Chapter Three: Rules? Rules!

He found a piece of tattered cloth and wrapped the dough skin in his hand within it. He glanced toward the nearby drawer, tracing a tiny circular symbol with his finger. After completing these tasks, he walked slowly toward the door.

Tick, tick.

Before he reached the threshold, the light in Chen Qing’s hand was already bright enough to illuminate the corridor. Through the door and window, a silhouette stopped outside the room. Was it a person?

He wanted to call out, but fear tightened his throat—what if it wasn’t? He watched as faint, writhing shadows crept beneath the door, their skin crawling like worms, spreading across the floor like water. They clawed at the minuscule gap, straining, struggling to push themselves upward. Their entire bodies pressed against the handle, the stretched skin splitting and tearing under the friction.

Blood dripped from the wounds, staining the gap below the door. Then, the blood transformed into a creamy yellow hue, slowly solidifying, molding the invading skin into the shape of a smiling face. The face was missing ears and eyes, so it began to sway, causing the old door to groan and creak. The thin skin ripped open several holes, but before blood could seep out, the yellow lumps shifted over the tears, patching them.

And so it gained a pair of eyes, along with six gaping holes.

“No one... no one,” it murmured outside, its voice barely audible.

“Not here, not here.”

It rocked its body, as if wanting to turn and leave. But the hardened skin restricted its movements, causing more wounds to appear. It tore at itself, the cracks widening with each motion. As its muttering faded into the distance, the skin that had pushed inside lost its grip, crawling a meter or two across the floor before lying completely flat.

It was as thin as a cicada’s wing, blending with the colors of the ground, stretched across several meters.

Chen Qing’s face turned pale. He stepped over the skin; its edges tried to lift themselves, reaching for his feet. After about six or seven seconds, once he had fully passed, the skin collapsed, powerless, against the floor.

Chen Qing, face ashen, pushed open the door. The scene beside him resembled hell: the dormitory, once intact, now lay in ruins, its rooms shattered and broken.

He walked step by step down the corridor, turning his head to see rooms now caked in mud. The liquefied, then solidified, fat covered every corner. Pus, sprayed across the room, had frozen every scene in place.

He stepped inside, leaving tracks in the fat, pointing toward a hellish tableau. He approached the bed, where a head hung suspended, mouth agape in terror.

“Perhaps I should know him?” Chen Qing muttered, though he had no intention of taking it with him.

“What did we used to do here?”

He lifted the head, its severed neck riddled with axe wounds.

“What did he do here?”

He reached out to touch a familiar mark on the wall, but his heart felt nothing but strangeness.

“Where is he... why did he...” Chen Qing muttered, leaving the dormitory and continuing forward. After about several dozen meters, he reached the stairs leading down.

He looked toward the end of the corridor, discovering the end was only a few meters away.

But at a glance, his brow furrowed.

At the end stood a shrine.

Inside the shrine sat an idol, three sticks of incense burning before it. Offerings of fruit, all rotted, lay in front.

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“Who lit the incense?” Anxiety gnawed at Chen Qing as he stepped closer to examine the idol.

It held its fingers in an orchid gesture, stained with black-red rust. Its face was delicate and clean, but as Chen Qing approached, cockroaches crawled out of its eyes.

The cockroaches clustered on the statue, stacking one atop another, their tails forming the shape of a ring pouch.

Chen Qing felt sick, yet for some reason, as he watched more cockroaches emerge from the idol’s eyes, a familiar scene haunted his mind.

He seemed to see several people...

They were gaunt from hunger.

They leaned on each other, their faces pale as iron.

They kept looking back, as if something lurked in the darkness.

They bowed before the idol, their foreheads bleeding.

The leader—a young man—seemed mad. He tossed flesh from his arms, gazing lovingly at the idol in the shrine.

He picked up the same orchid gesture as the idol, feeding the cockroaches into his mouth, one after another.

He smiled, then turned his head.

He looked at his companions, revealing an utterly terrifying smile.

“That’s him.”

Chen Qing recalled the vision and recognized the madman.

“That’s Wu Chenyin? How did he become this?!”

His heart skipped a beat. In the darkness, a piercing whistle shattered the silence.

Chen Qing spun around, and an arrow pierced his arm and lung.

“Damn it!”

Pain flooded his mind, turning his face ghostly white.

The whistle echoed in the corridor. The haze before him stabbed like needles. Looking back, the idol’s face twisted into a monstrous snarl, its mouth opening, a sticky, snake-like tongue licking incessantly.

“Damn, damn!” The pain in his brow intensified. Looking ahead, the fat in the rooms began to liquefy and flow, forming a path in the corridor. At the end of the black mist, he saw the true form of the strange creature: twisted, rotting.

Its skin hung loose, several heads covered by skin and fat at its neck. Its limbs were impossibly long and uneven.

“Different people...”

“Are those my former companions?”

Chen Qing’s face paled. Only now did he see, beside that monstrous creature, his only surviving companion—standing there alive.

He caressed the creature’s left hand affectionately, licking the remaining fat with his tongue, then cast a look of disgust into the distance.

“How did you manage to survive? How are you still alive?”

He looked at Chen Qing, his voice twisted and hoarse with a cruel laugh.

“I’ll live, damn you.”

Chen Qing cursed, instantly sprinting toward the lower stairs.

He was close, and when he reached the lower floor, the monstrous creature and Wu Chenyin’s figure were only halfway down.

When he hid in the bathroom, the two “people” had just entered the first floor.

Chen Qing’s lips had turned pale from blood loss. He sat on the toilet, his hands trembling uncontrollably.

“How did I escape... what did I do before?”

He pressed his wound, blood trickling quietly between his fingers.

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His eyes closed, thunderous crashes of doors being destroyed sounded in his ears.

“Resistance?”

“But they obviously survived here for a long time.”

“So... what is it that I can do, but they cannot...”

The noises drew closer, blood pooled ever deeper on the floor.

When the roaring finally ceased, he opened his eyes.

They reached out, stroking his arm with broken, sharp fingertips, crouching atop the bathroom door, several heads peering inside.

They stared for a long while, watching Chen Qing’s bowed face, his trembling shoulders, then several faces smiled together.

“Let’s die together... why should I be the only one who can’t live?”

“Die, stay here with us...”

“We’ve waited so long for you, Chen Qing.”

He listened, and suddenly all his trembling stopped.

He bowed his head and spoke in a woman’s voice: “Chen Qing? Where is he?”

He lifted his face, no longer bearing his old appearance.

He looked at them—at the face on their neck matching his own—and he, she, smiled.

She watched the monster frozen midair, and Chen Qing knew he had found it.

Found one way to survive.

If they had all come together, then surely they all saw that face skin.

They would disdain it, but he would certainly tuck it away...

It looked at Chen Qing, its muttering changing: “Not her... not her...”

They left, disgruntled, their massive skin scraping across the floor as they moved to the next room, fading away after a thunderous crash.

Chen Qing glanced at the arrow still lodged in his arm and grew anxious, gritting his teeth to pull the part embedded in his chest.

As for the wound in his arm, a quick comparison made him abandon the idea of removing it.

Staggering from the bathroom, the pain had eased with the help of adrenaline.

He touched the facial skin on his face, a strange expression appearing.

In the mirror, the person he saw was all too familiar.

“But if... if the first time I left, I used this method... whose skin was it then?”

He muttered, and footsteps sounded outside the door once again.

Chen Qing tensed, climbing quietly atop the bathroom entrance to wait.

Not long after, the bathroom door was pushed open.

The newcomer cursed under their breath: “Where did he go! Why isn’t he dead yet!”

“If only... if only he died, everything would be over!”

Chen Qing frowned as he listened. So the last survivor... must find another ‘sacrifice’ and bring them here, until only one remains?

He recalled what had been said: “But I escaped alive, and before them.”

He thought for only a moment, and an idea began to form.

The dead would be devoured, and the living hunted. Does this mean, if I become a dead one who cannot be devoured, a living one who cannot be hunted, I can leave?

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