Chapter 298: The Distortion of Human Nature

"Cough cough......" Liu Qiang gulped rough air into his lungs, snot and tears smeared together, he propped his hands on the ground and rolled and crawled backward.

"Brother Zhang, Brother Wei, I've made a huge mistake, I'm really not a person."

"Slap! Slap!"

Liu Qiang wailed while swinging his arm to slap himself.

"You said you'd give me a multiple-choice question, didn't you? I choose, I choose them all, I only beg you to show mercy and spare my dog's life."

Zhang Wei didn't respond at all, merely pushing the cracked spectacles on his nose bridge in a leisurely manner.

He went around the puddle on the ground, bent down, and picked up the Watermelon Knife that Wang Dayong had dropped.

"Clang!"

The blade, smeared with mud and sand, he casually tossed to Liu Qiang's side.

Metal clinked against the concrete, producing a sharp, teeth-grating sound.

"Option A." Zhang Wei raised a thin finger, pointing at the mud-collapsed Wang Dayong nearby, "Take this knife and cut off Wang Dayong's tongue at the root."

He spoke slowly, "Usually this bastard loves to follow behind you, wagging his tongue; if he had no tongue, the whole world would be much quieter."

Upon hearing this, Wang Dayong's soul fled in terror, he rolled and crawled into the corner of the wall, his hands flailing as if shocked.

"Brother Liu, you mustn't act recklessly—killing someone could get you shot!"

Liu Qiang stared fixedly at the knife on the ground, his facial muscles uncontrollably twitching, his Adam's apple sliding up and down.

Zhang Wei couldn't be bothered to look at his cowardly state, raising a second finger.

"Option B, I'll restrain you and let him slice off your two or three hundred pounds of filthy fat, piece by piece, like slicing roast duck."

"I'll only count to ten."

"Ten."

Zhang Wei had just uttered a number.

No sooner said than done, Liu Qiang lunged out like a starving wild boar, rolling and crawling, his fatty hands gripping the Watermelon Knife's non-slip plastic handle tightly.

"Sorry, Dayong, Brother—I have to survive!"

The blade flashed in the dim light, scarlet blood spraying like spilled ink.

Wang Dayong rolled on the ground, covering his gushing mouth, emitting a shrill, bellows-like howl from his throat.

A half-section of still-twitching red soft tissue fell into the mud, warm white steam rising from its surface.

Zhang Wei watched this horrifying scene; his stomach didn't churn at all, instead a surge of excitement doubled deep in his marrow.

Over the past three years, the grudges and black pots I'd eaten under this dead Fatty were finally repaid with interest.

Liu Qiang held the blood-dripping Watermelon Knife, turned, and knelt on the ground like a fawning lapdog.

"Brother Wei, I've finished the task; please show great mercy and spare me this time."

Zhang Wei sighed, the dark seal in his hand turning half a circle flexibly between his fingers.

"Did I say I'd spare you?"

The black ghost-head seal descended from above, precisely aiming at Liu Qiang's broad forehead and pressing down from afar.

The tyrannical Rule Power of the Divine Gift came down like a thousand-pound weight from midair.

"Take the knife and stab your own heart." Zhang Wei issued the ultimate order nonchalantly.

Liu Qiang's eyes bloodshot and bulging, nearly popping from their sockets, his throat emitting the miserable wail of a beast at death's door.

Resistance is futile.

His two hands completely broke free from the brain's control, raising the heavy Watermelon Knife, the tip reversed and aimed dead-center at his left chest.

"No...... Zhang Wei, you beast...... you'll die a horrible death......"

"Sizzle!"

The sharp blade pierced fat and flesh without hesitation.

Liu Qiang's massive, obese body collapsed like a toppled mountain and shattered jade pillar, his limbs twitching a few times before all vitality ceased.

As for Wang Dayong, who had lost too much blood, he had already fainted from the intense pain, exhaling but not inhaling.

Stepping over the bodies scattered across the ground, Zhang Wei's leather shoes tread on the blood as he leisurely walked up to Zhao Li.

Zhao Li, who usually swaggered in the break room, was now so frightened she couldn't utter a coherent word.

Her designer bag, bought with several months' salary, fell into the foul-smelling dirty puddle, and she didn't even bother to retrieve it.

She was the top social butterfly of the HR department.

Before the Mutation struck, Zhang Wei would have to draft a three-day mental script just to greet her, and even a WeChat request for help would often be brushed off with a few perfunctory emoji packs.

"Brother Zhang Wei, can you let me go?"

Zhao Li trembled as she reached to undo the top button of her work shirt, exposing a large expanse of smooth, fair skin to the murky air.

"From now on I'll obey you completely; tell me what to do and I'll do it—I'm actually quite good at serving people."

She painstakingly struck a most alluring pose, trying to win favor with this lowly office drone whom she had once trampled underfoot and rubbed wildly.

Zhang Wei looked down coldly, lifted his mud‑splattered shoe, and kicked her in the shoulder, sending her sprawling to the ground.

"Save it, pretending to be a chaste heroine."

"Usually at the company, you complain my clothes are ragged and smelly, and that I'll never find a wife in this lifetime."

"Now why are you rushing to cling to my poor, sorry self?"

Zhao Li ignored the bruise on her shoulder, flipped over, knelt on the ground, and kowtowed repeatedly.

"It's my blindness, my dog‑eyed contempt for people; Brother Wei, your minister's belly could hold a boat—don't stoop to my level."

Zhang Wei properly stowed the ghost‑head seal in his inner coat pocket, pulled over a battered, missing‑part office chair, and sat down with ease.

"How interesting—you just seemed to say you were a dog."

"Yes yes yes! I'm a dog, I'm the lowly mutt you keep."

Zhao Li, to save her life, completely abandons the human baseline and, without hesitation, answers affirmatively.

Zhang Wei crosses his legs, and the mud‑splattered toe of his shoe brazenly lifts Zhao Li's sharp chin.

"Since you admit you're a dog, then show some dog‑appropriate Awakening."

"Kneel on the ground, crawl two rounds using hands and feet, and bark a few pleasant sounds to entertain me."

Zhao Li is first completely stunned, and a fleeting, indescribable sense of humiliation flashes in her eyes.

But a peripheral glance catches two horribly mutilated corpses beside her, and the instinct to survive overwhelms everything. She grinds her silver teeth, plants her limbs on the ground, and scrambles, lying in the nauseating sludge.

She crawls forward with difficulty for two steps, lifts her face smeared with cheap eye shadow, and opens her mouth toward Zhang Wei.

"Woof."

"Not full? Raise your voice."

"Woof! Woof woof!"

Zhao Li strains herself to bark, even mimicking a Pekingese, sticking out her tongue to pant.

Seeing the once unattainable goddess now wagging her tail like a beast at his feet, begging for pity.

Zhang Wei leans his back heavily against the chair back, lifts his head, and laughs wildly.

His sharp laughter ricochets between the crumbling cement walls underground, shrill and maddening.

"It's absolutely exhilarating."

So stepping on the former bully in the mire and repeatedly crushing him is such an addictive feeling.

"To hell with order and law."

"To hell with gentleness, propriety, humility, and frugality."

This shattered world already belongs to the Thugs who wield absolute power.

The pathological pleasure is like a wild horse breaking its reins, completely shattering the last rational barrier in his mind. Humanity disintegrates within this brief ten‑minute span.

As long as he grasps this seal, every living thing under heaven must bow and submit to him.

After the maniacal laugh, Zhang Wei once again pulls out the warm yet eerie "Seal of Domination."

There are fourteen Divine Gifts in total, representing fourteen divine elects.

A battle‑royale‑style plunder. Whoever endures to the end can step onto the altar and make a wish to the gods.

Zhang Wei nudges the crooked glasses frame with one hand, and a chilling, predatory glare shines from behind the lenses.

Such a once‑in‑a‑millennium turnaround cannot be missed.

Frankly, whether it's immense wealth, a nation‑toppling beauty, or even immortality, a wish can grant it.

With this brazen, unreasonable artifact at his side, as long as he avoids those out‑of‑spec monstrous aberrations, he can assemble a strike‑anywhere army.

No matter how powerful the various strongmen are, once this black seal stamps them from afar, they become lambs ready for slaughter at his whim.

He not only intends to survive to the bitter end in this cannibalistic apocalypse, but also to become a dictator perched atop the throne.

He wants every creature that despises him to kneel on his foot and lick the mud.

"Enough, you, get up." Zhang Wei, holding the seal, points a finger at Zhao Li on the ground.

Zhao Li, as if pardoned, quickly pushes off the filthy water‑soaked ground and scrambles to her feet.

"Go retrieve all the water and compressed biscuits from Liu Qiang's gray hiking pack and pack them up."

"Put the supplies on your back and follow me obediently."

Zhao Li nods repeatedly like a chick pecking grain, runs over and struggles to yank the pack strap from the sticky, viscous blood pool.

Zhang Wei turns his head and looks toward the night outside the passage.

Outside, the blood‑red moonlight grows ever thicker, and the air is filled with a nauseating mix of iron rust and rotting organ fermentation.

His hunting game is only just beginning now.

Half an hour later, the two walk on the dilapidated asphalt of the pedestrian street.

The street is a mess, with severed limbs and wrecked private cars piled like a mountain.

After only a few steps, from the deep, dimly lit left alley comes a tooth‑aching sound of bones gnawing.

Zhao Li, frightened, stops dead in her tracks, her legs going limp as if shocked.

Zhang Wei, on the contrary, becomes excited.

He strolls leisurely into the cramped alley.

A mutated, hairless stray dog bathed in red light lies amid the junk piled beside the Trash Can, vigorously gnawing at half a carcass.

The beast is as large as an adult water buffalo, with Bone Spikes jutting from its back, and its foul saliva drips down its interlaced fangs.

Hearing footsteps, the hairless dog suddenly whirls, emitting a low, oppressive roar from deep in its throat.

Zhao Li retreats wildly, and her hiking pack thuds onto the ground.

"Wei Brother, run!"

Zhang Wei's feet root to the ground, unmoving.

"Why run? Let's test its quality."

The hairless dog's hind legs suddenly kick, its massive, hill‑sized body leaving an afterimage as it lunges straight at Zhang Wei's face.

The stench from the Bloody Maw nearly makes one vomit.

Zhang Wei meets the challenge, and with his right hand at unbelievable speed pulls out the Ghost‑Head seal.

"Kneel firmly, then."

He shouts, and from several meters away aims the seal's base at the beast soaring in mid‑air.

Invisible magnetic wave ripples cascade outward.

The originally blood‑thirsty, feral dog convulses violently in mid‑air, its limbs' power source forcibly ripped away.

The several‑hundred‑pound body scrapes against Zhang Wei's pant leg and slams onto the rough ground, carving a deep pit two or three meters long from the inertia.

The monster clutched its neck and struggled, trying to get up and shred the tiny human before it.

The manipulable underlying logic brutally suppressed its feeding instinct, directly taking over its brainstem nerves.

Zhang Wei walked forward at a leisurely pace, lifted his mud‑splattered leather shoe, and stamped his foot hard onto the massive, tumor‑covered skull of the Hairless Dog.

"Submit or not?"

A painful, mournful wail leaked from the monster's mouth, and its once ferocious beast eyes were, for the first time, filled with pleading.

Zhang Wei laughed boisterously again.

This thing is literally a cheat code from a single‑player game. Even this irrational blood‑thirsty beast can be forcibly suppressed; what can the other contestants use to fight him?

Zhao Li, who had hidden at the back and witnessed the whole process, nearly had her eyeballs pop out.

She had thought Zhang Wei could at most handle a plump ordinary guy like Liu Qiang with a few tricks, never expecting such a non‑human monster could be killed in an instant.

The abacus in this woman's mind clacked loudly.

In this Weird world where lives are as insignificant as weeds, clinging tightly to Zhang Wei's thick thigh would cause the chance of survival to rise sharply.

"Brother Wei, you're literally a war god walking among us!"

Zhao Li ignored the sharp shards of broken glass littering the ground and, rolling and crawling, scrambled to Zhang Wei's feet.

She clutched Zhang Wei's calf tightly, deliberately exposing the scenery on her chest beneath the Blood Moon.

"I saw early on that Brother Wei is a ruthless figure who does big things; from now on, I'll be a dog at your side, biting wherever you point."

Zhang Wei lowered his head and looked down at the sycophantic face.

He reached out and, without courtesy, slapped Zhao Li's scarred face.

"Having good eyesight is a virtue. Get up, pick up the pack, and keep moving."

"Got it, Brother Wei," Zhao Li rolled to her feet, bowed her head, and went back to retrieve her gear.

Zhang Wei turned and looked at the Hairless Dog crawling on the ground.

"You come along too, scout ahead. If you encounter a breathing creature, bite its throat clean off."

The Hairless Dog whined in response, rose from the ground, and obediently led the way at the front.

With this beast as a guard, Zhang Wei could practically stride across this fallen world.

Meanwhile.

Above the heights beyond their sight.

Hundreds of meters away, at the edge of a skyscraper's lightning rod.

A biting cold wind blew.

A slender figure dressed in a handcrafted vintage suit, his face hidden by a Gray Mask, was idly tapping the rooftop railing with an Eyeball Staff carved with a glass eye.

Sai Men's crimson aura flickered weirdly like a dying candle in the wind, and he took in everything happening on the street below.

"Look at this ridiculous nouveau‑rich scowl."

He held the Eyeball Staff aloft; the lifelike glass eye at its tip spun half a circle, precisely locking onto Zhang Wei's back.

"The cowardly vermin that live at the bottom of the food chain for years, once granted violent privileges beyond reason, emit malice that can be more suffocating than true Weirdness itself."

Sai Men gracefully tipped off his black top hat, and across the distant void performed an impeccably proper gentleman's hat‑off salute toward Zhang Wei's silhouette.

"Go on, expand to your heart's content, open your belly, and revel."

"Humans, those pitiful carbon‑based beings, only when they climb to the clouds and get a boot to the gut does the sound of their bones shattering become the most beautiful lullaby."

Before his words finished, his figure rippled like water and vanished completely into the heavy back‑lit shadows of the rooftop.