Chapter 363: Bestowed Blessing

The firelight in the Air-raid Shelter flickered twice.

Prophet stood in the center of the clearing, the black robe's hood covering most of the face, revealing only a pale strip of chin and a faint arc.

They didn't hurry to speak.

Hundreds of people knelt on the ground, hundreds of eyes fixed on them, hundreds of hearts beating almost in unison.

They just stood there, letting the silence speak the first words for them.

Enough.

Enough time.

Prophet finally moved. They took a step forward, lifted the chin from the shadow of the hood, and the lower half of the face illuminated by the firelight wore a strange expression.

It wasn't indifference.

It wasn't aloofness.

It was pain.

It was the look of feeling pain oneself when seeing another's wound.

"Do you hate?"

The voice was soft, yet it reached every corner of the tunnel. The echo bounced several times between the curved cement walls, layering together, sounding as if three or four people were asking the question simultaneously.

No one answered.

But everyone's breathing grew heavy.

Prophet took another step forward, the hem of the black robe brushing a dried pool of blood on the ground.

"You certainly hate."

Their voice softened, as gentle as when coaxing a child.

"What good is hatred? Hating for twenty, thirty, forty years, hating until something grows out of your bones, until your body cries out in injustice for you—then what?"

They extended a hand, pointing at the crouching middle‑aged woman in the left corner of the wall.

"Zheng Mei, do you hate the hospital? Has your hatred brought back your daughter?"

Zheng Mei lowered her head, lips pressed tight, shoulders trembling.

Prophet's finger moved to the right, pointing at the veteran in the camouflage jacket.

"Chen Gang, do you hate that big figure? Your third‑class merit, the people you saved in the Weird Domain—your achievements earned with one leg—can they outweigh a single word from him?"

Chen Gang in the camouflage jacket clenched his fist, his Nail pierced his palm. A faint "crack" sounded from the keratinized chest, and something beneath arched.

Prophet turned around, facing the entire Air-raid Shelter.

【8】 "Who do you hate? Corrupt officials? Capitalists? The parasites above that devour people without spitting out bones?"

Who do you hate? Hate corrupt officials? Hate capitalists? Hate those parasites above who devour people without spitting out bones?

They shook their head.

"Wrong."

"What you should hate is yourselves."

A stir arose in the tunnel.

Prophet did not stop. Their speech was slow, leaving gaps between each word, giving the words enough time to sink into people's hearts.

"Why are you suffering? Because you are rotting. You've been rotting since birth. This flesh—" he patted his chest, "—is a designed prison. It gets hungry, thirsty, sick, ages. It forces you to beg, to kneel, to be humiliated. Your daughter died in the Corridor because this flesh couldn't bear it; you were put on the elimination list because this flesh, once tainted by Weird, became a target."

He paused.

"Have you ever considered that this very skin is weighing you down?"

Lao Zhao's left side convulsed violently again. The thing that had pierced the bronze mirror rolled beneath the skin, slithering from the shoulder blade to the waist, leaving a tingling, nerve‑ripping ache at each spot. He clenched his teeth, chattering, and pressed his right hand against his ribs with such force his fingertips trembled.

If he let go, the thing would burst out.

Prophet's voice continued to drift overhead.

"The world offers you only one path—waiting for death."

The firelight flickered.

Someone began to sob. Not a wailing cry, but a suppressed, distorted whimper forced from the throat. Among the hundreds, at least thirty or forty were crying.

But more people did not cry.

They only stared, their eyeballs dry, reddened by the firelight.

"I was once just like you." Prophet's tone changed, from preacher to an ordinary person recounting his own story. "I was also fearful. I also struggled. I also tried every method that should be tried—petitioning, contacting the media, pursuing legal channels."

He let out a short laugh, as if something had choked him.

"Then I realized they were a gang. They wrote the law, set the Rules, raised the media. You use their tools to sue them? That's not defending rights; that's performance art."

From deep in the tunnel, someone echoed, "Right, performance art."

The voice was hoarse, carrying a numbness drained by reality. The words rippled outward like a stone dropped into water—

"Useless." "A bunch of bastards." "I believed them for twenty years."

The clamor rose and fell.

Prophet raised a hand.

All sound was cut off instantly.

"But."

He said only one word.

"But— I was chosen."

Beneath the cuff of the black robe, a mass of dark‑red light rose slowly. It was neither lamp light nor firelight. It grew from his palm, pulsing with a rhythmic beat.

With each pulse, the entire Air-raid Shelter thudded once.

It wasn't an audible boom. It was a physical sensation, a resonance rising from the soles of the feet, like a hand pressing your heart through the chest cavity.

Lao Zhao's pupils contracted.

In the middle of that ball of light, several crimson-colored things slowly rotated; each was only the size of a thumb pad, moist and sticky, its surface covered with vein-like patterns, and they throbbed as they expanded and contracted.

And heart.

Exactly the same.

The Prophet's voice came from a distant place, both near and far—near as if whispering in the ear, far as if separated by an entire world.

"The Seed is not a curse. The Seed is the cure. It accomplishes for you what this flesh cannot—evolution. The old shell breaks, and only then can the new you stand. You are not losing humanity; you are shedding the limits of being human. This world will not save you; you are saving yourselves."

He pushed his palm forward.

Those throbbing Seeds slipped from his palm, hovering in midair. Crimson light fell on every upturned face, making their eyes glow like lanterns lit with red candles.

Old Zhao's Adam's apple rolled up and down once.

The burn‑scarred man beside him had already risen; the writhing thing beneath his right forearm almost burst through the skin. He staggered forward, muttering something over and over.

Zheng Mei also rose.

Chen Gang also rose.

Old Zhao himself also rose.

He couldn't remember how he had risen. His left leg had long gone numb; the thing in the bronze mirror went mad inside him, thrusting outward, while his right hand pressed desperately against his ribs, beyond control. Yet his knees locked, and his soles planted on the ground.

Because those Seeds were calling him.

It wasn't a sound. It was a frequency—a beat that whispered "come" with each pulse, precisely filling the gaps between his heartbeats, making it feel as if his heart had always been missing that half‑beat.

The burn victim was the first to lunge toward the Seeds. He flung his mouth wide, dropping his jaw as if dislocated, and directly seized a Crimson Seed, swallowing it whole.

Then he screamed.

That scream was not human—like a steel rod bent, like a cat falling from a height, like a kettle boiled dry still left on the stove, whistling.

He flung himself to the ground. The skin on his right forearm burst open, flesh rolling outward—not rotting. The crisp crack of shattering bone was magnified tenfold in the enclosed space; everyone heard a continuous series of clicks, like crushing a whole field of walnuts. The burn victim rolled on the ground for a full fifteen seconds; what spewed from his mouth was no longer blood, but a dark liquid with a metallic sheen.

Then he fell silent.

He crawled up from the ground.

Old Zhao saw his right hand—the hand that had once writhed with a misshapen lump—now covered in a layer of dark gray scales extending from fingertips to shoulder. Each scale lay flat as if grown there naturally. The writhing stopped; the mutation stabilized.

He lowered his gaze to his new arm, then lifted his head; two streams of murky tears slid down his scar‑streaked face.

... It doesn't hurt anymore.

Three words.

More effective than any sermon.

Zheng Mei lunged forward. Chen Gang, dragging his shortened left leg, surged after her. Old Zhao released the hand pressing his ribs, not even hesitating.

He opened his mouth, and a Seed slipped into his throat.

The sky collapsed.

His consciousness was hurled into a meat grinder. Bones shattered, muscles melted, skin flowed down the frame like wax. The thing that had burrowed in from the bronze mirror let out a triumphant hiss, growing wildly in the chaos—but the Seeds were faster. Crimson power surged like molten lava into his veins, grinding over the parasite, boiling, crushing, absorbing, and assimilating the "snake" that had writhed inside him for a month and a half.

At the peak of pain, he felt nothing at all.

Old Zhao opened his eyes.

The left side of his body was no longer rotting. The black skin receded, the bloody gauze dried, and the face in the bronze mirror vanished. In its place, dense dark‑red patterns crawled up his left arm from wrist to shoulder—like vines, like veins, like a tattoo.

He clenched his fist.

Power exploded from his joints, so much that his fingertips glowed.

He turned his head.

All five who had swallowed the Seeds now stood. Zheng Mei's frame changed—her formerly gaunt body filled out her clothes, spine straightened, eyes glowing with a dim red light. Chen Gang's shortened leg, amid the crack of blood and bone, regained its original length; his keratinized chest sealed shut, sprouting new skin with a dark sheen.

The five faced the platform, knees striking the concrete floor.

"Prophet—"

Their voices were uneven, their levels of sanity varied, yet each carried the same devotion rising from the marrow.

Around them, the believers who had not yet taken the Seeds red‑eyed, shoving forward. The Prophet extended his hand from his sleeve again, and more Crimson Seeds rose from his palm, drifting like dandelion fluff toward the crowd.

The Air-raid Shelter went completely mad.

Weeping, pleas, the crisp crack of breaking bone, and the post‑transformation howls mingled together, hardly different from hell's soundtrack.

And the black‑robed figure on the platform stood still at the very center of the frenzy.

Then he lowered his hood.

Old Zhao knelt on the ground and lifted his head.

He saw the firelight illuminate the Prophet's face.

It was a young face: crew‑cut, dark circles, skin not pale but tinged with the sallow hue left by chronic late‑night habits and instant coffee.

If Zhixia Qin were here, she would surely recognize him—this was none other than Xiao Zhang, the timid lackey who always trailed Qin Zhixia, terrified of ghosts, constantly shrinking his neck to complain.

Swap his black robe for a police uniform, and he'd be the sort of fresh‑faced clerk you see handing forms at the police station window—utterly ordinary.

But his eyes were not ordinary.

In those eyes lay something indescribable—not bloodlust, not madness—but pity. The kind of lofty, downward‑gazing compassion one feels when watching ants struggle in a mud pit.

Yes, compassion.

A compassion that chills the spine more than coldness does.

He slightly bowed his head, gazing at the twisted, transforming believers howling and worshiping on the ground; the corner of his mouth curled—a subtle arc, uncannily precise, as if he had practiced it countless times before a mirror.

He raised his hand and lightly brushed his chest.

His lips twitched.

His voice was so soft that no one in the tumult could hear it.

"Qin Team… you're wrong."

He paused, blinked. In his eyes something shattered and reassembled into a pattern utterly unlike before.

I in the past was also wrong.

He moved his hand away from his chest, five fingers spread, palm down, as if soothing a group of children.

And I, now walk on the correct path.

The tail sound of that last word still hung in the air, not dissipated.

At this moment.

Outside the heavy metal door of the Air-raid Shelter, a sound suddenly came.

Three——

The worshippers' voices of reverence abruptly stopped.

Two——

Lao Zhao's pupils suddenly contracted, he turned his head toward the iron door.

One——