A long, deep groove ran across Kane's face, extending straight down from the center of his forehead, over the bridge of his high nose, across his lips, and all the way to his chin.
The edges of the scar on his face curled and rippled like dry tree bark twisted after being torn apart by a violent gale, resembling dark-red rot buried deep beneath the soil.
The shattered remnants of his eyeball fell to the ground, gradually merging into the soil before being completely absorbed by the surrounding grass and trees.
Having gained nourishment, these plants grew rapidly, sprouting from tiny buds into grass or shrubs and bearing fruit.
Yet the fruits these plants bore all carried, to some degree, human characteristics, much like the ginseng fruits of legend.
The only pity was that eating them would not grant immortality. They were even poisonous.
This poison was the poison of immortality, the poison of undying.
It was a poison born from the irrepressible vitality of human cellular molecules.
A field mouse emerged from its burrow and began searching for food.
The shrub's fruit was undoubtedly its best choice. As the field mouse gnawed on the plant fruit swollen with residual flesh and blood to fill its belly, fragments of Kane's consciousness fell into the mouse's stomach along with it.
Even now, he could clearly sense the field mouse's movements. It was lurking deep within a burrow beneath the riverbed, repeatedly gnawing on a hard object.
He could sense it because his cells had completely merged into the plant, becoming part of it, yet they had not been absorbed by the plant and had instead turned into its fruit.
This added another kind of suffering to his torment.
Even before this, his body had been enduring all manner of pain every