The Magpie Occupies the Nest

Having experienced the Plague Doctor incident, Ning Xiuyuan had reason to suspect that his time in the human world was limited by lamp oil.

As it turned out, his guess was correct.

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

No!

To be precise, the darkness had already arrived, but the white worm had frozen this corner of the human world, blocking the Verdant Form's escape route, and thus preventing the darkness from penetrating.

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

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

"Creak—"

The sound of his feet crunching on ice shards echoed on the frozen earth, making the world even quieter.

Ning Xiuyuan took a deep breath.

He could feel the darkness growing thicker, like a torrential downpour, gradually squeezing out the air, making him feel suppressed and suffocated.

The endless frozen earth reflected a faint glow, but it grew dimmer and dimmer, no longer able to illuminate the land.

Ning Xiuyuan stopped.

He took out a bottle of lamp oil from his pocket. It was the last bottle.

He hesitated whether to pour in half of it to extend his stay, as this place... felt most like his home.

"Rumble..."

The faint roar of a helicopter could be heard from the sky. The searchlight pierced the night sky like a sharp sword, but it couldn't penetrate the twilight darkness around him.

Ning Xiuyuan gave a self-deprecating laugh and let the candlelight be extinguished by the darkness.

The next second, the fluorescence of the frozen earth completely disappeared.

The darkness had descended.

In the endless darkness, that familiar, eerie, furtive barking could be heard again, like the murmuring whispers of a ghost in one's ear, unsettling.

A peeled hand pierced through the viscous darkness and reached for Ning Xiuyuan's neck.

Just as it was about to touch the flesh that would bring screams of satisfaction.

"Bang!"

The sound of flames erupting, along with the spreading light, was like molten lava splashing on his face or aqua regia bathing his body. It caused the peeled hand to let out a piercing scream and retract into the darkness.

"Hoo..."

Although he had prior experience, the relighting of the candle made Ning Xiuyuan let out a long sigh of relief.

"This is..."

However, before he could finish his breath, Ning Xiuyuan's eyes widened abruptly, his face filled with horror.

Inside the crystal lampshade, a striped goat pupil floated above the flame. Its square pupil reflected his disbelieving face.

—It's Him!!!

Before Ning Xiuyuan could react, the striped goat pupil suddenly disappeared.

Just as Ning Xiuyuan was about to search, It reappeared, right in front of Ning Xiuyuan's left eyeball.

Under Ning Xiuyuan's terrified gaze, dense tentacles suddenly grew around the striped goat pupil. As the tentacles thrashed about, they abruptly plunged into Ning Xiuyuan's eye sockets, grabbing his left eyeball.

"Ah—"

Ning Xiuyuan screamed in pain. It wasn't the pain of flesh, but a tearing that pierced the depths of his soul!

But it wasn't over yet. A more terrifying scene unfolded before Ning Xiuyuan.

The goat pupil, held by countless tentacles, suddenly split open its dark pupil, revealing a mouth filled with spiral teeth. It swallowed his left eyeball in one gulp, then forcefully squeezed into the eye socket, like a cuckoo's egg.

Three or five tentacles that remained outside retracted into the eye socket. The goat pupil flipped itself within the socket, turning its striped pupil outward, reflecting the crystal lantern.

All of this happened in an instant!

By the time Ning Xiuyuan reacted, the usurpation was complete.

"No—"

"Get out!"

Ning Xiuyuan let out a terrified roar. His left index and middle fingers curled into hooks, and he fiercely dug into his left eye socket, trying to gouge out the hideous and terrifying foreign object.

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

"Get out! Get out!"

Ning Xiuyuan gripped the goat pupil, hysterically trying to dig it out.

However, the goat pupil's dense tentacles were deeply embedded in his eye socket, reaching into his brain, heart, and even his soul.

The harder he dug, the more he felt the desperate cries emanating from his body.

It felt as if his own organs were being dug out!

Could the striped goat pupil be completely dug out? Ning Xiuyuan didn't know.

But his spiritual intuition screamed at him that before that could happen, he would first have his brain, heart, and even his soul pulled out from his left eye socket.

This was because It had clearly replaced his eyeball, parasitizing his body and becoming a part of his very being.

It was like the Cymothoa exigua that sucked the blood from a fish's tongue, becoming a part of the host's tongue organ.

But It was far more terrifying!

Ning Xiuyuan didn't believe It would obediently remain a parasite. Once It recovered, he would surely be the one to die!

"Huuu... huuu..."

Extreme fear, a desperate situation, and a series of recent encounters had pushed Ning Xiuyuan's mind to the brink of collapse.

He gasped for air, countless thoughts flashing through his mind.

"Come out, or I'll extinguish the candlelight and leave you to be lost in this darkness forever."

Ning Xiuyuan roared in a low voice, reaching out to twist the wick knob and extinguish the candlelight.

"Creak creak creak—"

As his finger touched the wick knob, an indescribable terror erupted from the striped goat pupil, engulfing Ning Xiuyuan's soul, making him tremble and unable to move.

—The striped goat pupil was trying to control him.

Control?

Ning Xiuyuan's right eye suddenly lit up!

His spirituality boiled, the supernatural ran wild, and the Plague Disciple, through the tentacles piercing Ning Xiuyuan's body, launched a frantic erosion against the goat pupil.

At the same time, the Heart of the Beast also activated abruptly.

An intangible power enveloped the striped goat pupil, gradually penetrating inward.

If you dare to control me, then I will dare to control you.

At worst, we'll both perish in a mutual destruction!

As the two strands of supernatural power eroded It, the striped goat pupil began to tremble, its iris colors shifting erratically. At this moment, It was weaker than ever before.

But It did not flee, as if there was a terrifying existence in the endless darkness that even It feared.

At a certain moment, the trembling goat pupil suddenly quieted down.

Ning Xiuyuan gasped for air, covering his left eye with an expression of disbelief.

Was it because the striped goat pupil had parasitized his body?

Or had It, in order to escape the hunt of the white worm, been forced to abandon most of its shell and even its characteristics, performing a 'golden cicada shedding its shell' escape, thus becoming incredibly weak?

In any case, Ning Xiuyuan's erosion of the striped goat pupil had gone far more smoothly than he could have imagined.

It almost felt as if he was the one controlling the striped goat pupil?

Or was It temporarily giving up its resistance to seek a safe haven, merely to appease the host's pitiful and fragile state of mind?

Sensing the information flooding into his soul, Ning Xiuyuan's mind reeled.

He blankly raised his face. On his left, blood-soaked face, a seductive striped square eye was embedded, filled with Taotie-like greed, cold indifference, and madness.

—It was a trace of the Supreme Mother God's characteristics.

This made him feel like an Old One returning to the mortal world!

The monsters, drawn by the scent of flesh and blood and lurking around the candlelight, seemed to have sensed something and fled in terror.

However, before they could get far, they hesitated and stopped.

Ultimately, tempted by the scent of flesh and blood, they once again circled the candlelight like scavenging hyenas, lingering and unwilling to leave.

Within the candlelight, Ning Xiuyuan's flowing blood seemed to possess a spirit, rolling back into his body and seeping into his skin.

As his eyelids closed, the striped square eye transformed into a pitch-black round pupil, having usurped the nest but dutifully fulfilling its obligations.