Head

Am I seriously in the world of Journey to the West? How did even Bajie show up...

Though he thought so, Zhou You made no move to respond. He simply hung upside down, staying perfectly still... just like a real corpse.

The pig-headed monster didn't notice anything unusual.

With its enormous head held high, it sniffed here and there among the corpses, occasionally pawing at the hanging bodies as it carefully examined every inch of flesh.

...It was just like a chef carefully picking out the day's ingredients.

Fortunately, Zhou You's build was probably a little too far from plump and juicy. After inspecting the options for a while, the monster gave up on him. It finally hoisted a corpse that had been cleaved in two and lumbered out, grunting with every step.

Only then did Zhou You have a moment to observe his surroundings.

At first glance, it looked like a small room of about twenty square meters. There were no windows or anything of the sort, and only a few dim candles provided light. Seven or eight corpses hung neatly around the room, and Zhou You was one of them—except he wasn't quite dead yet.

The door wasn't locked.

But in his current state, he couldn't make it over there.

"So the main thing now is figuring out how to get off this hook..."

Zhou You tilted his head back and tried to see if he could free himself from the hook with one hand. A wave of pain immediately stopped him. Because of the way he was hanging, he could only get down by hardening his resolve and sacrificing his right hand. There was no way to free himself otherwise.

In a place this dark, losing a hand was pretty much the same as losing his life.

Zhou You glanced around, hoping to find a handy tool or something he could use for leverage. Unfortunately, even after searching for a while, he still couldn't find anything useful.

So he turned his attention to the corpse hanging in front of him.

Looks like this is the only thing I can use.

"...Sorry, brother."

Zhou You silently apologized, then arched his back a little and took a deep breath. His lower body suddenly kicked into action!

The force sent him swinging forward on the hook. A tearing sensation accompanied the movement, and excruciating pain shot through his hand, but Zhou You didn't even groan. He swung straight toward the corpse!

Unfortunately, he came up just short.

Zhou You didn't give up. Enduring the pain, he gripped the hook with his right hand to keep the wound from tearing further. Then he kicked backward, hitting another corpse and increasing the force of his swing!

After trying two or three times, he finally reached the corpse in front of him. He wrapped his legs around its waist and locked them tight.

Zhou You paused to catch his breath and recover a little strength. Then, using the corpse for support, he pressed up with both legs and lifted his whole body.

At last, he was high enough to reach the hook.

Grabbing his already pale right hand, he pulled his palm off the hook with a bone-chilling scrape, wrenching it free by sheer force!

By then, he had used up all his strength.

Even so, Zhou You didn't let gravity drag him down. He clung to the corpse and slowly slid his way to the ground, finally landing on the dust-covered floor.

He hadn't alerted anyone from start to finish.

Only then did he let out a long breath. He wiped the beads of sweat from his face and spat.

"System, you're getting more and more outrageous. The dungeons getting harder would be bad enough, but now you've even started me off half-crippled..."

Despite his complaint, he struggled to take out the Yungu Ointment and smear it over the wound in his palm.

A sticky but cool sensation gradually seeped into his body. The wound began to stop bleeding and close at a visible rate. It wasn't exactly healed, but at least he wouldn't completely lose the use of his hand.

"This stuff works well, but I still managed to get too little out of that old woman." Zhou You sighed at the few tubes of ointment he had left, put them away, then crouched and carefully made his way to the door. He peered outside.

There was no sign of the pig-headed monster, but the sound of a cleaver chopping on a chopping board came faintly from somewhere in the other direction.

Zhou You didn't need to think twice to guess who was making the noise—and what they were chopping.

So he headed that way without hesitation.

The place he was in seemed to be an underground cavern. The air was unbearably foul, with a lingering musty smell. The tunnel hadn't been worked on at all; bare stone walls stood exposed, lit only by the dim torches mounted along them.

Before long, Zhou You made his way to another stone chamber.

Unfortunately, this wasn't an exit either.

The place looked quite a bit larger than the corpse room. It seemed to be a dining hall, with a huge stone table set in the middle. There was nothing decorative about it; the surface was covered in patches of grease and grime, and rotten scraps of food lay in the cracks. Flies buzzed overhead, circling as if they were enjoying a feast.

It looked like a dining table with abysmal hygiene, one that was heading straight toward Indian-level sanitation.

But the problem was...

What kind of household put three heads on its dining table?

Zhou You looked over and saw three severed heads arranged neatly at the far end of the table—as if they were ordinary household decorations.

From left to right, the first was a young man with his hair tied up in a bun, the second a middle-aged man with a fierce expression, and the third an old man with white hair, nearing the end of his life.

For some reason, despite their different ages, the heads were all about the same size. Even their facial structures were quite similar.

"Could the owner of this place be a neat freak, so obsessed with uniformity that he even..."

Zhou You wasn't particularly affected—he was already used to this sort of thing after his previous experiences—but just as he was about to take a closer look, heavy footsteps sounded behind him once again.

At the same time, the copper bell on his wrist began to tremble rapidly!

The monster was back!

He hurriedly glanced around, spotted a cabinet in the corner, and dove inside.

A few dozen seconds later, the footsteps entered the room. The creature seemed not to notice anything unusual. It simply set something down on the table, then left.

Only then did Zhou You breathe a sigh of relief and climb out of the cabinet. He looked up and immediately saw something.

It was a person's corpse, roasted until it was glistening with oil, golden brown, and crispy...