The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 91: Strange Black Spots

He spat out a mouthful of blood, along with two teeth.

Now that Gao Yang had found a way to deal with his Talent, the scale of victory started tipping the other way.

Mad Red slowly straightened up, trembling all over as his eyes blazed with excitement and insanity. He cast away his whip and opened his arms with his head thrown back, breaking into loud laughter.

“Hahaha, hahahahaha...”

When he had finally laughed enough, he cocked his head and looked at Gao Yang.

Neither of them talked. With the blazing fire between them, the resentment and killing intent in their eyes settled down and solidified.

Five seconds later, they rushed at each other.

Mad Red reached toward Gao Yang’s chest with his right hand. While avoiding it, Gao Yang bent his left arm and hit Mad Red’s temple with his elbow.

Mad Red leaned backward, but then he felt a grip around his wrist. Gao Yang had clutched his right hand.

The reckless move caught Mad Red by surprise. His opponent had touched his right hand willingly!

Scoffing inwardly, Mad Red prepared to activate his Talent, only to be yanked toward Gao Yang by the clutch on his right wrist the way it had happened before, and Gao Yang’s fist slammed into Mad Red’s abdomen.

Stomach twisting, Mad Red staggered two steps back. He endured the pain and tried to activate his Talent again, but Gao Yang was already hitting him in the left face with a merciless spin kick. It was so powerful that Mad Red flew into the air and flipped involuntarily.

Gao Yang couldn’t afford to be complacent for a second, and he gave Mad Red no chance to even take a breath. As he continued to acquire Luck points at an increased rate, his Agility was rising more and more.

Mad Red had tried to activate his Talent many times, but he was never given the time. There was always a punch or a kick. And no matter how far he flew away, Gao Yang would always get to his side immediately and follow up with another attack.

A minute passed with Gao Yang’s one-sided abuse of Mad Red. The man had many of his muscles torn, his jaw dislocated, his ribs broken, and he was bleeding from his organs while suffering a concussion.

Gao Yang’s two hands were scraped and fractured as well.

Gao Yang seized every second and kept moving. He wouldn’t stop until he killed the man. However, being careful would only get him this far. Mad Red caught an opening while he was kicked into the air, and he tightened his right fist, activating his Talent.

Boom!

Gao Yang’s right hand exploded.

Blood splattered everywhere. Gao Yang’s right arm was now attached to half a palm, and all five fingers were missing.

The fingers were connected to the heart[1], and Gao Yang felt tremendous pain. However, he would happily lose an arm or even his life to get revenge, let alone a hand.

Now that his right hand got blown up, he didn’t have anything else to worry about.

Holding the bleeding stump, Gao Yang stalked up to Mad Red. The man lay prone on the ground, almost entirely paralyzed.

Gao Yang said with an icy expression, “Any last words?”

“It’s you...it’s all because of you...” Mad Red barely managed to string words together by moving his dislocated, bleeding chin, his voice furious and resentful. “My older sister died...”

“My sister, the best sister in the world... She wouldn’t have died if I got the Rune Circuit... With her dead...I have nothing...”

Mad Red’s eyes glinted with tears of heartbreak and despair, and he rambled unintelligibly, “It’s your fault... If not for you...Sister wouldn’t have died.”

“No, no...” His eyes dimmed, and he muttered to himself, “It’s not your fault... It’s all me, all because of my incompetence... That was what killed Sister... If only I were stronger, stronger still... Just a little stronger...”

Staring at the hateful and pitiful man, Gao Yang was just about to put the man out of misery when he smelled something familiar. He had noticed the same smell when Mad Red escaped in their previous clash.

He looked down and saw Mad Red holding a small syringe in his left hand, the needle already inserted into his thigh.

Gao Yang’s eyes widened.

The man wasn’t saying his last words, but buying time!

Strange black spots emerged throughout Mad Red’s body, growing in number and spreading like they were alive, until his entire body was covered.

“If I were stronger...Sister...” Mad Red stood up—or it would be more precise to describe it as him getting straightened by an invisible force.

It reminded Gao Yang of Old Man Li. Before the wanderer turned into a mutated monster, it had seemed like that he was injected with a mysterious power, and his body straightened like a mistake being fixed.

“She wouldn’t have died!” Mad Red screamed, his eyes melting and bleeding black vicious blood until there were only two empty sockets left.

He took a big step and swung his right fist. Gao Yang quickly dodged back. The fierce punch left a sharp cut on his nose bridge like a razor.

He would’ve lost the lower half of his face if he got hit.

Mad Rad didn’t immediately attack again after the punch. Instead, his body started seizing up eerily, and the explosive cracking sounds made it seem as if his every bone was getting shattered and reassembled.

Now taken over by black spots, Mad Red looked even thinner and more twisted, and his chest tightened into a spiral-shaped ‘generator’, supplying the different parts of his body with endless energy through the thick black vessels that were too many to count.

Finally, Gao Yang realized how Mad Red had made his escape last time even though he should’ve lost his ability to move. The man must have injected himself with the same solution, only the dosage had been smaller; this time, he went all-out.

“Sister...Sister...why did you die... Why did you abandon me...” Mad Red’s face twisted. It was difficult to tell whether he was crying out in pain or laughing maniacally, and his mind was slipping into insanity.

Mad Red lowered his head with his back hunch, his arms dangling uselessly.

A few seconds later, he lifted his head, staring at Gao Yang with black eye sockets. “Sister...Sister, I’m coming to save you...”

[Warning, you are in extremely great danger.]

[Luck acquisition rate increases to 5000 times.]

—What?!

It was too quick.

Before Gao Yang even realized it, Mad Red had already disappeared. And in between this thought and the next, a red palm grabbed onto Gao Yang’s face.

Shit!

Gao Yang almost stopped struggling, waiting for his head to explode, but that didn’t happen. Instead, the right hand simply held Gao Yang’s head in its grasp and slammed him backward.

Bam!

Overwhelming pain spread through Gao Yang’s back. When he realized it, he had already broken through the cement wall behind him.

His first reaction wasn’t fear, but relief. Relief that his head hadn’t split, and his body wasn’t broken.

Mad Red clutched on Gao Yang with his right hand and lifted him out of the rubbles.

Staring at him, he muttered, “Sister...you’re not Sister...”

Realization struck Gao Yang. The man had been overtaken by a mysterious power. He had become stronger, powerful to a terrifying degree, but he had also lost his Talent as an awakener and his consciousness.

Mad Red was more like a disoriented monster than anything, and he started muttering again.

“Sister...Sister, don’t leave me...”

“Human...”

“Sister...I’m scared, Sister... Save me, Sister...”

“Human, human...”

“Human, human, humanhumanhuman...”

Finally, the man disappeared entirely.

All that was left was a monster.

Mad Red’s hand penetrated Gao Yang’s chest, aiming at his heart. Due to the nightmare Gao Yang had had of Gao Xinxin turning into a monster and carving his heart out, he anticipated the move and managed to twist his body at the last second. The hand ended up penetrating Gao Yang’s lungs.

It was so painful that Gao Yang couldn’t even scream.

Did I lose?

Am I dying?

No.

I’ll be the victor!

1. According to the dictionary definition, the expression is used to describe a close connection, or a parent’s loving every child of theirs equally, but increasingly, many Chinese authors are using the phrase to mean that the fingers are particularly sensitive to pain. It may have something to do with the belief in Chinese medicine that the fingers are connected to particular internal organs via the meridian system, and diagnosis and treatment can be done accordingly. ?