Chapter 18

Black Glasses moved his neck, which had become very stiff. It had only been a short while, but he already felt his eyesight starting to decline.

If that thing could be seen clearly, it was probably riding on the back of his neck and covering his eyes.

And it was affecting his brain.

Chuchu’s sudden appearance just now was that thing affecting him. He had also suffered the last time this thing attached itself to him. It could definitely drive one mad. Black Glasses didn’t know if it had a real consciousness, but it clearly had a strong tendency to make people go crazy.

It would quickly exhaust and take what you needed most. For example, your vision.

It had been a long time since he had fallen into real darkness. He remembered that when this happened before, his eyesight would decline rapidly as long as he did strenuous activities.

This thing didn’t like to ride on lively people, so it would trap them in one place and keep them from moving.

Anyone in a similar situation could only sit on the bed and look down at the ground. This was the inevitable outcome for almost anyone who wanted to bring back the dead from Thunder City.

As long as the so-called “alleviation of all regrets” were related to the dead, only their own demons would be recalled.

People could neither turn back time, nor make up for their past mistakes. All they could do was move forward and forget. He felt that Wu Erbai should be able to understand this point, but for some reason, when he got hired, he didn’t think this was the case. What was in Wu Erbai’s heart? Well, whatever it was, it seemed to be heavier than Wu Xie’s obsession.

How long did it take before he was completely blind last time? Nineteen days. As a matter of fact, ever since that time, his vision would go blurry half of every day. His sunglasses no longer played such a big role anymore, but this time, he was afraid that he would be completely blind after being parasitized again.

The leather figurine women were still floating underwater, but a bunch of them had appeared on the riverbank. There were standing silently in the water with smiling expressions on their faces. Except for the one beside him, the others hadn’t moved for the time being.

Black Glasses grabbed the one that suddenly wrapped itself around him, stepped on its foot, pulled its hair, and twisted it until it was wrung out like a sheet.

There had to be something inside the figurine’s skin, but he wouldn’t let it come out. He quickly tied the figurine’s arms, neck, and ankles together.

The contents had no choice but to surge towards the genitals, where they started trying to bite through the figurine’s skin. The whole leather figurine lost its human shape, looking more like a bunch of crabs caught in a net. He picked up a nearby rock and beat the contents more than a dozen times before the leather figurine finally stopped moving. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned his head, only to find that all of the leather figurines on the riverbank were lying in the water. Their hair was the only thing left floating on the water’s surface. More than a dozen of the things inside of them seemed to have followed the sound and climbed up to the dry land on the riverbank.

They were as densely packed as a private push-up class in a gym. He saw that the whole head of the nearest leather figurine had cracked open, revealing that it was full of tentacles which looked like withered hands.

How did the villagers fish here? Wouldn’t they die?

He gave a wry smile. It was useless to cut the figurines’ skins with his knife since it would be more difficult to deal with the contents leaking out of them. He tried to think of a plan. If he suddenly went completely blind during the battle, then it was all over.

But it didn’t matter. Someone would surely bring back news of his death. As long as that woman didn’t fall to her death while climbing back up the cliff.

Speaking of mute people, he wished there was another mute person here with him.

What should I do? At this time, he saw the boats sitting off to one side of the riverbank. As soon as he turned around and rushed towards them, the leather figurines also accelerated and crawled towards him.

Their speed was beyond anything he had expected. At most, he thought that these things would climb up like zombies, but they ended up crawling towards him at an extremely fast speed. The first one arrived in an instant. He kicked it in the head and the human hand shellfish that was inside immediately shot out. It was like kicking some kind of egg sac.

Black Glasses did a backflip and landed on the ground directly beside one of the boats. He pulled out a wooden oar, swung it around, and sent the second head flying like a golf ball.

As a result, all of the human hand shellfish inside rushed towards him like the tide.

Black Glasses did another backflip, landed on the end of the boat, and kicked it up. Three, four, five, and then six flying shellfish were instantly knocked down.

At this time, he suddenly felt a heavy weight on his back and fell to the ground.

As the darkness quickly closed in, he felt the pain of the human hand shellfish crawling on him. Their sharp tentacles like fingernails pierced his skin at the same time his field of vision became increasingly narrow. There was only a small area he could see now.

“Hey, if I die, you won’t get to go back.” Black Glasses laughed as he felt himself quickly being overwhelmed by the shellfish. He stood up and shook his body wildly, but the shellfish seemed to have barbs and began to drill into his skin.

His field of vision was still shrinking, which was a little surprising since that meant that the thing on his back wanted him dead. If he died, things probably wouldn’t end well for it, so why was it acting like this?

Black Glasses was quick-witted and immediately understood.

Shit, it saw someone else. There are other people here. It’s going to kill me and then go to them.

Who is it? Chuchu?

Could that girl dive here like him? Impossible. The current was so fast that she would drown in the first three minutes.

Then who was it?

At the moment when Black Glasses’ field of vision completely shrank to the smallest area, that area became the brightest point of light in his eyes. It seemed as if all of his photoreceptor cells were putting up one last struggle.

He saw a man with a hood jump out of the water, draw a blade from behind his back, turn the blade in a circle, and cut his own palm. He then jumped directly over Black Glasses, spilling his blood on him.

Oh, this isn’t a human.

Black Glasses smiled and stood up, letting the blood spill directly on him.

In an instant, all of the human hand shellfish dispersed like the tide.

The man in the hood threw his backpack to Black Glasses, pulled out an incendiary bomb from the side pocket, and threw it out quickly. Flames burst out in an instant and the whole riverbank burned up.

“Sunglasses.”

“No need. My disease has worsened.” Black Glasses wasn’t wearing sunglasses as he looked at the flames. “Do you smell it? It’s the smell of Typhoon Shelter Fried Clams (1).”

<Chapter 17><Table of Contents><Chapter 19>

****

TN Notes:

(1) I think it’s just a special way of preparing clams or just a fancy name. I was getting results for like Typhoon Shelter Fried Shrimp or crabs, or prawns, etc. Here’s some info on how the name might have come about.