"Hmm? Let you go? What are you talking about? We're all friends here..."
In the narrow alley, some voices sounded desperate, while others sounded cheerful.
The girls' voices were all pleasant to hear, but sometimes, pleasant voices could weave an extraordinary nightmare.
"What gives you the right to cry? If you hadn't shamelessly tried to seduce Senior Lin, why would we have beaten you?"
"It wasn't me..."
"It's not my fault that he kept messaging me. I already blocked him..."
"Still talking back? Hit her in the mouth..."
"..."
Standing on the second-floor landing, Xiao Xiao did not deliberately look down, yet she could still hear the girls' chattering laughter. She could hear them growing more and more excited, breaking into peals of laughter from time to time.
Below, seven or eight bobbing heads of various colors surrounded a tiny white dress in the middle, kicking and beating it as an atmosphere of some strange delight blossomed around them.
Yet at the very center of that delight was a flower of despair, giving rise to endless pain and fear.
Elsewhere, in the coffee shop, the woman wearing sunglasses also seemed to have been reminded of the past by what she had just seen. She stared blankly at the blurred street outside the window.
"You are..."
A hesitant voice beside her broke the silence. She turned her head and saw a woman dressed in a coffee-shop uniform.
The other woman was staring at her intently, examining her carefully. After a long while, she finally became certain and exclaimed in delight:
"Ah, it really is you, Zhang Xiao?"
The woman in sunglasses held her coffee in her hand and stared at her without moving.
"You're wearing sunglasses, so I didn't recognize you..."
The coffee-shop employee waved both hands somewhat dramatically and laughed. "It's me! I'm Zhao Qian. You don't recognize me?"
"We used to hang out together all the time in high school..."
"..."
Her face was filled with sincere joy. She moved closer as she spoke, but suddenly stopped.
Only after drawing near did she realize that the woman in sunglasses was not holding her coffee motionless. Her arm was trembling slightly, and ripples kept spreading across the coffee in the cup.
"This..."
The employee's smile grew somewhat awkward as well. Rubbing her hands together, she said, "Um, I'm sorry..."
In the narrow, gloomy alley, Xiao Xiao stood on the second-floor landing, looking down at the group of girls as if she were looking at this twisted world.
Everything happening below even made her shudder with fear.
She had never imagined that, despite accepting the fact that this world was full of monsters, she could still be frightened sometimes.
Young people had far too much creativity. They had abundant energy to ponder useless things they found interesting—for example, ways to make people suffer more, or fall into greater despair.
"Go away, go away..."
Nuo Nuo's cries sounded so powerless amid the excited voices around her.
Xiao Xiao could hear her despair and could even sense something slowly taking shape within it. "Why? Why are you treating me like this...?"
"Why do you have to bully me...?"
"Beat you, beat you! I'll let my dogs bite you to death..."
"..."
Listening to her anguished cries, Xiao Xiao suddenly understood why the girl who loved wearing white dresses had raised three such vicious hounds.
To adults, it might have been a minor matter. To a girl, however, it was the collapse of her entire world...
Crouching on the second-floor landing, he saw the girls laughing and dragging Nuo Nuo, her clothes in disarray, toward a pile of dog feces. Some laughed beside her, while others held up their phones, trying to capture close-up footage.
Nuo Nuo's fierce struggles only made them more excited. Perhaps they had a kind of heroic fantasy in their hearts, believing that bullying someone who fought back and struggled made them feel a greater sense of accomplishment.
He silently closed his eyes, focused his mind, and imagined the feeling he had experienced when summoning the three vicious hounds to his side while dealing with the Choking Nest.
His eyes snapped open. "Summon!"
The girl in the white dress was being dragged toward the dog feces, while people around her kept taking the opportunity to kick her.
The one kicking her was a chubby girl. Nuo Nuo remembered that she had once been bullied too. Someone had doused her in blue ink, and she had crouched in the corner of a bathroom, crying.
But later, she gradually became familiar with these people, especially the girl with the ponytail, and began hanging around with them.
She seemed to enjoy joining in the beating of someone else, growing excited and afraid that she would not be able to get involved.
Nuo Nuo struggled desperately, but fists and feet fell on her like raindrops.
They were all young girls, but their fists could still be hard.
At that moment, despair filled her heart. She could not even hear her own sobs anymore. Only countless inexplicable thoughts kept emerging from the depths of her mind.
If only I could keep those three dogs by my side. If only I could let them out to bite people.
They looked so vicious. It was precisely because she was afraid that she had bought those three dogs, hoping to find a sense of security in them.
However, it was ultimately only her delusion. She really did raise three ferocious dogs, but how could she possibly take them with her everywhere?
She had raised three such vicious dogs, yet now she was still being dragged along like a dog and pinned down in front of dog feces.
Behind the phone cameras were excited faces.
They really were going to post her current appearance online. What would she do afterward?
Perhaps...
...die?
That thought flashed through her mind. Like lightning, it struck the darkest corner of her spiritual world.
So this was what it felt like to think of death for the first time. It was not panic, but relief.
"Ugh..."
But at that very moment, Nuo Nuo, whose body and mind had completely fallen into despair, suddenly heard a vicious, bloodthirsty growl.
At first, she thought she had fallen into an illusion. But in the next instant, the people around her clearly heard it too. The hands dragging her loosened slightly, and when they turned their heads, they felt their scalps go numb.
At the mouth of the alley, three tall, powerful vicious hounds had appeared at some unknown point.
Their faintly reddened eyes glared forward. Their bodies crouched low, fangs bared, while murky drool dripped continuously from the corners of their mouths. They slowly approached, as if bringing a heavy darkness into the alley.
"Is this my dream?"
Through the hazy silhouettes of the people, Nuo Nuo saw the three hounds in which she had once placed all her hopes.
As if suddenly seeing a ray of light in the darkest despair, she summoned every ounce of her strength and shouted, "Ghost, Count, haha... bite them..."
"Woof..."
Before her voice had completely faded, the three vicious hounds had already lunged fiercely into the alley.
At the very moment her voice fell, the three vicious hounds, who had come from who knew where, suddenly pounced forward ferociously.
The girls surrounding Nuo Nuo panicked. Before they could react, they saw a face rush right up to them, along with a pair of dark-red, nightmare-like, savage eyes.
At that moment, Xiao Xiao stood quietly on the second-floor landing, watching the scene intently.
He had summoned the dogs, and he had given the order.
His order was simply: "Bite them hard..."
These brave, even rather imposing girls were instantly scared into shrieking. They scrambled toward the other end of the alley, dropping their phones and fashionable slippers all over the ground.
But the three vicious hounds lunged after them without hesitation, their sharp fangs tearing viciously into the girls' tender flesh.
By then, they had revealed the most terrifying appearance Xiao Xiao had seen when he had previously fallen into a panic.
Their powerful, corded bodies and sharp, savage fangs radiated a tangible terror that could almost be seen with the naked eye, causing the air around them to warp faintly.
Like a nightmare.
For quite a long time, they had been among the most terrifying monsters in Xiao Xiao's nightmares.
After he bought them, however, they became docile, cute, and even rather simple-minded, causing Xiao Xiao to gradually push the images from those nightmares to the back of his mind.
But at this moment, their terrifying side was revealed in full.
They tore and ripped with reckless frenzy, like mad beasts that had completely lost their reason. Blinding blood and flesh flew through the narrow alley.
Perhaps it was an illusion, but Xiao Xiao even felt that the terrifying aura surrounding them was continuing to rise, becoming ever more distorted, while the air around them seemed to grow viscous.
"Buzz..."
Just as Xiao Xiao was wondering whether this was an illusion, he unexpectedly sensed a faint tremor.
It came from the card face he had tucked into his coat pocket. As if affected by something, it transmitted mysterious information directly into his phone.
He took out his phone and saw a message with neither a sender nor any beginning or end:
Item Name: Three Adorable Hounds Pain Substance detected to be increasing. Strengthen: Yes/No Strengthening Cost: 90 points Strengthening Cost: 80 points ...
"The points required for strengthening are actually decreasing continuously?"
"Why is that?"
"The increase in Pain Substance... Pain Substance seems to refer to some kind of element inside Aberrant Creatures? Why is it increasing now?"
"..."
This was the first time Xiao Xiao had encountered such a situation, and he was momentarily surprised.
"What a pity..."
At that very moment, a voice suddenly sounded behind him. "This was supposed to be a perfect opportunity to harvest Pain Substance..."
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