Chapter 291: Transaction
Fang Mu walked alone through the dark passage, where the surrounding things became increasingly eerie and bizarre, yet filled with an indescribable aesthetic sense.
To avoid becoming addicted to that terrifying and eerie beauty, Fang Mu chose to ignore them as much as possible.
Fang Mu did not know where this passage led, but it must be a desperate abyss.
Without Xia Chen muttering beside him, Fang Mu only felt the quiet was terrifying. When a person fears, their head starts to wildly imagine the unknown appearance with its laughably limited perspective, beginning to think everything from a conspiracy theory angle and linking their own bad luck together.
Those monsters chasing them—frog people, strange toad, flesh and blood giant toad—had now disappeared as if they had never appeared. They clearly saw him and Xia Chen roll down the ramp, yet completely ignored it, and did not take the chance to catch up and devour them alive. It was as if it was not simply a hunt, but rather a carefully set trap.
They drove the pitiful and humble him and Xia Chen into the trap, letting the two headless turtles step into this bottomless “stone urn.”
Fang Mu could not guess the purpose of doing this, just as he did not know why he had formed bad karma with these filthy, twisted, dark, and fallen anomaly beings, after which his high-quality, ordinary, and comfortable life was gone forever.
But if this was true, then they had at least succeeded halfway, because Xia Chen was dead, and he would eventually follow in his footsteps.
Xia Chen’s corpse, which he had casually placed in a corner, had a serene expression at death, just with a bluish-purple facial expression. It was uncertain whether he died from blood loss or because the frog eggs that greedily devoured his flesh and blood carried some unknown toxin or parasite that led to his demise.
As promised, Fang Mu took off the necklace from Xia Chen’s neck. It was a polished grayish-white stone, not one of the common shapes, as if it was casually picked from nature and polished smooth on the basis of its original appearance.
Perhaps the stone of the necklace held some special meaning, but that was unknowable. He only knew it was extremely precious to Xia Chen. He should not have been able to die with his eyes closed peacefully, but after hearing Fang Mu’s promise, he was willing to pass away peacefully.
An eerie heavy low roar quietly arose, becoming louder and louder with each step forward.
Fang Mu was familiar with this voice. He thought with relief that he was once again closer to that toad god.
This sound seemed to urge him to move forward faster, or to welcome his arrival, or somewhat like a warning to his life.
“I hope this time, I can die more decently,” Fang Mu thought to himself. In his previous life, he died in humiliation and pain, with his flesh and blood body and soul separated, watching his own flesh and blood body smash his own head, and his soul bisected by that giant mantis. He only hoped this life he could have a better way to die.
The toad croak grew closer, slowly turning from distant chirp into heavy roar, like muffled thunder drums being beaten, or like fallen evening city funeral bells. The source of that voice was buried in the stone chamber a hundred steps ahead.
Without giving Fang Mu time to react, a black, flexible, foul-smelling mucus-covered long strip flashed and shot out, instantly crossing the hundred-step distance like a cowboy’s lasso, binding Fang Mu’s arms and waist. The next moment, Fang Mu felt as if his waist was about to be pulled apart, his whole body leaving the ground and flying uncontrollably toward the stone chamber.
Fang Mu, who did not resist at all, was hoisted high up. He looked at the huge toad figure in front of him, his body trembling and sweating uncontrollably, but his eyes calm and clear. His body was instinctively submitting in fear, while his spirit appeared calm and detached.
It was as if his mortal flesh and soul consciousness were once again split apart. Fang Mu could not say exactly when his change began.
Perhaps it started when he heard that Lin Family Village was wiped out with no survivors in the village, or even earlier, when he figured out the reason for the toad frog god’s mad “obsession” with him.
Fang Mu still feared the toad god’s power and appearance, but Fang Mu no longer feared death.
Regardless of whether the other could understand, Fang Mu still spoke to the toad shadow slowly opening its blood-red eyes all over its body: “Transcend… Lord of All Things, we… we are all under His… carefully designed space-time cage. We can cooperate.”
Fang Mu also felt that he was probably truly mad, actually attempting to communicate with the abnormal god and trying to reach a transaction with it.
“You want me to open the seven orifices, to share senses with the Lord of All Things, and then communicate with Him, right?” Fang Mu discovered the toad god made no movement, merely gazing at him with several bright scarlet eyes. Those gazes were like ice-cold spears, endlessly stabbing in and out of his body. Though not injured, he already felt as if experiencing intense pain. Enduring the discomfort, he continued, “I can cooperate with you, but in exchange, you must help me too.”
Fang Mu stiffly grinned, putting on a confident smile as if molded from plaster, “Otherwise, every time I traverse and rebirth afterward, I will immediately choose suicide, giving you no chance to find me. I will return to the end of the universe, letting you live in a past without a future, just like me.
You want to control me, kill me, and I can counter with my method. Are you angry, toad god?”
As the words fell, Fang Mu felt the black long strip wrapped around his waist slowly loosen its grip, gently placing him on the ground. The toad shadow let out a low call, as if responding to Fang Mu.
Fang Mu felt he understood the other’s meaning. Immediately after, he heard a metallic object falling and rolling in front of him. Looking down, it was that nail hammer.
Fang Mu picked them up. Under the gaze of those rounds of red “full moons,” he aimed the nail at his nose, murmuring in his mouth: “After losing normal vision and hearing, this time it’s losing normal smell…? Will I be able to smell the abnormal god’s aura?”
Dang!
Outside the window came the voice of a traveling merchant hawking while striking a triangle iron. Gentle sunlight shone on Fang Mu’s zombie-like pallid face. Fang Mu looked at the three dishes and one soup in front of him, with no appetite.
“Eat a little at least, don’t just starve to death like this.” A graceful figure walked into the hospital room where he lived.
Fang Mu remained motionless, his expression unchanged, only his eyes turning, like a grass carp waiting to be killed in a basin of water. When he saw the stone necklace on An Fang’s neck, he shifted his turning gaze back to the three dishes and one soup in front of him, saying softly: “Okay, but today I have no appetite either.”
With that, he hesitated, tremblingly picked up the spoon on the tray, scooped a spoonful of seaweed egg drop soup, held his breath, and sent it into his mouth, as if drinking bitter medicine.
As if his whole body was resisting and rejecting such food entering his body, after forcefully swallowing it down, Fang Mu’s eyes turned red, and he dry-heaved.
“Glucose, normal saline… just these nutrients won’t let you persevere for long.” An Fang sighed, sitting by Fang Mu’s bed.
In a daze, Fang Mu seemed to see his wife An Qin, who had not yet been married to him during his hospitalization back then, looking at him with such concern, saying the same words: “What exactly happened to your body?”
