Chapter 362: The Prophet

Lao Zhao hasn't slept for three days.

It's not that he doesn't want to sleep. He dares not.

Every time he closes his eyes, that thing inside the left side of his body pushes outward.

From the rib gaps, from beneath the shoulder blades, from under the already blackened skin on his lower back—it rolls and tumbles inside, like a live snake forced into a bottle, eager to burst the container.

A month and a half ago, he found a bronze mirror in the half‑collapsed residential building in the western part of the city.

In the mirror there was a face, not his.

That face smiled at him briefly, then slipped into his body.

From that day on, his left side began to decay. First the Nail turned black, then the skin blistered, then the muscles peeled away layer by layer, exposing a gray‑green, putrid fascia underneath.

He wrapped gauze around seven or eight layers, yet blood still seeped out, and wherever he went he carried a scent that mixed Sewer and morgue.

Lao Zhao pulled the Windcoat's zipper up to his chin, the brim pressing against his eyebrows.

Most of the streetlights in the southern district were out; the few that remained glowed feebly, orange‑yellow halos falling on the ground, casting clusters of vague Shadow. He walked close to the wall base, his left foot dragging, keeping the scrape of his shoe on broken bricks to a minimum.

At the intersection ahead, two beams of flashlight swept over.

Special Forces.

Lao Zhao curled into the gap between a Trash Can and an electrical box, his back against the icy metal, daring not to breathe. The flashlight beam passed half a meter above his head, illuminated the opposite corner, lingered two seconds, then moved on.

When the footsteps receded, he squeezed out of the gap.

The gauze on his left shoulder seeped again. A damp dark patch clung to the Windcoat's lining, and even through the fabric the sweet, cloying rot could be smelled. He fought the nausea and tugged the Windcoat collar up again.

The vent pipe entrance was hidden behind a loose cement slab on the outer wall of the Air‑raid Shelter.

Lao Zhao crouched, using his right hand—the only hand still intact—to pry away the rubble, revealing a circular iron pipe mouth just large enough for a person to crawl in. Fresh scratches scarred the pipe wall, the metal polished bright, evidence of recent frequent traffic.

He took a deep breath and shoved himself inside.

The tunnel was darker than outside. Lao Zhao alternated elbows and knees to crawl forward, the iron sheet beneath his body emitting a muffled thud. His left arm could no longer exert much force; each inch forward, the rotting muscle scraped the pipe interior, squeezing out viscous fluid that clung behind him.

He crawled for about seven or eight minutes.

At the tunnel's end a sliver of light seeped out—not a lamp, but firelight. Flickering, dark‑red, exactly the hue that appears on a funeral hall ceiling when paper money is burned.

Lao Zhao emerged from the pipe mouth; when he hit the ground his left leg gave way, his knee striking the cement, the pain making him grit his teeth.

But that pain was quickly overtaken by another sensation.

Quiet.

Too quiet.

He had imagined many kinds of underground gatherings—noisy, chaotic, full of shouts and quarrels. After all, desperate people crowd together; how could they be calm?

But the Air‑raid Shelter was indeed quiet.

Several hundred people packed into this modestly sized arched tunnel, densely packed—some standing, some squatting, some leaning against the wall. Torches were thrust into wall cracks; the firelight danced on their faces, revealing angular yet indistinct visages.

No one spoke.

Precisely speaking, someone was speaking, but the voices were pressed down extremely low, blending with breathing. Hundreds whispered in unison—their frequencies merging like hundreds of elderly women chanting in a temple, indistinguishable, making the whole space hum.

Lao Zhao's back broke out in gooseflesh.

He took a few steps inward, his gaze sweeping the wall.

On the cement wall at the left side of the tunnel, someone had drawn a staff with something. Not paint, not spray—its hue was brownish, the edges dried and solidified, yet a few spots still dripped.

It was blood.

At the staff's tip a circle was drawn, with a black dot in the middle—an eye.

That Eyeball Staff design. Sai Men's emblem.

Lao Zhao had seen the circulating photo online, identical to this. Beneath the totem were a few crooked lines, also written in blood:

"The flesh is a shackles. Evolution is redemption."

Cheap incense burned in a corner, its thick smoke mingling with the sweat and blood scent of hundreds, clinging to the nostrils, impossible to scrub away.

"Brother, first time here?"

Lao Zhao turned his head. Beside him crouched a man in his thirties, wearing a crumpled combat jacket, his face scarred by extensive burns. Beneath the skin of his right forearm something vague writhed, irregular in shape, as if bone were shifting on its own.

Lao Zhao said nothing, merely nodded.

The burned man glanced at the bulging left side of his Windcoat; his expression held no disgust, but a hint of shared‑plight sympathy.

"Same," the man said, pointing to his right hand. "I started a month before you; it began the same way, a limb rotted, almost swallowed me whole."

"What happened later?"

"Later—" the man said, pointing ahead, "just wait and see."

Lao Zhao asked no more, finding a spot against the wall to sit.

He scanned the surrounding crowd. Some wore sanitation uniforms, some Patient Gown, some in school uniforms looking only seventeen or eighteen, and some middle‑aged men still with ties half‑off their suits.

Some bore abnormal marks—hard scales sprouting on the backs of their hands, neck skin shimmering with iron‑gray metallic luster, others like him, tightly wrapped a body part with strips and gauze.

Each of these people was like him, pitiful beings being slowly consumed from within by the Weird, seeking any hope of salvation.

The rest were ordinary people, clearly without the same ailment—yet equally unable to continue normal lives.

After an unknown amount of time, someone ahead stood up.

A middle‑aged woman with a buzz cut walked to the cleared central space of the tunnel. The firelight cast her Shadow onto the ceiling, stretching it long.

Her voice was hoarse but steady.

"My name is Zheng Mei. My daughter is seven, with stage‑four neuroblastoma."

The whispers in the Air‑raid Shelter fell silent. Hundreds of eyes turned.

"We've been on the waiting list for eight months. Eight months," Zheng Mei's hand clenched at her coat edge, knuckles white. "Every morning at five I go to the hospital to queue, staying until eleven at night. The nurses say it's almost ready, just two more people. I wait. I can wait."

She paused, inhaled. Not a sob‑inducing breath, but the kind where you force something hard down.

"Later I learned that the two people ahead of my daughter—one was pushed aside by some city official's family, the other had a construction boss slip twenty million in directly. My daughter moved from third to fifth, then from fifth to ninth."

"When the eleventh month came, my daughter died. She died on a folding bed in the hospital Corridor."

Her eyes were dry.

That dryness is different from being emotionless. It's the charred layer left after something burns the tears dry.

"I went to see the director. The director had security drag me out. I went to the Health Supervision Committee. The Health Supervision Committee said it would investigate. After three months of investigation, the conclusion was 'Bed allocation complies with the relevant regulations'."

Zheng Mei smiled faintly; the curve of her mouth was unsightly, stiff as if cut with a knife.

"It complies with the regulations. My daughter's life, in accordance with the regulations, is gone."

Someone in the tunnel began wiping away tears.

After Zheng Mei finished speaking, she retreated into the crowd. Another person stepped forward.

It was a young man, wearing a camouflage jacket so dirty its original color was indiscernible. His gait was slightly crooked; his left leg was visibly shorter than his right by a segment.

"My name is Chen Gang, a veteran, third‑class merit."

He yanked the zipper of the camouflage jacket down, revealing a gray cotton T‑shirt underneath. A large dark stain covered the front of the shirt—not sweat, but something seeping from his skin.

A thin layer of keratin covered the skin on his chest, like a snake about to shed, and something beneath was slowly bulging.

"Three months ago I mistakenly entered a C‑level Weird Domain, endured seventy‑two hours, saved many people, and got something on me." He patted his chest, his Nail striking the keratin layer with a dull "thud‑thud". "I should have been a hero, but because I upheld justice and offended a high‑ranking figure who wanted to profit from the Weird Domain, I received a notice—I was placed on the 'Hostile Enigmatic' list."

He curled his mouth.

"In other words, I'm no longer human. I'm a target that could be dealt with at any moment. I fought for the country before entering the Weird Domain, risked my life to save others inside it, and after emerging I'm not even considered a person."

Lao Zhao's Nail dug into his palm.

Not out of anger. It's because it's all too familiar.

One after another, the people stepped forward and told their stories. Some voices trembled, some were steady, some stopped mid‑sentence and crouched on the ground, lifted by those beside them.

A bald man lifted the shirt on his back for everyone to see— the skin on both sides of his spine had fully hardened into a shell, the nerve endings exposed, and even a brush of air hurt.

He said that after being infected in the Weird Domain, he learned the only way out was to plunge into another Weird Domain and risk his life; successfully merging the second Weird would suppress the internal loss of control.

"I have no idea where my Weird Domain is. Even if I did, the entrance is sealed off by Special Forces— they only let their own people in."

The bald man's voice cracked.

"What are we? Consumables? Society's dregs? Pests that must be eradicated?"

Lao Zhao's left side of the body suddenly convulsed violently. Something inside churned wildly, as if ignited by these emotions. He clenched his molars, pressed his right hand hard against his left rib, and his fingertips felt a cold, hard object beneath the skin pushing outward.

He looked around.

Hundreds of eyes gleamed in the firelight. That shine couldn't be explained by ordinary emotional fluctuations—it was a light that had burned the head, having scorched all fear and hesitation dry, leaving only ash and resolve.

They were all the same.

All of them were the dregs chewed up and spat out by the world, the doomed who would crawl even into this Air‑raid Shelter.

Gradually.

Around Lao Zhao—behind him, to his left and right, front and back—hundreds of throats murmured in hundreds of different tones, like waves stacking upon waves, filling the entire Air‑raid Shelter to the brim.

"Purification."

"Grant."

"Let us—no longer decay."

Then the voices fell silent.

All the voices stopped.

At the deepest part of the tunnel, the rusted iron door made a sound.

It wasn't the sound of being pushed open. The latch on the inside of the iron door was disengaging on its own. Metal scraped against metal in the sealed space, sharp and grating.

Lao Zhao lifted his head.

Footsteps came from beyond the door. The rhythm was neither fast nor slow; each interval between steps was just right—not a walk, but a measured stride. A pace cultivated after becoming accustomed to everyone's gaze, calm to the bone.

The iron door swung open.

In the Air‑raid Shelter, the breaths of hundreds vanished in an instant.

Then everyone, including those already unable to stand, whose limbs had been eroded by their own Weird, all of them knelt.

The sound of knees striking the cement floor rose and fell, dense and muffled.

Lao Zhao's knees also touched the ground. He didn't know whether he knelt voluntarily or was pulled down by an irresistible force. He only knew that the figure emerging from behind the iron door made every living cell in his body tremble.

The person wore a long black hooded coat, covering half of the face.

He was the host of this gathering, and also one of Sai Men's Spokespersons, the "Prophet".

Like a judge walking to the witness stand, yet like an evangelist ascending the altar.

Hundreds of pairs of eyes gazed at the silhouette as if on a pilgrimage.

Lao Zhao's lips trembled.

"Prophet......"

When those two words crawled out of his throat, he realized—

It was the first time in his life he knelt before another person.