Xi Yao had left them in a relatively intact little room in a corner.
It was even darker inside the factory. Wind occasionally passed through the ruined walls, making a "shhh-shhh-" sound as it swept over the hard wreckage.
Before he even entered the little room, Shen Bai could already hear muffled sobs, accompanied by sounds of friction.
Huo Qiuliang stood beside him with arms folded, looking around and shivering.
"This place gives me the creeps every time. Next time we have something to do, let's do it during the day."
Liu Yiyi looked at the trembling Huo Qiuliang and lightly snapped her fingers.
Snap!
A rush of heat suddenly blew up. At the same time, several patches of air around Liu Yiyi abruptly distorted, heated to a critical temperature in an instant! Several larger bits of airborne debris ignited, and the firelight immediately drove away the darkness.
After the brief flare, the flames did not go out for lack of fuel. Instead, they slowly stabilized, circling the three of them.
Watching the flames revolve around them, Huo Qiuliang stopped moving those hands and followed beside Liu Yiyi.
Liu Yiyi soon approached. Looking at the door before her, she reached out and pushed it open.
It gave a long creak.
The door teetered, but little dust fell. Someone had already been here during the day, after all.
The sight that greeted them made Huo Qiuliang, standing behind Liu Yiyi, rather apprehensive.
"Honestly, that woman from Lichuan really doesn't handle things the way you'd expect from her personality..."
Inside the dark, cold room, two Curtain-Callers were writhing and struggling, trying to break free of the... walls confining them.
All four limbs of both Curtain-Callers had merged into the walls at strange yet rather aesthetically pleasing angles, as though someone had "inlaid" them into the walls.
But a closer look revealed that it was not as simple as being embedded.
The color of their limbs already blended smoothly into the walls, and mottled cracks had even formed on them. As the two struggled, Huo Qiuliang could hear strange twisting sounds, like rubber... yet drier and rougher. Compared to brick and stone, though, they sounded smoother.
Yes, they had truly become one with the walls. Where their limbs joined the walls, they possessed a mixture of the properties of flesh and cement.
The man's struggles seemed to be nothing more than instinct, and they were not particularly intense. That snip of Shen Bai's had cut away the vast majority of his senses and awareness.
But the woman struggled far more forcefully, and far more vividly.
Li Yan's tears had smeared her makeup. All her previous attempts had done nothing but cause her greater pain. Her hands seemed to have grown large and hard. She could not feel her fingers opening or closing, and the legs that had once run freely were now stiff and unyielding. Over the course of that afternoon, she had broken down countless times.
Li Yan had never imagined this day would come.
She had originally been a cashier at a small shop. Her days were dull and uninteresting, just like her. She had never thought she was different, or that she would make something of herself one day. She was simply the most ordinary of ordinary people.
Until one day, after work, when she and her coworkers encountered an Evil Sin while closing up the shop.
A monster, yes, but elegant in its movements. It had a human form and attire-purple as glossy as lacquer flowed slowly over its body, with irregular, curling fractures and sharp edges shaping its face and body.
It appeared without warning.
In the space of a moment's distraction, blood and dismembered bodies were scattered everywhere. Terrified, Li Yan fled blindly.
And at that moment, she actually awakened her gift and stepped onto the first Staircase.
But that did nothing to help her then. That Evil Sin was far beyond anything a first-Staircase Gifted could face. Li Yan could only kneel before it and beg for mercy.
The Evil Sin looked at her and her only two remaining coworkers, then spoke with interest.
"If you want to live, kill the other two with your bare hands."
Then the Evil Sin restrained the other two shop assistants and told Li Yan to do it.
Eerie purple material extended to pin the two in place. At first it seemed soft, but after a brief delay, the purple substance solidified into a sturdy cage.
Li Yan looked at her two coworkers, now firmly immobilized. The substance holding them had just crushed the others' bodies. The smell of blood made her stomach spasm, though she had already vomited.
This was what she thought:
Anyone would do it. I just want to live!
Li Yan looked at the girl begging for mercy, a university student working part-time over summer vacation. She had heard her talk many times about how hard things were for her family. Killing her would help free her.
Li Yan wanted to strangle her. Suffocation-what a cruel method. Every hesitation only added to the victim's punishment.
To be honest, Li Yan was unexpectedly comfortable with the feeling, and inevitably made the mistakes a novice would make.
Struggles that offered no resistance, bulging eyes, incoherent sounds-everything echoed faintly in Li Yan's mind... For the first time, Li Yan felt her own strength.
A wondrous feeling.
She "hesitated" many times. In short, death took a long time to arrive.
Life ebbed away in her hands. Li Yan, who had been scared shitless just moments before, felt so full of strength. Yes, she was no longer an ordinary person. Although she was no match for the monster, ordinary people were no match for her either.
Then, if a monster like that can treat me this way, why can't I do the same to others?
"You lunatic!!!"
When Li Yan came back to her senses, the girl was already dead, and the woman beside her was cursing at her in terror.
Why are you cursing at me?
Li Yan turned her head. Her face was reflected in the glass beside her.
Thick color enveloped the shop outside, and beneath the bright lights, the glass was more true to life than a mirror.
She discovered that she was smiling.
The corners of her mouth were pulling upward, and the look in her eyes was so strange. Cruel, surprised... and excited.
God, what an evil smile. Scarier than any of those actors in the shows I follow.
Li Yan froze for a moment. She seemed to have frozen for a moment, anyway. Then she turned to look at the Evil Sin.
And the Evil Sin seemed very satisfied with Li Yan's performance. It lightly pointed at the last woman.
This time, however, the bars confining the woman blocked her neck.
Oh dear. Now that's troublesome.
The woman was actually quite nice. She would bring everyone snacks she had bought, and chat about how her daughter, who had only just started middle school, already refused to let her comb her hair.
But there's no other choice.
Sometimes, Li Yan wondered why she had accepted everything so quickly back then. Was she actually a very bad person?
Surely not. I should just be an ordinary person. Any ordinary person would do the same.
Tearing open the abdomen was a little harder than Li Yan had imagined, so she wanted to try starting with the head. The eyeballs might have been tougher than she had thought.
That still did not work. In the end, Li Yan got entrails all over her hands anyway.
There must have been pleading, wailing, and cursing. Li Yan simply no longer remembered whether she had not heard it or had truly forgotten it.
In any case, that Evil Sin told her:
"You passed."
Everything afterward followed naturally. On many occasions, Li Yan did what any "ordinary person" would do.
What every ordinary person would do when forced... kill people who knew nothing about it.
Children? The elderly? Pregnant women? Office workers? There was no difference. In short, Li Yan did it all. Until she was caught today.
Those inexplicable brats.
That long-haired bitch.
As Li Yan's limbs slowly merged into the wall, she remembered those two coworkers.
They had been unable to move like this, too.
Then Li Yan recalled what she had done.
Every ordinary person would do things like that to someone who couldn't move.
She broke down in an instant. Just one instant.
She suddenly burst into tears. She wailed. She cursed.
Xi Yao glanced at Li Yan, who had suddenly gone mad, smoothed her own hair, and sent Shen Bai a message.
"I've secured them for you. Be careful not to start a fire when you burn them."
Before you continue