Scarlet Descent

For a moment, Ye Feifei's mind went completely blank.

The corpse had clearly been dead for a long time. Its wedding dress bore large patches soaked with cadaveric fluid, and its pale, rigid face showed abnormal swelling from decay. But now, it had somehow opened its eyes. Those dull, hollow eyes were fixed on Wei Wei and Ye Feifei, and its mouth emitted a hoarse, disjointed sound:

"Human desire is a twisted seed. You never know what kind of flower it will bloom into."

As it spoke, the corpse began to prop itself up. However, its limbs moved in a jerky, uncoordinated manner. It tried to rise to the left but used its right arm to support itself on the cold, cracked floor. When it pushed upward, it seemed to use too much force, causing the upper half of its body to twist unnaturally. Its legs strained against the ground, pushing upward, yet its face remained fixed on the ceiling. Then its neck slowly twisted 180 degrees until it finally faced forward.

Facing Wei Wei and Ye Feifei directly, it smiled—a ghastly, broken smile—and opened its mouth:

"But if you patiently search and listen, you can always find the one that surprises you the most..."

"..."

"The dead person..."

Only then did Ye Feifei react, her scalp tingling as she staggered backward. "The dead person is talking..." she whispered in shock.

"Shh..."

Wei Wei quickly reached out and supported her trembling form. A faint smile played on his lips—a hint of undisguised excitement mingled with professional detachment—but he spoke very softly, as if afraid to startle the entity:

"This isn't a resurrection of the dead..."

"It's a walking corpse."

"Some unknown spiritual entity has been summoned and entered her body..."

"..."

His voice was so soft that it seemed he feared Ye Feifei might panic and inadvertently scare the entity away.

"Unknown spiritual entity..." Ye Feifei's voice trembled with fear and disbelief.

What kind of luck had brought her an unknown, summoned spiritual entity on her first real case? She had seen countless files in Captain Ouyang's office and was no novice; she roughly knew the taboos and dire consequences of such behavior. Unknown and chaotic summonings were notorious for calling forth terrible, inexplicable beings. In the files of the Scrap Iron City Security Office, the recorded consequences of these mysterious summonings grew increasingly bloody—with not a single good outcome. Some people tried to summon the spirits of their deceased relatives, but instead ended up calling forth unknown ghosts. Others attempted to summon a specific ghost to fulfill their wishes, but instead unleashed an evil entity that harvested all life... She really shouldn't have gone out on days like these!

"Don't be afraid, I'm here..."

Wei Wei noticed her fear and slightly retracted his smile. Gently, he placed his hand on her shoulder and leaned close to her ear:

"You just focus on protecting the child..."

"..."

Strangely, Ye Feifei calmed down considerably and looked up at Wei Wei's profile. Now, with his irrepressible smile controlled and his gaze steady, he turned his attention to the corpse in the wedding dress. His voice was gentle, yet probing:

"So, was all this just your inducement?"

"A mine worker shouldn't have access to this forbidden knowledge of the death system, nor the ability to foresee and escape police pursuit. It would be difficult enough to dig up this corpse—so you must have taught him all this, right? Including the so-called divine instructions he heard, and the promise that sacrificing a life would help him resurrect the goddess in his life—it was all your influence, wasn't it?"

"Honestly, this would only fool amateurs."

"I've seen many people awakened from death, but I've never seen a 'person' truly return from death."

"The sacrificial ritual here wasn't set up by him either, was it?"

"I've seen the animal specimens he made. The work was too crude, too haphazard. He couldn't have arranged such intricate symbols by himself."

"So, his responsibility was merely to bring the infant here and kill it at the right time?"

"Of course, we rescued the infant."

"But he was killed by me. Since he died within the range of this sacrificial symbol, does it count as a sacrifice?"

"Unfortunately, whether being used or ultimately becoming a sacrifice, he never truly understood his position."

"..."

"What's wrong with that?" The bride's corpse emitted a mocking voice.

It was still constantly adjusting its body—or rather, adapting to it. As it twisted back and forth, it contorted into various strange shapes, like a nightmare acrobat performing in a macabre circus:

"There are always some people in this world who go unnoticed. You see them and label them with a certain type, but you never know that they too harbor desires surging inside them—desires so intense they become twisted, like a furnace of desire. This worker was too ordinary, so ordinary that in anyone's eyes, he could only exist as a background character..."

"But who truly knows about the desires surging inside him, desires so intense they become twisted?"

"It wasn't me inducing him, but him desperately begging me to descend before him..."

"I was actually helping him. At least, I let him dream of doing something he never dared to do in his life before he died..."

"..."

"Hee hee hee hee..." The corpse suddenly laughed shrilly, a sound that echoed like broken glass. "Of course, it also helped me find my way back..."

"Congratulations..." Wei Wei smiled and cupped his hands, then tilted his head slightly. "But I'm curious, what exactly are you?"

"Some evil spirit wandering in nightmares?"

"Or perhaps a high-level believer who, though dead, is reluctant to leave this world?"

"..."

"Crack" "Crack" "Crack"

At that moment, the bride's corpse emitted a series of crisp, bone-breaking sounds. It finally adjusted into a posture that made it appear comfortable. Its limp head suddenly lifted up. Its neck twisted twice, rising like a cobra so that its face came directly toward Wei Wei. The pupils in its dull, dry eyes suddenly dilated to fill the entire eye socket:

"Why don't you come closer and see for yourself?"

"..."

"Whoosh..."

The moment its pupils dilated, the entire room was suddenly filled with a cold, twisted power. Ye Feifei had just reached the door when two doors suddenly slammed shut. Simultaneously, the surrounding windows—and even some unstable bottles—were either slammed shut or swept to the ground by an invisible force.

"Hee hee hee hee hee..."

But the twisted corpse moved with surprising speed. Its two arms twisted to support it on the ground while its legs bent backwards from the front. Its abdomen faced upward, and its bent legs touched the ground as it moved incredibly fast. A continuous series of cracking sounds echoed as its body left a string of shadows nearly imperceptible to the naked eye, instantly rushing to Ye Feifei's side.

Ye Feifei trembled with fear but tightly closed her eyes, suddenly turning her body to protect the infant.

She could do nothing else. Faced with that twisted monster charging toward her at an unimaginable speed, Ye Feifei felt that even if she weren’t holding an infant—even if she had a loaded gun raised in advance—she wouldn’t have time to act. Facing such a monster, even the most basic instincts would vanish instantly. Thus, she could only firmly remember Wei Wei's words and focus entirely on protecting the infant in her arms.

"Bang!"

At that moment, a gunshot suddenly rang out. A bullet flew from an oblique angle, accurately hitting the head of the bride's corpse. Demon Hunter Bullet Type 1: Green-headed Fly. Although the coagulant in the bullet head had little effect on a creature already dead, the bullet's force made its head tilt abruptly, and its neck tore with a dreadful sound under the strain.

"I haven't finished talking to you yet..."

Wei Wei walked over holding a black short gun, his expression somewhat displeased: "Don't you have any manners?" "..."

As he spoke, the muzzle of the gun burst with rapid fire:

"Bang bang bang bang bang..." One explosive bullet after another struck the female corpse. Normally, with the force of these bullets, each one could probably tear the corpse in half—blasting off whatever part it hit. But now the bride's corpse was twisted, wrapped in a fine, strange force field that weakened the bullets' power. They only dislocated her joints and left her body crooked. She quickly darted to the wall and climbed onto the ceiling. She moved swiftly along the ceiling, dodging the bullets fired at her, and looked back at Wei Wei with cold, unyielding eyes.

"Ignorant and arrogant blasphemer, you have no idea what your fate will be..."

"..."

Wei Wei listened attentively to her words, then grabbed another handful of bullets, ready to load them into his gun at any moment.

The bride's corpse, now full of hatred, had its iron-gray lips begin to move rapidly. A fine, faint, and utterly incomprehensible murmur—like the voice of hell—quickly arose. This sound was shrill and strange, unlike any human vocalization, as if it possessed its own life and sought to drill into one's brain.

"What is this..."

Ye Feifei instinctively recoiled, as if reality had suddenly turned into a familiar nightmare.

"Demon language."

Wei Wei paused, looking at the bullets in his hand with some distress, and reluctantly answered, "A language that can communicate with demons..." As he spoke, he turned his head to look outside the cement house, already hearing the faint, strange sound of wings flapping.