"BANG—!"
The gunpowder in the chamber detonated instantly, the massive recoil jolting Jiang Nuan’s grip until her palm went numb.
The bullet she fired at close range struck Qinian perfectly in the center of the forehead.
No blood splattered.
The bullet sank into something like an extremely viscous gel, leaving only a deep black hole at the center of his brow.
The smile on Qinian’s face didn’t even fade. His eyes, slightly tilted at the corners, remained locked on her—until his pupils began to dilate, spreading until they swallowed the entire iris.
Then—
Crack. Crack, crack—
A skin-crawling sound of tearing flesh erupted in the silent break room.
Starting from the bullet hole, Qinian’s skin peeled open sideways. A massive split ripped straight down from his forehead, tearing through the bridge of his nose, his lips, all the way to his chin.
The entire face peeled back like an ill-fitting costume yanked off by force—revealing what lay hidden beneath the skin.
It was a lump of crimson, squirming meat.
At the center of the mass were rows of sharp, elongated teeth, layered in concentric circles like the blades of a meat grinder. Thick, yellowish-green fluid dripped from the gaps between them.
At the same time, the bodies of "Jiang Ce" and "Shen Wu" on the sofa seemed to lose their bones, rapidly liquefying into puddles of sludge before screaming as they merged into the writhing mass of flesh.
The monster’s size doubled in an instant.
The pristine walls began to rot and peel. Clean tiles oozed dark red blood.
The illusion was collapsing.
"Then stay…"
The monster with the split face lurched forward, its throat emitting a sticky grinding sound—three distinct voices twisted into one dissonant chorus.
"…and become part of us."
Jiang Nuan’s back pressed hard against the icy wall. The blood in her veins felt frozen solid with terror.
She forced her stiff fingers to pull the trigger again.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Every bullet sank into the lump of flesh without even raising a ripple.
The magazine was empty.
The trigger clicked hollowly at the bottom of its pull.
The monster opened its abyssal maw lined with teeth and lunged down at her head.
The stench of blood washed over her.
"Close your eyes."
Two words—barely audible yet eerily clear.
Not the distorted, layered voice from the illusion. It was a clean, cool voice tinged with impatience.
It was Shen Wu.
The real Shen Wu.
Almost by reflex, Jiang Nuan’s eyelids slammed shut.
"Wooooom—"
The air around her was instantly sucked away.
The sensation of weightlessness returned, but this time, it wasn’t a fall. Accompanied by a piercing ringing in her ears, Jiang Nuan felt an invisible yet overwhelmingly powerful force yank her backward.
As if someone had grabbed her by the collar and wrenched her out of a quagmire.
The violent pull churned her stomach in nauseating waves.
"You can open your eyes now."
That cool voice spoke again, this time right beside her.
Jiang Nuan’s eyes flew open. She gasped for breath, her hand shaking so badly she could barely hold the gun.
No monster of jagged teeth. No sickening stench of decay.
Around her was nothing but endless void.
No concept of up or down. No walls. No floor. Only pure, viscous darkness—like a motionless ocean of infinite depth.
She instinctively looked up.
Her breath caught.
Above her, suspended in the dark dome, hung a single eye.
An eye so vast it defied the limits of comprehension.
It had no eyelids. Its pupil was pure gold, with a vertical black slit at the center, quietly gazing down upon this void of nothingness.
Cold and indifferent, devoid of any emotion.
As if all the illusions and lies in the world were exposed under its stare, nowhere to hide.
Jiang Nuan felt as if her very soul had been seen through—every fear and secret laid bare.
But strangely, beneath that absolute scrutiny, she sensed a faint sliver of security.
Because under the watch of this eye,
there was no false Qinian, no twisted monster.
"Don't stare at it."
The voice came from directly ahead, carrying a clear note of warning.
Jiang Nuan jerked her head down, panting heavily.
Shen Wu stood less than two meters away from her.
He wore the same black combat suit as before, but it was stained with large splotches of dark red blood.
His complexion was dreadful, his lips pale and bloodless.
"Not too slow a reaction." Shen Wu raised a hand to press his temple, frowning as if enduring a severe headache. "If you hadn't closed your eyes, you'd already be assimilated by its consciousness."
He glanced at her, his sharp-tongued nature entirely intact.
"I thought you were going to wait until that thing bit your head off before you'd bother to pull the trigger."
Good.
It was him.
Jiang Nuan’s tense shoulders actually relaxed at that cutting remark.
"You... you've been here the whole time?" she asked, only then realizing her voice was shaking.
That monster earlier had nearly drained her san value to zero.
"Just arrived a moment ago," Shen Wu said, pressing his temple hard, clearly uncomfortable. "But I needed time to lock onto your mental coordinates."
"Are you alright?"
"Not dying." He lowered his hand, but his face looked even worse.
Jiang Nuan looked around the pitch-black void. "Where is this?"
"My mental domain," Shen Wu said, frowning again. "You could think of it as the inner space of the 'Eye of Truth.'"
"The mental illusion that thing outside constructed was too deep. It took me a while to find you and pull you in here."
Jiang Nuan seized on the key point.
"That thing outside—is it that SS-class restricted zone?" She swallowed. "Didn't it already die?"
"We were all deceived." Shen Wu closed his eyes.
As he did, the massive golden eye in midair also shut.
The entire space plunged into absolute darkness and silence.
"What's happening?!" Jiang Nuan's heart clenched. She groped toward Shen Wu’s direction, grabbing his arm.
A second later, golden light flared again, and the giant eye reopened.
"It's fine," Shen Wu said, his face even paler than before.
He took a breath and continued.
"At the very last moment, it actively abandoned nearly all of its body and energy core, faking its own death. Then, it survived with the remaining body and energy."
A chill crept up Jiang Nuan’s spine.
An SS-class restricted zone—not only clever enough to disguise its own rank, but also smart enough to cut its losses, play dead, and even lie in ambush.
"How could a monster... have such intelligence?" Jiang Nuan found it hard to believe.
Shen Wu let out a cold laugh, and there was an unprecedented gravity in that sound.
"That's precisely what makes it lethal."
He turned his head, gazing into the boundless darkness, as if through the pitch-black void he was staring at the monster lurking outside.
“It doesn’t just possess a mind—its intelligence is far beyond any creature we’ve ever imagined.”
“It has a cunning and logic nearly identical to a human’s.”
Shen Wu turned back to face Jiang Nuan.
“In all of human history, there has never been a contaminated creature with human-level intelligence. They’re supposed to be nothing more than beasts driven by polluted energy, focused only on feeding and killing.”
“Earlier, when it suppressed its own rank, we thought that was its limit.”
“Every single one of us let our guard down.”
In Jiang Nuan’s mind, everything that happened in the rest stop flashed back in an instant.
No wonder—it understood how to exploit Jiang Ce’s personality, how to use Qinian’s tone of voice. It knew to use a spotless environment to deceive her.
If she had actually believed…
Wait.
Jiang Nuan suddenly realized an even more terrifying question.
Spiritual anchor… spiritual domain…
She locked eyes with Shen Wu.
“This is your mental space, so that means I… I’m a consciousness?”
Her voice trembled.
“Then what about my body? My body is still out there! In that monster’s lair!”
