Chapter 122: Metamorphosis and Paranormal Phenomena

Jiang Wan left the premises with the agent, leaving Chen Qing behind. This was his own request—he wanted to be alone. Of course, Bu Zhaozhao did not count; perhaps she might even be of the same kind as the entity here? It was hard to say. However, he had made this decision with the upcoming mission in mind. They needed historical records, and even if Jiang Wan claimed they were there for a recent case, they required testimonies from those who had personally experienced these events in the past. There was much to be done, but it certainly could not be Chen Qing who handled the legwork.

Under Jiang Wan’s judgmental gaze, he slowly closed the door.

"Have you ever thought about what it would be like if the house you bought turned into a house of horrors?" The moment Jiang Wan and the agent were gone, Bu Zhaozhao’s gloating voice emerged.

"And? Does me suffering benefit you?"

She smiled, watching as Chen Qing stepped onto the spiral staircase, climbing toward the second floor. The building was ancient, just as he had observed before; both the decor and the materials were relics of a bygone era. The walls had yellowed, and the floor was thick with dust. As he ascended, he noticed stains on the left side of the gallery, marking the spots where paintings had once hung.

"No benefits, really." She grinned, floating alongside him. "It’s just rare to see you get bested. It’s amusing."

He did not deny it, merely shrugging slightly. "Didn't two people almost die in here last time?"

"But they survived in the end," Bu Zhaozhao shook her head. "Or even further back, that time we came to collect you."

"But you accomplished your goal, didn't you?"

Hearing her words, he suddenly chuckled. "And then there is the matter of my own origins."

Bu Zhaozhao fell silent for a moment, and Chen Qing continued. "In fact, those who can live in this world and speak so easily are all people who have won every step of the way—winning against opponents, winning against rules, winning against the paths left by those before them. Those who lose just once..." He smiled and gestured toward her.

He left the rest of his sentence unfinished, as it was a bit too cruel to voice. After all, wasn't someone who had only lost once in her entire life standing right in front of him?

He continued forward, but the hallway he had just traversed felt different. He couldn't pinpoint exactly what had changed, but as his gaze fell, his brows furrowed. He took a few more steps until he reached the master bedroom at the end of the second floor, and finally, he understood what was different. It was the darkness that had seemed so absolute from the gallery, and the state of the bed that had once stood in that room.

The mattress, once used for sleeping and stained yellow with sweat, was now terrifyingly black. Standing closer, he finally discerned what comprised the blackness on the bed. Those were thousands upon thousands of jet-black flies, each the size of a pinky finger, crowding together to coat the entire mattress in a living, shifting shadow.

He stared at the mattress, his feet making a faint, almost imperceptible sound. Yet, the flies in the room seemed startled in that instant; they erupted into a frenzy, the roaring sound of their beating wings echoing like thunder.

"Buzz—"

Immediately after, he felt several flies slam into him like bullets. The force was so great that the moment they struck his shoes, they burst. Milky white bodily fluids, mixed with several pure white maggots, began to slowly crawl across his footwear. He took one look, and his expression changed drastically.

Was it dangerous? Truly, it was not. But was it disgusting? Who would want their own body covered in a mass of wriggling worms? This wasn't the Backrooms!

He let out a cold laugh, yet his body remained unmoving at the door. He raised his hand and pulled the door beside him shut. With a heavy thud, the sound of bodies hitting the door followed.

"Pitter-patter—pitter-patter."

The sound was relentless. After it had continued for three to five minutes, Chen Qing prepared to open the door, but Bu Zhaozhao’s hand stopped him.

"Something's not right..."

She spoke, and Chen Qing calmed his mind. He closed his eyes, and the vertical pupil in the center of his forehead instantly split open. But this time, the pupil seemed to have undergone a new change, much like his legs.

Another eye sprouted from the first, the two eyes squeezed together. Then, just as he prepared to focus on what lay ahead, the area surrounding the two eyes began to churn like boiling porridge. Hundreds of tiny bubbles formed around them; if one looked closely, each bubble contained a distinct, visible lens. His eye looked like a flower, with the stamen blooming under the pressure. As each bubble burst, the fluid inside trickled down from his brow.

Yet, he felt nothing amiss; he simply assumed he was weeping. He turned his head, and upon seeing the grave expression on Bu Zhaozhao’s face—noticing her look of slight revulsion—he understood.

"Is this... have all my traits mutated?"

"Hard to say," she added. "You shouldn't touch things from the Divine Grace Church! They’re all a bunch of lunatics! They’ll stop at nothing, isolated and deranged." She looked at Chen Qing, her expression heavy. "Anything they leave behind is never good. They leave a gun, and it fires from both the muzzle and the butt—all in the name of 'double the firepower.' They forge a blade, and once you pick it up, you can never put it down—they call that 'unwavering progress.' They are madmen! Psychopaths! Lunatics whose brains are naturally steeped in the saltpeter of an outhouse wall! Stop playing with this stuff! I'll find you a Foundation containment site to raid later—playing with non-heritage artifacts is so much better!"

He listened to Bu Zhaozhao, the corners of his mouth twitching upward. He was smiling, though the burden in his mind made it difficult. Even though his mental power and willpower were over twenty times that of an ordinary person, and even though he could handle about four E-class or two D-class non-heritage artifacts simultaneously—heck, perhaps he could even attempt a C-class for a short while—even as he was, he could barely smile while processing the forty-plus visual images flooding his mind, all of which demanded he draw upon his own willpower to sustain them.

He had three traits—the change in his speed was not particularly noticeable, nor were its side effects. But his observational ability and its side effects seemed to have been pushed to his limits in an instant.

"That cup of coffee... it’s got quite a kick... the aftereffects have been going on for nearly three or four days now..."

He muttered to himself. Bu Zhaozhao, clearly hearing him, shook her head in exasperation, sighed, and took a half-step back. There was something about Chen Qing’s vertical pupil that had yet to manifest. She could keenly sense a crisis brewing within it.

But Chen Qing himself? He clearly had no such sensation. He attempted to focus his gaze on a single point, and the 3D-motion-sickness-like sensation diminished slightly. He looked at the door—the dark, palm-wood door now featured tiny white granular organisms, each about 0.1 millimeters in size. They were wriggling. He focused his vision, and the image before him instantly magnified significantly.

"Oh..."

The magnifying-glass-like function surprised him. But a second later, he lost interest in his own unique ability. He watched as the tiny white dots grew, yellowed, pupated, and emerged as black flies the size of half a finger. Then, as the flies paired up and began to crawl onto their companions' backs, just as he thought they were about to mate, a rustling sound—composed of thousands of tiny, overlapping noises—rose and fell.

Like a wave of sound, it drowned out Chen Qing’s own breathing as the flies grew to the size of thumbs.