Chapter Sixteen: Dragon Abyss
Qin Changsheng grabbed Cao Mengmeng’s hand and suddenly stood up. The pain in his stomach had completely vanished, and after breaking out in a sweat, he felt his entire body grow significantly lighter, his spirit even more invigorated than before.
What exactly had that red monster done to him when it forced that blood-red viscous blob into his mouth?
He turned his head and looked around, noticing that Mi Huaxia and the corpse pile had disappeared without a trace. Everything seemed to have returned to normal.
Except for one thing.
“Come out! Everyone, come out!” With a furious roar, several invisible sword energies rippled violently through the empty surroundings, their force so strong they gouged several notches into the concrete parapet at the edge of the rooftop.
Qin Changsheng saw that West Wind Lie seemed to have gone mad. His contracted Shanhai Beast swung its sharp blades wildly, slashing recklessly at the air. Judging by his frenzied demeanor, it was as if he were fighting an unseen horde of enemies.
What was going on?
He looked at Cao Mengmeng, who was still holding his hand, seeking answers from her.
Cao Mengmeng noticed his gaze and, after a moment of puzzlement, impatiently shook her head. “Why are you looking at me? Didn’t you just go through this yourself?”
Just went through it? Qin Changsheng was momentarily confused but began to recall what had happened moments ago, and suddenly everything became clear.
What West Wind Lie was seeing now was exactly what Qin Changsheng had just witnessed.
For some unknown reason, they had all fallen into a hallucination!
When had it all started? Qin Changsheng only remembered hearing the chime of a bell, after which the corpse pile and Mi Huaxia had suddenly appeared.
“Is it because of the bell?” He frowned. “Does the bell have a hypnotic effect?”
“No, that was just an ordinary bell, signaling the corpse pile to resume activity. It has no special effects,” Cao Mengmeng shook her head, dismissing his guess. “The reason we fell into hallucinations must be something else.”
“What is it?”
“It’s the ability of the Shanhai Beast,” Cao Mengmeng’s expression suddenly grew serious. “Here, that’s the only possibility. Someone took advantage of the bell’s chime to release their ability on us. The bell distracted us, which is why the hallucinations felt so natural that you didn’t even have time to doubt them.”
“So, we’ve been attacked?” Qin Changsheng finally understood Cao Mengmeng’s meaning and looked around warily but saw no suspicious figures.
If someone had triggered an ability from the shadows to trap them in hallucinations, where was that person now?
“Come out! I see you! Come out and face death!” While Qin Changsheng was pondering, West Wind Lie roared again. His Shanhai Beast still bore the large net that Momo had created earlier. It seemed that the corpse pile Qin Changsheng had seen in the hallucination was actually West Wind Lie’s Shanhai Beast.
No wonder the sword energy that grazed his cheek felt so familiar.
“What do we do now?” Qin Changsheng watched West Wind Lie furiously attacking the empty air and instinctively took a few steps back. He didn’t want to get caught up in those fierce sword energies. “How did you pull me out of the hallucination before? Can you do the same for him?”
“That’s impossible,” Cao Mengmeng looked troubled as well and shook her head. “Do you remember how you woke up?”
“No, don’t make me remember.” The disgusting “indirect kiss” scene flashed before Qin Changsheng’s eyes again — a memory he would spend his whole life trying desperately to forget.
---
“In short, the way I woke you was by inflicting intense pain,” Cao Mengmeng explained. “My Shanhai Beast, Little Red, can make anyone who swallows its bodily fluids feel an extreme burning sensation anywhere on their body. I was able to shake off the hallucination only because I used this ability on myself to ‘burn’ myself awake.”
As she spoke, Qin Changsheng saw a blood-red droplet materialize out of thin air. The droplet rapidly condensed in midair, growing larger and larger until it formed a fiery, seductive figure whose neck sprouted the head of a fierce fish—the same red monster he had seen before.
“This is my Shanhai Beast, the Hot Pot Demon Little Red,” Cao Mengmeng introduced simply.
“Well, now I definitely can’t forget,” Qin Changsheng muttered, covering his face as cruel memories surged back. “Anyway, can’t you feed some of that... fluid to West Wind Lie?”
“I told you, I can’t,” Cao Mengmeng shook her head again. “You swallowed Little Red’s fluids because in your hallucination she kept her original form, so the signals I sent to you were effective.”
“But I tried the same on Ah Lie just now. Unlike you, he saw Little Red’s image distorted into another monster and wouldn’t let her get near.”
“Why is that?” Qin Changsheng asked.
“Just a guess,” Cao Mengmeng hesitated, “but these hallucinations seem to only affect creatures you’ve seen before.”
“Explain.”
“Before this, you had never seen my Shanhai Beast face-to-face, so when you first saw Little Red, she maintained her true form. Meanwhile, I and Ah Lie appeared as monsters to you,” Cao Mengmeng offered her theory. “Ah Lie, on the other hand, had seen my Shanhai Beast before, so when he saw Little Red, he saw a different monster.”
“Rather than a hallucination, it’s more like some kind of cognitive contamination that distorts your perception of known things.”
Qin Changsheng only half understood the last sentence, but he grasped the overall idea.
Cao Mengmeng was currently powerless and could only lead Qin Changsheng to keep a safe distance to avoid being caught by West Wind Lie’s indiscriminate attacks.
“Everyone else on the team has seen Little Red. This cognitive contamination has already affected them all,” Qin Changsheng saw an uncharacteristic look of helplessness on Cao Mengmeng’s face—the first time he had seen her at a loss.
“Wait, didn’t you say Shanhai Beasts are like underwear, something you don’t show to others? By your logic, everyone except me has seen your... underwear?”
Qin Changsheng tried to lighten the mood with a joke, but Cao Mengmeng’s cold glare made him realize he hadn’t helped at all.
“Look over there—can you still joke now?”
Following her gaze, Qin Changsheng’s expression instantly froze.
On the ground spread a large pool of blood—not a hallucination, but real and right before his eyes. In the center lay a fat figure barely clinging to life, riddled with sword wounds that bled like a sprinkler. Clearly, these were the results of West Wind Lie’s rampage.
Qin Changsheng recalled this chubby guy’s online name was Rain Palace Lotus, who had been trailing behind West Wind Lie’s group, never uttering a word since appearing.
Though the fat man was still alive, he was only breathing in without breathing out. Whenever he opened his mouth, a gush of blood bubbled out, indicating severe lung damage.
The brutal reality wiped away Qin Changsheng’s humor. West Wind Lie, trapped in hallucinations, was already hurting his teammates. If they didn’t stop him, things would only get worse.
“I’ll hold him down; you take the chance to give him medicine!” Qin Changsheng decided he couldn’t hide anymore and prepared to act, but Cao Mengmeng grabbed him before he could move.
“It’s useless,” she shook her head. “Ah Lie’s Shanhai Beast is Longyuan, a sword demon that specializes in combat. It’s much stronger than both of us. Your Ink Demon hasn’t recovered yet. Going in now won’t help.”
---
“We can’t just stand by and watch!”
“There’s only one way,” Cao Mengmeng quickly interrupted Qin Changsheng’s impulse. “Find the mastermind and take her out—that will lift the hallucinations immediately.”
Qin Changsheng quickly asked, “Who is the mastermind?”
“There’s only one possibility,” Cao Mengmeng’s eyes burned with fierce determination. “Neither Rain Palace Lotus nor Dong Huan has a Shanhai Beast. The only one capable of this is a single person.”
Qin Changsheng recalled how Cao Mengmeng had looked before everything happened and suddenly realized, “You mean that girl named Wu Yutong?”
Cao Mengmeng said, “I’ve looked into that woman’s eyes. Like you, there’s only darkness inside. But yours is a vague emptiness, while hers is solid and pitch black, like ink—that’s the color of her soul.”
Well, although Qin Changsheng didn’t believe in souls, this was the most reasonable explanation for now.
He immediately awakened Momo and began scanning for other Shanhai Beasts nearby. Momo’s perception covered a radius of two hundred meters, so locating Wu Yutong should be easy.
Thump... thump... thump...
A signal flared like starlight in the chaos of Qin Changsheng’s mind, but he quickly sensed something was wrong.
Besides Cao Mengmeng and West Wind Lie, he did detect another Shanhai Beast—but that person was not inside this building. They were about seventy meters away.
A dreadful premonition struck him.
Boom!
At that moment, a familiar explosion roared by his ear, accompanied by gusts of wind rippling from afar.
Even dull-witted Qin Changsheng immediately understood—the Shanhai Beast he sensed was not Wu Yutong’s.
He was here!
In the distance, fiery explosions blossomed like fireworks beneath the clear sky. The deafening blasts echoed in all directions as a hooded figure soared from the center of the blast.
When Qin Changsheng saw the eerie grin beneath the hood—a smile like a sinister yellow bean emoji—the mystery in his heart was finally solved.
Mi Huaxia had arrived!
And this time, it was no hallucination!