerator and then opened the freezer.
The cold air rushed towards him.
The freezer was already full of severed limbs, sorted and packed in vacuum freezer bags.
Facing Si Chen was a badly decomposing human head.
But Si Chen still recognized its owner from the facial outline.
It was Thirteen. But Thirteen shouldn’t be here, he should be in the orphanage in Zhuangshan.
The head opened its eyes, its expression full of hatred. “You madman.”
It opened its mouth and let out a stream of curses. Its face twisted with resentment, wanting nothing more but to send Si Chen to hell with its mouth.
“No wonder your brother didn’t come to pick you up! You are sick!”
Si Chen lowered his face. He pulled the knife out of his neighbor’s neck and stabbed it hard into Thirteen’s forehead.
The head crumbled into pieces.
Thirteen’s curses abruptly cut off.
There was no more room in the refrigerator. He had go out and throw the body away.
Si Chen opened the closet, ready to change into another set of clothes. His clothes were covered in blood and he would scare others if he went out like this.
He put his clothes in the bottom drawer of his closet.
Si Chen dragged something out from under the bed. It looked like the box was extremely heavy.
It seemed he’d gone back to when he was weak and sickly, panting even from just taking out a storage box.
Si Chen opened the lid and a stench instantly assaulted his senses. Buzzing flies took off.
The smell of rotting meat is always the worst.
Si Chen retched non-stop, overcome with nausea. Tears even appeared in the corners of his eyes.
He covered his nose and looked inside the storage box. Inside was a child.
Despite the stench, the child’s body was well preserved. He appeared as though he were simply asleep.
The child’s face was pale. In his grasp was a suicide note. A sweet smile was pasted on the corner of his lips, looking peaceful and beautiful.
The person in the box was himself, or rather, himself as a child.
Si Chen’s expression was very gloomy. He opened the suicide note and there was only one sentence on it. “Why hasn’t gege come to pick me up yet?”
When Si Chen was going to be sent back to the orphanage, his gege had been the only one to oppose it. He had ample reason; “Didi is younger than I am and he is not in good health. He can get better treatment if he goes to the Safe Zone. I can just go back to the orphanage.”
His adoptive parents were ill and had no biological children of their own.
But this proposal had been rejected.
Si Chen sat in the car alone with his luggage in his arms. Si Zhou ran after the car for a long time, shouting, “We’ll definitely come to pick you up!”
Si Chen held the piece of paper tightly. He couldn’t help laughing. He was laughing so hard, he doubled over. His head was on the ground, his waist was arched like a fully drawn bow.
It hurt.
It was so painful that he could hardly stand up.
He was also very tired, so tired that he wanted to sleep forever.
…
…
The Eyeworm had managed to crawl up halfway. It turned its head and looked below. Because it was afraid of heights, its body almost went limp and it almost fell off the wall.
“You’ve made it more than forty floors up. Do your best.” It cheered itself up deep in its heart, “When we get to the 66th floor, we can eat!”
Although it was very weak now, its full-force mental attack should be more than enough to deal with some Low-Dimensional creature.
The Eyeworm supposed that that human should have already collapsed from fear.
Calculating the time, it should almost be the end of the nightmare…
It fantasized about the delicious Eternal Life Abyss and its body was filled with motivation once again.
…
Si Chen’s dream continued.
He was sitting on a chair, knife in hand. His eyes were closed but under his eyelids, his eyeballs were moving rapidly.
A strange tumor appeared on the back of Si Chen’s hand, like an eye about to burst.
The Eternal Life Abyss had already called out “Mom” in Si Chen’s ear so many times that its voice had gone hoarse.
But it still failed to wake Si Chen up. It was spinning about anxiously, nearly twisting itself into a knot.
In the dream, Si Chen had stopped his mad laughter.
He stood up, panting. He turn on the lights and put the neighbor’s body into a woven bag.
Si Chen had already realized that something was wrong but his brain seemed to refuse to think and was trying to rationalize all this.
“Could it be a High-Dimensional invasion…?”
The woven bag suddenly moved and blood oozed from the bottom. Was it a fraud corpse?
Si Chen kicked it again and growled, “Quiet.”
I can’t figure it out, I don’t want to.
Si Chen went out with the woven bag on his shoulders. Almost at the same time as when he closed his door, the door of the room next to his, the one cordoned off, opened a crack.
The surroundings seemed to get colder. Si Chen’s body was aching from the cold. He stared at the gap, watching as it expanded little by little.
Finally, Si Chen saw the person standing at the door clearly by the light in the corridor.
Si Chen suddenly laughed out loud.
That person was himself.
“Long time no see. Do you mind talking to me?” the person at the door asked.
Si Chen gave no answer but that person had already started talking on his own, “You still haven’t made any progress at all. Your solution to all your troubles is always to kill. I don’t like trash so I’ll killed the trash myself. I don’t like threats so I’ll kill all threats. You’re so desperate to go up but have you ever thought about what kind of life you want to live?”
Si Chen frowned. “You’re so annoying.”
“Yes, you are already an Evolutionary. You can gain a higher status. But what after? All this to prove to them that abandoning you had been a wrong decision? Is there only this one goal in your life? That’s so pathetic.” The tone was dripping with ridicule and sarcasm.
Si Chen wanted to argue with him but when he opened his mouth, he felt that there was no need to quarrel with him.
“Is this a dream?” he asked.
“Yes. And I’m showing up as your worst fear. Seems that you’re deathly afraid of going crazy. But I think, you’re much crazier than I am. I just can’t help talking.”
Si Chen pursed his lips.
Very abruptly, the person at the door whispered, “You have worked so hard all these years, Si Chen.”
He was wearing a white dress, a nightgown. He crossed the cordon lightly, like a nimble deer.
He hugged Si Chen and with a gentle tone, he said, “You are the strongest child I have ever seen. From the first time we met in the orphanage, I knew that this world would be yours sooner or later. You’ll be fine. Let’s go back.”
Si Chen opened his eyes, panting heavily.
The warm yellow light above his head was still on. Snowflakes had begun to fall outside the window at some point.
The Eternal Life Abyss woke up and shouted, “Mom! Meat! Hungry!”
Si Chen’s head was still a little heavy. The raised bump on the back of his hand dissipated like an illusion.
He just wanted to get up and pour himself a cup of hot water when he saw a mass of dark red tree branches tumble in from the balcony.
This little tree branch was quite unique, with a vertical pupil on top of its head.
When the Eyeworm saw Si Chen, it was already excited.
Several of its dendrites squirmed forward quickly, heading straight for Si Chen.
Now, so long as it stretches out its tentacles and puts them on the back of Si Chen’s hand, it can control Si Chen’s body!
It looked at the back of Si Chen’s hand.
…What happened to the marker?
Si Chen raised the knife in his hand and stabbed it into the eyeball in front of him without any hesitation, rolling it into a ball of spaghetti.
The Eyeworm’s limbs twitched due to the severe pain and it let out a strange scream.
“Why is this happening? This is impossible!”
It spoke in its native language. The Eternal Life Abyss understood it but Si Chen could not.
Given the Eternal Life Abyss’ level of intelligence, it was obvious that it couldn’t translate for Si Chen.
Si Chen boiled hot water and threw the Eyeworm into the water.
The fresh eyes of the Eyeworm turned red and white. The sweet aroma of vanilla ice cream exuded from the hot pan.
Si Chen murmured, “It’s been a long time since I’ve been given such a thoughtful delivery.”
Thanks for the update 😊
That was close 😅
Thanks for the chapter!
Dinner delivered
lol ‘do your best’ the eyeworm’s a bit cute XD
okay the other si chen talking at the end was definitely strange!!
Maybe it was the spirit creature from when he was a kid?
Best laid plans become … eyeworm dinner … that smells like vanilla … lmao! That was close! Delivery isn’t usually that speedy! Thanks for the update 🤣❤️🤣❤️🪱👀
Si Chen’s head sounds like a breeding ground for craziness 😅
Thanks for the update!
The irony that a stronger ‘vanilla ice cream scent’ is emitted after the eyeworm was boiled in hot water XDDD
This book has always been bloody and cruel, but when I read about the corpse of a baby at night, I needed a break
Thank you very much for the translation 💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚💚
Nice, takeout’s here!
He’s a crazy bastard already 💀
Ohhhh is si Chen the aforementioned “arrival”