Chapter 7

Chapter 7

“Meow-Awoo-”

A sharp cat’s cry pierced the air outside the window.

Qin Ying, drenched from head to toe, shuddered.

Her heart raced as she tried to open her eyes, but failed.

Her eyelashes were glued shut by something, and there was a faint, tugging pain when she tried to move them.

Gradually, she drifted back to consciousness from the haze, remembering what had happened.

She had left the bustling metropolis, avoiding all the chaos to return to her hometown.

While cleaning, she had stepped on a small Dragon Bone and discovered a box containing a miniature world.

And then, there was that bowl of Monstrous Beast soup, cooked without salt or ginger.

Qin Ying hurriedly raised her hand to rub her eyes. Gristly debris fell away, and her stuck eyelids finally parted.

The first thing she saw was the shell chandelier hanging from the ceiling.

She blinked, realizing the black spot in her right eye had vanished. The entire world was crystal clear.

Her eyes felt comfortable in a way she had never experienced before.

To put it accurately, Qin Ying’s vision before was like a forty-year-old television with a screen full of dead pixels.

Now, her eyes were like a high-end 8K TV worth millions.

She could clearly see the natural textures on the shells of the chandelier and a tiny mold spot the size of a fingertip in the corner of the wall.

Looking down at her hands, she saw her arms were coated in a layer of cherry-red slime.

There were some dried black blood scabs on her fingertips; that was what had glued her eyelashes shut.

Qin Ying propped herself up, realizing she looked like she was lying in the middle of a crime scene.

Blood, sweat, and some kind of secretion from her body had mixed together, soaking through the bamboo mat on the bed.

In the high heat, these substances had fermented into an extreme, fishy stench.

She rushed barefoot into the bathroom and looked into the mirror.

She saw her own eyes, lustrous and glowing like black pearls.

When she focused her gaze on a specific point, her irises took on a very faint golden hue.

Qin Ying stood dazed for a long time, staring into the mirror before a very slow smile spread across her face.

This reckless gamble-she had won!

She scrubbed herself raw twice in the shower.

While she was biting down on her toothbrush, Qin Ying-whose skin was now two shades fairer-felt a thirst so intense it was as if she had swallowed a piece of burning charcoal. Her stomach was also cramping with hunger.

Wrapping herself in a bath towel, she stepped out of the bathroom, only to be hit by the stench from the bedroom, making her recoil.

Gagging, she threw open the window for ventilation.

A gust of the odor wafted out from her window. A tabby cat that had been yowling in the street froze for a moment before tucking its tail between its legs and fleeing into the distance.

A perfect, slimy silhouette of a human was imprinted on Qin Ying’s bed.

She picked up her phone from the nightstand to check the time.

It was 1:30 PM, exactly twenty-two hours since she had drunk the Danghu soup.

The scheduled message hadn’t been sent yet; Qin Ying canceled the transmission and deleted it entirely.

She found a set of clean loungewear to change into, then rolled up the foul-smelling bedding and bamboo mat, dragging them down to the backyard on the first floor.

She burned the letter she had left under her pillow.

Qin Ying’s grandmother had been a stickler for cleanliness, buying bleach and oxygen bleach by the crate; there was still plenty of near-expired stock in the utility room.

She spread out the soiled bedding and mat, filled a bucket with water from the garden tap, and mixed in five bottles of bleach to pour over the bloodstains.

Using the components in the chlorine bleach, she aimed to remove the bloodstains while simultaneously destroying any biological information on the sheets.

She didn’t want to just throw them out and risk someone seeing them and causing trouble.

Qin Ying tilted her head back and gulped down two large bottles of water.

Enduring the hunger, she ordered the nearest delivery she could find.

Having finished all this, she stood in the yard with her wet hair hanging loose, letting out a long sigh of relief.

While waiting for her food, Qin Ying went back to the bedroom to move the box onto the dining table.

Due to her hunger-induced low blood sugar, she failed to notice one strange thing-despite the blood-soaked stench in the bedroom, not a single fly had appeared.
In fact, in this old district where cockroaches and rats were a common nuisance, her home was so clean that not even a single ant could be found in the backyard.

When she opened the lid of the box again, Qin Ying’s mindset had completely changed.

What lay before her was no longer just a box housing a world of tiny people-it was a gigantic treasure.

Infinite possibilities.

She looked into the box and froze when she realized the scenery inside had changed.

It was no longer that riverbank scoured by thunder and lightning, but a city the color of dusty yellow earth.

Most of the buildings inside were laid out in a boxy, rectangular plan-like the traditional “eye-shaped” layout-built from yellow clay and thatch. They stood shoulder to shoulder, yet arranged in tidy, orderly Li Fang.

There wasn’t the slightest hint of green anywhere in the entire city.

Qin Ying’s eyesight was freakishly good now; viewing the whole place felt like staring down at a scale model in a real estate showroom.

She tried to find Han Lie.

But Han Lie wasn’t anywhere within her view. Instead, she spotted a dark alley tucked into a corner of the city.

A layer of black, gauze-like haze hung over it, gathering and scattering as it twisted into strange shapes.

At first, Qin Ying assumed it was just some bizarre local feature of the World in the Box.

Then she looked closer-and her hair stood on end.

It was a narrow alley piled with corpses.

Bodies were stacked layer upon layer in that dead-end passage. In the blazing heat of summer, they’d rotted to the point that maggots writhed through them.

The roiling black haze was flies.

Her improved vision had its downsides too. Qin Ying could even vaguely make out the outline of the corpse at the very top of the heap.

Someone had stripped it completely bare. With nothing left on it, she couldn’t tell if it had been a man or a woman, beautiful or ugly.

Only its eyes, bulging wide, and a mouth that wouldn’t close-like three dark holes.

Stick-thin limbs, and a belly bloated so high it looked ready to split.

Qin Ying’s stomach lurched.

She almost imagined she could smell the stench of decay. She hurriedly tore her gaze away and forced herself to breathe.

And then she saw something else.

Not far from the corpse-filled alley was a street.

Several stalls had been set up there.

Blank white cloth banners with no writing on them fluttered weakly under the scorching sun.

At the mouth of the street, Qin Ying saw three people locked in a struggle.

To be exact, two adults were dragging a half-grown child.

The child was skin and bones. He fought with everything he had, thrashing like a fish, but he couldn’t overpower two grown people.

They hauled him to a stall with a chopping board.

The board was smeared with dark, dried blood, and crooked iron hooks hung from a crossbeam.

No meat hung from the hooks, but even someone with no common sense could tell this was a butcher’s stall.

So what kind of meat did they sell?

A hoarse, desperate scream rang out: “Father!”

The boy stretched his arms toward his father, crying after the man’s back as he left without looking back, a half-sack of unhulled wheat slung over his shoulder.

“I’ll be good! I’ll do lots of work! I won’t say I’m hungry anymore!”

“Don’t sell me to be a Cairen-!”

By the time the sound drifted out of the box, it had turned thin and wavering, yet Qin Ying felt icy all over despite the height of summer.

Cairen-“vegetable people,” humans treated like produce and sold as meat.

Qin Ying wanted to reach in and stop them, but she remembered how she’d nearly been dragged into the box the last time she put her hand inside.

She was just about to panic and hunt for some tool she could use to save the boy when she suddenly saw a tiny figure sprinting toward the commotion.

He’d changed out of leather armor, wearing only a short black cloth jacket and trousers, but Qin Ying recognized him at once from his build.

It was Han Lie.

He seemed to have heard the cries and come to help too-only he couldn’t tell exactly where they were coming from.

Qin Ying shouted, “Han Lie! Follow my directions-go save him!”

Han Lie jolted mid-run, clearly startled by the voice that appeared out of nowhere.

He lifted his head toward the sky. He didn’t waste words-only said, “Many thanks, Supreme Deity!”

Then he sped up. Guided by Qin Ying’s urgent calls to turn left, then right, he charged straight into the Cairen Shop selling human flesh.