Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The quiet tap of footsteps seemed unnaturally loud in the still room, like the ticking of a clock counting down the moments.
Fang Yuan stepped inside, the darkness seeming to bend and twist around him. His gaze never wavered, as he fixed his eyes on Jiaying.
She lay in the bed, her body small and trembling.
Her eyes flickered up to meet his, that last desperate hope still clinging to her—like a sinking person grasping at a thread.
Her voice cracked through the silence, a faint whisper: "Yuan'er..."
He didn't answer, just walked closer, each movement smooth but cold.
His fingers brushed lightly through her hair, slow, almost too tender. But, there was no affection in the gesture.
"You never understood," his voice was calm, almost distant.
"You thought you could meddle in someone's business."
"But that's the thing about people like you."
"You never realize that everything is always out of your control."
He paused, his dark eyes locking with hers, a heavy silence hanging between them.
"You think you could save your youngest son,"
"But... you never would."
Leaning in, his breath cold against her skin, he murmured, low and dangerous, "I'm not here to scold you... Mother."
His fingers slid down to her neck, just barely touching, a slight pressure that made her breath hitch. He could snap it with the smallest shift of his hand—she could feel that.
But he didn't.
He pulled back just enough to look into her eyes, his voice still steady.
"You're nothing but a fleeting thing in a world that cares for nothing."
"And the irony is—you will never even know your fate."
"You'll die thinking you could've done something, but you never could."
The air around them grew cold, the silence pressing in as though the room itself was closing in, suffocating her.
Fang Yuan's gaze was unwavering, his expression unchanging.
His lips curled, almost imperceptibly, a smile that wasn't one at all, more like a grimace, as he leaned closer.
"Don't worry."
The worn floorboards creaked under his weight as Fang Yuan settled beside her still form.
"I'll make it quick."
His expression was a placid mask of pure focus.
With a deliberate motion, he took out a single Gu worm from within his aperture.
His fingertips slowly pinched the carapace of a creature that was not quite a scorpion.
Its segmented body was the color of a week-old bruise, and its barbed tail curled in a loop.
This was the Love Life Separation Gu, the most poisonous Gu within it's rank.
Without ceremony, he pressed the Love Life Separation Gu against Jiaying's slack cheek.
A subtle flex of his will was all it took.
The Gu twitched, then became a thing of pure, horrifying purpose. It scuttled, legs like needles, across her skin, seeking the warm, wet darkness.
It pried her pale lips apart with a grim mechanical motion and vanished into the insides of her mouth.
Fang Yuan's hand followed, his touch incongruously gentle. He smoothed the damp hair from her forehead, his palm a dry, cool contrast to her fevered skin.
"It's okay," he murmured, the words empty of comfort.
His caress moved to cradle her jaw.
"Die now."
The sentence triggered something inside her.
Jiaying's body arched off the bed, a violent, seismic jerk as if her spine were a snapped cable.
A wet, choking rattle tore from her throat, muffled by the Gu within.
Her eyes rolled back until only the veined whites were visible, swimming with ruptured capillaries.
Tremors seized her, not like a seizure, but like something was systematically tearing her muscles from the inside.
The ghastly transformation was visible on the surface: a virulent, necrotic green bloomed beneath her skin, spreading from her core like ink in water.
It was the poison at work, a deadly poison that seized her cells and strangled them.
Her capillaries burst, painting the green with a lacework of subcutaneous crimson.
The air filled with the sour tang of bile, of voided bowels, and the coppery stench of internal hemorrhage.
Soon, the violent thrashing subsided into feeble twitches, then an absolute, profound stillness.
The greenish pallor fixed into a permanent, waxy hue.
Fang Yuan withdrew his hand from her hair, letting her head loll to the side, as a final strand of saliva fell onto the pillows on the side.
But, his work was only half done.
From his aperture, he took out two more Gu.
The first was a fat, brown earthworm, its body glistening with a thin layer of acidic mucus.
The second was a flat, carapaced beetle, its antennae twitching.
He placed the earthworm at the entrance of her nostril and positioned the beetle at the rim of her right ear canal.
Instantly, the earthworm contracted and expanded, pushing itself forward with a slow, peristaltic determination until it was entirely swallowed by her nasal cavity.
While the beetle's hard legs clicked faintly against cartilage before it, and it too, disappeared into the silent auditory passage, leaving only the faintest trace of iridescent slime behind.
"Go."
It seemed like Fang Yuan's command created a trigger.