"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
"Wang Xiaoxue?!"
When Fan Shang saw those words, his eyes went wide with disbelief.
Of course he remembered the name Wang Xiaoxue. He had only just killed her.
In fact, to avoid some bullshit situation where his cause of death turned out to be not cutting off her head, Fan Shang had even chopped it off.
But what was he seeing now?
The Death-Announcing System said he would die—not because that Cat-Faced Ghost from earlier had caught up, but at Wang Xiaoxue's hands.
Was this some kind of fucking joke?!
Even the darkest joke wouldn't go that far, would it? He had cut her whole head off!
But despite his disbelief, Fan Shang still chose to trust it immediately.
For no other reason than that he was afraid of dying.
So Fan Shang swung himself onto his bike in one great stride.
He was about to make a run for it, but he was already a step too late.
The Tall, Thin Man who had been crowding around Jiang Yu suddenly stumbled and almost fell to the ground.
"Huh? I... what's happening to me..."
His steps grew unsteady, and his face visibly paled. His vision blurred as the Tall, Thin Man felt himself rapidly weakening.
Feeling this, the Tall, Thin Man found it strange. He wanted to ask the people beside him what was happening to him.
But when he raised his head, he saw his companions staring at him in terror.
They backed away involuntarily, as though they had seen a monster.
"Hey, you... pfft... what's wrong with you?"
He was confused.
The Tall, Thin Man wanted to ask.
But halfway through his sentence...
He vomited a mouthful of blood. Only when he saw the blood in his hand did he finally realize something was wrong. Following everyone's horrified gazes, he looked down and saw that a sharp, beaklike object had somehow pierced his neck.
As he looked at it, the beak twitched slightly, as though it were drinking his blood.
Turning his head farther, he discovered that a deathly pale head had somehow perched on his left shoulder. It was an old man's head.
Tiny feelers sprouted beneath its severed neck, clinging to the man's shoulder like claws. When the Tall, Thin Man looked at it, the head's lips curled into an eerie smile.
Only then did the Tall, Thin Man realize.
That beaklike thing wasn't some sharp object at all. The grotesque head had pursed its lips and stretched its mouth into that shape.
Like a mosquito's proboscis, it was greedily sucking the Tall, Thin Man's blood.
In just a few seconds, a grown man's body had been drained into something resembling a dried corpse.
At the sight, the people who had been planning to go after Jiang Yu all looked terrified.
Looking behind them, they saw that a round creature had somehow emerged from the woods on the left side of the road. Its entire body was pale, its petals covered in bloody eyes, while its center was packed with a dense mass of human heads.
It was staring fixedly at them.
It was the Compound-Eyed Sunflower.
"It's... it's that monster! That monster caught up with us!!"
Someone screamed, and the survivors immediately scattered in every direction.
No one paid any attention to Jiang Yu, who lay frightened on the ground. Now they had only one thought: escape.
But how could the Compound-Eyed Sunflower let them go?
Its central flower disk trembled slightly. Then the heads began to sway, giggling, each with the same pointed beak.
The unlucky ones were pierced straight through by the heads and collapsed in pools of blood, never moving again. Some were lucky enough to avoid the initial strike, but the heads that hit the ground quickly scrambled up and pierced their ankles. Then the swarm of heads sucked them dry.
For a moment, screams and blood filled the air.
Seeing this, Jiang Yu hurriedly scrambled up from the ground, got into a vehicle, and fled for dear life.
The fat man's group of three and Fan Shang did much the same.
Having only just escaped another chase, they were still in the groove, and naturally reacted faster than the others.
Of course, there were brave souls too. Some who reacted too slowly and had run out of fuel knew they couldn't escape, so they grabbed their weapons and tried to fight the monsters head-on.
"Die, you monsters!"
One swung a steel pipe at a head hurtling toward him.
But with a sharp clang, the pipe bent. The head merely shook itself, a faint layer of black mist seeping from its skin. It hadn't even been scratched.
As though enraged, the head sucked the man's leg dry. Then, perhaps because it could no longer support his weight, his lower leg snapped, and he collapsed to the ground.
As he watched the head crawl toward him, its eyes filled with venom and mockery, despair spread across his face.
Yes, utter despair.
In this damned Weird World of monsters, humans couldn't even scratch a monster's skin, even if they risked their lives.
But...
This was the apocalypse!
"Aaaaargh!!!"
"Fuck, when the hell did that damned monster get here?!"
Fan Shang glanced at the carnage behind him, then cursed as he pedaled frantically.
Ahead of him were the fat man's group of three, Jiang Yu, and the other survivors.
Again, a bicycle had its limits.
Fan Shang swore that once he shook off the monster this time, he would switch to another vehicle.
He had originally chosen a bicycle because it was convenient and didn't need constant refueling like a car. Fuel, after all, was an incredibly precious resource.
But after today, he felt it was time to abandon that idea.
They wanted to escape, but how could the Compound-Eyed Sunflower possibly agree to let them leave?
Just then, behind the Compound-Eyed Sunflower, a head was racing in the direction Fan Shang and the others had gone.
Upon seeing the Compound-Eyed Sunflower's flower disk, the head didn't hesitate. The feelers beneath the gruesome stump of its neck sprang up, sending it back into the disk.
The head squeezed slightly toward the back of the disk, then shot out with a pop toward Fan Shang and the others.
No, perhaps it would be more accurate to say it flew straight toward Fan Shang.
If Fan Shang had turned around at that moment, he would have seen a face he knew all too well.
After all, he had only just cut it off.
And that face belonged to none other than Wang Xiaoxue, whom Fan Shang had just killed.
"It's all your fault, all your fault, all your fault! I want you dead, I want you dead, I want you dead, Fan Shang!!"
The head chanted those words as she flew.
Meanwhile, Fan Shang was feeling puzzled as he pedaled.
He had been fleeing for so long, yet he hadn't seen the slightest trace of Wang Xiaoxue.
But Fan Shang had already confirmed that the Death-Announcing System never made mistakes during his trips into the city to gather supplies and his encounters with other dangers over the past week.
Had he already shaken her off?
The moment that thought arose, Fan Shang threw it out of his mind.
The chances were far too low.
With that in mind, Fan Shang kept watching his surroundings, looking left and right, afraid a monster might suddenly leap out.
Suddenly, Fan Shang seemed to hear something...
"Fan Shang, Fan Shang, Fan Shang, Fan Shang, Fan Shang, Fan Shang! I want you dead! You killed me! I want you dead... heehee..."
The voice was indistinct. Fan Shang could only vaguely make out a little laughter.
But the next moment, a pain shot through his hand, and his bicycle veered slightly off course.
"Hiss!!!"
Then Little Black's hiss rang out. Looking down, he saw that Little Black's fur had already bristled all over.
Before he could say anything, Fan Shang finally heard that voice clearly.
The voice was saying...
"Fan Shang, Fan Shang, Fan Shang! I want you dead! I want you dead!!!"
Thud!
Something heavy struck the ground.
Fan Shang turned to look and saw a head scramble up from the ground.
It... was Wang Xiaoxue's head.
But she was no longer human. Her whole head was deathly pale, her mouth pointed like that of a mosquito or fly.
But that wasn't the most frightening part.
The most frightening part was...
Wang Xiaoxue's eyes were now pitch-black, yellow pus constantly oozing from them. Countless fleshy growths reached out from the severed stump of her neck like tentacles. She looked utterly disgusting, utterly grotesque!
The instant she saw Fan Shang, the head reflected in his pupils broke into an eerie, venomous smile.
"Heehee... Fan Shang, I found you..."
"It's all your fault. You killed me. I want you dead. I want you to become just like me... heehee..."
"If you want to blame someone... blame yourself for not smashing my head to pieces... heehee..."
"Are you fucking kidding me?!"
At the sight, Fan Shang was completely stunned.
Honestly, he had considered that Wang Xiaoxue might have been eaten by some monster, and that a remnant of her consciousness had survived and come after him. But he had never imagined Wang Xiaoxue would be in this state, that she would be so disgusting.
And that line, "I should have smashed her head to pieces"-he had thought it was merely a warning that he was in danger. Never in his wildest dreams had Fan Shang imagined it was literal.
He should have... smashed her head to pieces.
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