A Retrospective Farce

"Kind person, please help me!" The woman was already in tears, her voice choked with sobs, her hands clapping red, filled with despair and helplessness.

However, the Dark Star Guild's predictors are naturally very vigilant, and when faced with this kind of situation, they remain motionless, like turtles hiding in their shells.

Women still can't get the door open for the "indifferent ones".

She collapsed to her knees, limp and sobbing uncontrollably as she held her child.

This is a mother's most genuine helplessness when she is unable to protect her child. Regardless of what kind of existence a woman is, or what kind of memories she has that she only comes out after midnight, Yu Xing can feel that at this moment, the emotions she is showing are real.

That's strange...

Is this a "person" whose cognition has been distorted? She doesn't think about why she hasn't seen daytime for so long; she only follows her deepest obsession to do what she needs to do.

But.

Yu Xing sighed.

Even though the woman's urgency was so real, all he heard from her was a breath.

The woman's disordered breathing became increasingly erratic with her crying and shouting, while the baby in her swaddling clothes remained quiet.

The baby wasn't breathing at all.

Another invisible branch pierced through the corridor and slowly approached the woman's embrace.

The swaddling clothes were indeed a bit thin and the baby was wrapped in a rather messy manner. It was clear that the infant was not receiving very meticulous care, but the woman had done her best.

The woman pressed her fingers tightly against the back of the swaddled baby, holding the child in her arms like a precious treasure. If a calm and normal person were standing nearby, they would realize that she was holding the child far too tightly.

The child's face was pressed against her chest, leaving him no room to breathe.

[This child has been dead for a long time.]

The consciousness on the branch was transmitted back to Yu Xing's mind.

[I don't know if he was suffocated by his mother or frozen to death, because his body was really cold.]

The branch touched the baby's corpse through a circumference, touching a chill that emanated from the very soul.

The poor woman was unaware that her child had died; she was still begging others for something to keep her child warm.

--That's how it looks at first glance.

The branch touched the woman's head again, then withdrew after a short while, and the branch swayed.

[She's gone mad, she's acting crazy, she thinks her child isn't dead, but it doesn't matter at all!]

She'll do something terrible about it!

Is it edible?

"No." Yu Xing silently replied in her heart.

The branches he controlled always felt hungry, but he had confirmed that this hunger did not necessarily have to be satisfied, just like when he was in chaos and wanted to drink blood, nothing happened even if he didn't drink it.

That's just a craving in the chaotic will of the tongue; it won't starve.

Conversely, if he doesn't properly restrain the branches and instead lets them "eat" all sorts of strange things, his own consciousness will definitely be affected and polluted. In that case, whether he will control the branches or the branches will control him will be an unknown.

He moved to a quieter, lazier branch and sent the branch that was clamoring to eat the woman back to another dimension.

Just then, a door opened a crack.

The woman turned around abruptly and saw a pair of pitying, cautious eyes through the crack in the door.

Yu Xing heard it clearly from inside the room; it was the child on the other side who opened the door.

The child, who looked to be just over ten years old, had been listening in the room for a long time and finally couldn't hold back any longer.

"You..." The child was a little timid. He wasn't wearing many clothes, and his exposed skin was covered with chilblains and cracks. His little face was chubby, with traces of baby fat.

Even under these circumstances, he still felt compassion for the woman and reached his hand out from the crack in the door, clutching a piece of cloth torn from somewhere.

"Here, take this. You can give it to your little brother, or perhaps your little sister... wrap it up..."

A light flashed in the woman's eyes.

She pounced on the baby, snatched the toy from the child's hands, and wrapped the swaddled baby in an even thicker layer. Overjoyed, she murmured to the infant, "Baby, is baby warm? Don't cry, baby, we'll get through this. Say thank you to your brother! Oh, Mommy forgot you can't talk yet, sweet baby."

She comforted the child for a while, her eyes brimming with tears, then turned to the child behind the crack in the door and said, "Thank you, thank you so much..."

The child was somewhat at a loss for words in the face of such thanks, but at the same time, he gradually relaxed because of the woman's gentleness towards him.

The door was pushed a little wider without the child noticing, and the child mumbled, "No, it's okay. If it can save the baby, what I did is nothing..."

The woman wiped away her tears and whispered, "It's a little brother. My child is a boy. I thank you on his behalf. Really, without you, my child would have..."

The child nervously tugged at the hem of his clothes, finding it hard to accept the thanks, and changed the subject. "The little brother is so good, he hasn't cried once."

The woman's face stiffened, as if she only remembered something after hearing those words.

She lowered her head and coaxed softly, "Baby, you're such a good boy/girl, you know not to cause Mommy any trouble, you didn't cry at all..."

"Baby, why aren't you crying?"

The baby in the swaddling clothes did not respond, its face half-covered by the cloth wrapped around it, it was too quiet.

The woman's eyes widened, and she hastily pulled back the cloth in front of the baby.

The baby's bluish-purple face was exposed to the cold air.

The chubby baby's face and lips were purplish, his eyes were tightly closed, and there were cracked, frostbitten skins on his cheeks. The flesh on his face was hard and inelastic.

The child standing nearby screamed in terror at the sight. To a child who hadn't seen much of the world, the little brother who was about to freeze to death and the already frozen corpse were two completely different things.

He couldn't even distinguish between freezing to death and suffocating to death; he was simply instinctively afraid of death.

The woman was awakened by the scream.

She abruptly covered the baby's face, her eyes filled with bewildered and hopeless terror, her whole body trembling, and the veins on her hands bulging.

"Baby..."

"Baby, why... why aren't you crying?"

"It must be because it's cold. Yes, you must be freezing. Are you scared? Don't be afraid, Mommy's here. You're just frozen stiff. Mommy will find you something warm. Wait for Mommy, wait for Mommy..."

The child behind the crack in the door calmed down and felt even more sorry for the woman. He tried to comfort her, "Well, you've already done so much for him—ah!"

The woman pulled the child out from behind the door and threw him to the ground. A hint of madness flickered in her eyes as she kept repeating things like, "Baby, don't be afraid, wait for Mommy." She first put the swaddled baby on the ground and then crawled over to hold the astonished child down.

What are you doing!

"Let me go! Let me go!"

The child realized the danger and started punching and kicking the woman holding him down, but the woman seemed oblivious to the pain, tearing at the child's clothes. "A little more, a little more and I won't be cold..."

"Your son is dead! What are you doing! These are my clothes!" The child cried out in distress. Giving the woman a piece of cloth was a decision he had agonized over for a long time. If the clothes were taken away, he would freeze to death!

It's too cold.

It's just... too cold.

The child struggled violently, desperately trying to pry the woman's hands off. "Your son is dead! Help! Murder!"

"My son isn't dead!" the woman roared, suddenly grabbing the child by the neck. "Who are you cursing! No one can hurt my baby!"

The child's eyes widened. The pressure on his neck made his bones groan under the strain. His breathing was blocked, and the feeling of suffocation made his eyes roll back.

He was still too weak; with his thin arms and legs, his resistance was negligible compared to that of a grown woman—especially a grown woman who had gone mad.

The child quickly became still.

The woman, panting heavily, stripped the child of all his outer clothes and even his sweater. Turning around, she held the clothes up to the infant's corpse as if she were holding a treasure she had finally found.

"Look, baby, this is such a thick coat. It will keep you warm! Mommy will help you put it on, okay?"

She pulled the baby's body from the rumpled swaddling clothes. The clothes for a ten-year-old were too big for the infant, so the woman wrapped the excess fabric around the baby, her face flushed, and lifted the baby high. "Baby, how do you feel?"

"Baby, you can make some sounds, right? Are you hungry? Or cold? Tell Mommy, didn't you already learn to call Mommy?"

The woman chattered on and on, while the infant, who had been dead for some time, remained silent.

She gradually calmed down from the chaos.

Looking at the baby's stiff limbs, the string of my deception had been stretched to its limit and could no longer hold on, snapping instantly.

She finally realized that the child was really dead.

Belatedly realizing what was happening, the woman slowly turned her head to look at the innocent child lying on the floor... whom she had just strangled to death.

She burst into tears.

The tears gradually stained a deep color, the transparent liquid turning crimson, and the blood tears flowed gurglingly, forming a pool of blood on the ground at an extremely eerie speed.

The woman knelt in a pool of blood, the smell of which was stronger than usual and filled the air.

Yu Xing was not spared either. When he smelled the blood, his body began to stiffen. Tiny ice crystals first gathered on his hair and eyebrows, and then gradually covered the surface of his skin.

He lay on the bed as if he were lying in an ice coffin.

Bending or bending the joints became difficult, and the whole body became as stiff as a corpse.

Extreme cold spread to her nerve endings. Yu Xing experienced the impact of the woman outside the door, quickly judged the nature of the impact, and felt that it was about time, so she slowly exhaled.

The aura condensed into white mist in the air, and the curse power within the body seemed to have encountered a hateful enemy, spontaneously gathering and rampaging beneath the skin. Wherever it went, not only ice shards, but even the chill vanished completely as if it had never existed.

This wasn't real freezing; it was just an illusion created by the smell of blood, giving the brain the false impression that the body was about to be turned into a corpse.

His body instantly regained its mobility. With a thought, the branches that had extended into Zhang Yu's room stretched out from the ceiling, materialized, and tightly bound Zhang Yu, who was trying to move around to relieve the cold but whose mind was also affected by the freezing cold and who almost fell off the bed.

"Ah!" Zhang Yu, who was in the room, was first startled by the sudden appearance of the thick branch, and then recognized that it was the same branch that the captain used to string together the Meng Dao outside the town.

He immediately stopped struggling and obediently remained restrained.

It seemed like it wasn't just his imagination; once he realized the captain had arrived, the cold feeling seemed to subside considerably and wasn't so unbearable anymore.

Even if something outside freezes it into an ice pop, the captain wouldn't just stand by and do nothing, would he?

With Zhang Yu behaving himself, Yu Xing turned his attention to the corridor.

Like Zhang Yu, some people, even if they are mentally clear under normal circumstances, will experience sluggish thinking when the freezing occurs, and will have a false sense of impending death.

This can lead them to forget to lie properly in bed.

They might not run off the bed, but they might sit up, or they might fall off.

For example, the Dark Star member opposite him.

The branch has already gone to that person's room to observe the situation.

Sensing impending death, the Dark Star members reacted immediately, each producing a strangely shaped bottle from which wisps of resentment emanated from its shattered opening.

The resentment swirled in the air, transforming into transparent ghost faces with trailing tails, trying to dispel the cold.

Yu Xing was using a third-person perspective, and this time, he could clearly see that neither the Dark Star member nor Zhang Yu from before had any trace of being frozen.

But the person in question was blinded by illusions. The Dark Star member seemed to be troubled by the ice, and the resentment was gathering in his right arm. His right arm was temporarily free to move, and he took the opportunity to slap his leg, as if trying to shatter the ice.

It was obvious that the force of this palm strike was completely unimpeded by the ice layer and was applied entirely to his body.

The merciless force brought the sound of bones shattering, causing the Dark Star member to cry out in pain. His dazed mind couldn't process much information in time. Prioritizing, he subconsciously sat up and checked the injury on his leg.

The moment he deviated from the action of "lying down," a spatial fluctuation emanated from his room.

When space remains stable, people often don't notice anything. Only when something that was taken for granted breaks down will people be surprised to discover that there was such a layer before.

Through the experiences of the Dark Star members, Yu Xing saw the barrier enveloping the other party's room.

The invisible barrier dissolved with the ripples, and the pool of blood that had spread across the corridor, like wild dogs that had caught a whiff of blood, suddenly flowed madly into the crack of the door leading to the Dark Star member's room.

First, the blood tentatively flowed into a pool, and finding no obstruction, it immediately began to bubble actively. The Dark Star member, already caught in the trap, seemed oblivious to the blood seeping into his room, letting it flow under his bed and then slowly climb upwards.

The resentful spirits swirling in the air screamed urgently, but they couldn't wake their owner, who was sitting on the bed hugging his knees, his eyes already vacant.

Soon, blood flowed through the bodies of the Dark Star members.

Yu Xing's branches had already moved aside, changing from crawling along the ground to winding and entwining on the ceiling. From her perspective looking down, Yu Xing saw the Dark Star members being silently covered in blood.

After a while, the enemy began to collapse.

The skin of the Dark Star members slowly dissolved, and the surging blood inside their bodies rushed out from the cracks in their skin, while their bones and meridians also turned into part of the blood.

It was just flesh and blood, without any support, yet it still maintained a human form.

Yu Xing recognized what it was at a glance.

--Flesh and Blood Ghost Shadow.

It's that kind of thing, whether it's to steal the ritual robes or simply to kill the still-living diviners, it's all about harming diviners to advance into human skin ghosts, red-clothed ghosts... flesh and blood ghosts.

So, were all those who broke the rules corrupted by this blood?

The Dark Star members were reduced to flesh and blood. The resentment he had summoned, now without its master, abandoned its previous fierce protectiveness and dissipated into the air with excitement and freedom, disappearing to who knows where.

Mohu's flesh and blood slowly crawled up from the bed, found a corner of the room, squatted down, and piled himself into an even more indistinct mass of rotten flesh.

"It's so cold..." the woman murmured amidst the blood-red landscape of the corridor.

Aside from the rooms where the living lived and the empty houses, the blood seemed to roam freely, opening one tightly closed door after another, and the previously motionless "people" emerged one after another.

With lively expressions, they looked at the corpses of the woman and the two children beside her, one big and one small, their initial surprise and anger subtly transforming into longing.

"You actually killed a child! Are you even human?!" a short, shifty-eyed man screamed at his doorway. "Look everyone, this woman has gone mad! She's killed someone! If we keep her around, who knows what she might do next!"

"Oh my god, it's Xiao Yangyang!" The short, chubby girl covered her mouth with her hands covered in chilblains. "Xiao Yangyang's parents are both dead, and he's been holding on all by himself for so long. How could you be so heartless! How could you be so heartless!"

"Get this woman out of here!" More and more people responded to the call.

From the ten rooms, more than ten people emerged. Some looked like couples, others like brothers. Oblivious to their surroundings, they stood in pools of blood, gradually becoming consumed by excitement, and charged towards the woman.

The short, chubby girl couldn't squeeze to the front, so she shouted, "Don't waste her clothes! Let me wear them! I'm the only woman left!"

A louder voice came from the crowd. "Bullshit! Could you even fit into her clothes, you fat woman! Who cares about men's or women's clothes at a time like this? Last time, I got the thinnest blanket, it should be mine!"

In the chaos, the woman was stripped naked and dragged away down the corridor in a daze by several hands.

This is probably what they mean by "expulsion".

The bodies of the two children who had sparked public outrage lay unattended to the side.

They quickly divided up the meager amount of clothing, then returned to their rooms cursing and swearing. Their wounds resembled those of victims, but their expressions were like those of demons.

The crimson blood sank into the ground, vanishing without a trace, as if it had never existed.

The corridor returned to silence. The branches watched as the people returned to their rooms, then at a certain moment, they all stopped moving, becoming like mannequins again.

The child's body vanished in the blink of an eye; not even a branch could be seen clearly.

The next second, "Xiao Yangyang," who had been strangled to death by the woman, reappeared in his room, holding a small trinket made of shredded newspaper.

The woman who had been driven out, now fully dressed, sat on the edge of the bed, holding her baby again, staring blankly ahead.