Chapter Ninety: The Descent of the Otherworld

Something was wrong.

The butcher’s blade had pierced straight through the creature’s body. It should have been a moment for triumph, yet as Fan Li watched, the veins on his forehead throbbed. A foul premonition rose in his heart.

In all the battles he had fought against monsters before, he had never seen one hurl itself at an enemy in anything like a suicidal collision.

Fan Li’s concentration was stretched to its limit, his gaze fixed entirely on the butcher and the creature.

The butcher fought in a style of its own: heavy chops, sweeping blows, no elaborate technique, relying wholly on strength rivaling that of a giant to tear its enemies apart. After its broad blade drove through the monster’s body, it heaved with its right arm, trying to wrench the blade upward and split the creature open.

But at that very moment, the monster’s expression suddenly twisted. Its savage features sharpened as the other heads wriggled rapidly beneath its skin and gathered to either side of the broad blade.

The monster used the heads on its body to seal the weapon in place, preventing the butcher from drawing on that vicious armament to inflict further harm.

It was grinning. It was hard to believe such an expression could exist on a monster’s face. Fan Li even suspected that it had not entirely lost its memories, and still retained some measure of thought.

The monster guided the heads upon its body. They no longer cried out or wailed; instead, all at once they wore distorted, ferocious expressions filled with desperate self-abandonment, the cold arrogance of one who looked down from a lofty height upon the weak below.

They seemed to be exulting in the immense delight that the butcher had been restrained, unable even to wield its weapon.

Then, a fist tore through the darkness and slammed straight into a head shrieking in a piercing cry.

One head exploded on impact. The unimaginable force caused the creature itself to crack open in places, rotten flesh spraying across the walls on either side.

This zombie, festooned with heads and possessed of a collector’s fetish, had clearly overlooked one thing: the butcher’s power did not depend solely on the broad blade. It itself embodied terror and crushing oppression.

The butcher launched its assault. Not only its massive fists, but the iron triangular crown on its head became a deadly instrument of attack. With the sound of flesh colliding, only a few exchanges were needed before the monster had lost most of its heads, and its body was left with wound after rotting, fatal wound.

A shrill scream burst forth.

The blows seemed to enrage the monster. From within the remaining heads on its body came an ear-splitting cry, and then it opened its mouth and began to vomit.

When those foul, stinking fluids hit the floor, they actually gathered together, spreading out like a great net that lunged directly over the butcher.

The viscous mass seemed alive, continuously climbing over the butcher’s body. The butcher struggled with all its strength, yet could not break free.

The monster kept vomiting, though some of its heads could be seen rotting at an alarming speed, blood seeping through ragged fissures in their cheeks.

There was a price to be paid for expelling those viscous fluids. The monster was trying to sacrifice its collection in order to restrain the butcher’s movements.

The huge mass of slime completely enveloped the butcher. Its motions were restricted, and it could no longer tear itself free effectively.

A moment later, the butcher was entirely swathed in blood, forming a colossal cocoon of gore. Yet the viscous matter kept piling on, layer after layer. Trapped within, the butcher could only struggle faintly, unable to break out.

Its strength exhausted, the monster’s remaining heads had turned into rotten, stinking death masks.

Using this power seemed to cost the creature dearly. Its narrowed eyes reflected a fierce blaze as it stepped toward the butcher.

The hand pressed against Ellie’s head slowly relaxed. Fan Li could not tolerate one of his own being killed, even if the butcher was only an emotionless monster.

The butcher could no longer offer effective resistance. Fan Li was about to unleash his second monster and end the enemy’s life.

Just as he fully released his hand and was about to order Ellie to attack, a piercing alarm suddenly rang out in the narrow corridor.

Everything happened so abruptly, as if some hidden mechanism had been touched by accident. Fan Li’s vision was affected; the gray cast left by his night vision began to fade with its only hint of color, and the next second he was swallowed completely by darkness.

Click.

Fan Li reached into his backpack and flicked on a windproof lighter.

Though he had been prepared, when he saw what lay before him, he still drew a sharp breath.

The scene from the first summoning of the butcher appeared again. The wall covering began to peel away, and the metal shelving was coated with a thick layer of rust. Unfamiliar noises echoed in the distance, like endless imprisoned ghosts hammering against the barred gate, desperate to escape.

And overhead, Fan Li even saw bodies bound in wire. They had been butchered by methods of extreme cruelty. His breathing tightened. He could be certain that before the darkness had fallen, these corpses had not existed at all.

This was not the real world. No, to be precise, this was the second world summoned by the butcher. Where there is light, there is darkness. If human beings live in the surface world, then the environment before his eyes, built from mildew, rust, bloodstains, and corpses, was the deeper inner world.

And in the center of the corridor, the huge blood cocoon that had trapped the butcher was also peeling away layer by layer. What made one’s blood run cold was that when the vomit hit the floor, it turned into beetles with human faces, shrieking incessantly.

Beneath those beetles were human visages, their expressions becoming violently agitated, as though they were facing the shadow within their own hearts.

Dense swarms of beetles clung to the monster’s body. The creature casually crushed a few, but it had no effect at all. Unlike the earlier slime, these beetles possessed the ability to attack. They opened their mouths and began to bite and swallow the monster’s flesh. In the blink of an eye, the creature had been covered by them, becoming a giant human-shaped insect puppet.

The butcher broke free from its bonds. It stepped forward, pulled the broad blade from the monster’s body, and though some beetle corpses clung to it, it did not care in the slightest. The butcher pinned the monster’s head in place. This time, it would not allow the enemy any chance to resist.

“Stop the summoning!”

The voice was like the first light of dawn breaking through darkness, purifying every evil thing hidden beneath it.

A bright, blinding blade appeared where the butcher had stood. The human-faced beetles, as though poisoned all at once, fell to the ground with pained expressions. The pressure upon the monster vanished. The instant its head was exposed, a blade shadow had already descended upon its face.

Puff!

The monster’s head was split in two, and all its crimes came to an end at that very moment.

Killing value +50

Seal the monster’s complete form?