Chapter 306: Good Medicine
This bizarre horror scene truly made one’s brows furrow tightly. If Fang Mu hadn’t seen even more blasphemous things that offended human aesthetic sense, he would have already been vomiting by now.
When that humanoid long-skirted creature, covered all over with rugged gullies, throbbing flesh tumors, and bulging veins, fully emerged from the fusion of the four flesh eggs and ghost spirit, hanging upside down from the cave ceiling, it was like a newborn life with naive innocence, yet it let out a shrill roar, proclaiming to everyone its supreme nobility and unique power far superior to all known Earth creatures.
The moment Fang Mu noticed it, it also locked onto Fang Mu right after its birth. With a light hop, it pounced down toward Fang Mu like a splitting blood-red flood.
Fang Mu knew it was impossible to defeat such a creature, so he could only bow his head and frantically search for footholds while escaping toward the abyss below.
But seeing the blood-red flood accelerating its splitting dance in the sky and desperately approaching him, Fang Mu’s reason was on the verge of shattering, forcing him to make a rational yet utterly irrational choice—he chose to leap down.
Fang Mu boldly leaped straight into the bottomless dark abyss that he couldn’t see the end of, embracing the unknown, falling into the abyss.
In the instant of leaping down, Fang Mu suddenly felt a sudden brightness behind him. He glanced back sideways and saw a white dazzling light exploding in mid-air, accompanied by intense high temperature, illuminating the hideous blood-red thing lunging at him, revealing it full of holes and wounded all over.
Fang Mu turned his gaze to where the dazzling light came from, vaguely seeing two figures, one male and one female, standing on a high platform. They seemed to have noticed his existence too, as one let out an exclamation, but the tail end of the exclamation carried a sigh of regret.
In the high-speed fall, Fang Mu felt the connection between his consciousness and reality becoming incoherent, switching irregularly back and forth between the high-speed images of rapid descent and endless darkness. This sensation made patterns and logic no longer important, as everything became elusive.
Then, whether it was the lantern show of his consciousness disintegrating or truly seeing the scene from each life’s final moments, the feeling of life suddenly closing and death abruptly descending at the peak of fear was unexpectedly like a gentle medicine, slowly comforting his uneasy surging heart.
This was a very eerie feeling. For most humans, death is unknown, equivalent to fear, but for him, death was just another restart. Death was not unknown. Fang Mu was not afraid of death; he feared more the endless weird things he had to face while alive, things that alienated life and deviated from death, infinitely approaching some ultimate terror of an incomprehensible truth.
Croak croak croak croak……
The toad frog chirps that had countless times made his hair stand on end now sounded in Fang Mu’s ears completely like the murmurs of billions of high monks reciting Buddhist scriptures, or like the gospel of a choir singing hymns, welcoming a life about to transform and awaken.
“Want to make it become like Them…” While recalling the past, Fang Mu suddenly remembered the memory of briefly staying in that eerie small dwelling, the mild yet deadly voice of the white-clothed youth, like a poison that induced peaceful eternal sleep.
“Make its eyes able to open, to see all things in the world.”
“Nose able to breathe, to smell fragrant scents.”
“Ears able to hear, to listen to the sounds of all things in the world.”
“Mouth able to speak and taste flavors, to express emotions and enjoy deliciousness.”
“Open one acupoint on the body every day, and after seven days, it died.”
Fang Mu recalled the story told by the white-clothed youth. At this moment, he was confused yet clear-headed.
“Died? Who died?”
“It died.”
“How did it die?”
“Died from opening the senses.”
“…”
Fang Mu fell into a state of questioning himself and answering himself, then questioning again.
“I’ve opened my senses too, so I’ve died too?”
“No, I haven’t died. I’m still alive.”
“How do I determine I’m still alive, by human definition?”
“No, stripping away all the beautification of human language, describing my state from the most simple natural perspective, I’ve died.”
“…”
As if the malicious god of fate had finally heard a satisfactory answer, Fang Mu found himself stopping just a few centimeters from the ground. His body was uncontrollably pulled, tugged, and finally dragged before an ugly massive toad.
Looking at that crouching detestable face, never before so close, able to maintain reason to scrutinize this twisted visage, just like him at this moment.
Fang Mu looked at the toad, the toad looked at Fang Mu, and Fang Mu looked at himself again.
Fang Mu couldn’t help but recall what the white-clothed youth had said at Lin Sen’s new work book signing event.
“Everything can deceive you, but your heart won’t deceive you.”
Fang Mu reached out to touch the cold corpse exposed inside the toad’s body awaiting digestion, gently scanning over the surgical scar on the corpse’s chest, murmuring, “I have indeed already died.”
Countless eyes on the Toad God’s body turned, focusing their gaze on Fang Mu, like invisible beams with freezing power “freezing” Fang Mu’s body, making him gradually unable to move.
“Are you really dreaming?”
The stiff Fang Mu stared into those pairs of eyes that revealed no emotions, like simultaneously looking into many mirrors of different angles and curvatures. Though deprived of mobility, Fang Mu’s brain was nimbly thinking, and Lin Ling’s voice flashed through his mind again.
The voice rippled in his heart, like vast Buddhist chants, layer upon layer, deafening.
Fang Mu’s consciousness blurred, and he saw some images again, memories that shouldn’t have appeared in his perspective.
A person draped in a black robe personally dug out a paulownia wood box deeply buried in the cave ruins, then delivered it to Fang Lin’s doorstep.
Fang Mu wanted to glimpse the true face under the black robe, but saw an aged wrinkled toad frog face covered in pimples and protrusions. Yet from this deformed twisted visage, he could instantly recognize its owner as Wang Zheng, whom he had thought long dead!
Wang Zheng in this form was essentially no different from being dead. He had become one of the frog people, under the absolute control of the Toad Frog God. All his actions had to obey the Toad Frog God’s orders.
Just like how he passed the empty paulownia wood box to Fang Mu of the second life, it was also under the Toad Frog God’s order. Including all the times before and after, countless instances of lurking and chasing near Fang Mu, they were all broad yet adverse commands from the Toad Frog God, simply to induce Fang Mu to approach the Toad Frog God’s dwelling voluntarily.
Faced with this unexpected yet reasonable truth, Fang Mu’s heart had no ripples or fluctuations, no anger toward the Toad Frog God’s actions, just one question arising.
“When did the Toad Frog God’s blessing begin to generate? If it was because the me of the first life entered Nong Mountain, then if the me of the first life had restrained my desire to investigate, would none of this have happened now?” Fang Mu thought, gazing at the eyes on the Toad God, and he saw the answer.
