In the darkness, the battle's progress was unknown, but in the end, with a harsh scream, the red light in the darkness abruptly extinguished and then re-condensed.
The entire Hot Pot Restaurant fell silent.
A deathly silence persisted for a full ten seconds. With the sound of dripping water, Ye Lan, who had lost an arm, walked out with a pale face.
And that dripping sound was his blood.
He gazed deeply at Xin Nan, his expression strange, and said with self-mockery:
“I can’t believe you managed to persist for so long against such a monster.”
Gasping for air, the Youth squatted on the ground, his expression appearing very dazed.
He was saved; he had won!
The destruction of that Ritual had caused far greater damage to the Boss Lady than imagined. He had merely stalled until now, and those Extraordinary Elements undergoing fusion and sublimation had completely torn apart the Boss Lady's very existence.
Only then could he find an opportunity to destroy her Material Carrier.
This was actually very wrong, but he was too powerless to think now.
Using the little remaining Reason to distance himself from the area, which would still contain immense pollution and be extremely fatal to him, he collapsed from exhaustion, unable to even treat himself at this moment.
Ye Lan's appearance brought Xin Nan, who was lost in thought, back to reality.
Although there was still red light in the darkness, it no longer felt dangerous.
Xin Nan quickly walked to the Youth's side, took off his belt, and was about to lift the guy's clothes to stop the bleeding. Otherwise, in just one minute, this guy who had saved their lives would die from blood loss.
Giving Xin Nan a weak smile, Ye Lan cooperatively turned around. It was truly remarkable that he could still smile despite such severe pain; an ordinary person would have been crying out in agony long ago.
However, just as Xin Nan pulled open his clothes and came into contact with the skin on his shoulder, countless thumb-sized eyes suddenly opened from beneath that skin.
Their grey-blue pupils all turned in unison, then looked at Xin Nan with a silent gaze devoid of any emotion.
Xin Nan blinked his eyes and couldn't help but think.
They're quite good-looking, these dead eyes.
Their clearly separated, erect eyelashes trembled in the void, possessing an inexplicable aesthetic sense.
To some extent, they were indeed beautiful.
But when such eyes, like insect eggs, appeared on a person's flesh in a completely irregular and even overlapping manner, it was no longer a matter of being scary.
From his neck to his abdomen, apart from the jagged wounds that looked like they were bitten off by a monster, and the arm bones dripping pale white bone marrow, there was not a single part of the Youth's body that wasn't an eye.
Heh, how weird. Any normal person seeing this would probably go mad!
Yet this Youth seemed completely unaware of this. Seeing Xin Nan stop his actions, he even asked with some surprise:
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong with you, kid? If you don’t stop the bleeding, I’m going to die!”
At that moment, two people ran out from a nearby nail salon.
Due to the specificity of the Hot Pot Restaurant, neither the explosion of mercury fulminate salt nor the battle between Ye Lan and the Boss Lady inside had caused a particularly large commotion.
So these two people didn't know what had happened. They came out laughing and talking to see what had attracted the police car, and then they saw the police below already unfurling a banner to quarantine the building.
The two were stunned. In their panic, they instinctively moved towards the stairs. Then, as they turned around, their line of sight naturally concentrated on Ye Lan, who was covered in eyes.
Obviously, they saw the same scene as Xin Nan, and their eyes rolled back as they fainted.
This undoubtedly proved that what Xin Nan saw was not a hallucination or an anomaly caused by these eyes.
Xin Nan smiled, "Sorry, I was just thinking about something."
Saying this, Xin Nan, with an unchanged expression under the gaze of those dead eyes, wrapped the belt around the Youth's upper arm and then placed his foot on his shoulder, pulling forcefully.
The belt tightened to its maximum, and the speed of the blood flow was greatly reduced.
This once vibrant person, who sounded full of energy even while dying, let out a grunt and then took a deep breath.
Xin Nan glanced at the eye fluid that had spurted onto his feet and the belt, unable to distinguish whether the Youth's grunt was due to the arm wound or because he had stepped on and burst his "eyes."
“Heh, I almost capsized in a ditch. But what’s your situation? Anyone else encountering something like this would have already passed out like them, right?”
Speaking of which, the Youth's expression was full of sighs as he pouted at the two unconscious people, and then looked at him again with that strange gaze.
“Human reason has its limits. Whether it's the monster before, or me, when beings like us face it directly, it can cause unsolvable mental pollution. So, a fragile brain will usually force a person into a coma to ensure it doesn't mutate. To avoid causing large-scale disturbances, we expend extra power to conceal our existence when we go out.”
Xin Nan frowned and did not answer his question:
“You seem to have separated the brain and humans into different things. In the eyes of people like you, is parasitism and host, or something like this, similar to the relationship between a person and their brain?”
“Heh, who knows?”
As he said this, perhaps due to weakness, Ye Lan's eyes narrowed, and he almost fainted.
Xin Nan felt an indescribable sensation suddenly emanate from him at this moment.
In the next second, Ye Lan, who had reopened his eyes, smiled and looked at Xin Nan, who was sitting beside him. He, who had been giggling and sighing just a moment ago, now seemed like a completely different person, becoming bizarre!
It was as if two souls were rapidly switching dominance within his body. The faint laziness and decadence that had always been on his face vanished, and the smiling soul that was relatively easy to get along with also disappeared without a trace.
What remained was like a dark flame, an expanding evil burning intensely.
He stared greedily at Xin Nan with those open eyes, and in a hoarse, ferocious voice said:
“Do you really think I haven’t noticed my own abnormality? Do you think I don’t know I’m actually mutating? Heh, aren’t you afraid that in the next moment I’ll suddenly open my mouth, turn into an even more terrifying monster than that woman, and swallow you whole?”
Saying this, the Youth placed his only remaining hand on Xin Nan's shoulder. On that hand, those grey-blue, lifeless eyes seemed to "come alive" all at once, looking at him with the same greedy and hungry gaze.
All of this vividly told him that the thing before him was not joking; "it" truly needed food!
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