Chapter 8 – The Museum Massacre

Wei An thought he wouldn’t sleep well tonight, but in reality, it wasn’t much worse than usual.

He dreamed of an endless building filled with monotonous corridors, turns, and sealed windows. The walls bore small, neat frames displaying perfectly empty landscapes. Occasionally, he’d come across large splashes of blood and dismembered limbs, all ancient.

He knew there was no exit, yet he kept walking blindly.

But perhaps he had wandered too deep into this barren dream. The corridors always hid something, and at some point, Wei An slipped into an especially abysmal nightmare—one that had haunted him since childhood.

It was hard to describe the sensation. It was as if he had entered some profoundly dark realm, something in his mind awakening.

He couldn’t say he “saw” anything. Rather, within the nightmare, an entirely different sense activated. It was pitch black, yet not empty—more like an incomprehensibly thick, suffocating language.

At the faintly perceptible edges of the human mind, it was an unfathomably vast, black ocean, stretching endlessly into the unknown—

Wei An jolted awake.

He lay in bed, his head splitting with pain, his body weak. He had sunk too deeply into that other world and couldn’t immediately return to reality.

It took a while before his fingers twitched, regaining a sense of control over his body.

With great effort, Wei An sat up, grabbed a bottle of pills, and swallowed a handful without looking. He lay back down, waiting for the medication to take effect.

Once he could move again, he got out of bed and returned to his computer to continue working.

By dawn, slightly later than a normal person’s waking time, Gui Ling wandered over in his pajamas like a ghost and sat on the couch.

Last night, Wei An had given him a long list of domestic instructions—how to bathe, how to change clothes, when to wake up, what to do next—almost following him into the bathroom.

Gui Ling had given him a deeply unimpressed look but had complied anyway. It was all just basic daily life stuff.

Now, as per Wei An’s orders from the night before, he had woken up on time, washed up, changed into the clothes his new administrator had bought, and sat there listlessly.

Despite being a terrifying entity, after all this fuss, he just looked like a grumpy roommate.

Wei An took a moment to appreciate the sight before returning to his contract revisions, then went to make breakfast.

The meal was still lavish—nutritious, well-balanced, and artfully plated. He made Gui Ling sit across from him, forcing him to eat in what looked like a cozy domestic scene.

Then Wei An went back to his terminal to adjust the contract while slowly sipping his health juice—which he also forced Gui Ling to start drinking.

The sun rose again, as it always did. The garden buzzed with life. Another peaceful morning.

Wei An discovered a minor issue with the contract modifications. The program interface displayed an unfinished task—an upper-echelon figure from Yingtian had escaped and needed to be dealt with.

Wei An was thinking about it when, suddenly, Gui Ling turned his head to look at him from the couch.

“I can kill him,” the man said.

Wei An stiffened. He turned and met Gui Ling’s gloomy eyes, the gaze sending chills down his spine. The world outside was bathed in spring sunlight, but in the deeper darkness lurked something dangerous, operating on a level beyond perception.

“No need, I’ll take some time to delete this task. Just stay here.”

Wei An turned back to the terminal. He could feel Gui Ling’s gaze remaining on him for a while longer, looking past him—an unsettling presence, trembling with hidden power.

Focusing, Wei An began deleting the remaining task from the contract. The fugitive could be left to the authorities.

The terminal displayed lines of tedious but comprehensible code, yet at the other end, it connected to something unspeakably horrifying.

Wei An had already mapped out his next steps. Judging by the current progress, the final stages of contract modification would likely drag on until they boarded the starship. But with enough money, interstellar travel could still guarantee a perfectly comfortable personal space without disrupting work.

He booked a flight on a massive city-class starship called the *Divine Arboretum*—the very name emanated opulence.

He and Gui Ling would depart in three weeks aboard this ship, the soonest large-scale vessel arriving in Taoyuan. The wait was longer than expected, but Taoyuan wasn’t like the Core Sector or a transport hub where ships capable of warp jumps came and went every second. It was remote—one of the reasons Wei An had chosen it for retirement.

Of course, there were smaller cargo, military, or unregistered ships traversing nearby space. Wei An’s own personal starship had the necessary functions, but boarding it would be like announcing to everyone that he was suspicious.

A proper identity required a proper mode of travel.

The *Divine Arboretum* was one of the top-tier tourist starships under the Dome Corporation, marketed as a warp-capable port exclusively for the wealthy and powerful. It offered ample personal space, impeccable service, and heavily armed escort ships—the only vessel suitable in every aspect.

By then, many local elites would be traveling with Wei An. That was the most normal, identity-appropriate way to leave…

Just then, Wei An’s phone rang.

He glanced at it. It was Xu Chengguang calling.

Wei An answered. The man on the other end shouted, “Have you seen the news?! Something’s happened!”

The incident had occurred at the Taoyuan Museum.

As a major province for ancient civilization ruins, Taoyuan’s provincial museum was a large, landmark cultural structure—a must-see for tourists.

Wei An had visited several times and often passed by while driving through the city.

It was an impressive complex, covering about 70,000 square meters, with convenient transportation and advanced fireproofing, anti-theft, and anti-humidity measures.

The architectural style was said to draw inspiration from hypothesized ancient civilization temples, though no one could say for sure what those had looked like. It mainly borrowed some design elements, resulting in a high-spec modern structure.

Wei An had a good impression of the place. The surrounding area was bustling, filled with souvenir shops, tour groups, and the lively atmosphere of mundane life.

This morning, when staff entered the grand ancient civilization exhibition hall, they were met with an absolutely horrifying sight.

The majestic, stately hall had transformed into a nightmarish corner of hell, densely hung with corpses.

The dead were contorted into grotesque poses, pushed to the limits of distortion. They were bound with rusted wires, twisted into bloody lumps of flesh suspended in midair or pressed against the floor, walls, and ceiling.

Some wires were as wide as saw blades, others as fine as threads—all growing from within the bodies, tightly embedded in their limbs, their roots burrowing deep into the building.

Like living instruments of torture, fulfilling a mission of slaughter to create this scene of extreme horror.

Blood was everywhere. When the staff entered, it was still dripping, uncoagulated, as if the victims were still suffering some unknown torment even in death.

The blood was a murky black-brown, like corrupt grease oozing from another world, spreading decay and contamination like an infernal rain throughout the hall.

The staff were so terrified they couldn’t stand for a long time. It took them a while to shakily call the police.

When the authorities arrived, they too were stunned by the scene. They quickly sealed off the entire building and kept the details highly classified.

So far, it was only known that the massacre had occurred last night. The victims included museum security and some staff working overtime for the annual exhibition—but not just them. There were far too many bodies.

The police initially suspected that something in the museum had gone out of control, even though all publicly displayed items had undergone repeated testing… but who knew? Ancient civilization artifacts were all deeply unsettling.

“The death toll is said to exceed two hundred,” Xu Chengguang said over the phone. “The Special Cases Unit has been dispatched. The latest update is that whatever happened there couldn’t have been done by ordinary means—it’s not a conventional homicide. It might be some unrecorded dark superhuman ability. They suspect it’s related to Yingtian—”

He lowered his voice at this point.

“I never knew the museum was built on the ruins of an ancient civilization temple—a bloody sacrificial one. Some kind of terrifying power is still there—” he continued.

“But there’s no temple ruins there, right? Wasn’t that just a marketing gimmick?” Wei An asked.

“No, this analysis article makes it sound real. It says a lot of people died during construction…” Xu Chengguang said. “Ah, I’ve got another call—might be an update. I’ll call you back later.”

He hung up in a hurry to gather more information.

Wei An set the phone down and thought for a moment.

He had expected worse things to happen after the Silver Bay incident, but this was still beyond the pale.

Wei An turned his attention back to the terminal to continue modifying the contract. The sudden case was unsettling; he could sense faint traces of something spiraling out of control.

Later, Xu Chengguang called again.

The death toll for the museum massacre had been confirmed at 270, making it Taoyuan’s most severe case to date.

Some victims were naked, others dressed in ordinary seasonal clothing—no discernible pattern. Aside from local staff, all the deceased had previously visited the museum.

They had been scattered across the city, yet somehow gathered here.

The most bizarre detail involved a tour bus with 52 passengers who had visited the provincial museum just yesterday. The bus was equipped with emergency measures, alarms, and professional security personnel from the travel agency. They had been reported missing yesterday. The police had filed a case, but the bus and all its passengers had seemingly vanished into thin air—until now.

They had been found in the worst possible way—all at once, as corpses.

Xu Chengguang was panicking because the police had identified the perpetrator as an upper-echelon figure from Yingtian—the very one Gui Ling’s contract had failed to eliminate.

This person had actually been on the police’s most-wanted list for three days—five-star priority, pinned at the top of the page.

Li Yingquan—a fugitive from Yingtian’s upper ranks, formerly a local miner.

Poor, mentally disabled, with few friends. During his impoverished years, no one knew what kind of life he led. To society, he was invisible.

Four years ago, he became a successful subject in a series of “supernatural” experiments conducted by the Yingtian government.

In modern terms, Li Yingquan was a “superhuman.”

This was an identity ripe with imaginative potential, spawning all kinds of creative works in the entertainment industry.

Such imagination stemmed from a long, dark history. The Federation might seem civilized now, but this stellar region had once been steeped in chaos, filled with vast swaths of ignorant nations following another set of blind, fanatical rules.

In those chaotic times, “Superhumans” were also called “Awakened,” “Executioners,” “Saint Souls,” and the like—all dripping with mystique.

From its inception, the Federation had sought to control, categorize, and manage these dangerous entities.

Currently, the official registry of “superhumans” numbered just over a thousand—a negligible fraction in the vastness of the interstellar age.

Their origins varied, but the primary source was certain technologies discovered in ancient civilization ruins—ones with bafflingly supernatural principles and effects. These were projects many factions pursued at any cost.

Beyond the official records, however, there were others in the shadows—created through less legal means and never integrated into the system, remaining forever in darkness.

Li Yingquan was a classic example—and one of the rare superhumans capable of causing mass casualties.

His signature killing method involved wires. Three days ago, in Su City near Tongyun, he had murdered a family of four in the exact same manner as the museum victims.

Their home had been a chaotic mess of wires growing into the walls and floors, turning it into a supernatural junkyard. Within it hung cocoon-like lumps of flesh—bodies bound by maliciously sprouting wires.

It was said the wires haunted Li Yingquan’s dreams and fantasies, as if something filthy had crawled into his brain during the experiments.

In his Yingtian “mansion,” doors and walls were decorated with these grotesquely bound forms.

He seemed to possess an innate desire to twist people into such shapes.