The tentacles were the first to recognize the mother.
Standing on the ferry, one could overlook the entire Black Water Town. The European-style buildings were concentrated in the center of the island, which featured prominent, strange sculptures.
Before arriving, Yu Ying had done her research and knew that the people of Black Water Town were fanatically obsessed with “Alien Forms,” believing that such entities existed in the world.
They were vastly different from humans. Their body structures were extremely complex; some possessed wings, some had giant ram horns, and others had thick, muscular snake tails.
It was said that the Alien Form sculptures originated from a Cthulhu mythos book found in Black Water Town. The Alien Goddess possessed a human body with a snake tail; her seaweed-like long hair was formed by nineteen pythons, her spine was covered in slender, flexible tentacles, and her arms were eight thick, soft, pink tentacles.
Based on the descriptions in the myth, Yu Ying could not imagine what the Alien Form actually looked like. She brought Yu Mianmian through the central avenue and reached the square, only then feeling the magnitude of the Alien Form—grotesque, yet strangely compelling.
Yu Ying looked up at the Alien Form sculpture. Humans appeared tiny beneath it. It possessed powerful, omnipotent strength. Multiple tentacles surrounded the town like invisible hands, seemingly protecting its residents.
People had gilded the sculpture; it was bizarre yet radiated a sense of divinity, with its tentacles spread out like the wings of a descending god.
Humanity had not carved its face, nor even its eyes; it seemed no one had ever seen what it truly looked like.
Suddenly, Yu Ying felt a palpitation. A powerful force resonated with her; her face turned pale instantly, and a layer of fine sweat broke out on her forehead.
Noticing that something was wrong, Yu Mianmian quickly supported Yu Ying and helped her to the side to rest.
The town bell rang, and the ethereal sound echoed. Women dressed in shrine maiden robes began to pray.
“Did you stare into the eyes of the Evil God?” an old woman asked, praying devoutly with her hands together, muttering prayers Yu Ying could not understand.
Yu Ying nodded weakly.
“You must not stare into the Evil God’s eyes; it will bring misfortune… it will bring misfortune.” The old woman kept repeating the last sentence.
Yu Ying looked up at the Evil God sculpture. The area where its eyes should be was covered by a piece of black cloth, which fluttered in the strong wind, as if that strip of cloth was used to suppress the Evil God.
Yu Mianmian felt uncomfortable after staying in the square for too long. Being suppressed by the high-level Evil God’s eerie power, the golden light radiating from the sculpture felt like it was burning her skin.
If she stayed any longer, she would melt. Yu Mianmian distracted Yu Ying, “Sister Yu Ying, are you feeling better? Shall we go look somewhere else?”
“Alright.” Yu Ying also felt that the magnetic field in this place made her uncomfortable; her heart felt constricted and painful, making it hard to breathe.
Before leaving the square, she glanced back at the Evil God sculpture. She seemed to see the Evil God’s eyes—the phoenix eyes opened to reveal pitch-black pupils, with the whites of the eyes occupied by black mist.
A chill ran down Yu Ying’s spine as she led Yu Mianmian away.
If she had paid closer attention, she could have seen that the Evil God possessed a pair of eyes identical to her own—pure black, like black mist.
Yu Ying felt that she was suffering from a serious illness. It felt as if there were two personalities living inside her body: her master personality suppressing an evil sub-personality.
She had been able to see illusions since she was a child, though she only witnessed them that one time when she killed a fish. After that, her mother forbade her from killing fish and gave her a specific medication every day.
“Felojalie” special medication—it could control the illusions she saw. Yu Ying thought her mental illness was under control, but she did not expect her condition to worsen the more she participated in the dating reality show.
There was a clinic in the town; she hoped the clinic sold the special medication to control her mental condition.
Yu Ying gripped Yu Mianmian’s arm and said feigning weakness, “My hypoglycemia is acting up. I need to go to the clinic to buy medicine. You go buy the things we need for the house.”
Yu Mianmian was confused: Her?
How would she know what humans needed?
Yu Ying listed the grocery items in her notes and sent them to Yu Mianmian’s WeChat.
“Don’t you need me to accompany you?” Yu Mianmian was worried that Yu Ying wouldn’t be able to manage alone, but Yu Ying insisted on going to the clinic by herself, so she had to compromise.
Yu Ying and Yu Mianmian separated. Every distance she walked, she could see prompt signs—maps of the island and road signs were posted on wooden boards.
On the wooden board was a prompt written in various languages: Note: The ferry port closes at 4:00 PM in Black Water Town!!!
Yu Ying followed the road signs to a clinic in a small alley. She kept her real-time location shared on her phone so Yu Mianmian could find her.
A female doctor stood behind a medicine display cabinet, wearing transparent-rimmed glasses, filling a prescription for a patient.
After seeing off the previous patient, she poured a cup of warm water for Yu Ying, handed it to her, and let her sit in a chair to rest.
The female doctor’s voice was clear, with a professional attitude, “Are you feeling unwell?”
Yu Ying drank the warm water and only then felt warm in her body. She stared into the female doctor’s eyes, “Do you have ‘Felojalie’ special medication here?”
“Felojalie is a prescription drug; it requires a prescription note from a doctor.”
It was clear that Yu Ying needed a prescription to purchase the medication.
Felojalie was a medicine for treating mental illnesses. It was effective at controlling the condition early on, but overuse caused dependency and it had long since been classified as a controlled substance by the state.
The female doctor asked about Yu Ying’s condition.
Yu Ying looked into the female doctor’s brown pupils, “Can I trust you?”
“No one keeps secrets better than the residents of Black Water Town,” the female doctor assured Yu Ying, promising not to leak patient privacy.
Yu Ying did not believe the female doctor’s rhetoric; she did not believe in anyone other than herself.
She hid her true condition and said to the female doctor, “I always feel like something is hiding in the dark, watching me. They are everywhere.”
“Are there any other symptoms?”
“No.”
“Do you often have nightmares? Can you clearly remember the content of the dreams?”
Yu Ying denied it immediately, “No.”
The female doctor wrote down Yu Ying’s symptoms, “You are just too tired, or you could say the psychological pressure is too great.” The female doctor closed her ballpoint pen and tucked it back into the top pocket of her white coat.
“You don’t need to take that kind of medicine,” the female doctor explained to Yu Ying, “Taking too much will cause dependency, and may even worsen your condition.”
The female doctor returned to the medicine display cabinet. As she turned to pick up a medicine bottle, a shrill ringing sound pierced her eardrums like a needle.
Within the sharp tinnitus was the sound of cartilaginous animals crawling and slithering. A pink tentacle crawled into her brain; the suckers on the tentacle sucked on the surface of the brain, seemingly wanting to suck the brains dry.
The female doctor’s brown pupils were covered by white mist. The skin in the middle of her spine bulged grotesquely. A tentacle drilled out of her skin, tearing through her white coat. The wriggling tentacle had just adapted to the human body when it touched the medicine cabinet, causing bottles to fall everywhere.
She crouched down, calmly picked up the medicine bottles from the floor, and placed them on the display cabinet. She received the information from the female doctor’s brain and learned that Yu Ying’s condition had worsened.
Yu Ying watched as the female doctor used her tentacles to pick up the medicine bottles. The tentacles agilely unscrewed the caps, poured all the medicine bottles into a glass container, added 500 milliliters of purified water to boil, and tentacle mucus dripped into the container.
“Drink this and have a good sleep, everything will be fine.”
“It” poured the brown solution into a glass container, and poured the remaining solution along with the dregs into a glass, handing it to Yu Ying, “A sure cure.”
Yu Ying held the cup of brown solution. Tentacle secretions were still floating on the surface, and the pungent smell was like slop from a sewer.
She must have been insane to have actually accepted this cup of foul-smelling poison.
“It” looked at Yu Ying excitedly, its tentacles twisting crazily and dripping sticky liquid. The voice in the bottom of its heart clamored for the human to drink that cup of viscous medicine soup; as long as she drank it, everything would be fine.
The octopus guessed that this human named Yu Ying was its mother. Its mother’s original form was an octopus monster with eighteen tentacles; even if she turned into a human, she shouldn’t be this fragile.
Mother’s bodily functions were too powerful; ordinary medicine pills couldn’t cure Mother’s illness. “It” added many, many pills, personally brewed a pot of medicine soup for Mother, and thoughtfully put it in a glass container.
“It” remembered that one time when it was sick, Mother had also brewed medicine soup like this for it. But it didn’t know that what Mother brewed was traditional Chinese medicine, not Western medicine.
Yu Ying lifted the glass to her lips. She raised her eyes and saw a flash of unspeakable excitement in the bottom of the female doctor’s eyes.
She poured out the “slop” from the glass without changing her expression, “It seems you need a psychiatrist more than I do.”
The medicine soup ran down the side of the cup onto the floor, emitting a pungent, foul odor; the floor was corroded and began to bubble. Yu Ying was not Mother; Mother would not have refused “It’s” gesture.
Perhaps Yu Ying was just an ordinary mentally ill patient who could see eerie objects through illusions. “It” had tested Yu Ying; there was no fluctuation of supernatural power on Yu Ying, nor any eerie value.
Being let down by an ordinary human for the first time, “It” was a bit angry. No matter what, Yu Ying should have obediently drank that cup of medicine soup.
“It” decided to teach this human named Yu Ying a lesson.
The female doctor’s tentacles clamored crazily, secreting more mucus from their suckers. Eight thick tentacles attacked Yu Ying’s back; the “base tentacle” tightly wrapped around Yu Ying’s wrist.
Every one of the octopus’s tentacles had its own consciousness. The “base tentacle” loved to “snuggle” with Yu Ying; this instruction seemed to have been engraved into its genes.
The “base tentacle” wrapped around Yu Ying’s wrist tightly, unwilling to let go. “It” saw a glowing jellyfish in Yu Ying’s handbag—did Mother have other eerie objects by her side? The “base tentacle” secreted mucus, leaving its own scent on Mother.
The “base tentacle” quickly released Mother’s arm to avoid the main body discovering the anomaly. The female doctor retracted the tentacles, her palm gripping the “base tentacle,” “You felt it too, didn’t you?”
The female doctor stretched out a finger to stroke the suckers on the “base tentacle,” her fingers stained with the mucus from the suckers, and licked them, “Why is it so wet?”
The “base tentacle” suckers tightened, no longer secreting mucus, pretending it wasn’t interested in the human just now. Damn it, the octopus main body used “it” to successfully find Mother.
Ever since Mother left the game world, “it” had felt no interest in any female octopus; the suckers on its tentacles would stick to Mother’s clothes to suck.
“Its” base tentacle had found Mother before it did. “It” was now 90% sure that Yu Ying was its mother. The remaining 10% required an event to prove that there was indeed octopus eerie power within Yu Ying.
If Yu Ying could not successfully dodge “its” attack, then Yu Ying was merely a human who could make the “base tentacle” excited.
“It” stared at Yu Ying’s departing back, a crazy thought arising in its heart—wanting to suck Yu Ying’s skin, wanting to merge with Yu Ying and never be separated again.
Yu Ying walked out of the clinic and found Yu Mianmian according to the shared location. Yu Mianmian was waiting for the cake decorator to make a cake in the cake shop. Seeing Yu Ying return, she stuffed an orange-flavored candy into Yu Ying’s hand, “Are you feeling better?”
“Much better. How long until the cake is ready?” Yu Ying raised her arm to look at her watch, “There are thirty minutes left; the last ferry is about to depart.”
The cake decorator replied to Yu Ying, “Black Forest cake takes a long time to make; it will take another twenty minutes.”
“Mianmian, shall we come back to buy the cake next week?” After leaving the clinic, Yu Ying felt extremely anxious, foreseeing that something bad was about to happen.
She looked up at the cloudy sky, where a few crows were circling. Yu Ying grabbed Yu Mianmian’s arm, “I promise, I will definitely bring you next week.”
Yu Mianmian pulled her arm away from Yu Ying, “It’s not far from the ferry port; if we walk quickly, it only takes five minutes.” Yu Mianmian acted spoiled toward Yu Ying, “Sister Yu Ying, you are the best!”
Jellyfish did not have the concept of a birthday. In their long lives, they had no concept of time. The God Jellyfish group reproduced through asexual reproduction; cells fell onto hydroids to form countless small jellyfish, and Yu Mianmian grew by devouring her own kind.
“It,” however, remembered Mother’s birthday clearly. April 16th was Mother’s birthday, today. “It” wanted a big birthday cake to celebrate Mother’s birth.
“Today is my birthday.”
Jellyfish have neither brains nor hearts; she would not remember the day she fell onto the hydroid, gaining life during the process of devouring.
Her name also followed her mother’s surname. There was the character “Yu” in her mother’s ID, and Mother always said her tentacles were soft like cotton candy.
Thus, she had a name—Yu Mianmian.
Yu Mianmian would not understand that in the human worldview, it is impossible for a mother and daughter to have the same birthday. Yu Mianmian falsified the information on her human identity, filling in the same birthday as her mother.
The day she was saved by Mother was the day Yu Mianmian was reborn.
From then on, her world was no longer just black and white; she could see her mother’s gentle face. She no longer had to drink the emotionless nutrient solution in the lab, as Mother would make her delicious, nutritious meals.
Her world could only revolve around Mother; she could not survive without Mother…
Yu Ying was stunned. How could there be such a coincidence in the world? She and Yu Mianmian not only shared a surname but also had their birthday on the same day.
The cake decorator handed the cake box to Yu Mianmian, “Miss, the cake you ordered is ready.”
There were no accidents on the way back to the ferry port. Fortunately, they just happened to catch the last ferry.
Yu Ying stood on the sightseeing deck, the salty sea breeze blowing her long hair. She saw the women wearing shrine maiden robes; they held candles and were chanting some kind of eerie incantation.
Among the crowd stood a woman with an alluring appearance; she was tall and held a candle, her red hair fluttering, and the sea breeze blowing her skirt until it snapped loudly.
Yu Ying was bewitched into looking into the woman’s pupils. The white pupils were like the thick fog rising on the sea in the early morning. Beside her ear, she seemed to hear some kind of cartilaginous animal crawling by, leaving a wet, moist trail.
She clearly heard “it” calling her.
“Mother, Mother, Mother…”
“It” missed Mother madly.
The calling was filled with crazed attachment and intense hatred, seemingly wanting to drown Yu Ying.
Yu Ying came back to her senses and discovered that all the shrine maidens’ pupils had turned white. They seemed to be controlled by some kind of eerie object, their gazes staring madly at Yu Ying.
The ferry left the ferry port, and Yu Ying could not help but let out a sigh of relief. However, she heard the ship’s cabin being slammed by an unknown creature. Pink tentacles broke through the windows and reached into the cabin, and seawater poured into the ship continuously.
Screams, panic, horns, and ear-piercing sounds drilled into Yu Ying’s ears. She withstood the interference of the sharp tinnitus, supported her body, and quickly descended from the deck.
The eerie tentacle monster was heading straight for Yu Mianmian…