Collective punishment

"What was going on?"

A well-dressed woman stared at her hands. The skin was slowly peeling away, exposing flesh beneath that had turned pitch-black at some unknown point.

"How could this happen?!! Where's the principal? Where's that lord? How could this happen?"

A man rushed into the woman's office in a panic. Compared with the woman, whose hands had only just begun to rot, he was far worse off. The skin on his face was already hanging loose.

And they were not the only two in this condition. Cries of shock and panic rose one after another from the surrounding offices.

This was the fifth floor of the teaching building, where the school administrators had their offices.

Soon, all seven administrators had gathered together. They watched one another gradually rot in terror, and discovered that their connection to that lord had been completely severed.

"Impossible... I only just got this ability. I don't want to die..."

"Where's Zhang Ya? Didn't he say he was going to the dormitory building with the lord to take care of the last few things? Why have we lost contact with both of them?!"

"No... no... Didn't the lord say it before? As long as we absorb people's fear, we can become like him too... Just like when Liu Zhipeng died... It's lunch break now... I'm going to the dormitory building!"

The vice principal made up his mind and turned to leave the office.

The prospect of death and the sudden mutation had frightened him out of his wits. He desperately wanted to return to normal now. He needed to absorb fear and death, and the girls' dormitory was the closest...

"Girls scare easily... I only need to kill one... Then I'll..."

His expression was hideous. His rotting eye bags drooped down to his lips, and the right side of his neck resembled a rotten mushroom. Even the hollow blood vessels were visible.

He had already become a monster.

Muttering to himself, the monster rushed out of the office, desperately seeking a way to survive.

Snick.

A soft sound came from his half-rotten neck. It was truly faint and crisp, like the opening and closing of scissors cutting material.

Then the monstrous vice principal swayed as though drunk. The head on his neck slid twice along the front of his neck, but still failed to keep its balance. That was too difficult for an independent, roughly spherical object.

At last, his head fell onto his shoulder, bounced off, and rolled some distance with a rumble.

Thud.

Only then did his body fall, splattering a few scraps of putrid flesh onto the floor.

At the doorway, a few drops of thick black blood dripped from an extremely fine thread.

"Ah, sorry."

A refined male voice sounded outside the door, first offering an apology before its owner stepped into the doorway.

Several white threads were wound around Shen Bai's left hand, while his right held a plain pair of scissors. Smiling, he looked at the six people remaining inside.

Shen Bai raised his right hand to adjust his glasses. Beside his face, the scissors' blades reflected a cold, hard gleam. He said:

"Should I have notified you all beforehand? After all, you're people of some standing. My abrupt arrival may have been quite a disturbance."

The female administrator trembled as she looked at Shen Bai, forcing herself to remain calm as she said:

"You... who are you?! Do you know who we are? You're committing violence at school! The police won't let you get away with this!!"

Shen Bai raised his eyebrows, seemingly not expecting her to say something so strange after watching her unfortunate companion die before her eyes. He spread his hands and said:

"Ms. Wei, saying things like that now only makes you look even more stupid and ignorant. And we have no time for an educational session, because you don't have much longer to live."

As Shen Bai spoke, he swept his gaze over the six people huddled together inside.

"I'm not here to kill you. You'll all die from the backlash soon enough. I'm only here to make sure you don't hurt anyone before you die."

Spreading a hand in an introducing gesture, Shen Bai indicated the corpse beside him and said:

"Take Mr. Liu Hedong here, for instance. He's an example. Over the next half hour, as long as you all stay quietly in this room and wait to die, I can finish my job without any trouble..."

"No way! Die, you brat!"

Before Shen Bai could finish, the most severely rotted man in the room interrupted him with an angry curse. He grabbed a pen holder nearby and hurled it at Shen Bai. Then his body twisted even further, and he turned and charged straight at the window!

Twang-

Shen Bai did not move, and his expression barely changed. Neither the pen holder nor a single pen thrown toward him touched him. Threads deftly wound around them all, stopping them in front of him.

Shen Bai's eyes were cold as he watched the man charging toward the window.

The rotting man did not try to open the window, but hurtled straight into it. The ability he had obtained from Evil Sin allowed him to alter his body and pass through thin barriers.

"Heaven's on my side! My ability is perfect for getting through those threads. That man can't do anything to me! As long as I..."

Shick-

*"? "*

The man's joy had not lasted even a second before he felt a violent stab of pain in his heart. Then his body instantly lost its strength, and he was dragged down and slammed hard into the floor!

Crash!

Before the man could understand what had happened, he was already unable to think any further. Cold spread into his mouth. He twitched twice on instinct, then died on the floor.

A pool of thick blood flowed from his chest, spreading across the floor.

"Aaaaaaah!"

Seeing another person die before their eyes badly frightened the remaining five. They had seen it perfectly clearly just now.

The man at the door had not even moved his arm. He had merely turned his wrist slightly, and Ge Gen had fallen to the floor dead!

"...All right, ladies and gentlemen. No more trouble."

Shen Bai sounded a little resigned. He carefully tucked the needle in his hand into the sewing kit at his cuff and said slowly:

"You only have twenty-three minutes left. Why not use the time to call your families?"

"I'll take care of your remains. I won't let your families see that you turned into monsters before you died."

"We really struck gold! A Hunter's inheritance and two gifted individuals! Now we won't be the team with the fewest members anymore!"

Liu Yiyi had returned to her normal state. The dazzling flames and the aura of cast iron had faded from her body, and she crouched on the ground, looking at Shi Yu and the other two.

"Wait... The three of us haven't said anything yet... Also, what's a gifted individual?"

Liu Yiyi looked at Shi Yu, thought for a moment, then beckoned to Huo Qiuliang behind her and said:

"Xiao Liang, they still don't know anything. You're about the same age, so you talk to them. Siying and I will look around some more, then go find your Brother Bai and have him stitch up that unconscious kid."

Liu Yiyi paused, a hint of heaviness entering her voice.

"We'll... have the bureau send people afterward to contact the students' parents and the teachers' families, and tally up... the casualties."

With that, Liu Yiyi stood up, looked at Shi Yu and Han He, and said:

"Boys, we'll talk later. Once we have time, we can have a proper chat about the things hidden behind the world."

Then she waved and left with He Siying in tow.

*Note:

The "Tailor" inheritance: seventh art: "Mending the Broken."

"Stitches like rain, fingers like flying blossoms. Thread the needle, guide the thread; a broken mirror can be made whole."

"Opening and closing follow the angle of my fingers. The smallest force, the largest cut. I pursue the separation of things, not their union."