Chapter 99: The Fear and Ecstasy Beyond Death

That group of beings, or rather creatures with human-like forms, quietly watched him—the two figures who stood out so starkly among them.

Chen Qing and Jiang Wan’s expressions remained unchanged, but a subtle tension had already crept into their hearts.

They continued pushing the cart forward, their movements mirrored by the gazes of those beings.

Silently, the watchers followed their path until they reached one of the entities. Only when the cart came close did their eyes shift slightly.

“Excuse me,” Chen Qing said calmly to the entity before him.

His tone was so composed that the entity blocking his way seemed puzzled.

Its face bore streaks of blood, seemingly from itself; wounds on its visage writhed ominously.

After a moment’s hesitation, it stepped back half a pace, clearing the aisle for Chen Qing.

Watching the cart pass, its eyes met Chen Qing’s. Then it smiled—a grotesque smile as its skull began splitting from the crown, transforming its head into a long, square-edged slab of flesh connected directly to its neck.

Looking up at Chen Qing, its mouth stretched to the top of the shelves: “Why aren’t you eating? Planning to skip out without paying?”

Chen Qing glanced back. The faces of distant customers began to smile as well. Within seconds, an inexplicable black mist filled the upper air of the supermarket. They looked up as the ceiling gradually vanished from sight, shrouded by this fog that dimmed the entire space, even the overhead lights failing to penetrate it.

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He watched the entities brimming with anticipation and chuckled sharply. “Mind your own business.”

Fixing his gaze on the entity before him, he reached out and patted its arm. “You’re just a customer. Customers should do what customers are supposed to.”

Before his words had fully fallen, and just as he passed by the entity’s side, a face appeared on the supermarket aisle ahead.

Calling it a face felt inadequate; more precisely, it was an expression.

Two eyes and a mouth hovered in midair, smiling, with nothing else visible.

It resembled a floating projection suspended in space.

He continued walking, feeling the stiffness radiating from Jiang Wan beside him. Step by step, she followed, and the distance between them and that face grew ever smaller.

“Chen Qing…” she lowered her head, whispering softly, “I don’t feel right about this…”

Her quiet words made Chen Qing’s gaze sharpen. He turned back and saw on the path they had just crossed another face, though it was farther away and its smile less sinister.

Just as he prepared to turn forward again, he heard a soft, disdainful laugh.

This time, he could clearly pinpoint its source.

Right beside him. Right in front of him.

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He turned his head; the smile on that entity’s face wavered but never disappeared, collapsing and returning repeatedly, punctuated by muffled chuckles.

Frowning, Chen Qing pushed aside his doubts for the moment. He fixed his eyes on the smiling face blocking the way ahead. Naturally, he would not walk toward it…

But what exactly was it?

And what did that final line mean—“There’s medicine here that can restore them to humanity”?

He raised his head—and in that unguarded instant suddenly realized that the two who had paused in the supermarket were already being watched relentlessly by thousands upon thousands of entities.

They stood motionless, their gazes fixed unwaveringly on the two.

They looked at him as if he were the most precious delicacy in the world.