Roasted Bear Paw

"Ah!"

Qi Liang stood there dumbfounded for a long while before coming to his senses. He scrambled and rolled aside, his face turning deathly pale as he pointed at the head in the vat. His lips trembled so badly he could barely speak. "A dead... dead person! Wh... whose is it?"

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.

"Blergh..."

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

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

The sharp, sour stench made Zhao Ke frown. Grabbing the old woman's hair in his arms, he moved aside to make some room.

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

The old woman bared her blackened yellow teeth in a cold grin. She did not answer Qi Liang's question, apparently 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 lunged for his throat.

The old woman looked to be over eighty, yet she moved with shocking speed, even more agilely than young men like Qi Liang.

"You're courting death!"

A flash of gloom passed through Zhao Ke's eyes as he raised a fist to strike. Before he could throw the punch, however, a chill suddenly surged through his heart.

The hand rushing toward him was shriveled and gaunt, 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 that. It could no longer be called a human hand—it was an animal's claw.

But this was no time for Zhao Ke to figure out whether it was braised... no, whether it was a human hand or a claw.

He quickly leaned backward and ducked under the old woman's incoming right hand.

At the same time, he flicked the hilt with the fingers of his other hand. 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.

"Shhk!"

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 feedback through the knife, he knew that strike had at least severed the tendons in the old woman's left hand.

"Ah!"

The old woman let out a shriek. Pain appeared on her wrinkled face, and when she opened her mouth, sharp fangs were exposed. Her other hand slammed toward Zhao Ke's back.

"Whoosh..."

The blow came with a deep rush of wind, swift and fierce. Zhao Ke had no time to dodge. "Rrip—" His back suddenly went cold, followed by a searing tearing pain that made him suck in sharp breaths and grimace.

"Get away from him!"

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

With a "Crack...", the old stool instantly shattered into pieces before Qi Liang's eyes.

That blow would have killed a younger person or at least given them a concussion. Yet the old woman merely staggered. She suddenly turned, fixing Qi Liang with her one eye, and reached out to grab him.

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

An opening!

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 and cut through her like tofu, sinking all the way to the hilt before stopping.

"Die!"

Zhao Ke's face was cold and hard. Worried that she might not be dead, he gripped the hilt and twisted it in her heart. "Shhk..." Blood burst from the wound with a wet spray.

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

"M... murder!"

Qi Liang stood frozen as he stared at the body lying in a pool of blood. Since coming to his senses, he had personally watched someone's head get bitten apart by a bear, watched someone shove Chen Jing down a slope to save himself, and seen the head in the pickle vat nearby.

Yet none of those things had shaken him as deeply as this, because this time he had not merely witnessed it—he had taken part in it.

Seeing Qi Liang's pale face, Zhao Ke frowned 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 much better shape—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 continuously sprouting from it, she cut off Qi Liang's babbling and pointed at the newly grown fur. "She wasn't human."

"Not human!!"

Qi Liang froze at her words. Looking closely, he saw that the old woman's corpse had somehow grown a dense layer of black fur. Her entire body looked twice as large as it had when she was alive.

Zhao Ke was not surprised that the old woman had not been human. What kind of human hand could grow claws that sharp and thick?

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

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

"A bear!"

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

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

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

Zhao Ke cut off Qi Liang's complaints. 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, emaciated body had curled into a ball after death, about the size of a calf.

Some patches of fur had already turned white. Most likely, she had been old and infirm, and her body had shrunk.

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

If Zhao Ke had not caught that faint scent of blood the moment he 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 finally snapped out of his daze. He suddenly saw Zhao Ke pick up an axe from the side and prepare to chop off the old woman's thick, black-furred paw, and he screamed sharply.

Zhao Ke ignored him. Only after swinging the axe and chopping off the old woman's left paw did he slowly raise his head. He looked Qi Liang over with a smile that did not reach his eyes, a savage grin spreading across his lean face. "What am I doing? Roasting bear paw, of course!"