Chapter 10: "Audience"
Gulp.
Chen Tan couldn't help but swallow.
"This… how is this possible?!" His voice came out hoarse. "No heart, head cut off—and it's still moving?"
"Where did that opera costume come from? We didn't dress him in it, did we?!"
"I don't know!!!" Li Xiuchun was completely in fear's grip now, her words tumbling out incoherent. "He—when he crawled out of the ground, he was already wearing it… It's the one we draped over him when we buried him last night!
He's a ghost… He really is a ghost!!
A ghost come to claim our lives!"
"Bullshit! There are no ghosts in this world!"
The scene before them was too grotesque. Chen Tan's legs had gone weak with fright, but he scraped together his courage, snatched up a dining knife from the floor, and thrust it at Chen Ling's face!
He'd killed Chen Ling twice. He could kill him a third time!
Whatever was inside that body, frightening as it looked, didn't seem half as terrible as the Calamities rumored outside. That thought gave Chen Tan a good deal of courage.
The sharp dining knife cut through the air—then, just before it touched Chen Ling, it stopped dead in mid-flight.
Chen Tan froze. He strained at the handle with all his strength, but the blade wouldn't advance an inch, as if an invisible hand had seized it and pinned it in place.
"Hee hee."
An eerie giggle sounded from behind Chen Ling.
The next instant, the dining knife in Chen Tan's hand vanished, replaced by a slender strip of red paper.
Chen Ling's pupils were unfocused and vacant. He chewed and swallowed the axe and cleaver still in his mouth, then fixed his stare on Chen Tan. He shuffled forward, mechanically repeating the same words in a hoarse rasp:
"Dad, I'm hungry."
Three simple words, and Chen Tan's scalp went numb!
He had no doubt that in the next moment Chen Ling would grab his head and stuff it into his mouth, chew it up and swallow it… His bones wouldn't be any harder than an axe or a cleaver!
"Run!! Get the Enforcers!!"
Chen Tan spun and bolted for the main door!
He knew this was beyond anything they could handle… The only way out was to beg the Enforcers for help. Those Enforcers with their extraordinary powers—they'd know how to deal with a Calamity!
As for how the Enforcers would judge them afterward for premeditated murder and organ theft, that was a problem for later.
Prison, after all, beat losing your life.
Li Xiuchun, crouched nearby and shaking all over, snapped back to her senses at his shout. She scrambled and crawled toward the sealed door.
While Chen Ling's attention was fixed on Chen Tan, she made it to the door and lunged for the handle…
Her hand closed on nothing.
Li Xiuchun stared down in confusion. The handle was gone… No—not just the handle. The entire door had become an image on red paper, gone from three dimensions to two.
She couldn't open a door painted on paper.
"Hee hee hee hee…"
Dense, overlapping voices piled in from every direction, as if the room were now packed with countless unseen figures… watching the two of them, crimson eyes full of mockery.
Red paper slips swirled around Li Xiuchun. In her daze she saw one grotesque face after another.
She screamed and screamed, backing away, until nothing remained in her eyes but pure terror.
At last her eyes rolled back, and she crumpled to the floor, unconscious…
[Audience Anticipation -1]
[Current Anticipation: 16%]
At the same moment, Chen Tan felt the ground drop out from under him, and he crashed hard onto the floor. He turned, stunned, and saw that the entire ground had turned red, rippling like waves.
He stared blankly at the red-robed Chen Ling walking toward him. Then something seemed to click, and he screamed in terror:
"It's true… What the Enforcers said was true!"
"You're a Calamity!"
"You're a Calamity that stole A-Ling's body!"
At those words, the red-robed Chen Ling stopped.
The corner of his crimson mouth curled upward. A pale finger rose to his lips in a hush.
"Shh—"
Just as the endless red paper was about to swallow Chen Tan, two sharp cracks of shattering glass rang out from the side!
"Calamity sighted at 128 Cold Frost Street!! Destructive power assessed at Level Four! Requesting Enforcer support immediately!!"
Two figures in black-and-red uniforms burst through the window. One swept his gaze across the room and spoke fast.
"Copy that. Support is on the way—hold it off as long as you can!" A stern voice crackled from the walkie-talkie at one Enforcer's waist.
The Enforcer gave a bitter laugh. "A Level Four Calamity? How are we supposed to hold that off?"
At the sudden intrusion, the unseen Audience let out soft murmurs of surprise, as if they'd found more interesting toys.
The red-robed Chen Ling flicked his hand. Chen Tan collapsed where he lay, blood seeping from every orifice, soaking slowly into the ground beneath him…
"Fall back! Stay alive—that's the priority!"
One Enforcer retreated fast, drew his gun, and fired again and again!
Bang bang bang—
The brass bullets tore through the void, but before they reached the red-robed Chen Ling they became tiny red paper slips and scattered into the air.
The red-robed Chen Ling raised a hand. Countless paper slips poured from the wide sleeves of his opera robe, coiling around the two Enforcers like serpents.
The paper wrapping them twisted sharply, wringing them like rope, then slammed them hard into the ground.
[Audience Anticipation -1]
[Current Anticipation: 15%]
The red-robed Chen Ling's body began to swell. His opera costume stretched taut, as if faces were about to burst out through his skin. Chaotic whispers filled the space.
Within seconds he had become a monster trailing whipping red-paper tentacles, pairs of crimson pupils opening across the slips. Nothing of Chen Ling remained in it.
It smashed through the paper door and charged into the empty street. Fine rain struck its body without a sound.
It picked a direction at random and streaked off as a crimson blur!
Almost at once, a black-clad figure split the dark clouds, racing in close pursuit.
"Target Calamity located," Han Meng said calmly.
"…Is it World Annihilation class?" came the worried voice from the walkie-talkie.
"From its aura, Level Five at most. So a Calamity did descend last night—but the needle misjudged its energy intensity."
"Level Five is still deadly! Be careful, Brother Meng!"
Han Meng said nothing. He followed the red blur to the wasteland at the edge of District Three, then dropped like a cannonball!
Boom—!!
The black meteor slammed into the wasteland, throwing out an invisible shockwave!
Shattered sand sprayed in every direction. The red shadow was forced to a halt, its dense paper tentacles swaying in the wind, every eye fixed on the rising dust.
A figure walked out slowly, head lowered as he lit a thick cigarette. Beneath the hem of his black trench coat, four silver stripes glowed faintly.
A Domain spread invisibly, light as a breeze, closing around the red-paper monster.
"I am Han Meng, Chief Enforcer of District Three, Aurora Realm."
Cigarette in one hand, he drew a pitch-black pistol from his waist with the other and thumbed off the safety. Sand and stone trembled inside the Domain. Somewhere unseen, a thread of killing intent locked onto the red-paper monster!
His lips parted. His words seemed to carry the rhythm of some law.
"I uphold the justice of human civilization…"
"…and I judge you dead."