The Bottom Rung

"Whoosh!"

The instant the streetlight went out, Xu Ye had no choice but to release his tentacle and dodge her attack.

The wind seemed to stir faintly. The air was thick with the stench of rotting blood, mixed with the smell of a long-neglected public toilet, flooding his nostrils.

His surroundings were quiet, so quiet that he seemed to hear nothing but his own heartbeat.

I got careless...

Xu Ye reflected on his mistake. He had thought that becoming an Awakened meant he could easily handle an Aberrant with 50 energy units, but he had forgotten that every Aberrant had a different personality and different abilities.

In the darkness, he leaned against a cracked corner of the wall without firing.

Doing so would give away his position.

She had not left. He was certain of that.

Thick clouds obscured the Crimson Moon. Dark clouds filled the sky, pressing lower and lower, and the air grew increasingly stifling.

A faint voice echoed through the long, narrow alley.

"I can sense some special beings in Night Spirit City. Looks like you're one of them..."

The woman's voice was low, hoarse, and dry.

Xu Ye did not answer.

"Forget it. None of you men are any good."

"I used to have a happy family. We were poor, but my son was obedient and devoted, and my daughter was lively. My husband and I worked from morning to night, twelve hours a day, just to pay for extra classes and tutoring for our son."

"He did us proud, too. He always ranked first in his grade."

"For displaced people like us, living on the outskirts of the city, education is the only way to rise above our social class."

"We really... worked so hard to get by..."

"We worked diligently. Even when they docked our wages, we never made trouble."

"I kept thinking, just put up with it, just put up with it... Once our son made something of himself, the hard days would finally be over."

The woman's voice was slurred, as though her mouth were full of blood.

"To your left, ten meters away." Alice had located her.

"I cooked and did the laundry every day, worked from before dawn until after dark, scrimped on food and clothes, and did everything I could to keep this family afloat. So why did my husband still go looking for other women?!"

"He spent our son's tutoring money on other women!"

"For my son's sake, I swallowed it. He never did it again, either. I only occasionally nagged him about how little he earned. And our little girl was reaching puberty, growing more and more temperamental."

"At least I still had my son."

"But why?! Why did my son kill himself?! He hanged himself!"

The woman's voice grew shrill, and the two legs protruding from her waist and abdomen stamped violently against the ground.

[As I listened to the woman, compassion stirred in my heart.]

[I had thought that after slaughtering fish at the RT-Mart Supermarket for over twenty years, my heart had long since gone cold.]

[Only at this moment, crouched beside a public toilet and breathing in the stench of old shit and piss, did I finally understand.]

[I let the woman escape.]

[Three days later, the woman hanged me at the head of my bed.]

Xu Ye: "..."

The woman went on speaking.

"My son was dead. I had nothing left. All the dreams and hopes I had placed in him... were gone."

"I couldn't let my neighbors laugh at me. I couldn't let my coworkers look down on me."

"That's right, I still had my daughter!"

"I still had hope!"

"I started holding my daughter to the same standards as my son. I enrolled her in extra classes and after-school tutoring. I hired a private tutor for her. Luckily, my son still had dozens of unused tutoring sessions left, so I had the teacher transfer them to my daughter."

"Why? I treated her so well, so why wouldn't she listen to me? She argued with me every day, and her grades kept getting worse."

"And my husband wanted to divorce me and go to that mistress!"

"Everyone bullied me. Even you people bullied me!"

"What did I do wrong?!"

"Why does no one understand that I mean well?! I'm only punishing these men!"

Xu Ye was silent for a moment before finally speaking.

"Where are your husband and daughter?"

"I killed them. They wouldn't behave."

The clouds parted a little, and crimson moonlight spilled down.

Xu Ye narrowed his eyes. He saw the woman take off her clothes, revealing three human faces on her wrinkled body.

They belonged to her husband, son, and daughter.

The three faces seemed to be alive, struggling desperately to break free of the woman's body. Their eyes were filled with terror, and their mouths moved wildly. Although no sound came out, Xu Ye could tell they were saying, "Help."

"This way, our family can be together forever."

Xu Ye could barely resist making a snide remark.

But he had a rough understanding of what kind of family this had been.

To improve their lives, the woman had placed all the pressure on her son.

Unable to bear the burden, her son had hanged himself.

This had triggered intense negative emotions in the woman, giving rise to a second personality. She had then been polluted by that second personality, losing her true self and becoming even more extreme.

That was why her husband and daughter had died at her hands as well.

Because her son was already dead, her obsession after becoming an Aberrant was not particularly strong, so she had begun taking revenge on men who fooled around like her husband.

"Whoosh!"

Once the woman finished speaking, her blood-filled pelvic cavity writhed, growing a great deal of new flesh. At the same time, however, her overall aura weakened considerably.

She had no intention of prolonging the fight.

The conversation had merely been a way to buy time.

She spat out a strand of spider silk that stuck to the streetlight, then pulled, hauling her entire pale body upward. As long as she got out of here and reached a crowd, she could escape in the confusion.

"Trying to run?"

Xu Ye lunged forward, skimming along the ground. His body was less than ten centimeters above it, but he moved astonishingly fast. The instant her spider silk stuck to the streetlight, his tentacle had already caught the woman's thigh.

The distance closed rapidly!

The woman pulled on the spider silk with her mouth, while Xu Ye's tentacle wrapped around her hind leg. She froze in midair, her body stretched taut.

Before the terrified woman could react, Xu Ye aimed his gun directly at her heart.

A tongue of flame flashed briefly in the darkness.

Most of her body began to burst apart.

The unbearable pain nearly made the woman scream, but death came faster than the pain.

A cold gust of wind swept past with a rustle.

The woman's spider silk gradually slackened, and finally her entire body crashed to the ground.

Xu Ye planted a palm on the ground and sprang to his feet. Looking at the corpse, he sighed. "Pitiful, tragic, and such a waste..."

"Still, at least there weren't widespread casualties. This should be a perfect conclusion."

He was just about to call Li Yunyao back when his heart suddenly began to writhe.

[Looking at the woman's corpse, I felt lost. Just what kind of age was this? How many people in this society were like her, living at its very bottom and gazing up at the stars?]

[Fortunately, I completed the mission successfully.]

[Three days later, a pollution incident occurred at my school. Heavenly Dao distortion struck, and the entire school fell.]

[Only then did I belatedly realize that this woman was not the pollution source.]