CH 33

The crimson light began to dissipate, and reality exploded in a bubble; it was fragmented, dark, and desolate.

In his pain, he felt his body getting colder. It was as if he were falling into an endless void.

He felt something being stripped away from his body—in other words, abandoned.

He sank deeper into the void and felt many blurred and distorted figures approaching him: some with curiosity, some concerned, some greedy, and some eager.

“You’re going to die,” a female voice whispered.

Hearing that voice, he became anxious, ‘Does that mean I’m not dead yet? That means I still have a chance to save myself!’

“It’s futile. Your soul is exhausted and wants to rest,” the voice replied.

‘I can’t die yet! No, you don’t understand. I still want to…’

“Does it matter?” the voice scoffed. “The sun still rises after you’re gone; the moon still shines after you’re gone. The world still moves in your absence. So, tell me, does it ever matter?”

“Then, I’ll… I’ll… I’ll sell my soul to you!” Yibei yelled into the void. “You can take me, but not my virginity! You see, I’m still a virgin, and I want to save my first time for my true love and…”

Yibei continued to trail off, and the voice was silent. The voice wanted to show him a way out, but now she didn’t feel like it anymore.

“Get out of here!” the voice roared in annoyance as Yibei continued to ramble on endlessly.

In the next instant, he was engulfed in a flash of life. As if something were dragging his body, he felt himself floating upwards out of the void, as if he were about to emerge back into reality.

“Swallow the Witch’s Egg, and you will live.”

Like a hallucination, the voice whispered straight into his brain. He woke up, back in reality, and panted heavily. His chest and internal organs were all broken, and crumbs of plasma spurted out of his huge chest wound.

He saw the egg that shone an eerie crimson intermittently and started crawling towards it defiantly.

“Hurry up!” the voice urged. “You have a minute left; they’re coming!”

Yibei wondered who this ‘they’ was, but in the next moment, he felt eyes on him. The stares seemed to come from a shadow in the sky, and malice pierced through his very soul.

He gritted his teeth and kept his gaze on the egg, crawling towards it.

“I…” he crawled, leaving a gory trail of blood and organs.

“I…” he gulped, staring at the egg, centimetres away from him.

“I don’t f*cking want to be human anymore!” He yelled as he grabbed the egg, stuffing it into his mouth.

His eyes shifted to a turbulent sea of blood, and countless human figures emerged from his body, stretching out their arms and tearing at his body viciously.

His body was torn into pieces almost immediately, leaving only bones, a heart, and his bloodshot eyes in a matter of seconds.

And just like that, his bones were scattered on the floor.

The Witch’s Egg hovered in front of his heart and split apart, turning into bloody needles the size of fingers. On the ends of each needle was a female, human face.

Rays of crimson light shone from the needles – anger, violence, sadness, doubt, depression…

The needles pierced through his heart, and continued to stab into it.

Yibei didn’t know how he was still conscious – all he knew was pain. Before he fell into a coma, he seemed to hear a strange, ancient voice.

“There is a mountain. There is a woman. Look! A severe drought stretching across the red land – you’re hatching… you’re hatching!”

In the next moment, his eyes burned, and a burst of blazing heat rushed towards the egg.

The two forces fought and collided against each other, sending out high-frequency screams that nobody could hear. The forces bit violently at each other, before coming to a rest, and the forces soon came to a delicate balance.

The egg cracked, slicing itself in half. The other half merged with his heart, and it seemed like magma was flowing between the cracks of the egg.

Soon, his heart started beating again, thundering across the boiler room.

With each heartbeat, a molten liquid thumped out of his heart. It formed blood, then it formed bone. It formed muscle, then it started to morph into a vaguely human form, then…

In the underground boiler room.

A naked, petite girl curled up in a fetal position, and she was suspended in mid-air.

Her snow-white skin was lit ablaze, but she wasn’t harmed or charred by the fire. Her slender and delicate limbs hid terrifying power, and fiery red hair hung down her back, fluttering despite the absence of wind.

Shadows emerged from the darkness and orbited around her. One could hear a sigh, and the shadows dissipated instantly.

The girl was gently placed on the ground, and her eyes opened.

In an instant, terrifying, devastating fluctuations of energy spread from her petite body and detonated with horrifying power.

Her long hair hung down her shoulders, and as soon as the tip of her hair touched the ground, the ground cracked from the intense heat radiating from it, and white smoke flooded from beneath the cracks.

The water stored in the boiler boiled in an instant, splashing violently against the metal casing.

The sprinkler in the room was activated, but all it could spray was steam.

In the darkness, the thick, black hair fled from the scene, but the heat caught up to the bundles of hair, and they were burnt to a crisp in an instant.

Fire.

The man imprisoned within the tangles of the hair was freed, and by the mounds of sweat dripping down his forehead, he knew that the deed was done.

He knelt down on the ground from the heat and gritted his teeth, “That damned rabbit, I have to have my revenge…”

Before he could react, a fiery wave of psychic energy hit him.

“W-what’s going on…?”

This wasn’t what he thought was going to happen. He knew the immense power laying dormant in the Witch’s Egg; however, Mr Rabbit’s aura should be cold and cruel, not scorching and domineering like a volcano.

Another wave of energy hit him, and sharp pains bit at his scars. He had no time to think about what had happened; all he could do was flee.

As he ran through the facility, there were violent explosions behind him; a faint yet wild laughter could be heard poking at his soul. The laughter was ethereal and sweet, but all it did was cause the man to tremble.

The flames licked at him, and he tore apart his body, allowing the cicadas in his body to escape.

Meanwhile, not far from Flowers & Sunshine Resort…

In the manhole cover of a sewage system, five cicadas crawled out of the cracks in the manhole.

Their eyes stared helplessly at the blazing resort. They trembled collectively before disappearing into the night.