"Monster"

"I suppose not everyone's constitution is suited to being parasitized by 'Tai Sui,' right? And among those who have been parasitized, only a small fraction actually suffer from terminal illnesses, right? You use them as examples, exaggerating the strange entity's abilities into something miraculous, luring more people into voluntarily accepting Tai Sui's parasitism..."

Sun Hang paused, staring into the Saint's eyes. "Am I wrong?"

"...What do you intend to do, then?" The expression on the Saint's face did not change much. "Notify the Public Security Bureau and the Investigation Bureau, have them come and arrest us all?"

"Where is Tai Sui's true body?" Sun Hang asked again.

"It is inside every one of us." The Saint raised an arm and called out in a low voice, "It is right before your eyes, within arm's reach."

Sun Hang said, "Bullshit."

He could sense that all the Tai Sui fragments parasitizing the people here combined were not even as much as the grime Wang Xiyi scrubbed off herself while bathing.

The Saint retreated two steps. The two people closest to Sun Hang suddenly sprang up from their prayer cushions, tore off the bandages over their eyes, and charged at him with strange cries.

"Those who defy Tai Sui shall be stripped of its blessing!" the Saint shouted darkly. "The process of stripping it away is a thousand, ten thousand times more painful than fusion!"

"Oh, is that so?"

Hundreds of white fungal threads burst from the two believers' bodies. In the blink of an eye, they wove themselves into a massive net and came crashing down over Sun Hang's head!

Sun Hang did not move. He simply stood there, allowing the fungal-thread net to fall over him.

The seemingly soft, powerless threads turned as sharp as blades the instant they touched Sun Hang's skin. They sliced through the epidermis and sank deep into his flesh. Grid-like cuts beaded with blood appeared across his face—while the clothes on his upper body had already been reduced to countless neatly edged diamond-shaped scraps scattered across the floor.

But after sinking into his flesh, those fungal threads vanished directly into Sun Hang's body, as if they had melted away. In an instant, they disappeared without a trace.

The cuts on Sun Hang's body healed in the blink of an eye. Even the tiny beads of blood that had seeped out were absorbed back into his skin.

The two believers immediately collapsed onto the floor, their entire bodies convulsing.

Their skin began to dissolve, exposing their bloody subcutaneous tissue directly to the air. Dense bursts of bubbles popped within their muscles... In less than five seconds, the two had turned into stiff corpses sprawled at Sun Hang's feet.

"Uh... looks like you really weren't lying to me. Forcibly stripping Tai Sui out of a human body really is painful." Sun Hang spoke earnestly to the Saint.

The Saint's formerly composed expression had long since vanished. His eyes were wide as he stared at Sun Hang, muttering, "You... what did you do to them?!"

"I did what you had intended for them to do to me... Sadly, there was too little of it. It wasn't even enough to fill the gaps between my teeth." Sun Hang took two steps forward. "Tell me. Where is Tai Sui's true body?"

"Monster! You're a monster!" the Saint shrieked. "You can't possibly be a hunter of the Federation! The Federation could never tolerate a monster like you!!"

The believers sitting on the prayer cushions could no longer maintain their earlier composure either. Every time Sun Hang took a step forward, they all took a step back. Before long, all thirty-odd people were crammed against the wall.

"I'll ask one last time. Where is Tai Sui's true body?" Sun Hang lowered his voice. "I'm very hungry right now, so I'm irritated. I don't want to waste any more time with you."

But who would have thought that the Saint seemed to have been scared out of his wits? It was as if he could not hear Sun Hang's question at all, and he just kept muttering the word "monster."

"You're noisy." Sun Hang raised his hand and shot the Saint's head apart.

The Tai Sui parasitizing the Saint had been the highest "quality" among this group, but it still could not dispel Sun Hang's hunger.

Not only that, Sun Hang discovered that after his "first" devouring of another strange entity, it was as though he had eaten an appetizer. Rather than easing, his hunger had only become more intense.

He glanced at the believers trembling in the corner and could not help feeling relieved.

The Cult Organization's brainwashing had not been complete—at the very least, they still knew to fear death.

"Which of you knows where Tai Sui's true body is?" Sun Hang asked. "Take me there, and I can guarantee you'll live."

The quality of the Tai Sui inside these believers varied wildly. The worst was not even as good as the little girl who had gone out to buy breakfast, while the best still fell far short of the Saint... As long as he could find Tai Sui's true body, this meager morsel was dispensable to Sun Hang.

The best way to deal with them was probably to hand them all over to the Investigation Bureau and the research institute... of course, that would have to wait until after Sun Hang devoured Tai Sui's true body.

He had no intention of concealing this matter, but before reporting it to the authorities, he needed to fill his stomach first.

"...I know where Lord Tai Sui is!" A weak female voice, carrying a hint of timidity, rang out. Sun Hang looked over and saw that it was the young woman whom the "Saint" had just used as a cushion.

The young woman wore only a thin white robe. In the chaos just now, half of it had been torn down, exposing large swathes of skin as white as snow—when she noticed Sun Hang looking at her, she hesitated only briefly before lowering the arms she had been using to cover her chest.

"Put your clothes on." Sun Hang waved the gun in his hand. "I have no interest in taking another man's leftovers. As long as you can find Tai Sui's true body, none of you have to die."

"The Saint took me to cut flesh from Lord Tai Sui before!" the young woman hurriedly said. "Lord Tai Sui is buried beneath this building!"

"Underground?" Sun Hang was slightly stunned. If Tai Sui's true body was buried belowground, why had he sensed absolutely nothing when he approached this building earlier?

"It's true, I'm not lying!" The young woman was so anxious that she looked about to cry. "Two months ago, on the shaded side of this building, there's an open patch of ground. If you dig up the soil, you can see Lord Tai Sui!"

"You can see it just by digging up the soil? Is Tai Sui buried that shallow?"

"I... I think it was only a dozen or so centimeters deep." The woman recalled, "That day, the Saint dug a few times with an iron shovel, and Lord Tai Sui's flesh was exposed... He cut the flesh himself too. He wouldn't let us get close, only allowed us to wait at a distance while holding the jars. Only after he finished cutting the flesh and filled the soil back in were we allowed to approach and pick up the cut pieces of flesh into the jars."

"You... besides you, who else was there?" Sun Hang asked.

The young woman pointed at the two believers who had died first.

"Besides them? Who else has seen Tai Sui's true body?" Sun Hang asked again.

"I... I've seen it too." The speaker was a woman in her thirties or forties. "She's right. Lord Tai Sui really is buried beneath this building, but the only one who ever got close to Tai Sui was the Saint. We could only watch from afar."

"How large is Tai Sui?"

"I don't know." The woman shook her head. "I could only see the soil being dug away, revealing a patch of something white, like a scalp..."