Jiang Qian was dead.
Lin Qiye had witnessed the entire process of her death.
The monster had dropped from above and, with its claws, slit her throat as cleanly as slicing tofu—then begun to feast in ecstatic frenzy.
To the very last moment, Jiang Qian's eyes had brimmed with terror and despair.
Lin Qiye's mental perception registered every detail with perfect clarity. His stomach heaved; he very nearly vomited.
He had weathered his share of suffering and hardship, and his mind had long matured past his years—but carnage like this, he was seeing for the first time.
And now was not the time to be sick.
Without a moment's hesitation, while the monster was busy feeding on Jiang Qian's corpse, Lin Qiye turned and ran for the other end of the lane!
His original escape route was blocked by the monster, so he could only do the opposite—run toward where Wang Shao had been killed.
The monster seemed far more interested in the corpse; it didn't give chase. Lin Qiye let out a fraction of a breath.
He didn't know what these monsters were, but one thing was beyond doubt: they did not belong to the category of "human," nor to any category of "beast" known to man.
If someone told him they were apes mutated by radiation, he might believe it. That size, that strength, that speed—no normal human could contend with any of it.
But only "might."
In this world shrouded by the Mist, a boy who had seen a seraph with his own eyes did not take science to be the world's only truth.
He believed in the existence of "mystery."
And Lin Qiye had the nagging feeling that he'd heard of monsters like these somewhere before.
He was still turning it over in his head when something else crossed into his mental perception. Lin Qiye slammed to a halt.
His breathing grew heavier.
Ten meters ahead of him, the shape of that monster appeared again. And Lin Qiye was certain—this was not the one from before.
It was every bit as ugly, but it was absolutely not the same one.
The clearest proof: cradled in this monster's arms was Wang Shao's corpse, and it was still feeding.
By now, Wang Shao's face was completely gone, nothing left but a blur of bloody flesh. If not for his rather distinctive clothes, Lin Qiye might not have recognized him at all.
This was a second monster.
The one that had killed Wang Shao!
Earlier, with Jiang Qian and the others, he hadn't been able to see beyond ten meters, and had assumed without thinking that there was only one monster. Now he understood how wildly wrong he'd been.
From the behavior of the one that killed Jiang Qian, these monsters clearly preferred feeding on corpses to chasing the living—otherwise Lin Qiye would never have escaped that scene.
Yet right after Wang Shao died, a monster had immediately come chasing after Lin Qiye's group.
Which could only mean one thing... another monster had already claimed Wang Shao's corpse for its meal.
One narrow lane. Two monsters. Every route of retreat Lin Qiye had was sealed.
Lin Qiye's face was ashen. An emotion he hadn't felt in a very long time—despair—rose in his chest.
In all his seventeen years, true despair had come for him only twice.
Once was ten years ago, when he saw those eyes upon the moon.
The other time was now.
Ahead of him, the monster that had finished eating a face tossed Wang Shao's corpse aside like garbage, turned its head toward Lin Qiye, and ran its long scarlet tongue over the blood at the corner of its mouth.
In that moment, Lin Qiye wanted to scream every curse he knew.
Fuck—why is it always me?!
Climb onto a roof as a kid, and I see a seraph.
Go blind from looking, then fall off the roof on top of it.
Get taken for a lunatic and locked in a mental asylum for a year.
And now—now that I've finally clawed through it all, ready to study hard, sit the college exams, and start a brand-new life...
I run into you, you hideous freak?
Most people wouldn't meet one of these in a lifetime—I get two at once?!
It's absurd!
Under the pressure of death, all the fury and grief pressed down into the depths of Lin Qiye's heart for years erupted like a volcano!
The rage roared and blazed. The fear in his heart was squeezed smaller and smaller, and a vicious, reckless nerve he never knew he had came surging up from somewhere!
He gripped his white cane tight, chest heaving violently, facing the monster as it coiled to spring.
In this moment, what stood before him seemed not to be a monster fresh from devouring a man—but every wrong and every setback he had swallowed in the past ten years.
Not even Auntie and Yang Jin knew what kind of fire lay banked in the heart of this boy who had spent ten years being crushed!
He refused to accept this!!
And perhaps not even he himself noticed: amid that storm of emotion, the eyes sealed shut for ten years were trembling violently—on the very verge of opening.
"SKREEE—!"
Eyeing the tender, fair-skinned Lin Qiye like a street thug eyeing a beauty, the monster shrieked and sprang!
"Fuck it—I'm not afraid of you!" Lin Qiye bellowed, hefted the white cane, and charged headlong at the leaping monster!
The distance between them collapsed in an instant!
At the very moment the monster's claws were about to tear open Lin Qiye's throat, he twisted hard to the side, dodging the blow by the width of a hair!
But though Lin Qiye could read the monster's movements perfectly, his body was still only human. The claw grazed past his temple, leaving a shallow line of blood.
And the black satin band was sliced through—swept away on the whirling wind, gone who knew where.
Eyes still shut, Lin Qiye seized the opening and roared, driving the white cane hard at the monster's belly!
CRACK—!
A crisp snap rang out. Lin Qiye's hands went suddenly light—then a massive force slammed into him from behind as the monster's tail swatted him away!
Lin Qiye tumbled across the ground. He hauled himself up through the pain, and his perception told him the cane in his hands had snapped clean in two.
A white cane was made for guiding the blind—hardly sturdy. Against a monster hard as iron, of course it was useless.
"Fuck!"
He snarled and hurled the broken half-cane to the ground.
One chance. He'd had one real chance, and this was how it ended.
The snapping of that cane was like a fuse. It detonated everything inside Lin Qiye at once. He stood there, fists clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms and left tracks of blood.
"I refuse to accept this!!" he roared!
And in that instant of surging emotion, a strange sensation welled up in his heart.
Like spring wind turning to rain, like water finding its channel—a thread of coolness flowed out from his heart, up into that knotted, blocked place in his mind, and touched it, feather-light...
And that final paper barrier broke open at a touch!
Lin Qiye felt a sun detonate inside his body. Heat beyond anything he had ever known flooded every inch of him. The eyes beneath his lids burned as if held to a furnace, scorching hot!
And so, as naturally as anything in the world...
he opened those eyes that had been sealed for ten years.
And the last image those eyes had ever seen was another pair of eyes,
the eyes of the seraph!
In an instant, a brilliant pillar of blazing light erupted from a lane on the edge of the old town, punching straight into the sky!
In that moment, the night shone bright as day!