Chapter 29: Hangman (ii)

A hanged woman?!

Lin Jue took two steps back as he gripped his spear, cold sweat breaking out on his back.

Where was Dan Liang? Where did Dan Liang go? Lin Jue looked around him nervously. The room was large; he could see as far as the kitchen, living room, corridor, bedroom with his eyes alone… but there was no Dan Liang in sight.

Did he not get pulled in?

That was impossible; this was definitely Dan Liang’s illusion, so he had to be here!

The hiss of air sounded twice from the depths of the kitchen. Lin Jue just noticed that the kitchen was connected to the bathroom, and the sound had come from there. After the spraying sound finished, Lin Jue finally saw Dan Liang walk out, shaking a spray can in his hand as he smiled at him.

He was still using Song Hanzhang’s appearance. The scent-removing spray allowed him to be ignored by monsters; in this illusion, he had a much greater advantage than Lin Jue – after suddenly losing his left eye’s vision, Lin Jue’s sense of balance and distance had been greatly reduced. But he had yet to realize it – a sure sign of danger. 

The rope suspending the female corpse suddenly snapped! The foul-smelling body fell heavily onto the ground, the heavy thud sending a tremor through Lin Jue’s body.

That pile of flesh and bones lay unmoving in the dark and terrible kitchen as if she had lost her life forever. But this mutated world gave her a second chance at ‘life’, for her to return as a monster.

At first, it was the sound of crunching bones as if they were being chewed on, or like the amplified sound of teeth grinding in the depth of night. Then it was her deathly pale and thin hands slowly moving, lifting up her dry body. Her spine which should have been snapped by her own weight slowly straightened, revealing a terrifying face under the messy black hair, her eyes bulging and her tongue lolling out.

Dan Liang stood behind her as the female corpse started crawling forwards, and watched as she stumbled toward Lin Jue!

At first, she was slow, but the moment she left the open doors to the kitchen, it was as if she had awoken. Her prostrate body suddenly lifted up and scrambled at Lin Jue like a dog, her four limbs on the ground but her mouth wide open and bloody!

Danger!

Lin Jue ducked to the side out of instinct. Just as the corpse was about to fly by him, she suddenly twisted her neck to the side without warning – her neck made a terrible cracking sound midair as her head bent more than ninety degrees, her tongue flinging towards Lin Jue like lightning!

A long, slimy, smelly tongue. 

Lin Jue attacked with his spear but his blinded left eye made him misjudge the distance; he wasn’t able to block the attack!

The very next second after his attack missed, the tongue curled around his throat and dragged him onto the ground!

Falling down heavily, Lin Jue’s mind blanked. He could see the mutated face of the corpse right by him out of his good eye! She was even smiling, her tongue twisted around his throat like a rope asking for death!

Pain flared up around his neck as he struggled to breathe. Lin Jue kicked heavily against the monster in an attempt to drive her away, but it only made her madder and she started dragging him towards the kitchen with her tongue. Lin Jue grabbed tightly onto the organ – otherwise he would have suffocated already, his other hand still tightly holding onto his weapon.

The pain of suffocation and this near-death experience was enough to almost make one give up. In those few seconds between the living room and the kitchen, Lin Jue had already wandered about once through hell and was almost out of breath.

Lin Jue struggled to open his bloodshot eyes on the edge of unconsciousness. On the left of his vision was a blazing darkness, the world on the right spinning madly. In that stumbling world, stood Song Hanzhang.

Like a flame, like a lighthouse, like a guiding morning star that would never fall.

“Let us survive together,” Song Hanzhang had once said to him, bathed under the light of the moon.

He suddenly found his courage and conviction.

How could he die here? Under incredible agony, Lin Jue questioned himself in a daze. How could he die here?!

Even if his hoarse and broken throat could no longer shout, even if his body, withering from the lack of oxygen, could no longer hold his spear, his faith to fight had not fallen!

Using the last of his strength, he roared soundlessly the moment the monster dragged him through the kitchen, and stabbed at the corpse!

The power behind that spear was great. With no time to dodge, the corpse tried to scream out furiously, only for the spear to accurately pierce through her mouth and come out of the back of her head!

The corpse’s tongue shook Lin Jue off madly. He was thrown forwards and slid toward Dan Liang who looked at him with shock and horror.

Lin Jue recognized him, recognized the illusion he had mistaken for Song Hanzhang in his befuddled state. Strong hatred flashed through his bloodshot eyes.

His battle instinct helped him once again. Even though one of his eyes was blind, even though he had lost his spear, he still grabbed Dan Liang’s thighs as he slid and dragged him onto the ground with him.

Dan Liang struggled and stabbed Lin Jue with his dagger. The dagger just happened to be in Lin Jue’s blind spot but some indescribable, prodigy-like battle instinct made Lin Jue grab onto his wrist. The dagger flew out and landed next to the corpse a few meters away.

Dan Liang finally felt panic. Lin Jue managed to turn the table in just a few seconds. The moment the corpse had been pierced through, Dan Liang’s heart suddenly stopped. Countless humble joys and enduring pains rampaged through his memories before finally melting into a thick rage. The rage had burned through his rationality and rendered his brain such that when Lin Jue fought back, he had no means of countering it.

Lin Jue held him by his throat and slammed his head onto the clay tiles of the kitchen. With a few brutal and vicious hits, Dan Liang’s face became covered in blood. Even the hard clay tile cracked, revealing the dirty concrete wall behind it.

Blood flowed down his face. Dan Liang suddenly laughed hysterically, long enough it almost became a howl, his teeth clattering from the impact.

This was the second time! This was the second time he broke down here. Whether it was survival or destruction, love or hate, tolerance or deception, they all returned to his mind at that very moment. He stared uncontrollably at the corpse not far away, pierced through the head by a lance, and howled with hysterical laughter.

He was a lunatic, and these mad genes came from his mother, another lunatic!

She had also been young and beautiful once, but that beauty had not given her happiness. She easily gave out her love and birthed a baby boy with her blood, not even realizing that the man she so desperately loved already had a wife.

Even after finding out everything, she naively believed that man would end that ‘bland and boring marriage without any common interests’ for her. After countless lies and long, endless waits without results, the man got tired of her. He left behind a large sum of money and vanished from her world. 

Back then, Dan Liang had already been five. He was even more clear-minded than his mother. He used his childish words to get what he wanted from that man, and used his innocent smile to beg for his attention. But none of that was enough to stop him from leaving. 

The days after that were hell. She became mad soon after and was sent to an affluent asylum. Because her equally mentally ill parents had passed away a long time ago and she had no other relatives, his guardian became volunteers from the community. They were filled with ‘noble’ sympathy, talking about his misbehaving mother in front of him with unbridled disgust, before giving him their cheap sympathy. 

He never objected, he pretended he knew nothing.

He learned already in preschool how to carry his little bag, board the bus under the surprised gaze of the bus driver, and arrive at the nursing home after an hour of travel through the city to see his lunatic mother. She was not a good lover, nor was she a good mother. She wasn’t even a good patient, shrieking every day that her lover would come and pick her up. She treated each young female with animosity and would get angry without reason, cry without warning, causing headaches for the workers.

He wanted to make her happier, and he soon learned how to do that. 

He showcased his new stationary, books, and clothes to her that he had gotten through various means, and told her that his dad had bought these for him and that he had visited her as well. He told her that it had just been too late and she had already been sleeping. She was so sick that she didn’t know the nursing home did not allow visitors at night. So, she grew ecstatic and gently kissed his cheeks, eagerly encouraging him to be even better, to make dad come to visit him more often, to remember to wake her up next time.

And that rare show of gentleness stirred him. He stared dazedly at her smile, nodded obediently, and the next time, the lie continued. 

Her loving kisses and rewards were like meat bones for a dog in training. Starving, he gnawed them with gusto. He felt that they were the most delicious thing in the world. He wanted to eat them again, and again, and again.

This absurd lie continued for almost ten years. She was finally allowed to leave the asylum and return home. He had also grown up. Repeating the same lie day after day made him tired, even nauseous.

Was it that painful to be abandoned? Was there anything about that man that was worth being so hung up on? Why couldn’t you accept reality? Why couldn’t you take a good look at your son? He was your only true support!

Did he deserve to be tortured like this for the rest of his life? What exactly did he do wrong?!

Weariness and impatience brewed in his rebellious heart until one day, he couldn’t take it anymore and exploded under her expecting eyes. He told her –  she had been abandoned a long time ago, he had never visited, ever, everything was a lie!

The moment the lie was revealed, he watched with rapt attention as her expression went from joyous to broken. After so long keeping himself down, he finally felt that guilty joy of revenge again.

He liked that expression, he liked seeing people break down. It was as addictive as drugs to him. 

He thought he could finally be free from this nightmarish cycle – and he was indeed free.

That night, he woke up without reason and walked towards the bathroom in the dark.

A dark shadow hung in the kitchen, like someone hanging from a noose.

He opened the light to the kitchen. In the hazy yellow light, he really did see a foul-smelling body, suspended by the neck, with protruding eyes and lolling eyes. 

The world was pale and silent. He watched for a moment and even walked by her corpse and went to the bathroom, before thoughtfully lowering the toilet seat like he had always done.

He washed his hands, he washed his hands extremely slowly. He pressed down on the soap bottle three times and carefully washed his hands until his fingers were white and wrinkled. 

The tap was still open. He suddenly looked towards the corpse in the kitchen. It was at that moment that his stalled brain finally woke and he woke up from his nightmare. The corpse hanging there was his mother.

He suddenly ran out in a frenzy and bawled as he clutched at her thighs. His emotions, which had been blank from the moment he saw the body, collapsed as he cried hoarsely and screamed frantically for her to not abandon him until neighbors called the police and the police broke down the door of his house.

He was sent into an asylum, the one his mother had lived in.

What a ridiculous cycle, fate.

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