Chapter 399: Sorry, Stay Alive

Jiang Yuan could feel the chill emanating from that pointed tip, seeping through the torn uniform fibers and pressing against his skin.

But it didn't move forward.

The entire Meat Mountain trembled.

It wasn't an aggressive vibration; something inside was wrong—a self‑tearing, violent spasm. The gray‑white tissue surface rippled in large folds, the Tentacle's movements grew erratic: some flailed wildly in the air, some withdrew into the flesh wall, some simply drooped and lay limp on the broken stones.

The light from those nodules flickered.

It wasn't the previously orderly pulse, but an irregular, flickering struggle—like hundreds of bulbs simultaneously fed unstable current.

The face of Mo Shu on the Meat Mountain's surface—its frozen smile—began to deform.

It wasn't the disintegrating dissolution of a Fake Person.

It was reassembly.

The gray‑white speckles were forcibly suppressed by some power, receding from the center of the face point by point. First the bridge of the nose: the noise speckles sank and contracted, the bone outline pushed up from beneath. Then the eye sockets: the shallow depressions deepened, gaining curvature.

The shape of the lips emerged from the speckles.

It was Mo Shu's lips. The lower lip was slightly thicker than the upper, the corners naturally tilted up a bit, giving a subtle curve even when not smiling.

Then the eyes.

The gray‑white haze faded from the irises, like dirty water wiped from glass. The deep brown pupils reconcentrated their focus, and light shone within.

It wasn't the simulated hollow reflection of a Fake Person.

It was human light.

Laden with fear and pain, yet its base hue was clear, whole, belonging to the consciousness that once was Mo Shu.

Jiang Yuan was nailed to the wall, blood still pouring from his body, his vision blurred to mere outlines and color blocks. Yet he saw.

He saw the expression on that face.

It wasn't a fabricated whine, plea, or cry.

It was a genuine, bone‑to‑bone struggle.

Mo Shu's features clenched together, her jaw biting so hard the facial muscles bulged in pieces, the veins on her forehead standing out like cords. She—or rather, the entire Meat Mountain—was thrashing, the six‑meter‑tall gray‑white body swaying violently left and right; each sway peeled large chunks of tissue from the surface, which fell to the ground and shattered into powder.

She was fighting herself.

A false human soul fragment battling a Quasi‑S Weird's full instinct.

This shouldn't have happened.

According to all known Rules, a Fake Person's cognitive overwrite is one‑way and irreversible. The original consciousness dies the moment it is replaced; only template data remain—a tool to maintain the disguise, without autonomy, without choice, let alone the ability to suppress the Mother Body.

Yet Mo Shu achieved it.

Or rather, she is achieving it.

The Bone Spike hanging from Jiang Yuan's chest still trembled. The tip pressed against his sternum alternately within half a millimeter, then withdrew a millimeter, back and forth, like two people twiddling the same finger.

"Jiang... Yuan..."

The voice squeezed out from deep within the Meat Mountain.

It wasn't the previously sweet, cloying, simulated tone.

It was a hoarse, broken, truly human voice that cost immense effort for each syllable. The throat was no longer human vocal‑cord structure; airflow passed through the gray‑white tissue gaps, forced into speech.

The Bone Spike snapped back three centimeters.

A liquid streamed down Mo Shu's face.

It wasn't the white fluff of a Fake Person.

It was red.

It seeped from the corner of her right eye, slid down along the cheekbone, dripping onto the gray‑white flesh wall, emitting a sizzling corrosive sound. The blood‑tear burned a small black pit into the tissue, releasing faint smoke.

Jiang Yuan let out a hoarse sound from his throat, unable to tell whether it was a call or a choke. Blood loss slowed his brain, thoughts began to fragment, leaving a wide blank between one moment's idea and the next.

Yet his eyes did not close.

He stared at Mo Shu.

The Meat Mountain's tremors grew ever more violent. Large areas of gray‑white tissue cracked and peeled, exposing deeper structures beneath—those dense clusters of nodules flashing madly, at a frequency nearly beyond naked‑eye perception, forming a swath of blinding, grim‑green phosphorescence.

The entire system was collapsing.

Not destroyed by external force, but torn from within.

Mo Shu's features were fully displayed on the flesh surface.

Almond eyes, the outline of short chestnut hair at the hairline, the two shallow dimples at the mouth corners. All present.

Yet her expression was neither crying nor fear.

She smiled.

The two dimples sank, the mouth corners lifted, eyebrows and eyes curved.

Exactly the same smile she wore each time she called "Jiang Yuan" in the Corridor, the same smile when she brought a tray in the Cafeteria and said "I'll sit here," the same smile after a mission when she flashed an OK sign with a face covered in gray dust.

That smile bore blood‑tears. The red mark at the corner of her right eye was still wet, hanging on the cheekbone, slightly skewed by the curve of the smile.

Ugly.

Yet stunningly beautiful.

"I'm sorry."

Her voice was so light it was almost inaudible; breathy tones leaked through the gray‑white tissue gaps, each word racing the wind.

"Live on... but this time, I can't be with you."

Then she moved.

It wasn't the Meat Mountain that moved, it was Mo Shu who moved.

She, weighing only a fragment of a Fake Person's soul, drove this six‑meter‑tall, Quasi‑S Weird shell.

The motion was uncoordinated, crooked, like a rookie piloting a giant mech for the first time. The gray‑white body tilted to the right, nearly fell, then was abruptly steadied. A thick Tentacle protruded from the flesh wall; its terminal Tooth-like Structure did not open but curled, folding into a hand‑like shape.

The hand reached toward the ground.

In the ruins. Between the broken stones and the broken Reinforced Steel Bar.

Spinal Sword.

The tentacle palm hovered a moment above the hilt. The gray‑white tissue began to smoke as it approached the lingering heat of the Bone Flame, the skin carbonizing and curling, emitting a hissing sound.

She didn't pull back.

The tentacle seized the hilt directly.

The gray‑white tissue scorched over a large area the instant of contact, black carbonization spreading from the tentacle's surface all the way to the root of the meat wall. Jiang Yuan could smell the acrid odor of burnt protein, so strong it stung his nose.

Mo Shu lifted the Spinal Sword.

Then, she turned the sword to another direction.

The tip pointed inward.

Aimed at herself.

Aimed at the deepest part of the Meat Mountain's belly, the core where all the nodules converged—originally this weak point did not exist, but she forced it to coalesce; it is the life source of the Fake Person Mother Body, the fundamental power that keeps this shell operating.

In the faint residual light of the True Sight Eye, Jiang Yuan saw the full view of that core.

It was a tangled ball of gray‑green tissue, about forty centimeters in diameter, its surface covered by a dense membrane, and something beneath was pulsating. Not a throb, but a jump—one after another, with rhythm, with frequency.

Like a heart.

Mo Shu aligned the Spinal Sword with that heart.

"No—"

Jiang Yuan let out a hoarse roar.

But his body was nailed to the wall by a Bone Spike, the Shadow Ghost Power temporarily exhausted, his limbs without any strength. He could only use his throat.

His throat was about to give out.

The forced sound was broken and hoarse, barely carrying three meters in the open ruins.

Mo Shu didn't look at him.

It wasn't that she didn't want to.

It was that she didn't dare.

She knew that if she glanced again, that final ounce of strength hewn from the depths of his soul would dissipate.

So she didn't turn back.

The Spinal Sword plunged in.

The tentacle palm pushed the hilt, the Bone Flame reignited on the blade, white light spewing from the crack in the gray‑white meat wall. The blade cut through layers upon layers of nodules, Umbilical Cord, filamentous tissue, straight to that beating core.

The moment the Bone Flame touched the core's surface membrane, the entire building shuddered.

The core was pierced.

The Spinal Sword split that gray‑green heart in half from the center, the Bone Flame surged into the fissure, burning all the beating tissue inside to black ash. The remaining Umbilical Cord withered and snapped instantly, the nodules' lights extinguishing one by one from the outer edge inward, like domino bones.

The Meat Mountain stopped trembling.

It collapsed.

From the top, the gray‑white tissue lost the force that maintained its structure, like a building whose skeleton had been pulled away, collapsing in huge chunks.

The tentacle sagged and fell, the tooth‑like structures no longer opened.

All the gray‑white matter began to decompose within three seconds of losing the core's power, turning into fine gray particles that fell rustling from the meat wall.

The Bone Spike that had nailed Jiang Yuan also shattered.

The hook first became brittle, then split in the middle, withdrawing from his abdomen and turning to black ash.

Jiang Yuan fell off the wall.

From a two‑meter height, his back slammed onto the pile of broken stones, a searing pain in his spine briefly darkening his vision. But he immediately rolled over, lying on the ground, dragging himself forward with his elbows.

He crawled toward Mo Shu.

Or rather, crawled toward the spot where Mo Shu stood.

Ash was falling.

Gray particles drifted down from all directions, weightless and silent, spiraling down silently in the shattered light.

Like snow.

A gray‑black, quiet snow that belonged to no season.

The six‑meter‑tall Meat Mountain vanished. Hundreds of nodules disappeared. The gray‑white tentacle, Umbilical Cord, and tooth‑like structures all turned into these fine ashes, covering the entire collapsed Corridor.

Nothing was left.

Jiang Yuan knelt in the ash, his two hands digging frantically. His nails split in two. He dug through the broken stones, through the broken Reinforced Steel Bar, through layer after layer of gray‑white residue.

There was nothing.

No bones. No hair. No scraps of clothing.

As if once again confirming that Mo Shu had never existed from the start.

The ash kept falling.

Falling onto Jiang Yuan's shoulders, his hair, his blood‑splattered fingers.

Then his hand touched something hard.

Embedded in the lowest crevice of the broken stones.

He pried away the last piece of concrete rubble and pulled it out from beneath the ash.

A black Hand Ring.

Mo Shu's Special Tactics Terminal.

The screen was shattered, the strap burnt away half, the metal clasp deformed. Yet it remained. It was the only thing in these ruins that had not turned to ash.

Jiang Yuan gripped the Hand Ring in his hand.

He gripped it tightly.

The deformed clasp, tightened to the point of distortion, pierced the skin of his palm; blood seeped out between his fingers and mixed with the soot‑black surface of the Hand Ring.

His mouth opened.

No sound came out.

His vocal cords were almost ruined. His throat was filled with bloody froth and dust; air scraped past the damaged tracheal wall, producing only a hissing airflow.

But his shoulders were trembling.

He curled up between ashes and rubble, his forehead pressed to the blood‑stained ground, his ten fingers clamping the Hand Ring tightly against his chest.

Ash fell on his arched back, forming a thin layer.

The Corridor was utterly silent.

There was no wet writhing of the Tentacle, no resonant throbbing of the nodes, no sweet, rising‑intonation voice calling his name.

All of it was gone.

Only a blood‑soaked young man knelt in a expanse of white ash, his shoulders twitching spasmodically, silently, expending the last of his strength—

He wailed loudly.