The Usurper

After the Plague Doctor incident, Ning Xiuyuan had reason to suspect that the length of time he could remain in the human world was restricted by lamp oil.

As it turned out, he had guessed correctly.

After curing Ji Zijun, he sensed a faint darkness, like twilight, silently seeping into the surroundings and descending upon the human world.

No!

More precisely, the darkness had descended long ago. It was only that the white worm had frozen this corner of the human world, sealing off the Verdant Form's escape route and, in doing so, preventing the darkness from seeping in.

When It gnawed at the Verdant Form and left, naturally, nothing could stop the darkness from descending anymore.

To prevent the darkness from sweeping away the unrelated Ji Zijun, Ning Xiuyuan chose to leave alone.

"Creak, creak—"

The crunch of his feet on the ice echoed across the frozen earth, making the world grow increasingly silent.

Ning Xiuyuan took a deep breath.

He could feel the darkness growing heavier and heavier, like torrential rain pouring from the heavens, gradually crowding out the air and making it oppressive and suffocating.

The boundless frozen earth reflected a faint glow, yet it grew darker and darker, no longer able to illuminate the land.

Ning Xiuyuan stopped.

He took a bottle of lamp oil from his robes. It was the last bottle he had.

He hesitated over whether to pour in half a vial and extend his stay. After all, this place... resembled his homeland the most.

"Rumble, rumble..."

The distant roar of a helicopter drifted faintly from the horizon. Its searchlight pierced the night sky like a sword, yet it could not pierce the twilight of darkness around him.

Ning Xiuyuan gave a self-mocking smile and let the darkness extinguish the candle flame.

The next second, the frozen earth's glow vanished completely.

The darkness descended.

Amid the endless darkness, that familiar, eerie barking rang out once more, like a wicked ghost whispering gibberish beside his ear, filling him with unease.

A skinned palm pierced through the viscous darkness and reached toward Ning Xiuyuan's neck.

It was about to touch the flesh that would satisfy its craving for screams.

"Bang!"

The sound of a flame leaping up, along with the spreading light, splashed over the skinned palm like lava to the face or aqua regia over the body. The palm let out a scream that pierced the eardrums and withdrew into the darkness.

"Whoosh..."

Though he already had experience with it, the relighting of the candle still made Ning Xiuyuan let out a long breath.

"This is..."

However, before he could finish exhaling, Ning Xiuyuan suddenly widened his eyes, his face filled with terror.

Inside the Crystal Lampshade, a Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes floated above the flame. Its square pupil reflected his incredulous face.

It's Him!!!

Before Ning Xiuyuan could react, the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes abruptly vanished.

Just as Ning Xiuyuan was about to search for it, It appeared again, astonishingly already floating before his left eyeball.

Under Ning Xiuyuan's horrified gaze, countless tentacles suddenly sprouted around the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes. As they thrashed wildly, they abruptly stabbed into Ning Xiuyuan's eye socket in unison and wrapped around his left eyeball.

"Argh—"

Ning Xiuyuan cried out in pain. This was not pain of the flesh—it was tearing that pierced deep into his soul!

Yet that was not the end. An even more terrifying scene unfolded before Ning Xiuyuan.

The Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes, its countless tentacles wrapped around the eyeball, suddenly split open its pitch-black pupil, revealing a mouthpart lined with spiral teeth. It swallowed the left eyeball in one bite, then usurped the nest and forcibly squeezed into the eye socket.

The three or five tentacles remaining outside shrank into the eye socket as well. The Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes rolled over inside the socket, turning its horizontal pupil outward to reflect the Crystal Lantern.

It sounded slow when described, but in reality, it happened incredibly fast!

By the time Ning Xiuyuan reacted, it had already completed its usurpation.

"No—"

"Get out!"

Ning Xiuyuan let out a terrified roar. His left index and middle fingers abruptly curled into hooks and plunged viciously into his left eye socket, trying to dig out the hideous, terrifying foreign object.

Blood flowed down from the eye socket in shimmering streams, staining his face red.

"Get out! Get out!"

Ning Xiuyuan seized the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes and frantically tried to dig it out.

Yet the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes' countless tentacles had sunk firmly into the eye socket, growing into his brain, heart, and even soul.

The harder he dug, the more clearly he could feel the desperate howls coming from his body.

It was as though he were digging out his own organs!

Could he dig out the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes completely? Ning Xiuyuan did not know.

But his spiritual intuition frantically warned him that before he could do so, he would first pull his own brain, heart, and even soul entirely out through his left eye socket.

Because It had already replaced his eyeball, parasitized his body, and become a part of his self.

It was like a tongue-eating louse sucking the blood from a fish's tongue and transforming itself into the host's tongue organ.

But It was even more terrifying!

Ning Xiuyuan did not believe It would obediently remain a parasite. Once It recovered, he would inevitably be the one to die!

"Haah... haah..."

The utmost terror, the desperate situation, and the series of recent encounters had driven Ning Xiuyuan's mind to the verge of collapse.

He panted heavily as countless thoughts flashed through his mind.

"Get out, or I'll extinguish the candle flame and let you remain forever lost in this darkness."

Ning Xiuyuan growled in a low voice. As he spoke, he reached out to turn the wick nut and extinguish the candle flame.

"Cackle, cackle, cackle—"

Unexpectedly, the moment his fingers touched the wick nut, indescribable terror erupted from the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes and swept through Ning Xiuyuan's soul, making his spirit tremble and rendering him unable to move.

The Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes is trying to control me.

Control?

Ning Xiuyuan's right eye suddenly lit up!

His spirituality boiled, the supernatural ran rampant, and the Plague Disciple launched a frenzied erosion of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes along the tentacles piercing Ning Xiuyuan's body.

At the same time, the Heart of the Beast abruptly activated as well.

An invisible, intangible force enveloped the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes and gradually seeped inward.

Since you dare to control me, then I dare to control you.

At worst, we'll both go down together!

As the two supernatural forces eroded it, the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes began to tremble. The color of its iris shifted unpredictably. At that moment, It was weaker than ever before.

But It did not flee. It seemed that within the endless darkness, there was an existence so terrifying that even It feared it.

At a certain moment, the trembling Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes suddenly fell silent.

Ning Xiuyuan panted heavily, covering his left eye with an incredulous expression.

Was it because the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes had parasitized his body?

Or had It been forced to abandon most of Its body and even Its characteristics to escape the white worm's hunt, performing a cicada-shedding escape and thus becoming extremely weak?

In any case, Ning Xiuyuan's erosion of the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes proceeded with astonishing smoothness.

There was even a sense that he could not tell whether he had controlled the Horizontal-Pupiled Sheep Eyes...

or whether, in order to seek shelter, It had temporarily abandoned resistance simply to soothe the host's pitiful and fragile mind.

Feeling the information pouring into his soul, Ning Xiuyuan's mind drifted into a daze.

He raised his face blankly. On the left side of his blood-soaked face, an enchanting horizontal square pupil was embedded there, gluttonous and greedy, cold and mad.

That was a fragment of the Supreme Mother God's characteristics.

This made him seem like an Old Ones who had returned to the human world!

The nameless monsters that craved the scent of flesh and blood and lurked around the candle flame seemed to smell something. They fled in terror in all directions.

However, before they had gone far, they stopped hesitantly.

In the end, tempted by the scent of flesh and blood, they once again lingered around the candle flame like carrion-eating hyenas, unwilling to leave for a long time.

Within the candle flame, the blood flowing from Ning Xiuyuan seemed to possess a life of its own. It rolled back into his body and seeped into his skin.

As his eyelid closed, the horizontal square pupil transformed into a black round pupil. Though it had usurped the nest, it dutifully took on the responsibilities it was supposed to fulfill.