Chapter 208
Chapter 208
Qin Ying’s eyesight was exceptionally keen now. By the light of the Migu Flower, she made out what was soaking in the pool, and her pupils contracted.
Slosh, slosh.
The murky pool water, yellow as thick phlegm, rippled as the thing chained within struggled to crane its head and look up at Qin Ying.
It resembled a grotesque rag doll that some destructive child had torn apart, then crudely stitched back together.
Thick, coarse stitches covered its body.
It was clearly missing parts, and shattered, sawtoothed wounds marked the severed ends.
Qin Ying instinctively recalled something Zhao Jixian had once told her.
During the construction of this tunnel, an explosion had blasted a White Civet encased in Black Stone out of the heart of the mountain.
The creature had been enormous, with a long white tail.
Qin Ying shifted her gaze in search of that tail, only to find the spliced-on lower half of a human body.
An animal’s upper body atop human legs looked wrong from every angle, inspiring nothing but revulsion and disgust.
The River God had his eyes closed, basking in the light as though bathing in it. Yet he sensed Qin Ying’s fleeting revulsion.
The blissful expression on his mangy, patchy face froze for an instant before disappearing.
He let out a quiet, self-deprecating chuckle.
The vibrations in his chest sent ring after ring rippling across the murky water.
“Am I very ugly?” he asked, slowly lifting his overly long eyelids.
A pair of different-colored eyeballs sat within his crooked, misshapen sockets. One glance was enough to tell they were not his originals.
Qin Ying frowned deeply. As her gaze swept over one particular spot, her grip on Di Shang tightened.
A torn corner of red fabric bobbed in the rippling filth.
It was from the red dragon-and-phoenix bridal jacket worn by Zhang Yuqin’s corpse.
If Qin Ying remembered correctly, the outfit had still been intact when the slender-waisted monster brought Zhang Yuqin’s body in here.
Now there was only a scrap of fabric.
Where was Zhang Yuqin’s body?
Qin Ying’s expression remained unchanged, but her heart sank.
She calmly moved her gaze away from the scrap. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something tug it beneath the murky water.
The River God was still looking up at Qin Ying with a bitter smile. “I used to be very beautiful.”
“Until humans…”
He left the rest unsaid.
But Qin Ying could guess what he had meant to say: until humans blew him to pieces.
Qin Ying stood quietly beside the stone railing.
All she wanted was to remind this River God, who claimed to want light rather than a bride, that a tiny trace of blood still remained around his muzzle.
She asked, “Didn’t you say the bride was merely something humans imposed on you?”
The River God laughed again.
But as he laughed, he suddenly began coughing violently, just like a human.
His body shook with every cough, making the iron chains clatter loudly.
He doubled over, exposing the length of his spine to Qin Ying.
Only then did Qin Ying see a row of fist-sized holes bored into the trapped beast’s spine.
A rubber tube was connected to every hole.
The tubes extended toward a rotting machine behind the pool.
It was some kind of machine used to extract Marrow Fluid.
However, the machine had deteriorated beyond recognition, and the rubber tubes attached to it had long since collapsed flat.
After a violent coughing fit, the River God leaned back against the edge of the pool and spent a long time catching his breath.
No matter how one looked at it, the creature did not seem to have much longer to live.
Qin Ying watched it silently.
Then she asked, “You weren’t killed in that explosion, were you?”
The half-human, half-beast “River God” in the pool gave a barely perceptible nod. “That’s right.”
As it spat out those two words, Qin Ying narrowed her eyes slightly.
The River God did not notice and continued, “They found a way to keep me alive.”
It lowered its gaze to the mismatched lower half of its body.
That so-called method had naturally involved piecing its blasted body back together into its current form.
Then they had chained it here and extracted its Marrow Fluid.
Qin Ying glanced at the machinery behind it and asked, “What do they use your Marrow Fluid for?”
Her voice was perfectly normal, yet the words “Marrow Fluid” seemed to trip some forbidden switch.
The River God in the pool suddenly began dry-heaving.
The immense, breathy sound echoed over the pool. The River God’s chest ballooned for an instant, and a round bulge the size of a human skull jutted from its throat.
Qin Ying thought it was about to vomit all over the pool, but its throat suddenly worked, and it swallowed the thing back down.
That made Qin Ying feel sick instead.
The thing in the pool convulsed for a long moment before abruptly raising its head to stare at her.
“What for? What for?”
“Do you humans truly not know?”
Its former weakness and caution vanished.
Bloody froth clung to the River God’s lips as it roared furiously,
“To open the door, of course!”
Qin Ying’s hand shook violently around the Migu Flower.
She held her breath, her mind going blank for an instant.
She knew she could not show such weakness before the River God in the pool. She was supposed to be forceful and cunning.
But the moment she heard the words “open the door,” a fear from the deepest part of her heart surged up beyond her control.
The River God in the pool had been staring up at Qin Ying the entire time.
Naturally, it did not miss that flash of terror.
The half-human, half-beast creature fell silent for a moment. Then irrepressible delight flooded its mismatched eyes, each a different color and size.
“Your fear feels very familiar to me.”
“You’re a test subject too, aren’t you?”
Qin Ying did not stay to hear any more. She retreated three steps and concealed herself between two enormous specimen tanks.
One stood on either side of her, each containing a bizarre, deformed human body.
As if chilled to the bone, Qin Ying wrapped her arms around herself, turned, and hurried outside.
“Don’t go! Come back!” the River God in the pool pleaded loudly when it heard her footsteps.
“Please, don’t go. Come back and set me free.”
“We’re the same! We’re the same kind!”
As Qin Ying stepped out of the laboratory, the River God’s anguished cries grew even louder behind her. “I’ll let all of you leave! Just don’t leave me here alone!”
Qin Ying stumbled over to a bookshelf and huddled in a narrow gap, arms wrapped around herself.
Her own heartbeat thundered in her ears. Only after a long while did she finally calm down enough to survey the study filled with books. She dipped a finger into a small puddle on the floor and drew an infinity symbol on her knee.
Then she called, “Han Lie.”