However, rewinding time ten minutes earlier, Zhang Chen had been riding his bicycle toward Xie Wen's residence. An old-fashioned van had been following behind him.
"Boss, where's this kid going? Didn't we say we'd kill him after school this afternoon?" asked the eight-foot-tall man in the driver's seat to the sunglasses-wearing man beside him, who had a gold chain around his neck.
"Just follow him. It'll be even better if he goes somewhere deserted. And Little Pebble said this kid was pretty strange, so I brought along a real weapon this time. If there are too many people around, it'll be inconvenient to do anything." The man in sunglasses spoke. The Little Pebble he mentioned was also one of the people who had tried to gang up on Zhang Chen outside the school gates last time.
"Look, he's just an ordinary brat. He only rides a bike a little fast. Brother A-Yuan, you brought a whole van full of brothers this time. What could possibly go wrong? Little Pebble and his lot are nothing but kids. Which one of our brothers hasn't seen blood?" said a muscular man in the back of the van, gripping a machete.
After Zhang Chen entered the house next to Xie Wen's, the group slowly drove in as well. Once the van stopped, a full nine men carrying large machetes climbed out. They all looked to be around twenty-five years old and carried a faint scent of Blood Qi. None of them were inexperienced ** nobodies.
"What's this kid trying to do, coming here alone instead of going to class?" The man in sunglasses seemed to sense that something was off.
"Brother A-Yuan, this kid really is courting death. Shall we go in?"
"Let's go. Once it's done, clean things up a little and leave quickly." The man in sunglasses thought it was just his imagination. In his mind, a middle school student could not possibly stir up any trouble.
The nine men entered the room on the first floor that Zhang Chen had opened. Looking at the long-abandoned room, even Brother A-Yuan, who had been in the ** for years, could not understand why Zhang Chen had come here.
"You eight, split up and find that kid," Brother A-Yuan said.
The eight men turned the entire house upside down but found no sign of Zhang Chen. When everyone gathered in the living room, they seemed to hear a sound coming from beneath their feet. Looking at the sofa that had been moved aside, they approached it and found the entrance to the basement.
Inside the basement
Hearing the heartbeat coming from within the wall, Zhang Chen was instantly startled. It was not the heartbeat of someone inside the wall—it was the heartbeat of the entire wall. To put it bluntly, the wall itself seemed to be alive.
Zhang Chen gradually calmed down and recalled the events of the past few days, beginning to analyze everything again.
"Wait, hasn't everything happened too quickly? From the very beginning, it seemed like I'd been led around by the nose. Xie Wen came to teach our class, and those ten red fingernails made me label her as dangerous. Then, because she was Wang Yizhi's cousin, I began all sorts of actions and speculation centered around Xie Wen."
"On the first day, after Xie Wen learned that Wang Yizhi and I had an unusual relationship, Wang Yizhi, who had stayed at Xie Wen's house overnight, had her fingernails turn red. That forced me to dig deeper into the matter—to come to this house again."
"Then there was that night when I invited Xie Wen for tea at 'Shangyin Island.' She had no reason to dress up so nicely, like she was going to meet **. She used a pile of words to mislead me and even made me reveal quite a bit of my strength in front of her. She gradually made me see her as one of the victims."
"On the second night, it was also because I entered that the whole house mutated. Yet something that thing had not expected was that not only had I not fallen for its tricks, I had even injured myself instead."
"Because things had changed, that fellow had no choice but to make Xie Wen take Wang Yizhi away the very next day, even at the cost of exposing Xie Wen's true identity. It used Wang Yizhi as bait to lure me here again."
"From the beginning, this entire matter was never centered on Wang Yizhi. It was centered on me, because this thing could obtain something from me through some method—perhaps some kind of power."
"So now, even though I know there's a huge trap ahead meant for me, I still have to jump into it? I have two advantages now. First, I can catch him off guard from here. Second, I know his true identity and where his real body is." Zhang Chen suddenly felt endless guilt toward Wang Yizhi. If he had not come, she would not have been dragged into this.
Just as Zhang Chen hesitated over what to do next, the basement door opened with a creak. The people coming down were the nine desperadoes from above.
"I told you, where could a little fly like you possibly fly to? Come over and kowtow to Brother A-Yuan twice. Maybe then we'll only cripple you, and you can still spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair," said the first young man to come down.
Zhang Chen's mind worked quickly, and he instantly understood that these people were connected to the group he had crippled a few days ago. With a major battle imminent, he had no desire to waste his strength on minor characters like them. So he said,
"If you don't want to die, get out of here now. This isn't a place you should be."
"Damn it, you won't shed tears until you see the coffin!" The two lackeys in front raised their machetes and charged at Zhang Chen. The first man swung down hard, but Zhang Chen easily dodged it. Then something unexpected happened.
Because Zhang Chen had dodged the slash, the blade sank straight into the wall. A thin trace of blood seeped from the section of wall it had cut into,
further confirming Zhang Chen's suspicion that the wall was alive. The other man behind him stopped in his tracks upon seeing this.
Seeing that his strike had missed, the man tried to pull his machete from the wall, but he could not budge it. Then the mutation erupted. Dozens of long fingernails suddenly grew from both sides of the wall where the blade had pierced it, instantly stabbing through the man's body before dragging him directly into the wall. Then everything returned to silence.
The instant the fingernails emerged, Zhang Chen had already retreated far away. The other lackey behind the dead man was splattered all over with his companion's blood. He immediately threw down the machete in his hand and ran for the exit.
Brother A-Yuan and the others at the entrance naturally saw the scene as well. Though they were ** people who had seen death before, it was their first time witnessing something like this. Quite a few of them began to consider retreating.
Seeing his men like this, Brother A-Yuan felt unwilling to accept it. He had been in the ** for so long, yet a middle school student had made fools of them. Suddenly, he pulled a pistol from his waist and aimed its dark muzzle at Zhang Chen.
Bang! The gunshot rang out, and the bullet flew straight for Zhang Chen's forehead. Zhang Chen saw the man draw his gun and fire without a word. Though he was far beyond an ordinary person, if a bullet struck him in the head, he would still certainly die.
He had no choice. Zhang Chen could only use his precious Telekinesis. The bullet was small and fast; his Telekinesis could not stop it completely and could only alter its trajectory.
The bullet that had been about to hit Zhang Chen suddenly sank into the wall to his right. Blood again seeped from the wall, which slowly healed like a soft-bodied creature. In response, a fingernail shot out from the place where it had been struck, moving so fast that it pierced straight through Brother A-Yuan's head as he stood there in shock that he had missed Zhang Chen.
Thick yellow fluid flowed from Brother A-Yuan's head. He was dead beyond doubt. The lackeys around him all threw down their machetes and fled outside, leaving Zhang Chen alone.
"I didn't expect these guys to help me out so much. If I'd cut open the wall directly back then, who knows what would have happened? Also, this wall seems to only counterattack targets that harm it. It has no self-awareness. Could Nail Man not be inside right now?" Zhang Chen did not dare fully trust his own thoughts. After all, he had only just figured out the truth after being toyed with by his opponent for so long.
"I'll gamble on it. I'll gamble that he isn't in the basement." Zhang Chen made up his mind and used his thoughts to control a machete. From two meters away, he brought it down heavily against the wall. Three seconds later, several fingernails grew from the wall and stabbed the machete into pieces.
"Three seconds? Thinking back, it seemed to be the same before." Zhang Chen came up with a plan.
With a thought, five machetes flew around Zhang Chen. They slashed across, vertically, and downward at the wall in front of him, carving out a doorway for him. The severed wall visibly began to grow back rapidly, trying to fill the gap that had been cut open.
Zhang Chen leaped forward and slipped to the other side of the wall just as it was about to heal shut.
Raising his head, he found complete darkness inside. With no light, Zhang Chen could only barely make out a little. What he stood on was not flooring, but fingernails. The entire room also reeked strongly of decay.
"This place is as disgusting as it gets." Zhang Chen stood up, only to seem to bump his head against something. Looking up, he saw a foot. Its owner was suspended above Zhang Chen's head by a large iron hook through his spine. The man's belly was bloated, and he appeared to be in his forties. Aside from that foot, everything else was gone.
Because of the poor visibility, Zhang Chen could only spread out his Telekinesis. Under his perception, there were more than forty corpses hanging like this inside.
"Damn it, is this a basement? It's clearly a slaughterhouse. The only difference from a pig slaughterhouse is that the things hanging from the iron hooks aren't pigs, but people." Compared to this, the mother-and-son ghosts in his bathroom were utterly insignificant.
Zhang Chen used his Telekinesis to sense each person one by one, silently praying that Wang Yizhi would not be among them. When he sensed the last person, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.
Just as Zhang Chen was troubled by the lack of visibility, the lights in the room slowly came on.
"I lost the gamble!" As Zhang Chen watched the fluorescent lights gradually brighten, the last trace of luck in his heart sank like a stone. Under the light, the walls of the room were made entirely of red fingernails. At the center stood a massive operating table made of bones. Zhang Chen could feel waves of torment and despair emanating from it.
"Wang Yizhi!!!" Zhang Chen saw Wang Yizhi tied to the operating table. Her clothes were still intact, and she bore no wounds. He could also sense her breathing, and he immediately relaxed. It seemed she had merely fainted.
However, Zhang Chen saw that aside from both of Wang Yizhi's thumbnails, every other fingernail had turned red.
At that moment, the fingernails throughout the room began to gather slowly, forming Nail Man beside the operating table. Staring at Zhang Chen, Nail Man suddenly burst into laughter and reached toward Wang Yizhi.
"Courting death!" Zhang Chen flew into a rage. His Telekinesis immediately locked onto Nail Man completely. The fingernails on both his hands extended straight to half a meter long as he charged toward Nail Man. Along the way, he severed every fingernail that grew from the ground. The distance between them was short. Zhang Chen cut open a path, leaped forward, crossed his hands, and sliced the immobilized Nail Man into dozens of pieces.
"Is he dead?" Zhang Chen looked at Nail Man, whom he had reduced to mangled flesh. Zhang Chen sensed that something was wrong, because Nail Man had still been laughing when Zhang Chen killed him, as though mocking his ignorance.
Suddenly, the entire basement began to shake...
Before you continue