Roasted Bear Paw

"Ah!"

Qi Liang stood frozen for a long moment before coming back to his senses. He scrambled and rolled away to the side, his face turning deathly pale. Pointing at the head in the vat, his lips trembled so hard he could barely speak. "A... a dead person! Wh... whose head is that?"

The corpse in the vat was none other than Li Hongbing, who had left ahead of them earlier.

Chen Jing had remained relatively calm at first. Though she was a psychologist, she was still a doctor. Her hands trembled as she stood there, but she was doing far better than Qi Liang.

"Bleurgh..."

Qi Liang was merely an ordinary college student. He had never seen such a bloody scene before.

His stomach churned violently, and the moment he opened his mouth, he could not stop himself from vomiting.

The sour, rancid stench made Zhao Ke frown. Grabbing the old woman's hair, he dragged her head aside to make some room.

Qi Liang seemed not to notice that detail. After forcing himself to adjust for a moment, he climbed up from the ground, stared at the old woman, and said, "You killed him!"

The old woman bared her blackish-yellow teeth in a cold grin. She did not answer Qi Liang's question, seemingly tacitly admitting it.

Qi Liang's chest tightened. Just as he was about to say something, the old woman suddenly reached for Zhao Ke's wrist, spun around, and clawed at his throat.

The old woman looked to be in her eighties, yet she moved with astonishing speed, even more agile than young people like Qi Liang.

"Courting death!"

A flash of gloom passed through Zhao Ke's eyes. He raised his hand, intending to smash his fist into her, but before he could throw the punch, a chill suddenly surged through him.

The incoming hand was withered and shriveled, yet covered in black fur. Five thick, long, razor-sharp nails reflected a terrifying killing intent in the air.

Zhao Ke was startled. Was that even a human hand?

He had seen plenty of human hands, but never one like this. It could no longer be called a human hand—it was an animal's claw.

But this was not the time for Zhao Ke to figure out whether it was braised... no, a human hand or a claw.

He hurriedly leaned backward and crouched down, dodging the old woman's right hand.

At the same time, with his other hand, he flicked the knife hilt with a finger. The small fruit knife spun swiftly around his fingertips in a flourish before he caught it in a reverse grip, blade pointed upward, and stabbed it toward the hand gripping his wrist.

"Shk!"

The sensation of the blade piercing flesh made Zhao Ke narrow his eyes. He did not need to look up; from the sound and the feeling transmitted through the blade alone, he knew this strike had at least severed the tendons in the old woman's left hand.

"Ah!"

The old woman screamed. Pain appeared on her wrinkled face as she opened her mouth, exposing sharp fangs. Her other hand slapped toward Zhao Ke's back.

"Whoosh..."

The blow came with a deep gust of wind, swift and sudden. Zhao Ke had no time to dodge. "Riiip!" His back suddenly went cold, followed by a burning, tearing pain that made him suck in a sharp breath and grimace.

"Get away from him!"

At last, Qi Liang, the burly young man standing over six feet tall, proved somewhat useful. He grabbed a stool nearby and smashed it down onto the old woman's head from behind.

With a "crack," the old stool instantly shattered into pieces before Qi Liang.

That blow would have killed or concussed even a young man, yet the old woman merely staggered a step and swayed. She suddenly turned her head, her single eye glaring viciously at Qi Liang as she reached out to claw him.

But she was old after all. After taking that stool to the back of the head, her one eye went unfocused, and she swayed as if she might float away. Not only did she fail to grab Qi Liang, she nearly fell over herself.

"An opening!"

Seeing this, Zhao Ke's gaze darkened. Ignoring the burning wound on his back, he raised the fruit knife and drove it toward the old woman's heart from behind.

"Pfft!"

The strike was swift and vicious. The slender fruit knife slipped past the bones beneath the flesh of the old woman's back, slicing through like tofu until the blade had sunk in all the way to the hilt.

"Die!"

Zhao Ke's face was cold and grim. Fearing that the old woman might not be dead, he gripped the handle tightly and twisted it in her back. "Shk!" Blood sprayed from the wound.

The old woman's body stiffened. Baring a mouthful of yellow teeth, she clutched her chest with both hands and crashed heavily to the floor.

"M... murder!"

Qi Liang stood there blankly, staring at the corpse lying in a pool of blood. After regaining consciousness, he had witnessed someone's head being bitten apart by a bear, someone shoving Chen Jing down a slope to save himself, and the head in the pickle vat beside them.

But none of those things shook him as deeply as this did, because this was not merely something he had seen. He had participated in it himself.

Seeing Qi Liang's pale face, Zhao Ke could not help frowning slightly. Though he disliked Qi Liang's cowardly appearance, he could understand it. After all, when Zhao Ke had killed someone for the first time, he might not have been in any better state—setting aside the fact that he had only been thirteen at the time.

"Stop yelling! Look!"

Chen Jing stared fixedly at the old woman's corpse. When she saw black fur continually sprouting from it, she could not be bothered with Qi Liang's nonsense. Pointing at the newly grown fur, she said, "She isn't human."

"Not human?!"

Qi Liang froze, then looked closely. Sure enough, at some point, the old woman's corpse had grown a dense layer of black fur, and her entire body looked twice as large as it had when she was alive.

Zhao Ke was not surprised that the old woman was not human. What sort of person could grow claws so thick and sharp?

If he had not dodged quickly just now, it would not have been as simple as losing a layer of skin from his back.

Zhao Ke turned the corpse over and saw that the old woman's face had already changed shape. Not only was it covered in thick black fur, even her features had become distorted.

"A bear!"

Having seen a bear eat someone alive earlier, the three of them had a deep impression of bears. Aside from the human clothes it wore, the old woman's corpse looked exactly like a bear.

Qi Liang could not help sucking in a cold breath. "Damn it, what kind of hellhole is this? Can even bears become monsters?"

"You should be grateful that she was old and feeble. Otherwise, all three of us would be dead!"

Zhao Ke cut off Qi Liang's complaint. The old woman's body had returned to its original form after death, but compared to the bear they had encountered earlier, it was not even in the same league.

Her frail, skinny body curled into a ball after death, looking about the size of a calf.

The fur in some places had already turned white. She was most likely old and weak, which was why her body had shrunk.

Even so, the three of them had narrowly escaped death.

If Zhao Ke had not caught the faint scent of blood when they entered and become wary, the three of them would probably be lying peacefully in bed right now, waiting to follow in Li Hongbing's footsteps.

"What are you doing?!"

Qi Liang came back to his senses just then and suddenly saw Zhao Ke pick up an axe from nearby. Zhao Ke was about to chop off the old woman's thick, black-furred paw, and Qi Liang let out a sharp cry.

Zhao Ke ignored Qi Liang. He swung the axe and chopped off the old woman's left paw in a single blow. Only then did he slowly raise his head, studying Qi Liang with a smile that did not reach his eyes. A savage grin spread across his lean face. "What am I doing? Roasting bear paws, of course!"