Chapter Ninety-Four: Button

The only gray-white field of vision had taken on a faint, eerie cast beneath the stain of blood-red script.

Fan Li had not killed the mutant at once. He had merely found it strange, very unlike the mindless zombies he was used to, but he still had not expected it to bring him such a surprise.

Ellie set the hammer beside the mutant, her tooth-lined face turned toward Fan Li, as though asking when it would be best to strike.

The little thing was remarkably dutiful. Fan Li even hesitated, wondering whether he ought to improve its treatment somewhat.

He waved a hand to stop Ellie from going any further, then silently said, “Seal!”

At the same time, he drew out the monster manual. Now that the danger had passed, this was a fine chance to observe it.

From the monster manual seeped a darkness deep and bottomless, heavy with corruption.

The book’s cover began to heave with greater force, and then the entire volume split open down the middle.

Inside was a giant eye. Its pupil was green, and fleeting shadows flickered within it from time to time, like wandering souls.

Those twisted forms had no human shape; even their appearance alone could make one hold his breath in pressure. And yet, despite such power, countless evil spirits still could not escape, remaining forever sealed within.

That eye stared straight at Fan Li, devoid of feeling, utterly indifferent.

Fan Li had once suspected that the book possessed a kind of vitality, and now that suspicion had finally been confirmed. It was not imagination, but reality.

The monster manual was alive. Like Ellie and the Butcher, it possessed life, though in a higher form of existence.

This was made most obvious by the fact that Ellie, who had once feared nothing and treated ordinary zombies as little more than straw, was now actually taking several steps backward, her body trembling faintly.

Ellie’s reaction only made Fan Li more certain that the book’s terror surpassed that of the many monsters.

In other words, those blood-red words that had appeared before him were actually the manual communicating with him?

Fan Li suddenly felt the palm holding the book burn with heat. He endured the pressure with great difficulty, barely stopping himself from throwing it to the ground.

A wail burst out beside him.

The mutant seemed to be suffering unimaginable agony. Its features were twisted together, even displaced.

The mutants he had sealed before had all already been killed. Sealing a living corpse like this was a first, and he had no experience with it.

The mutant’s legs had been shattered, and now it could only writhe side to side on the ground like a worm, grotesque and filthy.

With a heart-rending howl, its body began to fall apart, dissolving into a cloud of blood mist that flowed into the eye on the book.

A voice rang out in his mind: the sealed creature possessed a certain degree of consciousness and met the requirements for conversion. Was it to be placed in the sealing house?

Fan Li looked at the book. At some point, that emotionless eye had risen an inch, fixing itself on his face.

When the living corpse was sealed, there was actually another option. The sealing house—was that the place where the music box and the hanging cross were kept?

Was he creating a new monster?

“Place it there.” After a brief thought, Fan Li made his choice.

A new prompt appeared: a medium had to be selected, and it could not be changed.

A button.

Fan Li immediately thought of the button still in his palm. He took it out and pressed it against the underside of the book.

“I’ll use this as the medium.”

The words had barely left his mouth when the red mist that had previously been drawn into the eye surfaced again, then surged into the button.

Under the blood mist, the button looked unreal, as if it were some object offered in sacrifice by a cultist, acquiring a trace of sinister strangeness.

As the blood mist kept pouring in, a ripple suddenly spread through the air beside him. Space itself seemed to undulate like water.

The different spaces appeared to be merging. By the time Fan Li reacted, he was already standing in a room of limited size.

It was more like a storage room, packed with objects.

A chainsaw, a puppet, a brightly colored clown mask, and a conch shell from which faint singing could be heard.

There were too many things in the room; these were only what Fan Li had seen at a glance.

After spending some time in contact with the monster manual, Fan Li naturally understood that each of these objects meant a real monster dwelling within.

By rough estimate, there were well over a hundred, perhaps even more.

“Aaah...”

A faint sound came from the corner, as if calling to him. Fan Li quickly looked around and saw a button lying in the corner.

Among so many objects, that button seemed utterly insignificant. The fact that it had been cast into the corner made clear that it held little status.

Compared with the larger objects around it, with their older and more sinister aura, the button looked weak and humble.

“Praise be to You! Lord who created all things!”

“I like hide-and-seek. One, two, three, frozen.”

“Get caught.”

“If you see her, don’t scream, or she’ll tear open your mouth and rip out your tongue.”

“If you love me, give me your heart.”

The instant Fan Li saw the button, a sharp sound like nails scraping a blackboard suddenly rang out around him.

A stabbing pain shot through Fan Li’s head, and he felt an unimaginable malice closing in from every direction.

Those voices came from different monsters, and they seemed strangely excited by the arrival of a human intruder.

Amid the unbearable noise, several phantom figures gradually appeared before him: a giant with a chainsaw in hand, a puppet with a fixed smile, a headless, limbless cloak as though held up by an invisible man, and a corpse wrapped all over in bandages. It stood not far from Fan Li, and from within the wrappings, yellowish mucus would occasionally drip onto the empty floor.

“We have to get out of here at once!”

Fan Li felt that under the siege of those discordant voices and the watchful gazes of countless phantoms, even his thoughts were beginning to rust, and his movements had grown sluggish.

If he could not leave, he could already imagine himself becoming some kind of statue standing here forever.

Clenching his teeth, Fan Li stepped forward, trying to shake off the numbness in his body. Step by step, he approached the button. What should have been a short distance took several minutes, and only then did he finally manage to grasp it in his hand.

Then dizziness washed over him. When he came to himself, he was already standing in a workshop shrouded in darkness.

A dazed feeling surged through him. For a moment, Fan Li even wondered whether he had been dragged into some kind of dream, whether everything that had happened was false rather than real.

But while his thoughts were still in disarray, he suddenly felt a chill in his right hand, as if he were holding a block of ice. Only then did Fan Li gradually wake from his haze.

He spread open his palm, and a plain, unremarkable button lay there.

It was ordinary, no different from the buttons scattered around it. Yet Fan Li knew that everything that had happened before had not been an illusion. Inside that seemingly common button was sealed an evil aberration capable of tearing an ordinary person to pieces.