Su Chenghe had never seen anyone's smile look so twisted and bizarre.
It was not a ghost, yet meeting those hollow, pitch-black eye sockets for even a second made it feel as though his soul had been stained by a layer of terrifying darkness, filling both his heart and body with bone-deep discomfort.
Xu Lan's burly body stood straight against the wall. Looking down at the intact sheet of facial skin, she was the closest to it and therefore suffered the strongest effects.
She was not some inexperienced newcomer, and she knew perfectly well that this face was not a ghost. Yet it had frightened her so badly that she did not know what to do for a moment.
More than discomfort, what filled Su Chenghe's heart was an indescribable grief.
He looked at the corpse slumped in the chair like a puppet drained of all strength. The once-tough man had gone limp in an instant, thin and soft as a sapling as he sprawled there.
Trembling, he reached out and lifted the shattered skull. The loose human skin rested in his palm, its utterly bizarre texture beyond description.
Blood poured from the seven orifices, running down the facial skin and onto his palm.
What he held was no longer a human head. It was more like a rubber head mask concealing a pile of broken scraps. It was difficult to imagine what kind of supernatural attack could inflict such injuries.
The monkey stood blankly in the corner behind him, staring at Qiang Haoming's corpse in a strange stupor. His once clearly defined black-and-white eyes were also undergoing an odd change.
His pitch-black pupils seemed to receive a drop of ink, rippling rapidly outward from the center until the white of his eyes was entirely swallowed, becoming two pure black