chapter 49

Chapter 49

It was as if he were experiencing a sudden, unheralded nightmare.

The hospital corridor was empty, and the Nurse Station was deserted.

Only when passing the water room did he glimpse blood slowly seeping across the floor.

Ning Qiuyan was forced toward the stairwell, barefoot, the steps icy and bone-chilling. The person behind him never loosened their grip on his throat; Ning Qiuyan couldn’t utter a single word. He knew very well that if he struggled even a little at this moment, the other would likely bite through his neck.

At night, the Inpatient Department of this building had an Access Control System; entering or exiting required swiping a card, otherwise it would attract the attention of the staff on duty.

But when they reached the exit, even Ning Qiuyan’s last shred of hope was dashed.

A beep sounded.

The person was well prepared, producing a card from somewhere and pressing it against the Access Control System. Then, as if discarding trash, they tossed the card aside, and the door swung wide open, unobstructed.

The cold wind of early morning blew gently.

A battered old car was parked outside the exit. Ning Qiuyan was shoved into the back seat, finally able to catch his breath. Thinking quickly, he opened the door on the other side while coughing and shouting, “Cough, cough… Help-”

Unfortunately, he was immediately dragged back.

The person squeezed in, slapped him hard across the face, and warned viciously, “Behave! Don’t make me kill you right here!”

The slap made Ning Qiuyan’s head buzz, a taste of blood rising in his mouth, nearly choking him.

Now that they were close, he could see the person more clearly, and his body shuddered, scalp tingling.

He understood why the face seemed so strange-beneath the young man’s features was a hideous scar, hypertrophic tissue connecting the face, chin, and neck, as if someone had savagely bitten him. The wound was so severe that any deeper would have severed his head. The scar pulled at muscles and facial nerves, making every expression on that face grotesque.

Part of the vocal tract was missing, making speech extremely difficult. Rather than speaking, it was more like simulating words with shrill, static-laden screeches.

Bang-

The car door slammed shut. The person, like a frenzied Monster, kicked the seatback and shrieked, “Drive!”

There was someone in the driver’s seat; the car shot off like an arrow.

The driver was just as crazed, the vehicle careening drunkenly through the hospital grounds. At the gate barrier, they ignored the security guard’s angry shouts and smashed straight through the bar!

The car doors were locked tight; no matter what Ning Qiuyan tried, he couldn’t open them, tossed about inside as the car sped and swerved.

Once out on the early morning road, the car accelerated wildly. The driver cranked up rock music, and the two began howling along like banshees.

Half an hour later, with a screech of brakes, the car finally stopped in front of a building.

Ning Qiuyan was dragged out and quickly realized it was an unfinished building, pitch dark all around, not even streetlights installed.

The two flanked him, pushing him into the construction site. The rough sand and building debris scraped painfully at his bare feet, feeling damp-he wondered if he’d cut himself.

Then, Ning Qiuyan was shoved into the building and tied to a broken chair.

Inside the cold house, a single lamp shone overhead. He didn’t know where the wires had been run for power; the bulb hung glaringly above Ning Qiuyan’s head.

“Who are you?” Ning Qiuyan shouted. “What do you want?!”

Though he knew these inhuman Monsters might not answer.

Sure enough, no one paid Ning Qiuyan any mind.

What happened next made Ning Qiuyan’s eyes widen in horror.

With the Monster was a young human girl. As soon as they finished tying Ning Qiuyan up, they staggered to the corner. Their breathing was rapid, like bellows, so excited they could barely control themselves, their movements frantic and disordered.

The Monster pulled up the girl’s filthy sweater, lifting the hem, then half-kneeling, half-standing, pressed against her like a crawling creature, impatiently biting into her waist.

Blood immediately welled from her side. The girl cried out in pain, yet lovingly hugged the Monster’s head, stroked his hair, and looked at Ning Qiuyan, giving him a dreamy smile.

Cold sweat broke out on Ning Qiuyan’s forehead, a wave of intense discomfort rising in his heart.
The man ate and swallowed urgently, and in less than a minute, the girl’s face lost all color.

She was weak from blood loss, slowly sitting down against the wall, tilting her head back.

At that moment, the man took something out of his pocket. When the girl automatically opened her mouth, a drop of liquid fell into it. Her tongue trembled, and a look of enjoyment appeared on her face.

The two of them were feeding on each other.

Ning Qiuyan’s stomach churned, and he vomited.

This scene was all too familiar. He immediately recalled the video Ray had shown him while he was working at N°.

“Huanle,” he remembered the name of that substance, and had once seen with his own eyes how it was extracted. Ray and the people involved at the time were already dead. Lu Qianque had told Ning Qiuyan that everything had been taken care of. But it turned out that such things happened not only in Wutong-even in the distant Sujing, there were such disgusting, depraved underground trades.

Call the police.

That was Ning Qiuyan’s first thought, but he quickly remembered his current situation, and also that Lu Qianque had said human police couldn’t handle such matters. This was a supernatural underground crime chain, and only those above them could resolve it.

The girl closed her eyes, her expression peaceful.

One broken line, addicted for life-this stuff was as terrifying as drugs.

The world suddenly fell silent.

The monster-like man turned around, ignoring the blood on his mouth, and reached into Ning Qiuyan’s clothes, pulling out his phone.

“Password,” the man demanded.

Ning Qiuyan did not answer.

The man suddenly grabbed Ning Qiuyan’s hair, forcing him to look up. With eyes regaining a hint of sanity, he stared intently at Ning Qiuyan and said, “Give me your phone password, kid, and you’ll die a little more comfortably.”

Ning Qiuyan pressed his lips together, glaring back in anger.

He was clearly so scared his body was trembling, yet there was a stubbornness he couldn’t explain. That so-called mix of cowardice and courage probably described boys his age.

The man smiled, though his mouth barely formed an arc. He pried open Ning Qiuyan’s eyelids, raised the phone, and finally unlocked it with facial recognition.

Ning Qiuyan demanded sharply, “What exactly are you trying to do?”

“Don’t rush. Let’s call dear Mr. Guan,” the man whispered. “He’s been on the island too long, lost contact.” He opened Ning Qiuyan’s contacts, then suddenly turned to look at Ning Qiuyan with a nervous twitch. “Yes, you guessed right. I’m the one who doesn’t dare call him.”

Ning Qiuyan frowned deeply, his face full of indignation and disgust.

“See these?” The man lifted his chin, exposing all his scars. “All thanks to him.”

Guan Heng.

From the start, the man had made his intentions clear.

He called Ning Qiuyan “Little Blood Bag of Guan Heng,” showing he knew something about Guan Heng, and had kidnapped Ning Qiuyan to force Guan Heng to appear.

Six months later, Ning Qiuyan heard his name from someone else’s mouth for the first time.

What happened on Du Island felt like a lifetime ago.

Ning Qiuyan’s life had become calm and ordinary, completely returned to how it was before he accepted that agreement, before he had ever gone to Du Island. Everything related to Guan Heng had disappeared, except for that guitar which proved Guan Heng had truly existed. Ning Qiuyan felt as if he had merely gone to the island for some paid volunteer service.

Sometimes he wondered if Guan Heng was just his imagination, and everything else was something he had constructed to justify it. Maybe there was no Guan Heng, nor any supernatural beings in the world.

But more often, he hopelessly accepted reality.

He and Du Island were completely severed, never to intersect again.

Yet on this night, such a terrifying accident occurred.

A connection between them was made once more.

The man searched through Ning Qiuyan’s contacts, his unstable mind making it take a while to find Guan Heng’s name-the number Ning Qiuyan had looked at countless times over the past six months.

The man pressed the dial button.

Ning Qiuyan tried to take advantage of his distraction, twisting his hands and feet tied to the chair, but found the ropes were too tight-he couldn’t move at all.

“Beep-beep-”

The sound echoed through the abandoned construction site room. The call had gone through.
Ning Qiuyan also stopped struggling for the moment. He had the illusion that, in the next second, Guan Heng would answer the call with his familiar, languid tone: “Ning Qiuyan.”

But even after the first round of beeps, Guan Heng didn’t pick up.

The man dialed again, a second time, then a third.

Guan Heng still did not answer.

The man flew into a rage, rushed over, and slapped Ning Qiuyan twice more across the face. “Why isn’t he answering! Why isn’t he answering!”

In the man’s eyes, humans were probably no different from ants. Ning Qiuyan was struck so hard he saw stars, his face quickly swelling up. Tasting blood in his mouth, he replied, “…I don’t know.”

The man cocked his head. “You don’t know? You’re his exclusive Little Blood Bag, his temporary antidote! How could you not know?!”

“We haven’t been in contact for a long time,” Ning Qiuyan panted. “If you don’t believe me, look-we haven’t had any contact at all in the last half year. Our agreement ended long ago. We have nothing to do with each other anymore. Mr. Guan has no reason to answer my calls.”

These were all facts. Ning Qiuyan hadn’t lied about a single word.

In fact, as he spoke, Ning Qiuyan realized a possibility: that phone number of Guan Heng’s might have only been used during the agreement and had probably long since been discarded.

“Don’t try to fool me.”

The man squatted in front of Ning Qiuyan, tilting his head again to look at him from another angle.

“If you two have no connection, why did he send people to follow you?”

Ning Qiuyan heard this and shook his head. “No, there’s no one following me anymore.”

“No one?” the man said. “Then why did I only get my chance today?! From Wutong to Sujing, those people were like mangy dogs chasing a bone, always sticking to you! That’s right, in the past few months, they’ve suddenly relaxed, started letting you wander, so gradually I was able to get closer, to cause a little trouble…”

Is someone still protecting me?

Ning Qiuyan was shocked, but as the man spoke, he immediately thought of the bicycle that almost hit him that morning, the sudden malfunction at the cinema, and the fire in the school dormitory.

He didn’t know which of these incidents were connected to the creature before him, or if all of them were.

“Instead of staying in a hotel with the other students, you ended up in the hospital, which made things much easier for me,” the man rambled, reaching out with his sharp fingernails to scratch Ning Qiuyan’s face. “Such a big fire, and you still dared to run into it. Interesting.”

Ning Qiuyan dodged, turning his face away. “Don’t touch me!”

The man withdrew his hand, leaned in, and sniffed at Ning Qiuyan, moving from behind his ear down to his neck, his nose brushing along the blood vessels on the side of his neck, taking a deep breath.

The man’s stench was overwhelming.

Goosebumps rose all over Ning Qiuyan’s body, nausea winding up his legs, back, and cheeks, nearly making him vomit again.

Finally, the foul smell dispersed.

The man stepped back two paces and turned on his phone’s camera, aiming it at Ning Qiuyan’s face.

He pressed record.

“Mr. Guan, it’s fine if you don’t answer the phone. Look what nice thing I’ve found.”

The man smiled, speaking in a whisper.

“This seems to be your Little Blood Bag, right? The one exclusive to you, with that Golden Blood that can bring you back to the light-so rare, so precious. Come on, Little Blood Bag, say hi to your Mr. Guan.”

The edge of Ning Qiuyan’s mouth was split from the slap, his face swollen high, but he simply glared silently at the camera.

The man said, “See? He looks so sad because you won’t answer.”

Ning Qiuyan stubbornly kept his mouth shut.

He knew he looked wretched now. He both wished Guan Heng would see the video and save his life, and hoped Guan Heng wouldn’t see him like this.

“Speaking of which, it’s all thanks to you that I am what I am today. I suppose you and I are of the same origin…” The man lowered his voice. “Do you think your Little Blood Bag would have the same effect on me?”

Ning Qiuyan sensed danger, his pupils suddenly widening a little.

The camera was still aimed at Ning Qiuyan.

But the man’s gaze passed over the phone and fell on Ning Qiuyan’s face. “He’s so tempting… I really want to drain him dry.”