Mai Minghe and the gathering of heroes

Mai Minghe had never heard of the Nest, much less known what these so-called "residents" were or how dangerous they might be.

But she thought that however bizarre things appeared on the surface, nothing could defy the logic governing its inner workings.

The hospital inside the Nest seemed to follow the same principles as a real hospital: press the call bell, and a "nurse" would come-or rather, a "figure disguised as a nurse" would come-and whoever came would target the person who rang.

Except nurses in real hospitals came to look after patients, while what the "nurses" here wanted to do... she did not pursue that thought.

If she could not escape the ward, she would experience the answer for herself any moment now. Why waste energy thinking about it?

To escape, she needed to create a few evenly matched rivals for the patient in the next bed.

One principle held true both inside and outside the Nest: only when several blades clashed and crossed would gaps appear; a single blade would simply pierce her body without distraction.

The real question was: could she squeeze out through the narrow gaps between those blades?

Clearly, the red-haired man had also understood the thinking behind her ringing the bell.

The instant he regained his footing, he kicked bed 2 hard. Its locked wheels scraped stubbornly across the floor, carrying its patient into the cabinet and hospital bed behind it. Amid the crashing, he roared without looking back, "Even if you wanted to leave a false image behind, you didn't fucking have to ring four times!"

He had a point. Honestly, Mai Minghe was feeling a little regretful herself.

She had just rolled across the hospital bed again, hoping to use the opportunity the red-haired man had created by separating her from the patient to get down on the other side of bed 1 and run for the door. But before Mai Minghe could even swing one leg across the mattress, she stopped dead.

A nurse was already standing on the other side of bed 1.

Right in her field of vision was the hem of a pale nurse's uniform.

She froze on the bed, staring at that stretch of fabric, and realized that in just a few seconds, the room had filled with people.

Human-shaped shadows stood silently in the dim ward like a forest sprouting from the floor, far more than four of them.

In her peripheral vision, she could not make out their faces, only the vague outlines of enormous, perfectly round, identical heads. Every head faced this corner of the ward, where two living people still breathed.

Why had so many come?

"...You're all so helpful. Actually, I'm feeling much better," she said dryly. "How about a few of you head back?"

As the "nurse" beside her bed slowly bent its neck toward her, Mai Minghe shut her mouth.

Many fragmented, horrifying possibilities raced through her mind. But she had not expected to see a normal, healthy face when it lowered its head.

"Where does it hurt?"

It was a young, gentle, round face. It-or should she say "she"?-spoke with a slightly drawn-out southern accent, as though she had only recently started working and had yet to lose her hometown inflection.

If she looked only at the nurse's large eyes, which drooped slightly at the outer corners, ignoring the round heads in her peripheral vision and the slender black shadow rising section by section to a height of three or four meters behind the red-haired man, Mai Minghe really would have thought everything just now had been a hallucination, a dream she had had while lying in a hospital.

"Get away from that nurse!" the red-haired man suddenly shouted.

Mai Minghe jolted and instinctively glanced toward him. Somehow, the red-haired man was half hanging from the wall like a knockoff Spider-Man who had not mastered his powers and did not quite know what to do with his legs.

Once he climbed onto the wall, he exposed what had been behind him: that slender black shadow, its head touching the ceiling, was walking toward Mai Minghe step by step.

There were residents on both sides of the bed. The only way out was the foot-

As though heaven had heard her thoughts and intended to grant her wish, something suddenly tightened around Mai Minghe's ankles, seemingly grabbing them, then yanked hard. She toppled helplessly onto the bed, the nurse's face and the ceiling flashing past her eyes as she was dragged straight toward the foot.

Cold sweat and hot sweat broke out together. Mai Minghe hastily stretched out both hands and clutched the edge of the bed, but apart from making the skin of her hands burn, it did nothing to stop her.

Whatever was gripping her feet beneath the bed and dragging her down over its foot possessed strength no human could match. Never mind Mai Minghe-even a marine would have been no match for it. In desperation, she cried, "My ankles!"

The nurse tilted its head.

"My ankles hurt!"

In the time it took to say those words, most of Mai Minghe's body had been dragged off the bed, and her feet were almost touching the floor.

The slender black shadow that had climbed out of the neighboring bed was waiting at the foot.

Contrary to her plan, it did not care where Mai Minghe was about to be dragged, because as she was pulled off the bed, her pajamas rolled up, exposing her lower abdomen-and the coils of "Snake Belt" wrapped around it.

The slender black shadow reached toward her belly.

"Oh?" The young woman's drawn-out southern accent sounded very enthusiastic. "Once your ankles are gone, they won't hurt anymore."

Every word she had been taught a lady must never say ran through Mai Minghe's mind.

At the same time, the slender black shadow touched her lower abdomen.

The instant those icy fingertips touched her skin, Mai Minghe nearly lost consciousness.

It was as though the touch of that cold had twisted her skin fibers, blood vessels, and fascia together, tangling them into knot after knot. Her brain could not endure the agony of her nerve endings knotting together, and darkness was already swimming before her eyes.

The little nurse was not stopping the slender black shadow, her own ankles seemed about to be lost, and meanwhile, she was still falling beneath the bed...

Just when Mai Minghe thought all hope was lost, she heard a shriek from beneath the bed in that split second.

The feeling that shriek stirred in human ears was almost impossible to describe. If she had to compare it to something, it was like discovering that her jackpot-winning lottery ticket had fallen into the toilet-the churning emotions of watching that winning ticket swirl away with the piss and shit were much like the sensation of hearing the shriek beneath the bed.

But whatever the case, her feet were finally released.

The little nurse made a questioning sound. It had clearly been standing beside the bed just now, but at some point it had moved toward the foot and was bending over to examine Mai Minghe's ankles.

"There's something on your ankles," the little nurse said. "I didn't pierce it just now. Let's try again."

As it spoke, it raised its hand-and for the first time, Mai Minghe saw that hand clearly. What extended from its wrist was not a hand, but a densely packed cluster of thick, gleaming steel needles.

In that instant, she thought she understood.

The nurse had stabbed needles at her ankles, but a pair of hands had been gripping them, so naturally, the steel needles had pierced those hands instead...

Mai Minghe understood, but with her elbows braced on the bed and her feet planted on the floor, even without those restraints, she could barely keep herself from dropping to the ground, much less move. The slender patient stood before her, its body folded halfway down, peeling off the "Snake Belt" bit by bit with its long fingers.

Whenever they touched, the agony of her blood vessels and nerves knotting together left her unable even to breathe, let alone move or run away.

"My stomach," she struggled to force out, staring at the countless densely packed needle tips. "My stomach hurts now... stab my stomach..."

The little nurse seemed unable to see the other residents-or perhaps it saw them and simply paid them no mind. It lowered its head to look at Mai Minghe's belly, raised its syringe high, and stabbed down.

The slender patient finally stopped removing the "Snake Belt" and abruptly swept its hand toward the little nurse. Its arm unfolded section by section through the air, as though it concealed countless joints. It sounded slow in the telling, but in the blink of an eye, it pulled a hospital privacy curtain out of thin air, blocking the little nurse and its steel needles behind it.

What kind of bizarre trick was that?

Mai Minghe did not dare sit there and see whether the little nurse could emerge from behind the curtain.

She seized the chance to leap up, dart past the slender patient, and hurry around it toward the ward door. Only a few seconds had passed since she had seen the little nurse, and she had already burned through half her life.

"You can do it," a round-headed figure said from the gloom.

Did I need your encouragement?

"Duck," another round-headed figure said evenly, without moving.

Who would duck at a time like-

Mai Minghe stopped short, bent over, and actually crouched down. Immediately, she felt a rush of air sweep over her head-something struck the ward's doorframe with a thud.

She was only five or six steps from the ward door, yet she had no choice but to turn back. Unwilling to give up, Mai Minghe cast a quick glance and thought she saw a pale hand on the doorframe, attached to an extremely long arm.

Spiderweb cracks spread across the wall around the frame.

Had she not ducked, that hand would probably have struck the back of her head squarely, smashing her against the doorframe like a fly.

As it turned out, she really did need the round heads' encouragement.

"Young man!" Mai Minghe ran toward the motionless round-headed figures and called, "What's with these big heads?"

A shadow suddenly moved behind the round-headed figures. Mai Minghe had barely startled before she heard it suck in a breath as though enduring pain and answer, "I've never seen this kind of resident. I don't know either."

It turned out the red-haired man had come down from the wall at some point and seemed to have been injured in the process. Probably to avoid the slender patient, he had also approached this group of round heads in the middle of the room, with several figures between him and her.

Mai Minghe badly wanted to ask what residents he had seen, then, and what on earth residents were, but this was clearly not the time. The slender patient had already turned its head in their direction, its crown scraping against the ceiling with a rustling sound.

As though afraid of letting it approach, the red-haired man quickly slipped between the round-headed figures. His face was ashen and covered in a sheen of sweat. Turning sideways, he took small steps through the crowd toward the door, not daring to touch the round heads' bodies at all.

Mai Minghe followed his example and hurried into the forest of round heads.

The moment she saw them clearly, her internal organs seemed to lose their support and plunge into the depths of her belly.

She had thought they were identical because every head in the gloom had an enormous, swollen, round outline. Up close, however, the round heads were actually male and female, old and young, all with different features.

Except their originally normal human skulls and facial bones had separated into pieces, while something like gas beneath them inflated their skin, forcibly swelling the broken bones and human skin into perfect spheres. The shapes of the shattered, scattered pieces of bone beneath the skin were still visible, bringing to mind continental plates floating on the surface of the earth.

Their eyes, one on the left and one on the right, were set on opposite sides of their heads like two blisters growing from their skin, turning to follow Mai Minghe's footsteps. Their nasal bones had split down the middle, stretching two crooked, elongated nostrils across their "faces."

Their mouths, though, were normal. Beside the corners of their mouths and all across their faces ran long, deep-purple indentations, formed where the stretched skin's fibers had torn.

A suspicion suddenly occurred to Mai Minghe. "Were these people originally?"

The red-haired man rounded the last round head, left the crowd, and strode toward the door. "Sorry, you're the residents' target. There's nothing I can do either. If I ever come across your body, I'll bring it back to Blackmoor City."

He really was not their target. He had almost reached the ward door, yet the slender patient paid him no attention.

The nurse still stood blankly behind the curtain, with only its shoes showing. Two hands extended from beneath the bed, also motionless.

Only the slender patient slowly paced before the group of round-headed figures, as though waiting for a chance to strike at Mai Minghe.

"It can't come in," a round head on Mai Minghe's left suddenly said, almost as though comforting her.

The one on her right said, "With all of us surrounding you,"

A round head behind her finished the thought. "If we walk toward the door together, you'll be able to get out."

Ugly as these things were, they were unreasonably kindhearted, and their idea was good too. Mai Minghe lowered her head and looked at the floor, and a thought from not long ago flashed through her mind again.

However bizarre things appeared on the surface, nothing could defy the logic governing its inner workings.

She abruptly raised her head and shouted, "Young man, stop! Whatever you do, don't go out!"

Honestly, I was perfectly happy in the women's section, and deep down, I didn't want to join the bustle in the men's section... The numbers in Qidian's women's section aren't great, but it's quite suited to a small group carving out a space to entertain themselves. It keeps you calm, too. Everyone's numbers are about the same anyway, with little difference between first and tenth on the rankings. Everyone gets along.

The men's section is different. It feels pretty restless and stressful, like everyone's gearing up to write over ten thousand characters a day and become a star with one book, ready to knock the emperor off his throne, asking for votes and tips, rushing the plot along and racing to the payoffs... I don't have those skills. Looking at all those rankings and charts and votes-how do I put it? It's like being swept into a roaring current, where sinking to the bottom at any moment wouldn't be surprising.

I still hope to take my time polishing things and write as well as I can. I also hope you'll all ask me to take time off more often-I'll definitely oblige, definitely.

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(End of chapter)