Chapter Forty-Four: The Mad and the Bizarre Creation

In that instant, something began to grow beneath the child's skin, writhing and pushing outward to form its own shapes on his arm. His entire forearm became covered with clusters of tiny granules, no more than a tenth of a millimeter in size, making his skin unusually rough—like sharkskin, yet somehow with an unnaturally smooth sensation to the touch.

Oh... At that moment, Chen Qing looked at his arm, and a diagnosis echoed in his mind.

Urticaria.

A kind that formed sheets of clustered dots.

He watched as the boy lifted his head, his eyes brimming with resentment. His gaze was wide and furious; he struggled to open his mouth but could utter nothing intelligible, only a series of squeaks and groans. As he opened his mouth, something began to crawl up from his esophagus.

He stared, yet Chen Qing's hand remained perfectly still—his skin, his muscle, as if they had merely been brushed by sand.

"Why... why?" the boy muttered, his voice hoarse, nearly a scream.

He looked at Chen Qing's unchanged expression, and the dense granules on his arm seemed to yearn for further contact.

But Chen Qing observed that the rashes on the boy's hand were already twitching, as if thousands of fleas and bedbugs had sprouted beneath his skin. A strange, fetid odor wafted from his pores.

Chen Qing frowned, stepping back two paces. He glanced at his own arm, but there was nothing—no rash, no mark.

What on earth was happening?

He stared at the child's arm and face, now covered in dense, undulating hives. The rashes leapt higher and higher, stretching his skin to several times its normal size.

The boy resembled a fountain at a music hall, rippling to the rhythm.

Chen Qing watched, seeing that the boy had shed all semblance of humanity.

He had become rounded, every pore on his circular skin plugged with something.

In the next instant, a faint cracking sound came from the boy's body. He burst apart like a balloon into dozens, hundreds of pieces. But as Chen Qing sidestepped and shielded himself from the splattering blood, he found the space before him clean and dry.

Confused, he lifted his leg to move forward. Yet at that moment, he felt violent itching and a sharp pain erupting across his back.

His face went pale, and he rushed to stand in front of Jiang Wan.

"Grab the gun! Destroy the skin on my back!"

His voice was urgent, barely finishing his words as he stripped off his shirt.

Jiang Wan was stunned, not yet grasping the situation. She looked up, still reeling from the previous shock. But as her gaze settled on Chen Qing's back, a wave of complex emotions flooded her heart.

Disgust, revulsion, incomprehension, antipathy, confusion.

Every negative feeling possible surged through Jiang Wan. She did not even know what it was.

On Chen Qing's back, there was a cyst the size of a fist, with three or four holes in it—like large blackheads, about the size of a pinky, plugged with some unknown substance.

Beside the black holes, clusters of fine tendrils extended outward. Jiang Wan's face blanched; she recognized them from deep-sea crustaceans, from immobile sea creatures that relied solely on tendrils to hunt.

She had seen such things before.

Her panicked retreat seemed to trigger a response; the tendrils stretched toward her, each twitch accompanied by a rough gasp from Chen Qing.

His face pale, he spoke calmly, "Hurry... this thing is wrong."

In truth, Jiang Wan hardly needed his warning.

She, face ghostly white, crept to Chen Qing's other side. There, the tendrils continued to surge forward, presenting the back of their mass.

She trembled, drawing the gun from her waist. After a moment's hesitation, she ejected a bullet from the chamber.

Sweat gathered on her brow, her fingers shaking as she held the bullet.

Pulling a small knife from her pocket, she delicately scored the base of the bullet. Soon, all the gunpowder had been removed.

She did not even need to pour it—her trembling fingers scattered the gunpowder evenly across Chen Qing's back.

But as she sprinkled it, her face grew paler still. She saw a human face emerging from the cyst—a visage in anguish, screaming soundlessly, trapped beneath Chen Qing's skin, unable to breathe or cry out.

It pressed upward, trying to break free with its face.

"What is this..." she whispered, struggling to steady herself, but failing.

She had seen Chen Qing so calmly destroy humanoid entities, had grown accustomed to handling anomalies, to witnessing the bizarre without flinching.

Yet now, she felt nothing but dread.

Trembling, Chen Qing could barely endure any longer. His pallor deepened; he snatched up his left hand from the floor and grasped Jiang Wan's arm.

"We can't wait... do it now..."

His voice was faint, edged with weakness.

Jiang Wan, white-faced, let the last of the gunpowder fall.

She readied the gun, aiming it at the bulging mass on Chen Qing's back.

One shot—just one shot would end it all.

She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and as the tendrils sensed danger and began to retract, the thunderous gunshot echoed throughout the world.

Residents inside the building peered through the curtains, their eyes burning with curiosity.

They stared intently at Jiang Wan's weapon, the blood pooling on the floor fueling their excitement.

With the gunshot, the inhabitants of the earth tower began to stir.

Their eyes met, each sizing up the others across the hall.

On the first floor, the woman who had become a mother returned to solitude, her face pale.

She had no time to turn; a hand pressed against her neck from behind, slamming her into the wall.

The sound was dull, clearly made with full force.

Her eyes rolled back, her ears ringing from the blow.

Before she could recover, warm breaths whispered at her ear, accompanied by the susurrus of a belt being undone.

She clenched her fists, powerless to resist.

Outside, the cyst on Chen Qing's back oozed blood.

It sprayed from beneath his skin, staining the human face there, making its already grotesque features even more uncanny.

It howled, as if desperate to escape Chen Qing's back and become its own entity.

But its struggle ended the moment it left his body, vitality instantly lost.

And Chen Qing? Sweat dripped onto the floor from his brow, his face pale as snow. Physical pain was secondary; a deeper, mental agony was the true torment.

The pain should have come from his back, yet his brain told him otherwise.

His mind screamed: your waist hurts, your legs hurt, your hands hurt, your eyes hurt. Every part of you aches—except your back.

You don't want to hurt? Protect your back.

So when Jiang Wan finally acted, his will nearly shattered from the illusion.

This experience surpassed all worldly tortures.

He trembled, attempting to reach his arm behind him. Even a rough search revealed the mutated area.

With a crazed determination in his eyes, he gritted his teeth and tore away the six- or seven-centimeter cyst, blood and strands of muscle coming away with it.

He groaned softly, vision blurring. Yet as he fell unconscious, he flung the chunk of tissue into the yellow sand.

He struggled to look that way, and only when he saw flesh land in the sand did he finally close his eyes, satisfied.

...

When he opened them again, Jiang Wan was sitting by the window, watching over him.

She held her gun, her face streaked with blood.

Outside, sand and gravel battered the doors and windows.

They had entered—entered one of the houses.

Chen Qing squinted, hesitating as he pushed aside his blanket.

His wound was not severe; in fact, by now, the injury on his back had completely healed.

He looked at the drowsy Jiang Wan and asked, "How long was I out?"

She turned her head, thinking for a moment before replying, "About six hours..."

"That long?" He squinted, pulling a document from his pocket.

Or rather, a sheet of paper, divided by lines into over twenty boxes, each marked with a sequence.

From one to twenty, the writing clear and precise.

Chen Qing pinched the bridge of his nose and moved to the window, intending to look outside when Jiang Wan hurried forward to block him.

He turned back; Jiang Wan shook her head gently, warning him, "A sandstorm is coming."

"A sandstorm... what is that?" he asked, confused.

"I don't know. After you passed out, the people in the earth tower tried to steal my weapon, but their strength was lacking. They had some skills, but seemed starved for ages. After I subdued those who attacked us, the woman was pushed out; I couldn't stop them. She died, flayed and bled out."

Chen Qing frowned, glancing down at his arm. He pulled aside the curtain; the sound of sand and gravel striking the window was especially clear.

He still remembered, in the last moment before he lost consciousness, that the yellow sand was unmistakably advancing toward fresh flesh.