Chapter 41: Fortieth Chapter: The Boundary Between Reality and Illusion
Gu Yunsheng’s voice allowed Lu Jingheng’s heart to settle slightly, but just then, he felt as if he had stepped on something underfoot. it was squishy and carried an indescribable, disgusting stench of blood that instantly rushed into his nostrils.
“What the hell is this?!” Lu Jingheng’s stomach churned. He suppressed his nausea and tried to move his foot, but the thing was stuck fast to his ankle—wet and slippery, impossible to shake off.
His heart began to race. He fumbled to pull out his phone and turned on the flashlight, wanting to see what exactly was torturing his fearful heart.
The pale beam instantly tore through the darkness, illuminating the area beneath Lu Jingheng’s feet.
“AAAHH!!—” Lu Jingheng’s eyes widened in horror. With a clatter, his phone dropped to the floor. The weak light shone upward from the ground, reflecting an utterly terrifying scene.
A giant slug was greedily suctioned onto his ankle. Its thick body was covered in viscous liquid, rising and falling slowly as it undulated. Under the weak light of the phone, it gave off a nauseating sheen.
“Lu Jingheng, how are you?”
Gu Yunsheng’s voice was exceptionally clear in the darkness, but Lu Jingheng felt as if he were nailed to the spot. Fear coiled around his heart like vines, making even breathing difficult.
The weak light from the phone on the floor illuminated the terrifying scene, making his stomach flip.
This wasn’t an ordinary slug; at least, it wasn’t any kind of creature he knew. It was massive, disgusting, and a nauseating dark red. It was tightly wrapped around his ankle, its thick, fleshy body rising and falling as it writhed, looking as if it were trying to swallow his ankle whole.
What made his skin crawl even more was that a ghostly “human face” was faintly visible on the creature’s head. Its features were twisted together in an expression that looked like pain, yet also like mockery.
“Holy shit! What is this thing?! Quick, help me get it off!” Lu Jingheng’s voice changed pitch, sounding like he was about to cry.
He had been afraid of mollusks since he was a child, especially slimy things like this—one look made him want to vomit, let alone a giant one with a ghost face!
Gu Yunsheng suppressed his nausea and fumbled his way to Lu Jingheng’s side. After seeing the creature’s true face under the dim light, he couldn’t help but gasp.
In his two lifetimes, he had never seen such a creature. To call it a mutant slug was an understatement; it looked more like a monster from a horror movie!
“Hold on, I’ll find a way to get it off!” Gu Yunsheng looked around, his gaze landing on a metal laundry pole that Lu Jingheng had casually tossed in a corner.
He strode over and grabbed the laundry pole leaning against the wall.
“Yun… Yunsheng… I… I feel like… it’s corroding my skin…” Lu Jingheng’s face was pale, his voice weak and filled with a trace of despair.
Gu Yunsheng looked down. Aided by the faint light from the phone, he saw the place where the monster met Lu Jingheng’s ankle actually began to sizzle. Bursts of white smoke rose up, and a scorched smell mixed with a nauseating stench hit his nose.
Lu Jingheng’s skin was turning red and ulcerating at a visible speed, as if it were being eaten away by strong acid!
Without a second thought, Gu Yunsheng jammed the laundry pole between the monster and Lu Jingheng’s ankle and gave it a hard pry.
“Get the hell off him!” Gu Yunsheng roared, using all his strength to try and tear the monster away from Lu Jingheng’s ankle.
However, the monster seemed as if it were fused with Lu Jingheng. No matter how much strength Gu Yunsheng used, it wouldn’t budge an inch.
“AAAAHHH!!—” Lu Jingheng’s screams echoed in the empty basement, filled with a hair-raising despair.
The monster seemed to be provoked. It undulated even more frantically. The flesh and blood at Lu Jingheng’s ankle vanished at a visible rate, revealing the stark white bone beneath.
Gu Yunsheng’s eyes were bloodshot as he glared at the monster, wishing he could hack it into ten thousand pieces.
Dammit! What the hell is this thing?!
Despair and anger were like two blazes, burning fiercely in his chest.
“Yunsheng, forget about me…” Lu Jingheng’s voice was as weak as a mosquito. “I won’t make it… you go, hurry…”
“Shut up! Stop talking nonsense!” Gu Yunsheng roared. “I’m not leaving you!”
“But…” Lu Jingheng wanted to say more, but Gu Yunsheng interrupted him sharply.
“There is no ‘but’!” Gu Yunsheng’s eyes were moist. “I said I’m taking you out of here alive!”
Just then, the ring on Gu Yunsheng’s finger suddenly emitted a brilliant light. The light grew more intense until it transformed into a piercing beam that shot directly at the monster!
The monster seemed to suffer immense pain, twisting its body frantically as it tried to escape the beam’s constraints.
Gu Yunsheng gasped, his heart nearly jumping out of his throat.
That light… what happened with that light?!
He was frozen in place, watching the light strike the monster. Suddenly, a scene from the book flashed back to him: the ring’s power had saved Selo and Ling Xi… Could it be?!
A foul stench rushed into his nose. Gu Yunsheng endured the nausea. He saw the monster being scorched, sizzling as it dissolved into a puddle of green pus.
Gu Yunsheng jolted. He felt as if his palm had been pricked by something; a chill instantly spread through his entire body.
By the dim light, he saw a dark blue fish scale lying in his palm, emitting a faint, ghostly glow.
The scale was as cold as ice. Upon contact, he felt a strange power enter his body, and his own wound felt as if it were being gently stroked.
Looking closely, several small words were carved onto the scale: “Apply to the wound to heal.”
This handwriting, this power… could it be Ling Xi?
Was he protecting him from the shadows?
Gu Yunsheng was overjoyed. Without a second thought, he pressed the icy scale onto the exposed bone of Lu Jingheng’s ankle.
In the next second, an indescribable wave of energy instantly exploded between the two of them!
Gu Yunsheng felt as if an electric current had shot from his fingertips straight to his brain. The entire basement shuddered. The air was filled with a strange energy. The dim lights above flickered several times before going out completely, plunging the basement into pitch-black darkness.
“Ah!” Lu Jingheng couldn’t help but cry out. But he didn’t feel the expected agony. Instead, it felt like a warm spring was flowing from his ankle, traveling up through his meridians. Everywhere it passed, the previously heart-wrenching pain miraculously vanished, replaced by an indescribable tingling and comfort, as if every cell were cheering.
In the darkness, Gu Yunsheng felt his hand being sucked in by an invisible force, unable to move. He asked tensely, “Jingheng, how are you? Are you okay?”
“I… I’m fine…” Lu Jingheng’s voice trembled slightly, filled with disbelief. “I feel… my foot…”
He tried moving his foot. Aside from a slight tingling sensation, there was no abnormality.
Using the faint light, he looked down at his ankle. This sight caused him to freeze on the spot.
He saw that the originally gruesome wound was now enveloped in a faint blue light. The light was warm and gentle, like morning sunshine or starlight. Under the shroud of that light, flesh and blood were actually growing back over the white bone at a visible rate! The shocking wound gradually returned to its original state, smooth as before, as if nothing had ever happened.
And that fish scale was currently emitting a shimmering blue light, illuminating his stunned face.
“This… this… how is this possible?!!” Lu Jingheng looked at it all in disbelief. He grabbed Gu Yunsheng’s hand excitedly, his voice shaking. “Yunsheng, this… this scale… it… it’s real?!”
Gu Yunsheng was also stunned. He looked at Lu Jingheng’s perfectly intact ankle, then down at the shimmering blue scale in his hand.
In his mind, he saw the scene from the book world where he had shown this scale to Xue Chenxi to stabilize him.
At the time, he only thought the scale was like a token of love, never imagining it truly possessed such miraculous power.
What he found even more incredible was that the world that originally only existed in the book actually had ten thousand threads of connection to the real world.
The ring was one, the scale was another, and both had played a massive role at a moment of crisis. This forced him to believe that perhaps there really were arrangements made by fate.
“Yunsheng, this scale… where did it come from? And this effect?” Lu Jingheng’s voice pulled Gu Yunsheng back from his chaotic thoughts.
Gu Yunsheng took a deep breath and looked at Lu Jingheng with a complex gaze, his tone certain. “Jingheng, do you remember the novel you wrote? The one… about the merman…”
“Are you saying… are you saying… this scale… belongs to Ling Xi?!” Lu Jingheng’s voice was distorted with excitement. As if he had suddenly thought of something, he grabbed Gu Yunsheng’s shoulders and asked urgently, “Yunsheng, what exactly is going on? Ling Xi… does he… does he really exist?”
Looking at Lu Jingheng, Gu Yunsheng didn’t know how to explain for a moment. This sudden turn of events was something he hadn’t fully processed himself, let alone explaining it to Lu Jingheng.
He pressed down on Lu Jingheng’s hands, signaling him to calm down. “Jingheng, don’t be anxious, listen to me…”
“This isn’t the place to talk. This pet hospital is indeed bizarre.”
Gu Yunsheng looked around. Under the dim light, the pet hospital looked exceptionally eerie and terrifying.
“Oh no, that taxi driver is still outside! We need to leave this place and talk when we get back.”
Gu Yunsheng suddenly remembered the driver waiting for them at the bottom of the hill.
He looked at Lu Jingheng anxiously. “Come on, let’s leave first.”
Although Lu Jingheng was full of questions, he knew now wasn’t the time to ask. This place was so weird; he couldn’t let an innocent person be dragged into it.
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