40: Can’t Die So Pathetically

Zhou Langxing had originally planned to ask his family’s private doctor to recommend a psychiatrist, but on second thought, if his father found out and misunderstood that Qin Yan had mental problems, that wouldn’t be good.

After pondering a bit, he sent a message in his friends’ group chat, asking them to keep an eye out and added a note: “The reward is generous.”

Sometimes he did wonder if constantly throwing money at things was bad, but since he wasn’t short on cash and some of his friends were, that thought quickly left his mind.

Who cared? If a problem could be solved with money, then it wasn’t really a problem. Why stress over it?

That’s exactly why every message he sent always got quick responses. One friend he hadn’t seen in a long time messaged him privately. The guy was deep in debt and working hard to pay it off—he said his childhood buddy was a grad student in psychology, and his advisor was a big name in the field.

Looking at the name of that so-called industry expert, Zhou Langxing couldn’t help but grin.

Was it that he couldn’t find a reliable psychiatrist?

No. He just liked creating opportunities for cash-strapped friends to make money.

“Today I am once again the God of Wealth,” he joked to himself.

He was just about to add the childhood friend’s contact info when he saw a voice message come in from Xiao Hei. Curious, he tapped on it.

“Fk, fk, f**k!! Someone come save my damn life! I ate something nasty!!”

It was kind of baffling. Eating something bad? At most you’d get diarrhea or need an IV. Why was he messaging him? Was this a rant? Did he want comfort?

Zhou Langxing replied, “Need me to bring you some toilet paper?”

Quickly, a weak but still cocky voice shot back, “Piss off! I don’t even dare go to the toilet, scared my guts’ll fall out!”

Even more baffling.

Then a location was sent over.

Zhou Langxing quickly got ready and left the hotel. It was around dinnertime—he’d actually been thinking of asking Qin Yan out for a meal. Guess that plan was scrapped. Time to go save his bro!

“You can’t walk? Then call 120. Or I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

“I’m scared the doctors’ll dissect me.”

Zhou Langxing held it in… then couldn’t, and yelled into the phone, “Riddler, get the hell off the planet!”

“Just come over, okay? I’ve got no strength left. Hanging up now. And—don’t call the cops!” Xiao Hei didn’t want to be detained and have his illegal history exposed.

Zhou Langxing had a strange sense of unease in his gut. While trying to call Xiao Hei again, the guy kept not picking up, and the rideshare car he’d ordered was crawling along, clearly stuck in traffic.

No time to wait—he stormed into a nearby car shop, threw down cash, bought a car on the spot, and sped off to Xiao Hei’s location.

It was an unfamiliar area, with the only landmark being an overpass about 500 meters away. As he tried to approach, he was blocked far in advance—tons of police milling about.

He didn’t have his license with him and didn’t dare push it. He quickly turned the car around.

What the hell had happened?

Glancing back, he noticed a bunch of reporters with cameras were also blocked outside. Had there been some horrific crime? Something so gruesome they couldn’t even broadcast the footage?

His heart sank. He had a gut feeling—it wasn’t that simple.

Because of the detour, the trip took longer than expected. It was now rush hour, and all the cars on the road seemed to radiate a panicked energy.

Stuck in traffic again, he tried calling Xiao Hei once more.

The phone rang for ages, still no answer. Zhou Langxing hung up, face grim.

A chilling thought crossed his mind: maybe something had already happened to Xiao Hei.

Over twenty minutes later, Zhou Langxing found him—curled up under an abandoned building, looking like a cooked shrimp.

“Xiao Hei!”

No response.

His body was already cold, exposed skin pale. His pants bulged strangely at the back—something was inside them.

Zhou Langxing stood frozen, his blood turning to ice, shivering from head to toe.

It wasn’t his first time seeing someone close to him dead.

But it still hurt to accept.

His eyes blurred as he stared—he thought the corpse’s face had morphed into Shurong’s: pale as death, as if soaked in freezing water all night.

He blinked. It was back to Xiao Hei’s face.

He slowly exhaled, knelt down, and with shaking hands, gently shook Xiao Hei’s shoulders. The body wobbled slightly, and something slick and sticky began oozing from the loose pant leg.

Zhou Langxing looked down.

It was… a length of intestine.

Intestine…

Xiao Hei had said he didn’t dare go to the toilet, scared his guts would fall out. A regular person eating something bad wouldn’t think their intestines were going to fall out. Xiao Hei knew something.

That overpass was sealed off. The accident must’ve happened there. What had actually gone down? Why had Xiao Hei gone there?

After a long pause, Zhou Langxing picked Xiao Hei up and carried him toward the car.

The intestines kept dragging behind, already seven or eight meters long.

Zhou Langxing glanced back, hesitated, but couldn’t bring himself to deal with it. He left the intestines behind.

They finally slipped all the way out, sprawled on the muddy ground—looked like a pink meat-snake from afar. Zhou Langxing slammed the gas and sped off.

He pressed his lips tightly together, forcing himself to focus on the road. But his heart pounded wildly, left eyelid twitching, hands gripping the wheel trembling. His legs were so tense they were numb.

It was insane. What the hell had happened?!

In the rearview mirror, the lifeless Xiao Hei slumped in the backseat. His bloodless lips twitched slightly, as if something was trying to crawl out.

Pink—was that a tongue?

Zhou Langxing, mind spinning, didn’t notice.

He made up his mind: he had to get the body autopsied immediately. He needed to know the truth.

The incident under the overpass had blown up.

Though the Observation Society took care of Uncle Wei, the people who had eaten the meat had long since scattered. Some ran home and tried to vomit it up. Others rushed to the hospital.

But it was already too late.

Within just thirty minutes, their intestines all fell out.

Doctors examined the corpses and found that all internal organs had been nearly eaten hollow. Someone suggested dissection, but the lead official refused—without the families’ consent, it was forbidden.

Just as a nurse was covering a corpse with a white cloth, a pink lump of meat wriggled out from the corpse’s nasal cavity—and chomped on her hand.

She screamed, and the meat forced its way into her mouth.

She dropped to her knees, dry heaving. Doctors and nurses around her rushed over, panicked.

At the same time, it wasn’t just today’s meat that was active. Last night’s victims—the ones who died from the wontons—had yet to be cremated. In the morgue, the undigested meat inside their stomachs slowly crawled out of their corpses.

It slithered through the cracks under the doors, flattening into paper-thin patties. Whenever they encountered a living person—they’d swarm.

Chaos.

Everything had fallen into chaos.

The west side of the city descended into madness.

Screams echoed everywhere. People were dying left and right—intestines fallen out, organs eaten away, countless wronged souls looming overhead.

…

“…It’s getting dark really fast today. Is it going to thunder and rain?”

Qin Yan was uneasy. He had just gotten back from the hospital and was about to make dinner when a heavy pressure filled his chest—irritated, suffocated, wishing he could knock himself unconscious.

Yin energy was harmful to the living. Because of Zhou Shurong, Qin Yan was sensitive to it. These symptoms made sense.

Zhou Shurong stood by the window, watching the “dark clouds” gather. His throat moved with a swallow, and a glint of hunger appeared in his eyes.

After a moment, he reminded Qin Yan to contact Zhou Langxing.

Qin Yan, trembling, said:

“Langxing said his friend died. His intestines fell out. The death was too bizarre—he’s taking the body to be examined for the real cause!”

Zhou Shurong was silent for a moment, then told him he had to go out. He urged Qin Yan to stay home—don’t go anywhere.

Qin Yan nervously agreed.

After Shurong left, Qin Yan kept trying to contact Zhou Langxing. “Langxing, have you gone online yet? It’s chaos out there, come back quick!”

Things had blown up too much. The internet was already full of it—way beyond what the authorities could censor.

In a certain conference room—

“Who the hell gave that intel?! Who said he was a low-level vengeful spirit?!”

The superior was livid. Brother Wu bowed his head in silence. During this operation, Jiang Ling had died, and another rookie had been scared out of their mind—practically lost their sanity.

He hadn’t expected it either—that vengeful spirit advanced so easily, all because it touched his taboo, triggering a transformation into a high-grade wraith.

In the end, it was only by threatening it with Wei Hong’s daughter, who was in the hospital, that he found a chance to kill it.

But the matter still wasn’t fully resolved.

After Wei Hong died, he didn’t leave behind any special artifacts. Those artifacts were concentrated forms of a ghost’s yin energy—eating one would greatly increase one’s power. He’d eaten one left by a low-grade wraith before, which instantly upgraded the high-grade wandering spirit inside him to wraith level.

Since there were no artifacts left, it meant Wei Hong hadn’t completely died. The minced meat he used for wontons had become the resting place of his consciousness. The meat was his corpse to begin with—so it wasn’t all that strange.

He’d heard that other high-grade wraiths appearing in different cities also had their own unique ways of escaping death.

“Big bro, right now the top priority is getting rid of those flesh clumps hiding inside people!”

Brother Wu had some sneaky thoughts. With so many of them around, sneaking a few bites for himself wouldn’t be noticed.

“You think I don’t know that?!” The superior clutched his aching head. “But that wraith chopped its whole body into minced meat and wrapped it into wontons. Do you realize how much that is?”

This time, the death toll would be even higher than last time—more than those who had slowly died in pain after developing boils from the hospital’s dust infection!

Sigh… There was no helping it now. Saving even one more person was a victory.

…

“Langxing, are you listening?”

Qin Yan’s voice trembled. Zhou Langxing could almost picture the tears in his eyes.

“Go home first, okay? Don’t wander outside anymore.”

Zhou Langxing stubbornly stared ahead at the straight road, his eyes unmoving.

“Langxing, check the news! The news says to stay away from people whose intestines have spilled out! There’s a red flesh clump in their bodies—that’s the real culprit—ah! That meat lump even has awareness! It will crawl into nearby living people! You have to be careful!!”

Screeeeech—!

The sudden screech of brakes was painfully sharp.

The corpse from the backseat tumbled down.

Zhou Langxing was just about to turn his head when a sudden jolt threw him violently into the deployed airbag. The corpse in the back rolled again, landing face-down—right on top of a pink flesh clump squeezing out from between its lips.

“Langxing! Are you okay? Can you speak? Hold on, I’m calling 120 now!”

So dizzy… Zhou Langxing held his temples. In the background, Qin Yan’s anxious voice blurred as the driver of the other car yelled curses.

His stomach churned, a strong wave of nausea rising. Just as he opened his mouth to vomit, something moist pressed against his cheek. From the corner of his eye, he saw it—a clump of pink flesh.

Qin Yan’s words flashed across his mind—pink flesh clump?

In that instant, goosebumps exploded all over his skin. A chill rose from the soles of his feet.

The flesh clump moved fast. Even though he clamped his mouth shut in time, part of it had already crawled in.

He clenched his teeth and gripped the slick tail of the clump with both hands, yanking hard to pull it out.

The driver of the car behind him was already furiously pounding on the window.

“Come out, you bastard! Hiding won’t help! Get out he—!”

Mid-rant, the man paused. “Hey, hey! Did you faint?”

He cursed, then pulled out his phone to call the police and an ambulance.

Zhou Langxing’s phone rang at his feet, his custom ringtone chiming once, twice, three times… then silence.

Zhou Langxing couldn’t afford to be distracted. He pulled hard.

Snap!

Did it come out?

No—it broke. Part of it was still in his mouth, struggling to break through the final barrier.

The piece in his hand kept squirming. Zhou Langxing didn’t dare squeeze too hard, nor dare relax, fearing if he pressed too hard it would squish through his fingers and crawl into his ear canals, eyes, or nose.

At the same time, he couldn’t loosen his jaw either. He bit down with all his might. In that moment, he was deeply grateful his teeth grew in perfectly aligned.

Still, his stomach kept turning.

Especially once he remembered—this flesh lump had been inside Xiao Hei’s belly. It had torn out Xiao Hei’s intestines…

Disgusting.

The urge to vomit worsened.

Outside the car, the rear driver waited anxiously, muttering aloud to try waking the “unconscious” person inside.

The window tint was too good. Even with his eyes pressed up to it, he couldn’t see what was going on inside.

Should he break the window?

As the thought rose, he glanced at the luxury car body—and immediately gave up. Forget it. Better wait for the ambulance and police. But things outside were chaotic today. Sirens wailed everywhere—what if they were all tied up?

Wait, no! The rear driver slapped his head—he was waiting for traffic cops! He had to make it clear—it wasn’t his fault!

A person’s stamina and will can only go so far. Zhou Langxing’s strength gradually drained away.

Sweat drenched his entire body. In his struggle, his hair came loose, the black tie lost somewhere. His long hair stabbed into his eyes.

His vision blurred. Bit by bit, tiny fragments of flesh slipped through his clenched teeth, climbing down his throat.

Just then, Zhou Shurong finally found him.

He had felt uneasy after sensing Uncle Wei and, while Zhou Langxing was parting from Qin Yan outside the hospital, injected a trace of yin energy into his body—as a tracker.

He floated into the car. The sight of Zhou Langxing’s miserable state met his eyes. Shaking his head, he slowly extended a long tongue formed of condensed yin energy, and licked away the flesh clump in Langxing’s hand—then the ones between his lips, and even those in his throat.

Though it looked like a tongue, it was really a yin-energy tool for capture. Zhou Shurong didn’t feel any psychological burden. Instead, having tasted something incredibly delicious, he narrowed his eyes in bliss.

The energy around him visibly rose.

His strength had increased.

He hadn’t expected it—something that once felt like it could kill him had now strengthened him.

Zhou Shurong opened his eyes, now filled with greed.

The danger vanished. The nauseating thing that had been trying so hard to crawl inside him was gone. Zhou Langxing opened his eyes. His cold, wet hair clung to his face, blurring his vision. In the haze, he thought he saw his brother’s face.

Was he just missing him too much?

Or… was he also dead?

Did his intestines fall out too? What a humiliating, disgusting way to die. He really wasn’t willing to go like this.