The Last Faceling

His body instinctively leaned back, his heels braced against the floor, and he sprang half a step backward.

But it was too late!

A twisted arm had already shot out from the crowd! It stabbed toward him!

The hand emerged from the shadows behind Lin Yang, its bone spike aimed straight at his neck from less than half a meter away!

Fatty tried to reach out and stop it! Too late.

It was too close.

Lin Yang closed his eyes. Am I going to die...

But at that critical moment.

Bang!

A thunderous blast rang out! Everyone's eardrums contracted at once.

After a long while, Lin Yang still felt no piercing pain. He slowly opened his eyes. The faceling's hand was no longer in front of him!

It had been sent flying, its bone spike broken in two, grayish-white mucus pouring from the break.

The hand spun twice in the air and fell to the floor with a smack. Its fingers were still twitching, its nails scraping against the concrete with a piercing screech!

Liu Jialiang leaned against the corner, a gun raised in his right hand, smoke still curling from its muzzle.

He slowly lowered the gun to rest against his knee, closed his eyes, and let out a long breath.

"The last bullet!"

Fatty scrambled up from the floor, Wang Jianjun's blood covering his knees.

He rushed over, snatched up the severed hand, raised it over his head, and slammed it against the floor with all his might!

The first blow broke its bones with a sharp crack!

The second sent a nail flying!

After the third, he threw the lump of mangled flesh to the floor and stomped on it twice before turning around, his face covered in black blood and sweat.

"Fuck your mother! You dared to sneak-attack Brother Lin!" His voice was trembling.

"This fucking bastard! It wasn't even pretending anymore!"

Lin Yang leaned against the wall, his chest still heaving. Cold sweat had soaked through the clothes on his back, leaving them cool and sticky against his skin.

He looked at the severed hand, still twitching on the floor, then glanced at Liu Jialiang and nodded.

Everyone in the classroom climbed up from the floor or straightened up against the walls.

Some went to examine the severed hand, some helped Liu Jialiang, and others checked that there wasn't a second faceling beside them. Once they had checked, everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

"That damn thing was so sneaky! It almost stabbed Brother Lin Yang to death!"

"..."

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

At last, the end of this long, dark hunt was in sight.

Fatty's emotions came and went quickly.

He wiped the mucus from his hands onto his pants, turned to Lin Yang, and forced a smile.

"Brother Lin, good thing you were smart! We almost fell for that bastard Shen Cheng's trick!"

"There's only one left now! Aren't you the best at investigating clues? How do we investigate next? I'll be the fucking first one in!"

Liu Yan nodded beside them. She moved closer again and tried to take his arm.

"That's right, Brother Lin. Keep investigating, and you'll definitely find it. We'll listen to you!"

The number "only one left" was enough to make people overconfident!

They had already killed five facelings. What was one more?

They might think that way, but Lin Yang knew better. The greatest danger to humans in desperate straits wasn't fear, but the sigh of relief they let out when victory was near!

Lin Yang said nothing and looked around, working out another calculation in his head.

Over the past few days, he had used inspection on three people: Zhao Yao, Chen Yu, and the girl with the ponytail. All of them were ordinary humans.

He was considering whether he needed to apply reverse logic.

Shen Cheng had taught him one thing: the most dangerous facelings were never the ones who looked suspicious, but the ones who looked most trustworthy!

If that pattern held, then the last faceling might be hiding among the people around him.

Lin Yang's gaze swept over the people in the classroom. Fatty, Jiang Yu'an, Liu Yan... and the two burly men.

His original plan had been to investigate slowly until he found the last faceling.

But time waited for no one.

The third day had arrived.

They were running out of food.

Only the last few pieces of tentacle meat remained, and the seasoning bottles were empty.

Last night, when Fatty had turned a seasoning bottle upside down to sprinkle it over the wire rack, only a tiny pinch of dark brown powder had come out, not enough to cover even half a piece of meat.

Someone had taken a bite of tentacle without seasoning. Even though the tentacle had been burnt on the grill, one bite had still left the person vomiting and suffering from diarrhea!

He had used the intelligence function to search several times over the past few days, but all it had brought back were weapons: axes, hunting knives, a rusty wrench, and... a small box.

The system was giving him weapons, not food. That meant there might be no food left in the teaching building.

Their stomachs couldn't wait three days.

Starting tomorrow, everyone would be back to waiting for death on empty stomachs!

Panic would surge back, and order would collapse again. Even a single faceling would bring utter disaster!

He had to force the last faceling out before then. And the only way to do that was to give it an opportunity it couldn't pass up.

That afternoon.

Lin Yang called everyone to the center of the classroom.

Dim, gray daylight shone through the windows, casting an indefinable weariness over every face.

"Starting this afternoon!" Lin Yang looked around at everyone.

"Everyone is free to act on their own. There'll be no more organized water runs, patrols, or food searches! And don't stay with me."

There were two seconds of silence, followed by a low stir. Some thought they had misheard.

Someone voiced the question on everyone's mind: "Brother Lin, wouldn't that give the faceling the perfect chance to strike?"

"Yeah, that would give the faceling a chance to attack!"

Lin Yang nodded. "That's right."

"But this is the only way to lure the faceling out. If it doesn't strike, we won't find the slightest clue.

"If we can't find any clues, all we can do is wait. And there's only one outcome if we keep waiting: we starve to death!"

His words struck everyone to the heart, and no one argued. Because no one dared say they weren't afraid of starving to death.

Lin Yang continued, his voice a little lower than before.

"This is fair, because death is random. No one knows whom the faceling will choose. Myself included."

He said it calmly, as though he, too, were on the list of those who "might be chosen."

Everyone nodded in agreement.

But in truth, Lin Yang knew very well that it wasn't true.

Death wasn't random. There was an over eighty percent chance that the faceling would come to kill him, because he was the greatest threat!

It knew that if it didn't get rid of Lin Yang, it would be found sooner or later.

Lin Yang had run through more than a dozen methods in his head, but this was the last one that could succeed. Using himself as bait!

Everyone began to disperse.

Fatty hesitated at the door and looked back at Lin Yang. He seemed to want to say something, but in the end, he didn't.

He slung the table leg over his shoulder and headed toward the other end of the corridor.

Jiang Yu'an took Shen Yue downstairs toward the pond. She paused as she passed Lin Yang and told him to stay safe.

Everyone left, each going to do what they wanted.

Lin Yang went up to the rooftop alone.

The rooftop was above the fourth floor of the teaching building.

Lin Yang pushed open the iron door, knocking rust from its hinges and scattering metal flakes across the ground.

He squeezed sideways through the gap and stepped onto the rooftop's concrete floor.

The air outside was much colder than in the classroom. Dim, gray daylight spread across the rooftop. There was no sun and no clouds, and he couldn't tell whether it was morning or afternoon.

The railings around the rooftop were rusted beyond recognition. Several had already broken, with a few tattered strips of cloth hanging from the breaks, swaying in the wind. There was no telling where they had blown in from.

Looking down from the railing, he could see the whole school: two teaching buildings and a dried-up courtyard. Like a judge pronouncing the final verdict.

Lin Yang walked to the middle of the rooftop and turned around, his back to the railing, facing the half-open iron door to the stairwell.

He waited.

Footsteps and voices occasionally drifted up from downstairs. He kept his hand on a cold object at the small of his back.

He didn't know how much time passed.

The iron door creaked.

A pair of black high heels stepped through the doorway onto the rooftop's concrete floor.

Then came a short red dress, and a familiar figure and face.

Liu Yan stood in the rooftop doorway, a smile on her lips as she stared fixedly at Lin Yang.

It was exactly the same smile she had worn while hovering around Shen Cheng these past few days: soft, clinging, and curved in a slightly ingratiating way.

But something about the smile looked wrong now. The curve was too wide, so wide that her eyes hadn't curved along with it.

"Interesting."

"So it was you..." A trace of surprise showed in Lin Yang's eyes.

Liu Yan had stopped pretending. An extremely thin slit and red muscle tissue stretched from the corner of her mouth toward her ear.

"Hee hee hee... You actually chose to come and die... Strange human creature."

"Not necessarily."

"You killed all my friends."

Liu Yan walked forward, gradually beginning to limp, but without slowing down.

Her voice was low and steady. It had the reverberation of two sets of vocal cords vibrating at once, one high and one low, layered together as though two people were saying the same thing at the same time.

"Don't you think you're too cruel? Couldn't you have let them kill a few people? You just had to play the savior."

"If I remember correctly," Lin Yang said, looking at the monster with contempt, "when those friends of yours died, you went over and kicked them a couple of times too."

Liu Yan's steps paused. Her smile faltered, as though something had caught it.

"Hee hee hee..."

"You were really dedicated. It's a shame you never won an Oscar. When Li Wei died, you stomped on his head. When Baldy died, you spat on him. When Shen Cheng died, you were the first to shrink back.

"Every time one of your own died, you put on the most energetic performance of all."

Liu Yan stopped smiling. The skin of her face began to sag, as though something beneath it were melting!

Her arms slowly rose at her sides, her fingers cracking as they lengthened. Then they bent to angles no normal person could reach.

"Urrgh... No one can save you now, heh heh heh..."

She took another step forward, her sharp bone aimed at Lin Yang's neck!

But the next second!

Lin Yang pulled the gun from the small of his back and aimed its dark muzzle straight at her forehead!

Liu Yan glanced down at the gun and couldn't help letting out a strange, high-pitched laugh.

"Idiot! You think I don't know? The bullets are all gone."

"You're pointing an empty gun at me... I'm going to eat you... eat you! Bite by bite, urrgh..."

The corners of Lin Yang's mouth curled up. He shook his head and clicked off the safety.

"How do you know there are no bullets in my gun?"

Liu Yan giggled.

"I heard your conversation loud and clear. That human, Liu Jialiang, already used up all the bullets! Heh heh heh... Brother Lin Yang... we're no fools... we know everything..."

Her steps slowed a little, as though she wanted to savor the look of despair on Lin Yang's face.

Lin Yang sneered. "Let's make a bet."

"Bet on what?"

"If the gun fires, you owe me one silver dollar. If it doesn't, I die."

"Hee hee hee-interesting human-... then let's try it."

But the next second!

Lin Yang pulled the trigger.

"Bang!!"

The gun fired.