Chapter 398: Wake Up

—The second wave of impact arrived.

Gray‑white tentacles erupted from the six‑meter‑tall main body; each was as thick as an adult's arm, its tip blooming into a tooth‑like structure that spun at high speed, shredding all remaining building material in its path.

Jiang Yuan twisted to dodge the first one; the second brushed past his earlobe, hot and searing, tearing away a small piece of flesh. He failed to evade the third, and a Shadow Soldier blocked it for him.

The two soldiers were sheared in half by the tentacles; the upper and lower halves flew in opposite directions, and before they could hit the ground they were swept away by more tentacles.

Swallowed.

Jiang Yuan watched with his own eyes as the remnants of the two Shadow Soldiers were drawn into the gray‑white flesh wall, changing color the instant they touched— from pure black to gray, from gray to white, and finally merging completely into the constantly writhing tissue.

Jiang Yuan's Shadow Legion visibly shrank: two hundred seventy. Two hundred forty. Two hundred ten. The tentacles attacked far too rapidly— at least twelve times per second, each precisely snatching away one to three soldiers. The legion's replenishment rate was completely overwhelmed.

He swung his sword.

The Spinal Sword's Bone Flame drew a white arc in the darkness, cleaving the thickest tentacle before him. At the cut, gray‑green slime splattered out, scalding, splashing onto his uniform and hissing white smoke as the fabric fibers rapidly rotted.

But within two seconds the severed tentacle regrew from the wound, thicker than before.

Jiang Yuan fell back, the Spinal Sword held horizontally before him. His breathing was rapid and irregular; with each inhalation, fragmented tissue scraped inside his lungs. His internal injuries were worse than he had imagined— the frontal impact earlier had broken at least four ribs.

Then that voice came again.

"Jiang Yuan—"

It came from deep within the Meat Mountain. Sweet. A breathy kind of sweet, with the tail of the word slightly lifted, as if coaxing.

"Your heartbeat is so fast."

Jiang Yuan's pupils contracted sharply.

He was all too familiar with that tone. After every mission's medical check, Mo Shu would come over to look at his heart‑rate data, then feign surprise, press her hand to his chest, and say the exact same words.

At those times his heartbeat truly did quicken.

The fourth tentacle, exploiting the split‑second of his distraction, swept in from the side and whisked away the last row of Shadow Soldiers before him— seventeen of them, taken in a single bundle.

The legion's count fell below one hundred fifty.

Jiang Yuan ground his lower molars, a metallic rust taste seeping from the gaps, and charged forward.

He could not retreat. If he fell back, the others from the Investigation Bureau would suffer, and he could not escape either.

The only way to survive was up close.

He struck the first slash.

The Bone Flame cut into the flesh wall; the gray‑white tissue curled and charred on both sides of the blade, emitting a bubbling sound like boiling oil. The blade pushed in thirty centimeters, ten centimeters more than before.

Effective.

Close‑range corrosion was far more efficient than the ranged slash; he could feel the Spinal Sword's Bone Flame burning away those gray‑white filamentous structures, turning them from living to dead.

Second slash. Cross Slash. For this strike he infused the power of the Shadow Legion— over ninety soldiers simultaneously contracted toward the blade, black shadows wrapping the outer layer of the Bone Flame, creating Dual Corrosion.

It cut half a meter inward.

He saw inside. A fist‑sized gray‑green nodule lay less than twenty centimeters ahead of the blade; it pulsed, with signal noise bubbling beneath its thin membrane, attached to a gray‑white umbilical cord stretching outward—a Fake Person Seed.

He cut it.

The third slash split that nodule in two. The gray‑green light vanished, the remnants carbonized rapidly in the Bone Flame, turning into black powder.

But the entire Meat Mountain shuddered.

It wasn't pain.

It was anger.

"Join us."

The voice changed. It was still Mo Shu's timbre, but the tone shifted from coaxing to pleading— sincere, soft, with a sobbing undertone.

"Then we'll live together."

"Just like before."

Jiang Yuan's movement paused for a tenth of a second.

Just that tenth of a second.

Six tentacles pierced simultaneously from his blind spots— two from above, one each from the left and right, and two from below. He cleaved the upper ones, deflected the left, the right one sliced off half his sleeve, and the ones below were blocked by the last thirty Shadow Soldiers.

No soldiers left.

The whole army was annihilated.

The Shadow Legion's strength fell from a full complement of hundreds to zero in under four minutes.

Jiang Yuan's back pressed against a broken piece of Reinforced Steel Bar. His hand trembled—not from fear, but because his muscle fibers, over‑enhanced by the Shadow Ghost, had been over‑exerted for too long, microscopic tearing accumulating to a macroscopically visible degree.

His right hand that gripped the sword was on the brink of failure.

But he did not let go.

Jiang Yuan made a reckless decision.

He poured all remaining Shadow into his legs, the thigh muscles swelling under the infusion until his uniform's pant legs burst. Then he kicked off the ground.

The ground was pressed into a half‑meter‑deep pit. His body shot forward, climbing the surface of the Meat Mountain, the Spinal Sword drawing a long fiery line across the gray‑white flesh wall. Tentacles lunged from all directions; he twisted his waist, flipped, and alternately stepped on the uneven surface, constantly changing direction, the blade slicing away every obstructing tentacle.

Four meters. He arrived.

Jiang Yuan raised his sword.

The Bone Flame burned brightest along the blade. All remaining Shadow energy—the final reserve from the Shadow Demon Body— surged into the tip, pushing the white Bone Flame to a blinding intensity.

With this slash, either he would cleave the opponent open, or he would exhaust himself.

Just as the Spinal Sword sliced through the air, about to touch the nodule's surface—

Gray‑white noise specks surged.

The flesh wall covering the nodule underwent a rapid structural re‑assembly in a few tenths of a second. The noise points contracted, coalesced, and compressed, shaping a face in less than a breath.

Mo Shu's face.

It was not the blank, featureless mask of a Fake Person. It was the real, fully detailed Mo Shu's face, with every laugh line and every mole.

She is crying.

Her almond-shaped eyes were filled with tears, her lips trembled, the two dimples flickered in and out due to the trembling facial muscles, and the skin at the corners of her eyes turned red from being soaked with tears.

He had seen that expression before.

He had only seen it once.

In the Corridor, Mo Shu learned that she was a Fake Person at that moment.

The Spinal Sword stopped.

It was not blocked.

The blade hovered less than five centimeters in front of that face, and the heat of the Bone Flame baked the gray‑white crust until it began to curl and char.

But Jiang Yuan's hand would not obey.

Half a second.

That's enough.

A thick Bone Spike pierced upward from directly beneath him.

He only felt the force when he lowered his head. The Bone Spike entered his left abdomen, exited through his lower back, and a spray of warm red liquid burst onto the ruined load‑bearing wall behind him.

Then the Bone Spike kept pushing forward, embedding him and his blood firmly into that wall.

The Spinal Sword slipped from his hand.

The blade spun a few times in the air, clanged as it landed in the ruins three meters away, and the Bone Flame went out.

Jiang Yuan lowered his head and stared at the Bone Spike that had pierced his abdomen. It was about seven or eight centimeters in diameter, gray‑white, its surface covered with tiny hooks. Each hook was embedded deep in his muscle tissue, and any attempt to pull it out would cause a secondary tear.

Blood was flowing. Not seeping, but gushing. From the two openings of the penetrating wound, dark red blood mixed with shredded organ fragments surged outward, sliding down the surface of the Bone Spike and pooling beneath his feet into an ever‑growing puddle.

Pain.

But not the worst kind of pain.

The most painful part was his half‑second hesitation just now.

The Shadow Ghost's hum grew faint. It could no longer hold on. After a whole night of physiological suppression, cognitive shielding, Shadow output, and the backlash of the recent total annihilation of the legion, the Shadow Ghost's energy reserves were depleted.

The Meat Mountain slowly approached.

Its mode of movement was not walking. It crawled as a whole, slowly, its gray‑white tissue engulfing all the broken stones and steel bars on the ground, crossing obstacles and wrapping them, like a rising tide.

That face of Mo Shu still clung to the surface of the meat wall.

The tear stains dried, and the curve of her mouth shifted—from crying to smiling. He knew that smile well. It was Mo Shu's signature expression whenever she saw him, with arched eyebrows, deep dimples, and the perfect upward tilt of the mouth.

But her eyes were gray‑white.

"Jiang Yuan."

That voice was calling him.

"Stop struggling, okay?"

"If you don't resist, it won't hurt, and we can be together forever."

Jiang Yuan's vision began to blur. Excessive blood loss and insufficient cerebral blood flow caused a gray ripple to wash over the edge of his consciousness.

The Shadow Ghost made a final effort—it concentrated all its remaining energy around the wound, trying to slow the bleeding. But the penetrating wound was too large, the hooks kept tearing, and even pressure couldn't stop it.

His fingers went numb. He had already lost feeling in his toes.

The Meat Mountain was less than two meters from him.

The gray‑white Tentacles had already reached out, the tips of their Tooth-like Structures opening and closing, leaving only half a meter between them and his suspended feet.

The cicada after autumn—this metaphor suddenly flashed in his mind.

Then he smiled.

It was not a bitter smile, nor a tragic one, but a near‑absurd, self‑mocking grin with a sense of reckless surrender.

He released his grip—the Spinal Sword had long since left his hand. He raised both hands, spread his ten fingers, and then seized the Bone Spike that had pierced his abdomen.

The hook cut into his palm.

The skin split, tendons were severed, and a muffled grinding of bone sounded from within his palm.

Blood spurted out simultaneously from all ten finger gaps. He gripped too tightly—tighter than he had ever held anything in his life.

The Meat Mountain paused for an instant.

The Tentacles and Tooth-like Structures halted their feeding, and hundreds of gray‑green nodules flickered together.

This behavior was not in its prediction model.

After being nailed down, prey should struggle. It should try to pull out the Bone Spike. It should call for help. It should feel fear.

It should not voluntarily grasp the thing that is killing it.

Jiang Yuan clutched the Bone Spike, blood staining his entire forearm red. His mouth opened, and besides the froth of blood, a name he had shouted countless times rose in his throat.

"Mo Shu—"

His voice was broken. His throat was half hoarse, and the airflow forced through the torn vocal cords produced a coarse, grating syllable.

"Please......"

"If you're still there, wake up."

The smile on Mo Shu's face atop the Meat Mountain froze.

It did not disappear. It solidified. All facial movements ceased in that instant, the gray‑white speckles stopped swirling, and the two gray‑white eyes stared straight at Jiang Yuan, nailed to the wall.

Silence lasted three seconds.

Then another Bone Spike shot out from the top of the Meat Mountain.

It was sharper than the previous one, its tip ground into a cone, its surface lacking hooks—not to nail, but to pierce. Its trajectory was straight, its target clear.

Jiang Yuan's heart.

The Bone Spike cut through the air, the gray‑green glint on its tip growing larger, filling Jiang Yuan's unfocused vision.

One meter. Half a meter. Twenty centimeters. Ten centimeters.

The tip of the Bone Spike touched the fabric fibers on his uniform's chest, and the outermost layer of fibers snapped the instant of contact.

Then.

It stopped.

At a point less than a millimeter from Jiang Yuan's sternum, the Bone Spike—capable of piercing any human body—hung rigidly in mid‑air, as if an invisible hand were pulling it from behind.

The Bone Spike trembled.

It was not residual inertia after deceleration. Two forces were opposing each other: one urging it forward, the other preventing it from moving forward.