Chapter 15

At this time, the fish in Professor Wang’s eyes had hatched and were looking at us through the whites of his eyes. From this angle, it was like he had two compound eyes (1).

His face looked very similar to the face of that strange immortal we had seen carved on the caisson in the front hall. At that time, Fatty had thought that the immortal was a bug that had turned into a monster, which bewitched the ancestors of the Yang family and asked them to build this Taoist temple underground. If someone died, came back to life, and started behaving strangely after their eyes turned into these compound eyes, they may indeed be regarded as a demon. But being mistaken for a demon was totally different from being mistaken for an immortal. Immortals were said to be beautiful (at least to a certain extent), so how could this person in front of me be mistaken for an immortal?

Fatty and I confronted Professor Wang’s body and shined our flashlights on him. Ordinary people would have already closed their eyes under such bright light, but the small eyes that made up his compound eyes still kept moving. It was like those two eyes were kaleidoscopes, constantly changing and arranging themselves in a strange and abnormal manner.

At this time, Professor Wang suddenly spoke.

His throat appeared to have been melted and we couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he was definitely talking to us. Professor Wang looked at us gloomily and said faintly, “Tired to sign.”

Fatty narrowed his eyes suspiciously and whispered, “Not dead? Shit, let’s get him out of here quickly so he can be saved.”

He moved to help Professor Wang, but I held him back. Even though the professor had spoken just now, his whole body had practically melted, saliva was pouring out of his mouth, his movements were strange, and his eyes had turned into compound eyes. In this state, he was clearly no longer human.

Professor Wang’s neck seemed unable to support his head anymore, for it kept wobbling from side to side. Despite this, he continued saying, “Tired to sign.”

“What do you mean?” Fatty asked him. “You’re tired? Then don’t crawl around if you’re tired.”

Professor Wang kept making that strange sound. Anyone listening would think that he was trying to speak, but the words were too unclear to understand what he was saying.

At this time, Professor Wang’s stomach suddenly burst open, as if the muscles and skin couldn’t hold up the weight of his internal organs anymore. Once this happened, all of his internal organs leaked out, intestines spilling everywhere. Under the bright light of our flashlights, I saw that his intestines had become transparent and were full of small eyes.

These small eyes made it look like almost all of his internal organs were full small “oocysts” (2).

Professor Wang sat down slowly, just like a deflating balloon. He was no longer moving, and his head had drooped down completely.

Fatty and I looked at him in alarm. After waiting for a while and seeing that Professor Wang really didn’t move, we cautiously approached. Fatty carefully looked at the “oocysts”. I had no idea what the mechanics behind this parasite were, to be able to make people’s internal organs transparent and melt their insides like this.

I suddenly realized that the corpses here had all become immortals in this way. “The flesh and internal organs of the corpses here have been eaten up by this fish,” I said to Fatty. “They only leave the skin, which is why the bodies are so light.”

“Professor Wang is really dead now. What do you think he was trying to say to us?” Fatty asked me.

No one could determine whether those words were really Professor Wang talking or if they were just meaningless sounds. I looked at my watch and said to Fatty, “We don’t have time for that. We’ve got about fifteen minutes at most.”

“What do you mean?”

“You and I are both infected,” I said to him. “Based on Professor Wang’s time of death, we still have forty minutes at most. After that, we’ll end up like him.” I used my flashlight to illuminate the whites of Fatty’s eyes and still saw the black shadow inside. “If we want to live, we have to get out in fifteen minutes. That gives us twenty-five minutes to get to the hospital for treatment.”

Fatty turned pale. “The only way to get out now is to implement your idea. Do you really want to fish using your thigh as bait?”

I looked at Professor Wang’s internal organs and thought about the murals in the front hall. These organs should be more useful than our thighs, so I turned to a fairly well-preserved banner, pulled it down, and wrapped it around the organs.

That smell… people’s internal organs really didn’t smell good.

Fatty and I picked them up and started running wildly. Fatty went to fetch the bronze sword (3) that had been hanging at the tomb entrance when we first came in, while I went to get the iron whip from the front hall.

<Chapter 14><Table of Contents><Chapter 16>

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TN Notes:

(1) Compound eyes are like bug eyes:

(2) Oocysts are cysts containing zygotes (fertilized eggs) formed by a parasite. Here’s an example for your viewing pleasure:

(3) Not a translation error. This is the bronze dagger from chapter 8. It apparently got an upgrade and is now a sword.

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Maybe it’s just me, but I’m still WAY more grossed out (i.e. traumatized) by the snake thing from Sand Sea Part 4. This fish ain’t got nothin’ on them.