Chapter 259: [Rotten Bones and Resurrected Flesh] Utterly Abominable
The rain within the instance beat down harder and harder.
It felt almost as if a celestial river had burst open overhead.
Moisture seeped continuously through the room, rendering Bai Cha’s face increasingly pale.
Her eyes were currently closed tight, her fingers intertwined with the fine threads attached to the puppet.
Evidently, she was drawn into a state akin to a dreamscape.
She couldn’t be considered the first to enter.
Song Shi-fan had entered as well.
Yet the other four individuals hadn’t moved just yet.
Shen Xiao-luo walked over to Bai Cha’s side.
Chen Mi, Wang Yuan, and Zheng Zelin fixated their gazes onto her actions, none of them uttering a sound, much less attempting to stop her.
Crouching halfway beside Bai Cha, Shen Xiao-luo scrutinized Bai Cha’s face meticulously.
After observing for a brief while, her gaze shifted onto Bai Cha’s fingers.
Those fine threads linked Bai Cha and the puppet together.
What if they were severed?
She watched for a moment, refraining from taking action. Instead, she stood up and walked into the room where they had retrieved the items earlier.
The first person to strike would inevitably face boundless vigilance from the rest.
If she could kill Bai Cha, so be it, but this seemingly frail and delicate girl might not necessarily be easy to handle.
The remaining three awake individuals inside the room exchanged glances with one another.
Zheng Zelin shrugged his shoulders, carrying his items to a corner as well. Deploying a prop—a paper talisman that he slapped onto his body—he entered the dreamscape only then.
Wang Yuan drew out a prop as well: a necklace.
And so, only Chen Mi and Shen Xiao-luo, who had stepped into the inner room, remained awake.
Chen Mi cast a glance at the four individuals inside this room.
He offered a faint smile, tossing out a prop—a blob of dark shadow that vanished the moment it touched the floor.
Immediately after, he entered the dream as well.
The door to the inner room was pushed open once more, and Shen Xiao-luo stepped back out.
Sweeping her gaze across the five individuals, her eyes landed on that locked room.
Shen Xiao-luo walked over.
A lock of this nature was very easy to pick; universal master keys were available in the mall.
With a soft click, the lock opened.
Inside the doorway lay pitch blackness.
Meanwhile, over on Bai Cha’s end.
The heart was easy to find, and she had located it.
Yet that heart rested atop a skeletal corpse.
This set of skeletal remains appeared exceedingly strange.
A human skeleton, if memory served right, ought to consist of 206 bones.
Yet the skeleton before her eyes formed a near-solid humanoid shape.
Specifically, the kind of humanoid frame composed entirely of seamless bone from head to toe.
The thoracic cavity was completely fused shut, and the waist consisted entirely of bone as well; by rights, the waist ought to contain only the lumbar vertebrae.
His bones no longer bore individual segments, his entire form practically morphing into a solid bone-man.
Plunged into the chest cavity overgrown with bone was a dagger.
Resting directly beneath the dagger was the heart, and Bai Cha could catch the sound of heartbeats echoing from within.
This clearly violated scientific logic, yet it was metaphysics, after all.
Clack-clack, clack-clack—
The puppet, Wen Zhao, walked over.
“My heart is inside there. Help me extract it.”
The skeleton lay atop a bed, surrounded by thick layers of dust alongside decayed, weathered remnants.
Likely the original flesh and skin.
Looking thoughtfully at the skeleton, Bai Cha cast a glance back at Wen Zhao.
“Do you not have hands of your own?”
Wen Zhao: “…”
He moved his somewhat stiff joints. Because his body was inherently a puppet, though he could execute any movement, he proved far less limber than a living human.
“If I could retrieve it myself, I wouldn’t need your help.”
Bai Cha locked eyes with him for a brief moment.
Then, Bai Cha doubled over and began coughing.
Once that fit flared up, she wouldn’t stop until she coughed up blood.
Furthermore, perhaps because she was even weaker inside this space, she actually began vomiting massive mouthfuls of blood.
Wen Zhao: “…………”
He couldn’t form facial expressions, yet his eyes held a deeply complex look.
“Do you suffer from some terminal illness as well?”
Bai Cha was already kneeling halfway on the floor.
Hearing his words, she raised her head, wiping the blood from the corners of her mouth.
“Yes, but it doesn’t matter much. Surviving day by day is a win.”
She spouted lies off the top of her head.
“Suffer from some terminal illness as well…” So you turned like this due to a disease? I seem to have heard before that a certain condition causes a person’s body to continuously grow bone?
Wen Zhao cast a glance at his own corpse.
“Yes, though I didn’t know it was a disease back then.”
Mechanically and stiffly, he walked to the bedside, stroking the bone over his heart’s location.
“My body grew stiffer day by day; my muscles turned to bone, and my joints fused together.”
“Everyone claimed I was cursed. The way everyone looked at me changed—including my parents, who subjected me to nothing but beatings and verbal abuse.”
“Then, everyone left.”
“It was on that exact day that a puppet master passed by. I discovered the marionettes he crafted could move; they were marionettes, yet the ones pulling the strings were the puppets themselves.”
“I squandered my entire family fortune, begging him to craft me into a puppet. He agreed, informing me that if I ever regretted it one day, I could have someone extract my heart, and I would die.”
Wen Zhao turned his head, fixating a strange stare onto Bai Cha.
“Yet later on, another voice informed me that if someone were willing to restore me out of complete willingness, I could replace them and possess a truly healthy body.”
Bai Cha offered an “Ah”, a look of apology gracing her face.
“Then I’m truly sorry—my body isn’t much better off than yours!”
A look of deep disdain surfaced in the depths of Wen Zhao’s eyes.
“Indeed. That’s why I was unwilling to let you take me out right from the start.”
If not for being incapable of beating her in a fight… he would have wanted to kill her right now!
A sickly, broken body like this—not even a ghost would prove rare for it!
Bai Cha offered a frail smile.
“Then I’m truly sorry. You should have spoken up earlier! Had you spoken up earlier, I would have picked that dress hanging above instead.”
Wen Zhao: “…”
Waving his hand, he truly couldn’t muster any enthusiasm.
“Extract the heart then. I don’t want your body. Break open the chest cavity, extract the heart, and thrust that blade thoroughly all the way inside, and I will die.”
He held zero drive to strive forward; whether he lived or died held zero meaning after all these years.
So what if he returned to life?
Certain people had dissolved into dust long ago; those who bullied him and whom he had once resented were gone long ago as well.
Even he himself was left with merely this set of skeletal remains, refusing to decay all along.
Inside the puppet, he could move.
Yet it was merely being able to move.
It had turned even more bizarre instead.
His past body had merely been diseased; now, he was genuinely a foul entity.
Stepping forward, Bai Cha gripped the dagger to give it a pull. Testing it, she discovered the dagger was firmly wedged in place.
It couldn’t be extracted.
Bai Cha locked eyes with Wen Zhao.
“I hold no power inside this space and can’t pry it out. Do you have any tools? A hammer or something?”
Wen Zhao: “…”
Had it not been for seeing her drenched in blood—feeling a shock in his heart at a single glance—he truly would still consider killing this woman.
He had already yielded to this extent, yet how could this person still… so abominable!
“Find one yourself,” he closed his eyes in annoyance.
Bai Cha searched the area without finding one, yet located a stone instead.
She began hammering violently at the corpse atop the bed.
Wen Zhao slowly laid a hand over his own chest.
Although he was merely a puppet right now, holding zero sense of pain, it felt exceedingly painful nonetheless.
His pitiful corpse—despised during life, destroyed after death.
Crucially, after hammering twice, this woman would break into a fit of coughing blood, then hammer twice more, only to cough blood again.
Anyone unaware would assume she was the one being hammered! Utterly abominable to the extreme!
Abruptly, his heart stirred subtly, and he raised his head to look overhead.
Just now, had a drop of water dripped down?
