Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Face?
Following Yu Yuan’s unstable breathing, upon his youthful face, which was covered in flower-patterned tattoos, his eyes were shut and his brows were furrowed. Tattoo patterns began to extend downward from the tip of his brows to his nose and then his lips, his smooth skin glistening dimly. Lin Sanjiu was slightly frightened when she looked at his face; however, she did not notice anything strange.
Right when she lifted her head, intending to ask ‘What’s wrong with your face?’, she saw a sudden tremble of Silvan’s shadow further away in the mist. Followed by a flurry of light, almost inaudible footsteps, he instantly disappeared.
“Hey, where are you going?”
The call spread further away but no answer was given.
She anxiously looked at Yu Yuan in her arms before she turned around and glanced in the direction where Meme left. The mist blanketed the sky and earth like a curtain, and the moment before, she failed to see where the boy had gone. She did not know if Meme heard Silvan’s call earlier.
Lin Sanjiu hesitated for a moment. She clenched her teeth and shouldered Yu Yuan whilst making her way towards the direction where Silvan disappeared with arduousness. No longer struggling to leave, she instantly felt a lot more relaxed. Her limbs and bones felt lighter and refreshed; the closer she was to the bottom of the slope, the quicker her steps.
Her mouth held a torchlight while one hand held Yu Yuan’s arm, which lingered over her shoulder. Her idle right hand was left free to handle the unexpected. More and more people fell to the ground but most of them were dragged up and laid side by side next to each other, seeming to enjoy Silvan’s work. In the blurry mist, she caught sight of several people with their heads down. She barely noticed the shadow’s facial features and failed to observe any strange happenings that she needed to be cautious of.
“Silvan!” she called out in a sharp yet soft tone. She listened carefully for a reply but received nothing in return.
She sat Yu Yuan down and leaned his body against someone’s back, beside the people who were leaning against each other. She walked towards a person who knelt down with his arms laid out straight and his face stuck to the ground.
Silvan had not moved this person. As a matter of fact, this person was part of a queue, as no one else was carried up after him. The people’s backs, which appeared like mushroom caps, spread further away in the mist.
Lin Sanjiu thought for a moment then forced her shaky hands forward, grabbing a person by the collar.
She mustered her strength and dragged the person up.
Before the person’s arm could continue to shake or even show his face, a black shadow jumped out of the mist. She quickly took a few steps back, and it was at that moment that Lin Sanjiu comprehended with surprise that something was not right with her body.
She was not afraid at all.
No matter what stage the evolution had reached, fear was one of the survival methods of humans. It had never disappeared from within posthumans, but now…
Lin Sanjiu stood there, looking at the face emerging from the mist. It was getting clearer in the air and getting closer by the second, yet her legs did not move. It was certainly the face of a man because when she quickly looked around, she realized the person she was carrying up remained still in her arms while his head remained lowered. She released her hands, and the person fell back to the ground with a thump.
As she gazed around, the shadow of the human face shrouded her sight.
One eye socket had a slippery eyeball, while the other one was as black and empty as a void. His nose lacked structural support, so his flappy skin rustled with the air. His mouth slowly opened up.
“Don’t touch those! Don’t move.” Silvan’s voice suddenly sounded from an unknown direction. The voice quickly dissipated, but it sounded close, and even the breathing of his voice was clear. “If you move and also see it, you must… resist!”
However, his words came too late. As Lin Sanjiu’s heart skipped a beat as she tried to force herself to move. In an instant, the face in the air stuck to her face—when the face’s eyeball touched her forehead, it immediately became sandwiched in between the two as the eyeball slipped down. A cold and wet fishy smell filled her nose; then a purple-black tongue stuck out from that mouth and licked her cheek, the corner of her eyes caught an area of white that abruptly shone on her face.
Mrs. Manas activated [Defense Forcefield] in the nick of time which completely covered her.
The face wrapped Lin Sanjiu’s face tightly, temporarily blinding her. She then felt something was licking her [Defense Forcefield] ceaselessly as if the thing was trying to make its way in. For a few seconds, she was stunned on the spot before finally moving her body. She searched for a small knife in her card storage, forcing her shaking hands to pry away the face from her.
When she finally forced the face off herself, she had never felt so exhausted before.
The face fell on the ground with a splat. As her eyes glanced around in a hurry, she seemed to have caught a glimpse of the several strips of black shadow from the ‘tongue’, which slurped back into the lips on the ground as soon as they fell. Lin Sanjiu panting heavily, she used her knife and pried open the lips that resembled two pieces of rotten meat. However, other than some pinkish soft connective mouth tissue, all she saw was the grayish ground through the mouth.
The person that she carried up earlier had his head lowered as he fell beside her face.
Lin Sanjiu extended her leg and kicked him over—something rattled and a grayish-white powder spilled all over the ground from his hair. As she laid her eyes on the powder, even though she did not feel nervous or scared, she couldn’t hold back the disgust that rose from her stomach.
After the face came off his head, his skull somehow turned dry and crispy. As he was kicked over, his head shattered like a plaster figure. The back of his skull was a black empty hole, no brain, no soft tissue or anything at all; not even a drop of liquid.
Though below the neck was still the body of a human, above it should be where the head was, yet it looked like an empty rubber ball with a wig on it.
Lin Sanjiu fixed her gaze at that half a black ‘rubber ball’. At that moment, she did not know why she was not afraid at all, despite clearly knowing that if Mrs. Manas did not respond in a timely manner, she would probably have ended up like this dead person. However, she felt that the tension chord within her was loosened, she could no longer feel nervous.
“Right,” She looked at that half-empty skull and regained her sense of self: “Silvan, where are you?”
Other than the slowly swirling mist around her and the backs of the people crawling on the ground from further away, Silvan’s figure was no longer in sight. She scanned around, then bent over and picked up from the ground a paper crane that was left behind.
It seemed like he used this paper crane as a reminder for her.
“Where are you,” She whispered to probably the most popular communication device in the Doomsday world, “I’ll go find you!”
Lin Sanjiu let free of the paper crane, she sprinted while following it forward. The slope became steeper, as the number of people on the ground started to increase. There were a few times where she almost tripped and rolled down the slope, she really did not know how these people balanced their body on a steep slope like this.
The further she ran, the more surprised she became.
They only brought out a hundred or more people, compared to this wide bulging land that is shaped like an upside-down bowl, it actually was not many. However, on the land blanketed by mist, the backs of people were tightly lined up together, hands touching legs, waist to waist. The torchlight’s beam could reach at most 2 to 3 meters far, and she had ran for countless 2 to 3 meters intervals and what her eyes could see were just more and more people’s backs on the ground, until she realized she had nowhere to land her step anymore.
The people that were bent down over here had far surpassed the hundreds.
While she absent-mindedly searched for a spot to land her next step, the paper crane flapped faster and flew further, swiftly disappearing into the shadow of the mist.
“Damn it”, Lin Sanjiu grunted softly.
She carefully looked around, she realized the people around her had a layer of ash above their clothes. The ash looked grayish-white, how long had they been crawling around here? She endured the resistance that came from her heart, then abruptly flipped over a person beside her leg—the white bone powder rumbled like smoke when the body was flipped, a half-empty skull was exposed.
“I am here, come over.”
Silvan’s soft voice scattered together with the mist and entered her ears, she lifted her head up all of a sudden.
“Don’t make a sound, be careful with your movements.”
Lin Sanjiu quickly traced the source of the voice, with every step she tread, she had to fight against the urge of tripping because she had been stepping on countless people’s hands. Right, when she tried to take another step forward she tripped. Out of nowhere a figure bolted up from the ground and grabbed her by the wrist.
She absent-mindedly lowered her head, she just could not figure out why she was this careless yet not afraid, even when she met Sivlan’s jade-like eyes, she did not heave a breath of relief.
The man with the blonde hair signed to her to keep quiet and to squat down beside him.
Her body bent over, a sunny presence and the smell of fig enveloped her instantly, a feeling like she was saved from the fishy stench lingering in the face rushed through her. Lin Sanjiu asked softly, “What, what are you doing?”
Silvan knelt down on one knee, his hands supporting his body while his head was lowered to the ground. Locks of golden hair slid down from his forehead, like the shadow that was selected by the sunlight from the sky. The mist covered the color of his hair and eyes, despite being so close, he looked a little blurry.
“Come on, try it,” He chuckled gravelly. His eyes glistened like the steamy surface of a lake, “Putting your face to the ground should be easy but it’s difficult to maintain a certain distance, right?”
Lin Sanjiu nodded, her body was shaking as she resisted the force.
“I did not do this to challenge myself”, his gaze seemed to have the ability to pierce people’s thoughts.
Silvan smiled: “There is something in the ground.”
“W-What is it?”
“Strips of a deep purple color, I did not get a clear look of what it is,” he said softly, “But I figured out that they will only be attracted by your face. They spring out from the ground and then get into people’s faces. Look at the people around you and I, they probably died a long time before we even came here… everyone’s skull has been dug empty.”
As Silvan spoke up until this point, he then softly heaved a breath and lowered his head again, fixing his gaze on the ground.
“I am using myself as bait to lure those things back into the center of the empty vessel. Then, the people behind us will not get… well, their face dugout.”
It seemed arduous for him to utter those words. Not only from the words he uttered, but he seemed like he was fighting himself, every movement was performed strenuously.
Lin Sanjiu nodded, she lowered her neck towards the ground in silence. She was afraid that her wobbling willpower could not support her to multitask both lowering her head and speaking at the same time, henceforth she completely collapsed.
A few seconds later, Silvan suddenly chuckled. His voice was difficult to describe but it caused goosebumps on her skin.
“Great,” he muttered, “I have finally found my long lost soul partner… I am no longer lonely.”
