Gou Zai Punishment Division

Inside the air-raid shelter, water cascaded down the arched dome.

The sound of dripping water echoed in the empty tunnel, reaching into the endless darkness.

The air was thick with a deathly stillness that hadn't moved for decades, carrying a weight that was almost tangible.

Chen Mo swallowed hard, his throat dry, and a bitter, scalding sensation, like swallowing a mouthful of cheap liquor, rose from the back of his tongue.

He put away the tattered black umbrella.

The cold, black water seeped into the cheap leather shoes through the seams.

He carried the heavy box of relief supplies and walked at a steady pace into the depths of the area.

The footsteps stopped.

The supply box was placed on a cement block covered with moss.

A thick, dark red substance was slowly seeping from the bottom of the box, forming a thin thread that stretched out of the black water.

A very faint cigar aroma, mixed with the smell of blood, drifted across the water.

The fishy smell was exactly the same as the one he had first smelled on that ghost train, which had almost made him vomit stomach acid back then, but now he only felt a numb nausea.

Chen Mo silently twitched the corner of his mouth and muttered under his breath, "She adapted really quickly..."

Chen Mo did not open the box.

He lifted his foot, and with a "bang".

They kicked the bait directly into the accumulated water deep inside the air-raid shelter.

The dull thud of water splashing echoed out.

The water was still for two seconds.

Then, a series of murky bubbles surged up from the depths.

A sound similar to fingernails slowly scraping against rusty iron scraped against the water, creeping slowly along the ripples.

Finally, it turned into a woman's sob squeezed out from a broken bellows.

The silt at the bottom of the water was stirred up, carrying a dull, fishy stench.

A sticky, wet sound approached along the base of the wall.

Chen Mo's back was pressed tightly against the cold wall.

Under the dim moonlight, a swollen, dark shadow crawled out from the dark current.

She was wearing faded, tattered overalls, and her wet, black hair was wrapped around her entire body.

The face was originally a flat patch of rotting flesh. Chen Mo's breath caught in his throat, and he instinctively wanted to take a half step back, but reason forcefully suppressed the trembling in his legs. He gripped the flashlight tightly and gritted his teeth, pressing his body even deeper into the shadows of the wall.

But the moment it smelled the cigar on the water's surface, an irregular, bloody gash suddenly tore open in the center of the flat, rotten flesh.

A mournful roar, accompanied by black water, squeezed out from the outward-curving crack.

As if searching for the source of the scent, the skin on her cheeks and even her neck began to crack silently. Several cloudy, whitish eyeballs moved eerily in places that didn't belong to eyes, staring intently at the supply crate that had fallen into the water.

The faceless woman, dragging her twisted joints, crawled rapidly toward Chen Mo.

The "zero" on the sole of his foot transformed into a thin, black film that tightened against Chen Mo's skin.

The faceless woman passed by Chen Mo.

Her swollen, rotting shoulders were almost touching Chen Mo's calves.

She suddenly stopped.

The twisted joints made a teeth-grinding grinding sound, and the rotten flesh face covered with everted cracks and eyeballs slowly approached Chen Mo's face.

The putrid black liquid dripped onto Chen Mo's leather shoes. At such close range, Chen Mo could clearly see the cloudy white film over those eyeballs.

She twitched her bloody mouth, carefully sniffing at Chen Mo's nose.

Chen Mo held his breath, letting the strong stench of the corpse hit him, not daring to even twitch his eyes.

A long, deathly silence.

The faceless woman's several eyeballs on her neck moved eerily, staring intently at Chen Mo in the shadows.

She remained "looking" at Chen Mo, her body dragging backward with sticky steps.

She stared at Chen Mo while letting out a roar and rushed straight to the bottom of the water.

Only after the sounds of tearing and biting underwater faded away did Chen Mo turn around.

His stiff shoulders slumped slightly, and cold sweat had already soaked through the lining of his uniform.

The faint light of the flashlight shone on the mottled wall.

The red painted slogans of the old textile factory were destroyed by countless deep, bone-revealing black scratches.

Those weren't claw marks from a monster going berserk.

Rather, it is a worker trying to maintain his sanity in absolute darkness, carving rows of tally marks with his fingernails.

At the end of countless bloody and mangled "正" characters, half a name was almost pierced through the cement.

Inside were congealed, blackened scabs—that was the section chief's surname.

Chen Mo stood in front of the wall, his fingertips hovering lightly over the various engravings.

Out of habit as an archivist, he subconsciously began to calculate the "workload" in his mind.

Wearing down fingernails, breaking joints, and carving thousands of bloody marks on a cement wall—this must have been a physically demanding job that lasted for at least half a month without sleep.

That old dog, the section chief, even dares to renege on the attendance records of the dead.

He silently tugged at the corners of his dry mouth and withdrew his hand.

The scratch marks continued downwards, disappearing into a collapsed dead end at the deepest part of the tunnel.

There was a moldy old military overcoat piled up there.

Chen Mo walked over and lifted the thick cotton cloth.

Underneath the coat was a bulky, rusty mechanical typewriter.

The keys and gears, corroded by decades of moisture, had long since rusted into a lifeless lump of iron.

Beneath the base, half of the "Special Materials Allocation List" was pressed down, softened by moisture.

A wooden hairpin was hooked along the edge of the paper.

The end of the hairpin was repeatedly polished on the rough cement floor, turning it into a sharp weapon covered in blood.

Chen Mo expressionlessly aligned the scraps of paper, folded them together with the hairpin, and neatly stuffed them into the hidden pocket of his robe.

Next to the typewriter was a brass tube covered in verdigris.

The bronze plaque reads "Civil Defense Confidential Information Upstream Line".

Chen Mo groped in the dark and rolled up a rough piece of official paper.

He placed his fingers on the row of rusted cast iron keyboard.

Chen Mo pressed down gently with his fingers.

There was no sound of metal shattering; the rust continued to grip the gears tightly. But the cast iron button sank in silently and smoothly.

The sensation from my fingertips was so hollow it sent chills down my spine.

"Click...click..."

The heavy lead type struck out a few lines of cold, bureaucratic writing:

Reason: Unauthorized use of special materials in the North City Civil Defense Project

"Directive: Initiate the liquidation process immediately. All deities must recuse themselves; those who disobey will be stripped of their divine status."

Signed: Department of Punishments.

Chen Mo rolled the official documents into a tube and stuffed it into a brass capsule.

Pressing down the mechanical pump with one hand, the exhaust valve emitted a sound similar to a patient's long sigh of relief.

Bang.

The brass tube wall vibrated.

This inexplicable death transfer order was swallowed up without a trace into the dark network of pipes.

After doing all this, Chen Mo quietly let go of her hand.

The wildly beating heart in my chest gradually regained its steady rhythm at this moment.

Rainwater dripped down the vents.

He stretched out his hand, letting the cold winter rain wash away the ink and rust from his fingertips.

He reopened the black umbrella whose ribs were deformed.

Behind them, the sounds of tearing and biting underwater grew increasingly frenzied; it was the imminent explosion of a battle between gods and demons.

He had a slightly hunched back, like a tired clerk who had just finished a night shift.

We retreated step by step into the deeper rainy night, following a seemingly safe blind spot.

He walked steadily, his footsteps muffled by the rain.

But he didn't look down.

In the depths of that muddy puddles, the edges of his leather shoe prints were slowly seeping outwards and swelling.

Little by little, it transformed into a bloated, non-human silhouette with translucent webbed feet.

The rain quickly covered up the unusual sight.