Chapter 72: Hell’s Final Stop
Ha… ha…
Walking through the underground passage filled with wriggling blood vessels, Xin Junmao was tense all over, carefully observing his surroundings. However, in this secluded and enclosed underground world, even his restrained gasps became particularly obvious.
Xin Junmao didn’t dare to stop, he had a feeling that if he paused for even a second, those sinister creatures lurking in the darkness would swarm out. This sense of panic forced him to keep moving forward. Of course, he actually didn’t have the courage to stay too long in this wounded all over world either.
“Would the Mysterious Group people be here?” Xin Junmao thought to himself. He didn’t know if the Mysterious Group investigators had already arrived underground to explore and investigate. The thought that he might miss the chance to encounter them made his inner anxiety breed crazily like bacteria.
Sniffing the foul smell from the underground ditches, eerie sounds of those sneaky and ugly underground creatures—like maggots, rats, toads and such things—occasionally came to his ears from nearby. With chilling winds and pervasive dampness, it made one’s soles of the feet feel cold.
Perhaps he was too nervous, or perhaps the illusions seen by his “eyes” made him imagine sounds that didn’t exist in this world. After gradually losing the sensation of those underground rats crawling around nearby, what poured into his ears instead was a low murmur.
Amid that eerie murmur, he heard pious emotions, like fanatics reciting death scriptures during a midnight mass, or evil monks tolling the rebirth scriptures during a pale happy event… Those voices of unclear meaning were tempting him toward depravity, like nails chiseling from the top of his skull, bit by bit eroding his brain.
Whenever he was about to not persevere, Xin Junmao would take out the bloodstone comb, as if raising a magic tool for exorcism against the invisible demons ahead, trying to intimidate and repel those hidden evils, while also expelling the haze and fear in his heart.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh—
He didn’t know how long he had been advancing, the scenery ahead showed almost no change, everywhere twisted flesh and blood and blood vessels, a scarlet expanse. He didn’t even know if his route forward was correct, but when he reached a certain spot ahead, he heard the sound of a train speeding over the tracks, which startled him awake and made him realize there should be a subway underground passage not far nearby.
He inexplicably shivered, then decided to follow the direction of the track sounds, turning into the branch road close to the noise.
“Please, let a normal person appear.” Xin Junmao no longer hoped to encounter the Mysterious Group people who came and went like ghosts, he only hoped to at least see an ordinary person, so he would have someone to talk to.
Walking faster and faster, Xin Junmao started running. He thought that perhaps ahead was just an ordinary subway platform, he would pass through a door and return to the human world.
It seemed everything was coming true. Xin Junmao saw a half-open metal door ahead, he ran up the steps, pushed open the door, and indeed arrived at a subway platform.
But upon reaching the platform, Xin Junmao suddenly knelt on the ground in horror, his eyes sleepless for several nights glaring with more bloodshot veins. The platform’s sign read “Heaven”, yet what met the eyes was a hellish scene.
This was indeed a platform, but also humanity’s forbidden hell terminus. Its so-called heaven was only for those madmen who had lost their sanity and moral principles, and anomalies. This was precisely the entrance to the abode of the outsider deity Gluttonous Daughter whom those evil dark things worshiped, the starting point of her underground kingdom.
A subway train was close at hand, parked right beside Xin Junmao, but the cold temperature and bloody aura emanating from the subway made him hesitate. He shakily raised his head and vaguely saw a spring-like gush of blood flowing out from one end of the train, with a familiar silhouette lying on the cold ground.
Xin Junmao mustered courage and walked forward. When he saw a familiar pale face lying in a pool of blood, he finally couldn’t hold back his fear and slipped, sitting awkwardly on the ground.
Zhang Xiaoxiao, he still remembered the female university student he met that day in the subway duty room. She had a fresh and beautiful face and a well-proportioned figure, but compared to her appearance, her timid yet warm and kind personality was what made a deeper impression and goodwill.
Yet such a girl with a bright future, living in her flowering age, was now brutally dead before his eyes. Cold deathly pallor and congealed blood smeared her cheeks, a huge cavity cruelly torn open in her chest. The subway car door opened and closed, blaspheming her dead body, leaving purple-black marks on her slender waist.
Staring into those eyes with dissipated vitality, Xin Junmao could only read deep despair and sadness.
He held back sadness and glanced at the carriage where Zhang Xiaoxiao died. The bloody horrifying scene inside still made him collapse into mad vomiting, but in an instant, he imagined the horrific events she must have experienced before death.
Xin Junmao vomited until only bile came out, with nothing left to vomit, before he finally lay exhausted on the ground.
He grabbed his hair, his heart in pain. He didn’t know why he had to go through these things, whether he committed unforgivable sins in his past life or did heaven-angering evil deeds in this one.
He was clearly just a normal person, one who had once struggled for a confused future… But now, he lived like an evil spirit departed soul punished to hell, unable to escape even if he wanted to.
Xin Junmao choked a few times, only to find himself so grief-stricken and despairing that he couldn’t shed another tear. His dull gaze scanned Zhang Xiaoxiao’s corpse, thinking: Perhaps death really is a kind of relief.
Xin Junmao began to calm down, and it was then he noticed the backpack that Zhang Xiaoxiao had held protectively with both hands until death.
“Why is this backpack completely intact?” Xin Junmao sniffed, walked forward, said sorry to the dead Zhang Xiaoxiao, and snatched the backpack from her stiff fingers.
Zhang Xiaoxiao’s chest and back were both pierced by something thick and sharp. If she had faced danger before death, with nothing around, even if she didn’t use the backpack as a weapon to fight back, she would at least use it as a shield in front of her. No matter what, the backpack shouldn’t be completely intact now.
Xin Junmao guessed that Zhang Xiaoxiao’s backpack contained something important, so she had to protect it well.
After unzipping the backpack, Xin Junmao only saw things a female university student might usually carry, and apart from that, the only seemingly valuable item was the tablet computer she carried.
He took out item by item, then exclaimed in surprise, pulling out an ancient yellowed booklet from Zhang Xiaoxiao’s backpack.
“《Fish Transformation Miscellaneous Notes》, by Ye Gong…” Xin Junmao opened the pages, which immediately flipped to the position of Zhang Xiaoxiao’s bookmark, and he then read the legend about the “sea mermaid”.
