The shopkeeper edged closer to Chen Mo, almost pressing his face against his.
"Well? Your heart, or your liver?"
"Or you can pay half first. Just add a little interest, then come back and pay the other half later?"
Chen Mo lowered his head to look at the scissors, then suddenly laughed. Installment payments were an option too?
"You're quite a decent fellow, shopkeeper."
"Of course. I value fairness above all in business..."
The shopkeeper beamed, his grin nearly reaching his ears.
"However... I don't like digging out my own."
As Chen Mo finished speaking, his right hand had already plunged into the other man's chest.
The smile on the shopkeeper's face had not even fully blossomed before it froze in place.
"You..."
He lowered his head and stared at the hand embedded in his body, his eyes filled with disbelief. "...How dare you?"
"Let me borrow your heart."
Chen Mo withdrew his hand expressionlessly.
Clutched between his five fingers was a heart that was still beating.
Yet circles upon circles of roots coiled around its surface, burrowing deep into the texture of the heart muscle. They contracted and expanded with every beat, as though sucking something from it.
The other ends of the roots extended from the severed opening of the heart deep into the shopkeeper's chest cavity.
Chen Mo's gaze traced the roots back to their source.
Through the man's opened chest, he could clearly see that the inside was packed with plant roots. Some had even pierced through his lungs, leaving honeycomb-like holes behind.
His guess had been right. There was indeed something wrong with the red flowers these people wore on their chests.
The shopkeeper's body had long since been hollowed out.
His organs had all become fertilizer, nourishing the red flower on the right side