Lunar calendar, April 15th.
An ominous day for travel, an auspicious day for a wedding.
The almanac had already clearly indicated it.
If using the process of elimination, Option D seemed like the first one that should be eliminated. Running away was not feasible.
There’s a saying, “You can hide on the first day of the month, but you can’t hide on the fifteenth.” It seemed to match perfectly with the date.
A plastic wall clock hung on the indoor wall. The second hand ticked away, its rotations irritating and annoying, as if a pair of hands were circling the neck and gradually tightening their grip, depriving one’s breath.
The hour hand finally pointed to nine.
There were less than twenty-four hours left until the Hai hour (9–11 PM) on the 15th.
Xin Hexue stood outside the clinic, looking at the gradually waxing moon in the night sky. It was already very close to a full moon’s outline.
Gu Mifeng emerged from the clinic after several hours of emergency treatment. He took off his mask with one hand, then pulled off his blood-stained gloves with the other, tossing them into the medical waste bin.
The hair on his forehead was damp with sweat. He gulped down a bottle of mineral water, tired like a dog.
“Fortunately, there was a perverted doctor who privately built an operating room here. Otherwise, no matter how tough this guy’s life was, he couldn’t have been saved.”
The unwritten rule in the medical industry within the Walled city was not to perform surgeries, so clinics didn’t have operating rooms. Fortunately, Gu Mifeng had also rented the room behind the clinic, which was where Eric originally lived. Inside had actually been converted into an operating room.
Who knew what that madman did besides mentally tormenting patients? Maybe he also performed dissection experiments.
It was said that he used to feed the stray cats and dogs in the walled city, which was why people in the village praised him for his benevolence as a doctor.
However, even as a strange being, Dr. Eric was already very dead. Even if someone fished his body out of the ditch or dug up the centipede-man’s corpse from the earth and pieced it back together, it couldn’t answer, and it held no collectible value whatsoever.
Thinking of this, Gu Mifeng asked, “What happened with those corpses at your door?”
During the day, it was Gu Mifeng and Xiao Huang who ran up to the fifth floor with a stretcher, placed He Qinghong on it, carried him down, and rushed him to the operating room.
The mountain of corpses and sea of blood scared assistant Xiao Huang into fainting on the spot. After all, he was just an expelled university student, his studies had been cut short before he could even see a cadaver.
Xin Hexue pursed his lips slightly and handed the invitation he found in the door crack to Gu Mifeng.
Gu Mifeng’s eyes scanned it, and his expression became serious.
Xin Hexue: “You were in the walled city yesterday evening and today during the day. Didn’t you see who, or what, killed them?”
Perhaps using the word “who” was incorrect.
Gu Mifeng shook his head. “No, I thought they had just withdrawn.”
Yu Xingzhou came running up, his hair disheveled.
He had originally gone up to help Xin Hexue deal with the mess at his door. He came to a stop, stared intently into Xin Hexue’s eyes, and quickly explained without even catching his breath, “They’ve all disappeared.”
“What?”
Yu Xingzhou explained: “Those corpses, they all dissolved.”
The betrothal gift couldn’t be returned. This wedding was a one-way deal.
A shadow gathered between Xin Hexue’s brows.
Yu Xingzhou and Gu Mifeng looked at him with worry in their eyes.
………
Inside the hospital room.
A fluorescent light hung from the ceiling, the bulb dazzling.
“Is this multiple-choice question serious? Not only is it sexual harassment, it’s also insulting to others.”
Gu Mifeng raised his eyebrows in surprise, looking at the text on Xin Hexue’s identity card with disbelief.
“I won’t even bother with the part calling me useless.”
Gu Mifeng shrugged, pointing at the glaringly “thoroughly tamed” in the last sentence.
“This actually passed review? Is the game company so short-staffed that there’s no one internally responsible for text review?”
He wouldn’t dare speak to Xin Hexue like that.
Xin Hexue took back his identity card. “This multiple-choice question has a time limit.”
Before the arrival of Hai hour on Lunar April 15th, that is, tomorrow at 9 PM, he had to make a choice.
Yu Xingzhou’s face was sullen. Unlike Gu Mifeng, who cracked jokes regardless of whether the situation was urgent or relaxed, a stormy cloud was brewing in his eyes.
Gu Mifeng: “Even if we can’t determine what the strange being on the other side is, one thing can be confirmed.”
Xin Hexue looked at him. “What?”
Gu Mifeng said firmly, “The people here are superstitious about the Red Prince. Both weddings and funerals must be witnessed by Him. So the marriage ceremony here must be held at the temple on the mountain.”
They held white affairs (funerals) for the deceased, which required the body to rest in the temple’s ancestral hall for one night. Xin Hexue and Yu Xingzhou were very clear about that.
But even red affairs (weddings) also had to go to the temple? Did the Red Prince truly hold such a high status in these people’s hearts?
Xin Hexue hesitated. “The location on the invitation says Tianxiang Restaurant.”
Gu Mifeng: “I asked Xiao Huang. There’s no such restaurant in Beidao City.”
After a moment, Yu Xingzhou lifted his head and said, “If that’s the case, then why not try Option A and see what happens.”
… The fluorescent light on the ceiling flickered.
The doors and windows were closed, and there was no wind indoors.
The light was dim. The bulb above was like an open eye, its creepy pupil rotating and observing everyone in the room.
The sound of a roaring tide rose in Xin Hexue’s mind again, and all the noisy yet subtle sounds in the real environment vanished in an instant. A cold chill started climbing up from his ankles, freezing him senseless.
Suddenly, a large hand held his, and warmth was transmitted over.
Xin Hexue followed the sensation and looked over. It was He Qinghong. His face was still pale from excessive blood loss.
“Don’t seek out the Red Prince.” He Qinghong’s slightly unfocused pupils resisted the fluorescent light, gathered focus and stared at Xin Hexue. “He is a monster.”
He continued, “Is Xin Cheng your biological father?”
………
Xin Cheng came from the Walled city.
Some said he had killed people since his youth, that he was a natural-born evil spirit; some said he abandoned his wife and children in his younger years, that he was not a real man; some said he betrayed trust and loyalty in his middle age, betraying close friends and brothers, and climbed over corpses to gain power.
But everyone envied him. Starting with nothing, he single-handedly built an organization that made the people of Beidao City go pale at the mention.
No one knew how this man, who was once so lowly he only deserved to roll in the mud of the walled city, managed to do it.
They only knew that after Xin Cheng made his fortune, he renovated the temple on Nanshan mountain, built roads, and donated money for incense.
So some said Xin Cheng had worshipped the god of Nanshan mountain, and the god had manifested.
But making a wish to a god should require paying a price.
Xin Cheng’s heart was not sincere. He was too greedy, and wanted too much. He thought he had given sufficient repayment, and then he boldly tried to steal fire…to steal the deity’s power.
The data He Qinghong found when he broke into the organization’s secret research room stated it clearly.
They lured the Red Prince into manifesting and cut off a part of the “bud primordia” from the Red Prince’s body.
Those bud primordia were densely packed and spherical, like fleshy tumors growing from the monster’s body, or like jabuticaba fruit covering a tree. They were not fully mature, so they couldn’t separate from the main body to become independent entities.
Their target was precisely this kind of bud primordia.
Xin Cheng wanted to create a god, to cultivate a Black Prince that obeyed him, not a Red Prince.
Fifty people were dispatched in that operation, but only one person returned.
The Black Prince they desperately stole back had no intelligence. It was just a lump of living flesh that acted on simple neural reflexes and instinctual attacks. It was a Red Prince shrunk down countless times, only half a palm big. It wasn’t an independent entity yet; they had to find a way to make it survive.
Along the way, they fed it a lot of dead feed, both men and women, young and old.
This kind of empty consumption wasn’t sustainable. So someone proposed using a living host for parasitism. In simpler terms, it wasn’t much different from “possession.” They experimented on many subjects. The hosts were all completely devoured from the inside. The first thing eaten was the stomach, and finally, they turned into a puddle of corpse fluid.
They also summarized a pattern: the age limit was before adulthood. The younger the host, the longer the Black Prince’s parasitism. This conclusion made people feel as if they had seen the light of victory, and Xin Cheng opened champagne prematurely.
Then, Xin Cheng picked three children from the Walled city to adopt.
Because they didn’t know if the host’s thoughts would affect the Black Prince, they also had to train the host accordingly. The host had to be completely loyal to the organization.
These three children were given the code names Number Seven, Number Eight, and Number Nine.
Number Seven was mute. Unqualified.
Number Eight and Number Nine had marks tattooed on their bodies as host identifiers.
Xin Hexue knew that mark; he had seen the tattoo on He Qinghong’s back.
Number Eight, who reached adulthood first, still died. After being parasitized by the Black Prince, he only lasted until the third day before being completely devoured.
The researcher Xin Cheng hired at great expense told him this wasn’t parasitism; this was the Black Prince feeding. For the Black Prince, young organs were relatively more delicious. It would slow down its feeding speed, using this unique way to indicate it was “enjoying” the food.
Perhaps for this species, there were no concepts like “mother,” “host,” or “parent” that they tried to instill. There was only food.
Xin Cheng then fell into panic and had frequent nightmares. If he couldn’t successfully tame the Black Prince, what bargaining chip did he have to resist the Red Prince?
In a state of constant fear, he ended up not being harvested by the Red Prince, but scared to death by his own dreams.
With the organization’s leader dead, the people below were in disarray like a plate of loose sand. Group Three stole the Black Prince. After the second-in-command took over, his first order was to kill the legal heir mentioned in the will, and his second order was to recover and kill the Black Prince.
The first task was assigned to Number Seven, the mute. The second task was assigned to Number Nine, He Qinghong.
“On April 5th, I had already disposed of the Black Prince that night.”
He Qinghong said firmly.
He hadn’t seen the invitation placed in the door crack and didn’t know it was an invitation to “my beloved son Xiao Hei.”
………
Xin Hexue did not return to 511 that night.
He slept in Gu Mifeng’s bed for the night, while Gu Mifeng curled up on the sofa in the bedroom, Yu Xingzhou slept in the living room, and He Qinghong was in the hospital room.
Surrounded by living people, one could have a somewhat more peaceful sleep.
Gu Mifeng was awakened by a series of faint sounds.
He opened his eyes halfway and stretched, his bones cracking. His nearly 1.9-meter-tall frame had curled up pitifully on a 1.5-meter sofa for the night, which was really not comfortable.
He rubbed his eyes to clear his hazy vision.
He sat up, his feet searching for his slippers, only to find the smooth floor.
“Huh?” Gu Mifeng looked down in confusion and picked up one of his slippers. It was bumpy and uneven in shape. “Did a cockroach bite this? Are southern cockroaches this fierce?”
In the background of his vision, the little black dog was still battling with the other slipper.
The glaring evidence was right there.
“Sorry, the child is a bit naughty.”
Xin Hexue picked up the little black dog from the floor. It usually maintained a puppy-like form, resembling a black Tosa. It shook its head and begged for pity from Mother.
Gu Mifeng said in surprise, “You’ve completely accepted it? I thought after hearing what He Qinghong said, you would ask me to help with an abortion again.”
After all, Xin Hexue now knew there was an operating room here; an abortion surgery wasn’t impossible.
Xin Hexue didn’t speak. He nudged Gu Mifeng’s shoe with his foot instead. “Go make breakfast.”
As a guest, he didn’t always order the host around like this. He made full use of his initiative and asked: “Or do you want to eat out? Anyway, finish quickly and come up the mountain with me.”
Gu Mifeng gave up on the slippers and opened the bedroom wardrobe to look for clothes.
Hearing Xin Hexue’s words, he raised his eyebrows. “Are you going to make a wish to the Red Prince? You heard it last night too. Making a wish to the Red Prince requires paying a price.”
Gu Mifeng’s long arms slipped through his jacket sleeves. He dressed neatly in front of the mirror, looking every bit like a beast in human clothing.
He turned around and looked at Xin Hexue. “He has so many descendants. Maybe He’ll want you to stay and be their wet nurse.”
