Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Old Zhang’s chest heaved for a few moments. After a short while, he finally picked up his phone.

He tapped the screen to wake it.

In the photo gallery, Ah Chen’s unremarkable face was being zoomed in on, corner by corner.

He spoke to me as if nothing was wrong. “Look, young lady, I want to believe you, but you can’t go around making a fool out of me.”

“This photo looks perfectly normal. My buddy might be a bit ugly, but you can’t say he isn’t a living person.”

I was starting to lose my patience.

“There’s a ring of wriggling, frayed edges around his pupils. Can’t you see that?”

“You say his complexion is ruddy. Look closer-is that a natural flush?”

“And look below his neck. Are those white patches?”

Following my words, Old Zhang’s thick fingers swiped across the screen, zooming in and out repeatedly.

The more he swiped, the more his fingertips trembled. His face grew paler with every motion until he nearly threw the phone away!

I delivered my final verdict.

“Your friend is nothing but a shell of skin now.”

“That milky white wriggling inside his eye sockets? Those are Corpse Worm Larvae. The muscle beneath the skin? Those are Adult Corpse Worms. And those three white patches below his neck are the most lethal part-those are Corpse Worm Eggs.”

I paused for a moment. “Check your own arms. Do you have a lot of white dots there, too?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, Old Zhang frantically shoved up his sleeves.

His arms were thick from years of manual labor, his muscles knotted. The sparse hair on his skin was currently standing on end.

Because of that, the individual white dots were exceptionally striking.

“These are… Corpse Worm Eggs?”

I nodded.

“Unless the Mother Worm dies, once those Corpse Worm Eggs hatch, you’ll end up just like your friend.”

The air in the car turned stagnant once more.

Old Zhang remained silent. His bloodshot, upturned eyes stared fixatedly at me.

After a long while, he grabbed his pack of cigarettes and climbed out of the car.

With a heavy thud of the door, silence returned to the interior.

Feeling a bit bored, I called out softly, “You in the trunk-still alive?”

No one answered.

I could vaguely hear a faint scratching sound.

About half an hour passed.

Old Zhang climbed back into the car, bringing the outside chill with him.

“Young lady, I’m not an educated man, but I know how you swindlers work. You’re all about psychological suggestion. You can talk a big game even when looking at a low-res photo.”

He thrust his phone in front of my face, showing me a search interface. “I just went and consulted a doctor online. See this? The doctor said this is called Idiopathic Guttate Hypomelanosis!”

“Stop trying to spook me with all this mystical nonsense.”

I sighed.

So much for being uneducated-he even knew how to do an online consultation.