Jiang Ye didn't trust Jin Feize. Granted, the guy hadn't actually caused him any real physical harm yet—he’d even helped him out a few times—but the mere fact that Jin Feize had catfished him by posing as a woman online was more than enough for Jiang Ye to permanently block his ass.
Using Apple's Find My app, Jiang Ye shared his live location with his bodyguard, instructing the man to tail him from a strict three-hundred-meter radius. With his tail secured, Jiang Ye caught the subway down to the harbor.
By noon, he arrived at the docks.
The harbor was completely deserted. Towering stacks of red and green shipping containers loomed overhead like artificial skyscrapers, flanked on both sides by massive gantry cranes that squatted along the seawall like dormant iron leviathans.
His phone buzzed. A WeChat notification popped up.
Candy-Loving Witch: Hop the iron gate and get inside.
The entire facility ran on automated management, meaning human personnel were practically nonexistent. The surrounding streets were just as dead. Jiang Ye scanned his perimeter, waited for a clear window, and scaled the iron gate in three quick strides, dropping silently onto the terminal grounds.
Candy-Loving Witch: Walk straight for 500 meters.
Jiang Ye kept moving forward, thumbing his screen to switch tabs to the Find My app. The map tracking screen confirmed his bodyguard’s blue dot was trailing consistently behind him.
Argos: Why the hell are we meeting here?
Candy-Loving Witch: Take a turn. Board the cargo ship.
Jiang Ye came to a halt in front of a decommissioned freighter, his brows knitting tight. After a tense moment of hesitation, he stepped onto the gangway. The vessel was an ancient, rusted-out hull, its cabin doors caked in a thick, black layer of grease and industrial grime.
Candy-Loving Witch: Go down to the refrigerated cargo hold.
Spotted a faded schematic bolted to the bulkhead, Jiang Ye mapped out the route to the freezer hold. He oriented himself, descended past the main deck, and plunged into the ship's belly.
Inside, it was pitch-black—the kind of blinding darkness where you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face. The suffocating, briny stench of stagnant seawater filled his nostrils. Flicking on his tactical high-output flashlight, he navigated the narrow corridors. The clearance was claustrophobically tight, the overhead steel plating feeling as though it were actively compressing down on him. Freight holds flanked both sides of the corridor, enveloped in a dead, echoing silence broken only by the rhythmic thud of Jiang Ye’s own boots.
Then, the faint patter of a secondary footstep manifested behind him. Someone was tip-toeing in his wake.
A cold prickle of dread crawled up Jiang Ye’s spine. A gut instinct told him that whatever was tracking him in the dark wasn’t entirely human. He checked his phone map again, but the signal inside the hull was garbage—the bodyguard's blue icon was glitching erratically. Grimacing, he forced down the rising panic.
He threw the heavy latch on the hinged watertight door and stepped into the refrigerated hold. The cooling units weren't running, yet the ambient temperature inside was drastically lower than on deck. The sheer scale of the hold was massive—the size of a football field—choked with rows of abandoned shipping containers. Jiang Ye picked his way through the grid of metal corridors, scanning the shadows for Jin Feize. Five minutes passed without a single sign of life.
"Jin Feize!" Jiang Ye called out, his voice echoing off the iron walls. "What kind of sick game are you playing?"
That soft, stealthy footstep clicked against the floor again. This time, it stopped right behind him. The proximity was a direct violation of his three-hundred-meter boundary rule.
Sensing something wrong, Jiang Ye spun around. Standing at the far end of the container row was a massive, towering silhouette. The bodyguard Shen Duo had assigned him was a hulking slab of muscle—an ex-foreign mercenary whose biceps were thicker than Jiang Ye’s thighs. The man stood there like an iron pillar, his facial features completely swallowed by the shadows.
"What's the status?" Jiang Ye demanded, taking a tentative step forward. "Did you spot something?"
As Jiang Ye closed the distance, the blinding beam of his tactical light inadvertently washed over the guard's face. An apology started to form on Jiang Ye's lips, but it died instantly. His blood ran cold.
Any normal person hit dead-on by a high-lumen tactical beam would instinctively squint or shield their eyes. This man didn't even blink. He didn't move a muscle.
Alarm bells blared in Jiang Ye’s head. He tore his eyes away to look at his phone. The screen delivered a jolt of pure horror—the bodyguard’s GPS signal was still pinned outside the freighter.
He speed-dialed the guard's number. The line connected, and the bodyguard's voice crackled through the speaker: "Hey, kid, ran into a bit of a situation out here. Sit tight, give me a few minutes—"
The guard had never even set foot inside the ship.
Then who the hell was standing in front of him?
An icy wave of sheer terror paralyzed Jiang Ye’s spine.
Thud.
Something detached from the figure's neck, hitting the deck with a heavy, wet impact before rolling like a basketball right to Jiang Ye’s feet. Jiang Ye looked down. Staring back at him was the pale, hollow-eyed face of a complete stranger.
Without wasting a millisecond to think, Jiang Ye bolted.
Behind him, the heavy doors of the shipping containers on both sides burst open in rapid succession. A swarming hive of headless figures erupted into the corridors. Jiang Ye's heart dropped into his stomach. Jin Feize hadn't called a meeting—the psycho had led him straight into a headless corpse nest.
"Jin Feize, you backstabbing piece of shit! Why are you doing this?!" Jiang Ye screamed into the dark.
He sprinted for the exit with an entire horde of headless freaks hot on his heels. They packed the tight corridors, a black, undulating tide of flesh rapidly choking off every escape route. Forcing his brain into overdrive, Jiang Ye materialized a mental schematic of the container grid, calculating the absolute shortest vector to the door.
In a dead sprint, he threw his weight forward, planted his boot against a container wall, and scrambled up onto the roof of the stack. He began leaping across the gaps between the metal boxes.
His reflexes were razor-sharp. Several headless entities lunged from the shadows to intercept him, but he dodged them by a hair. Losing their footing, the creatures plummeted off the edges, the sickening crunch of fracturing bones echoing below. Jiang Ye launched himself into a final leap, clearing the gap to the container closest to the exit. Sliding down the corrugated metal wall like an acrobat, he made a mad dash for the door.
Hope flared in his chest as he grabbed the heavy iron wheel, putting his entire weight into spinning the watertight latch. The heavy door cracked open a fraction of an inch.
Suddenly, a pale, bloodless hand slammed through the gap from the outside, gripping the edge of the frame. The fingers dug so violently into the steel plating that the metal groaned. Jiang Ye froze. With a slow, mechanical screech, the door was forced open from the outside.
A towering headless corpse obstructed the exit.
Jiang Ye recognized it instantly. It was Li Yi’an. The kitchen knife Jiang Ye had hurled earlier was still embedded deep in the creature's chest.
Behind him, dozens of elongated, headless silhouettes closed in. He was completely cornered.
"Do you... do you still remember Li Miaomiao?" Jiang Ye whispered, his voice trembling.
The headless corpse didn't give a damn. It threw a brutal, heavy counter-punch straight into Jiang Ye's face. Li Yi’an’s fist hit like a literal iron scale weight, sending a deafening ring through Jiang Ye’s skull. He collapsed hard onto the deck. As he struggled to push himself up, a secondary impact slammed into the back of his head.
His legs gave out entirely. His vision fragmented into a blurred haze of static as his consciousness began to drift. Clawing desperately at the floorboards to crawl forward, a pair of hands seized him. Through his failing vision, he saw thick, black tendrils erupting from the entity's severed neck—writhing like microscopic tentacles, twitching as they snaked through the air, driving directly toward Jiang Ye’s eyes.
VREEEEEEW—!
The deafening roar of a power saw ripped through the hold.
The spinning steel teeth tore through the headless corpse’s back, erupting violently out of its chest cavity. The vibrating saw blade whirred inches from Jiang Ye’s face. The creature's grip went slack, and its body collapsed sideways, dumping Jiang Ye onto the blood-slicked floor.
A figure stood over him, silhouetted against the dim light breaking through the exit. Slim, tall, and perfectly composed—like a lone pine tree amidst a slaughterhouse.
"Jin... Feize..." Jiang Ye croaked, his throat raw.
Jin Feize moved with terrifying efficiency, wielding the heavy power saw with a calculated, surgical precision that no ordinary high schooler could ever possess. He systematically butchered the surging wave of headless corpses, dropping them one by one. Severed limbs and viscera rained down onto the deck around Jiang Ye, coating his face in hot, metallic spray. Within five minutes, the entire refrigerated hold reeked of a rancid, suffocating stench of blood.
Wiping a smear of gore from his cheek, Jin Feize tossed the power saw aside and strolled toward Jiang Ye. His smile was warm, radiant, and serene—resembling a benevolent Buddha granting salvation. But Jiang Ye knew the truth. The creature standing before him was a demon masquerading in human skin.
"You absolute... psycho..." Jiang Ye hissed through grinding teeth. The concussion from Li Yi’an’s punch hit him in waves; the entire room spun violently as he tried to stand, sending him crashing back down.
As Jin Feize closed the distance, Jiang Ye dragged his broken body forward, desperate to put any amount of space between himself and the maniac. But Jin Feize was faster. Stooping down, he grabbed Jiang Ye by the hair from behind, forcing his head back to lock eyes.
"Get off me," Jiang Ye snarled, trying to shove him away.
But Jin Feize’s hand was a vice grip, clamping down hard on Jiang Ye’s jaw.
"You want the intel on your mother," Jin Feize murmured, a bizarre, erratic thrill dancing in his eyes. "But what are you offering as collateral? I don't do charity work."
Jiang Ye looked at the boy, realizing this freak was infinitely more terrifying than the headless monsters surrounding them. His survival instinct screamed at him to run.
Spitting through the pain, Jiang Ye growled, "Go to hell."
Jin Feize lunged forward, slamming his lips against Jiang Ye’s.
Shock rocked Jiang Ye’s system. He fought to throw him off, but Jin Feize’s strength was unnatural, binding him in an embrace that felt like an iron cage. Snapping into a feral panic, Jiang Ye bit down hard, tearing open Jin Feize's lip. Despite the sharp hit of pain, Jin Feize didn't flinch. Instead, his grip tightened around Jiang Ye's waist, the bitter, metallic taste of iron blood flooding both of their mouths.
"Grandfather was right. Kisses really are sweet," Jin Feize whispered softly against his skin, pulling back just an inch. "I told you, Jiang Ye... I have a massive sweet tooth."
"Get the fuck off me!"
Jiang Ye wound up a punch, but before his fist could connect, a sharp sting pierced his neck. A syringe.
An instant paralysis crept inward from his fingertips and toes. His consciousness shattered, his brain losing all operational control over his nervous system. He could feel the ice-cold fluid surging through his veins like a nest of frozen vipers invading his anatomy. The colors of the room flared into an unnaturally vivid, hyper-saturated glare, the geometry of the ship vibrating in a chaotic, frenzied blur. His soul felt completely detached from his physical vessel, plunging down into an infinite, roaring abyss.
He went completely limp in Jin Feize’s arms. The last thing his failing eyes registered was Jin Feize’s face leaning back in, hungrily consuming his lips. Completely powerless to resist, Jiang Ye slipped into total darkness, leaving his body entirely at the boy's mercy.
*****
Through the haze of his comatose state, a vision manifested.
He saw a vast, endless mountain range. Except the mountains were alive—heaving in a slow, rhythmic respiration cycle. The peaks exhaled massive, swirling vortexes of atmospheric pressure that drifted across the landscape at a glacial pace. Jiang Ye forced his vision to focus, tracing the source of the atmospheric flow deep into the heart of the valleys. Following the current, he drifted down into a desolate, forgotten mountain village.
A dense, black forest choked the ridges, spreading across the terrain like a malignant, diseased moss. Driven by an unseen force, Jiang Ye walked into the dark woods. He tracked through the gloom for what felt like hours until the canopy began to rustle.
A group of hikers carrying heavy rucksacks emerged through the trees. A few of them had firearms slung over their shoulders.
Jiang Ye froze as they marched past him in a single-file line. They didn't lock eyes; they seemed completely oblivious to his presence, moving with a disciplined, silent urgency.
Then, he spotted her. Jiang Ruochu.
She was wearing dark sunglasses, her entire aura and posture drastically altered. Jiang Ye barely recognized his own mother. He tried to scream her name, but his vocal cords produced zero sound. He could only watch as she walked right past him.
The unit halted outside the perimeter of a derelict, decaying village. Dropping their gear, they formed a perimeter circle and ignited a fire, boiling a strange concoction in a massive pot.
Jiang Ye hovered over the cauldron. The fluid inside was a pitch-black, viscous sludge. Once it reached a rolling boil, they killed the fire, waiting for the mixture to cool. Half an hour later, the unit split. One half stood guard with rifles raised, while the other half formed a line, dipping cups into the sludge and drinking it down.
The effects were instantaneous and erratic. The individuals who drank the fluid dissolved into absolute madness. Some began dancing in grotesque, disjointed contortions, chanting cryptic hymns in a language that defied comprehension. Others tore their clothes off entirely, collapsing into a frantic, hedonistic pile of flesh. The armed guards watched with cold indifference, completely desensitized to the spectacle. They stepped in to pry the writhing bodies apart, binding them securely with nylon ropes.
Once the first group finally burned through the hysteria and regained consciousness, the guards traded places. They stacked their weapons, stepped up to the cauldron, and drank the pitch-black soup, descending into the exact same state of violent insanity.
Throughout the entire chaotic display, Jiang Ruochu stood to the side, calmly smoking a cigarette with a completely deadpan expression.
Confusion racked Jiang Ye’s mind. His mother detested smoking. She couldn't stand the smell of tobacco. Li Yi’an used to have a heavy habit, but he had quit cold turkey specifically because she hated it so much.
Once the entire crew stabilized, Jiang Ruochu's outfit gathered their gear, split into tactical fireteams, and marched straight into the abandoned village.
The settlement was a decaying, hollow ruin wrapped in a suffocating shroud of dread. It looked like an open maw, instantly swallowing the teams the moment they crossed the threshold. Jiang Ye attempted to follow them in, but a voice suddenly echoed in his ear—
"Jiang Ye..."
A sharp tingle flared at the nape of his neck, as if someone were pressing their lips against his skin. The memory of Jin Feize’s violation snapped him back to reality. Turning on his heel, he threw a vicious punch into the dark—but the strike hit nothing but empty air. The vision dissolved instantly, pulling his consciousness across thousands of miles, tearing him away from the mountain range and slamming him back into the reality of the freighter.
*****
Jiang Ye snapped his eyes open, instantly hit by a wave of violent nausea and vertigo. The world spun like a carousel, his head feeling as heavy as a lead weight. He lay there for a long moment before slowly pushing himself up onto his hands and knees.
His vision gradually stabilized, the hyper-saturated distortion fading away.
The floor around him was a slaughterhouse. The headless corpses were scattered across the hold, systematically dismantled into precise, equal portions. Their spines had been meticulously severed, their limbs butchered and stacked with a clinical neatness that immediately reminded Jiang Ye of the precisely organized pork slabs inside Jin Feize's home freezer.
Blood coated every surface. Jiang Ye’s clothes were soaked, but because he was wearing a black short-sleeved shirt, the stains were mostly masked.
Jin Feize was gone. The hold was dead silent. The kiss felt like nothing more than a fever dream, but when Jiang Ye reached up to touch his neck, his fingers found a distinct, fresh puncture wound.
Stepping over the piles of butchered meat, Jiang Ye felt entirely drained, his muscles aching as if he had just sprinted a grueling cross-country mile. Clutching his throbbing head, he staggered out of the freezer hold and dragged himself up to the main deck.
Jin Feize was leaning against the rusted ship railing, quietly staring out at the open sea.
The golden hue of the setting sun softened his silhouette, casting his sharp features into a stark balance of light and shadow. The ocean breeze whipped through his dark hair. He looked impossibly handsome—unreal, like an ancient sea siren washed ashore. Hearing Jiang Ye’s heavy footsteps, he turned his head, a calm expression on his face.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
Jiang Ye’s voice was pure ice. "You engineered this. You led me right into an ambush."
"And?" Jin Feize chuckled smoothly. "You're still breathing, aren't you?"
"Where is my bodyguard?"
"Oh, him? Turns out your guard has a side piece on payroll. I simply leaked his infidelity and his schedule for today to his wife," Jin Feize said, his tone carrying a mock pout. "You broke the rules, Jiang Ye. I explicitly said I wanted this to be just the two of us."
Jiang Ye closed his eyes, taking a slow, controlled breath to lock down his rage. "What did you shoot into my veins?"
"Ayahuasca," Jin Feize replied casually. "A tribal herbal hallucinogen. Shamans use it to commune with spirits and peek into the supernatural realm. Modern science writes it off as a simple neurological trip, claiming the brain maps hallucinations as divine visions. But honestly, who's to say? Maybe it actually opens a window to the gods."
Jiang Ye's grip tightened, his brow furrowing deep. "You're a lunatic. Why go through all this choreography just to drug me?"
Jin Feize sidestepped the question entirely, leaning forward with an intense curiosity. "You haven't answered my question. What did you see in the trip?"
The puzzle pieces clicked together in Jiang Ye’s mind. The hallucination wasn't a random chemical trip—it was a targeted transmission. That vision contained the exact telemetry on his mother’s whereabouts. This was the intel Jin Feize had promised him. But how the hell did a chemical compound unlock memories or data that didn't belong to him? What was the underlying science?
"I saw my mother," Jiang Ye said, his voice dropping into a dark, contemplative register. "I watched her deploy into a classified, abandoned village deep in the mountains."
"See?" Jin Feize’s smile returned, perfectly warm and serene. "I told you. This time, I wasn't lying."