"Could it really work?"
At that moment, Xiao Xiao could not help feeling a little excited.
The three hounds were summoned out, and they seemed somewhat dazed as well, not knowing how they had suddenly arrived there.
Their reactions also seemed to differ greatly according to their breeds. As soon as one hound appeared—with a large head, thick neck, and black muzzle—it saw the corpses in front of Xiao Xiao.
It immediately let out a threatening growl. It pawed at the ground and charged forward, baring its fangs as saliva flew from its mouth, displaying the ferocity of a vicious dog to the fullest.
Another vicious dog of medium build, covered in yellow fur, quickly surveyed its surroundings, then wagged its tail at Xiao Xiao before charging toward the corpses ahead.
The last one had black-and-white markings. It excitedly looked around, frantically wagging its tail at the corpses twitching nearby and jumping up and down as if it wanted to play with them.
"Was buying that one a bad deal...?"
Taking in the performances of all three dogs, Xiao Xiao thought to himself as he took the opportunity to stride forward.
"Is this guy crazy?"
"Hasn't he realized how dangerous the Choking Nest is?"
"Where did the dogs come from?"
"..."
Xiao Xiao could guarantee that every step he took had been carefully considered, repeatedly weighed, and thoroughly analyzed for its chances of success.
He also believed that after careful consideration, anyone with a sound personality, stable mental state, and a certain level of intelligence would make the same decision as him.
But in Ruan Ruan's eyes, he simply seemed abnormally insane at that moment...
How had he managed to face such a terrifying and bizarre scene without hesitation, charging forward and even summoning three vicious dogs from who-knew-where to help him clear the way?
There was no time to ask in her haste. With the help of the three vicious dogs beside him, Xiao Xiao forcibly tore open a passage through the corpse horde flailing in front of him.
After undergoing the most basic enhancement, his physical abilities had improved considerably, and his movements were not slow. He still seemed clumsy, however, lacking experience and coordination in his limbs.
But his actions were decisive. In an instant, he had passed through seven or eight grasping hands and charged into the innermost part of the warehouse.
The area behind him was suddenly filled with vague shadows. The three vicious dogs... no, two of them—the third was slacking off—had dealt with some of the corpses blocking his way, but they could not kill them. Now, the corpses were closing in around him.
It looked as though Xiao Xiao had deliberately walked into a trap.
Yet at the same time, after reaching this area, Xiao Xiao suddenly stopped. He saw a person completely different from the corpses around him.
It was a man in a white shirt. Haggard and emaciated, he knelt on the empty floor in the middle of the warehouse, painfully covering his face with both hands. He was motionless, like a statue.
Countless scattered, twisted masses of flesh had spread from his body, connecting him to the scattered corpses behind him and constructing this nightmarish scene.
"Is that the Suffocation Puppet?"
Xiao Xiao suddenly raised his pistol—though from Ruan Ruan's distant perspective, he merely took a look before calmly raising the gun in his hand.
The motion was even somewhat elegant.
However, after raising his gun and taking aim, Xiao Xiao suddenly lowered it again and strode toward the man.
"What are you doing? Hurry up and shoot him..."
Watching from a distance, Ruan Ruan was already deeply perplexed.
She could not understand why Xiao Xiao had already found the Suffocation Puppet and could fire, yet had forcibly lowered his gun and instead walked toward it.
Although once the Choking Nest had formed, firing at the Suffocation Puppet alone would not solve the problem—
the Choking Nest represented the spread of this aberration. The Suffocation Puppet and the surrounding corpses had become one whole, like an infected wound that needed to be cleared away in its entirety.
Even so, if Xiao Xiao simply shot the Suffocation Puppet, it would still affect the Choking Nest to some degree and make the incident easier to deal with.
But Xiao Xiao's reason was actually very simple—
Damn it, my shooting is so bad. At this distance, there's a high chance I won't hit it...
Therefore, he had no choice but to quickly close the distance to the Suffocation Puppet while dodging the masses of flesh writhing along the ground.
But just as Xiao Xiao rapidly approached, the man in the filthy white shirt suddenly moved.
He slowly lowered both hands and cast his hollow, black eye sockets toward Xiao Xiao.
At that moment, Xiao Xiao was in a state of Mind Burst and extreme tension. His brain was operating under an enormous burden when his gaze suddenly collided with those two hollow, black eye sockets.
"Buzz..."
At that instant, he seemed to sense dense and complicated mental forces cutting into one another, flashing a series of insane scenes.
He saw a man—a very ordinary man, so ordinary that he instinctively felt it was himself.
He had been born into an ordinary family and grown up in an ordinary environment. His grades had been ordinary as well. He had never been particularly inattentive in his studies; he simply had never possessed the clever mind of those students with better grades.
After graduating, he found a job at a major company. His mind was fairly flexible, so he had even been transferred to the business department and handled several major deals.
Thus, he smoothly married and had children, and happiness quietly arrived.
Then, as was only ordinary, his mother fell ill. Of course, he had to take responsibility and pay for her treatment. He simply had not expected it to cost so much. Fortunately, his savings from the past few years could bear it.
After working hard for a few years, he would earn the money back.
But he had not expected the factory to go bankrupt. He had no choice but to look for a new job, but the new factory was not friendly. The salary it offered was less than half of his previous one, and the benefits promised beforehand were canceled as well. Having once enjoyed success, he naturally refused to lower himself. He resigned after working there for a while, thinking he could find something better—or at the very least, something not too different from his previous job. But he had not expected...
He found a new job again and again, then quit again and again, as if some kind of curse had begun to cling to him.
His money dwindled while his debts grew. His child's tuition, tutoring fees, financial support for the household, and four elderly parents to care for—countless hands reached toward him.
He needed money so badly, yet the money was right there, beyond his reach.
He worked harder and harder, laboring desperately and crashing around like a headless fly trapped in a glass bottle. In the end, he earned even less money, and through one moment of carelessness, a former friend even swindled him out of a sum.
That had been his child's school money. His wife cursed him viciously, while he merely crouched at the door, clutching his head.
When life was happy, the days always slipped away quickly. When life was miserable, time seemed to come to a halt, and every second was agonizing.
Finally, when his child came down with a high fever and his wife called him countless times to send money over, he stared at the empty balance on his credit card and was seized by a profound sense of helplessness.
His wife asked for a divorce. He came to an empty street, and his father called to say that his mother's illness had relapsed.
He stared at the list of names filling his contacts, yet did not know whom to call.
When he finally could not withstand his father's urging over the phone and cruelly turned off his phone, he felt like a complete bastard.
He wandered aimlessly through the streets. At some point, he arrived at the factory where he had once been happiest and sat in the empty warehouse, thinking that perhaps it would be better to end everything.
He took out a box of matches, pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, and wanted to give himself a moment of peace at the end.
But...
...the cigarette pack was empty.
He suddenly raised his head and burst into loud sobs, feeling that something inside him had accumulated to the limit and finally shattered something fragile.
"The cigarette pack's empty..."
"..."
Xiao Xiao suddenly awoke. Less than a second had passed, but it felt as though he had experienced an entire life falling apart.
A complicated expression appeared on his face as he looked at the man in the white shirt. At the man's feet lay a box of matches and a cigarette pack crushed flat in his fist.
Around the edges of his hollow, black eye sockets, Xiao Xiao saw what seemed to be traces left by some kind of liquid.
Xiao Xiao had already gripped his pistol tightly and intended to rush up and shoot the man in the forehead, but a sudden emotion struck his heart like a rising tide.
His movements slowed. Xiao Xiao lightened his steps and walked up to the man in the white shirt.
Behind him, the surging heads of the dead were tearing into the three vicious dogs.
Amid the swaying, scattered shadows, Xiao Xiao and the man kneeling on the ground shared a moment of silent eye contact.
The moment was actually extremely brief.
Then Xiao Xiao suddenly raised his hand, removed the cigarette tucked behind his ear, and gently placed it between the man's lips.
He picked up the matches from the ground, struck one alight, and gently lit the cigarette for him.
"You've worked hard..."
With complicated emotions in his heart, Xiao Xiao let the still-burning match in his hand fall onto the coat the man had tossed aside. The flames began to burn quietly.
The man remained motionless. His hollow, black eye sockets silently watched Xiao Xiao, while the tiny ember at the end of the cigarette seemed like the last warmth in the world.
Xiao Xiao slowly retreated, watching the figure disappear beneath the flames. After taking a few steps, he sighed, turned around, and charged back into the pile of corpses.
Struggling left and right, he fought his way outside together with the three vicious dogs.
So life really could drown a person...
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