He just broke up with his girlfriend and is already living with the devilish rich girl.

Bai Ziheng stood in front of the dilapidated tenement building, squinting at the six-story old building in front of him.

The plaster on the wall was peeling badly, revealing the dark red bricks underneath.

Bed sheets, thermal underwear, mops, and several strings of dried red peppers were hanging on the railings of each floor's corridor.

The air was filled with the fishy smell of the market closing up shop, mixed with the aroma of garlic sizzling in someone's wok.

But this excitement had nothing to do with him.

He just stood there, completely out of place with everything around him.

The sounds and smells all avoided him, unable to touch him.

Just then, a scream suddenly came from above.

"Someone jumped off a building—!!"

The sound was so sharp and piercing that it instantly silenced the noise in the entire building.

The old woman peeling garlic trembled slightly. The opera on the radio on the third floor was still playing softly, but all the talking stopped.

Bai Ziheng raised his head.

A woman was standing on the edge of the sixth-floor rooftop.

She was wearing a floral dress, the hem of which was fluttering wildly in the wind.

She was holding a child in her arms, wrapped in a faded red swaddling cloth.

The woman's hair was loose, obscuring most of her face and making her expression impossible to discern.

His mind went blank.

The next second, the woman took a step forward.

She looked into his eyes, and then, standing directly in the spot where he was standing, she missed a step.

Her floral dress tumbled in the air, and the red swaddled baby slipped from her arms and flew away.

It was spinning in mid-air, half a meter away from her.

The woman's body crashed onto the clothes rack on the second floor, bending the iron pipe and making a piercing metallic sound.

The swaddled baby landed before her, making a dull "thud".

Then there are women.

A dark red stain spread across the cement floor, slowly seeping outwards along the gaps between the floor tiles.

Her floral dress was soaked in blood and clung to her contorted body.

Her hair was scattered in a pool of blood.

The swaddled baby landed right next to her without making a sound.

Bai Ziheng's hands were trembling.

He looked down at the woman.

She's not completely dead yet.

Her neck was twisted at a frightening angle, and her face was directly facing him.

His face was covered in blood, and his lips were moving as if he were saying something.

Then she laughed, a laugh that sent a chill down Bai Ziheng's spine all the way to the back of his head.

Because she was laughing in his voice.

He heard his own laughter coming from her mouth.

Hoarse, deep, with a smoky voice.

"You can't save anyone..."

Bai Ziheng's heart was pounding like a drum.

A voice in my head was screaming wildly, "Move! Move! Go ahead and tear it apart, bite it to pieces!"

But he couldn't move.

His feet seemed rooted to the ground; he couldn't move a single finger.

That feeling was all too familiar.

He felt the same way ten years ago when he stood at the entrance to the principal's office where his sister was kneeling.

To avoid being expelled from school, the older sister knelt there and apologized to people.

There was a fire burning in my chest, stuck in my throat, with nowhere to go but to burn myself.

The swaddling cloth tore.

A hand reached out. It was small, bluish-gray, with long, sharp fingernails on its five fingers.

"That's enough, meow!"

A hand reached out from behind and grabbed the back of his collar.

Bai Ziheng was pulled down from behind by a force, and what he saw before him was...

Apartment building, blood, woman, swaddling clothes.

They were all twisted and deformed, as if they had been kneaded into a ball.

Then, with a "whoosh," it was all gone.

He tilted his head back from the ice water in the washbasin.

Water splashed all over the ground.

Ice water streamed down his chin and neck, his soaked T-shirt clinging to his body.

He was panting heavily, his throat filled with the taste of rust.

My vision was still blurry; everything looked like it was through a layer of mist.

"……Ha ha--"

"How are you, meow? Can you still take it?"

The cat squatted down beside them, clutching a towel it had just pulled out of the cold water.

The two cats' ears were turned back, and their tails were pacing nervously on the floor.

Her cat-like eyes were wide open, staring straight at him.

"no."

Bai Ziheng wiped the water off his face and braced his hands on the edge of the basin.

"These grievances are harder to digest than I imagined."

"You're too careless, meow."

The cat tapped its tail on the floor, its tone unusually serious.

"The hyena from last time was an enemy you faced head-on. Its obsession had a vessel, a goal, resentment, and unwillingness to accept defeat, but at least it knew what it wanted."

"This time, the aggregate of resentment is completely different. It's dozens of people who were dragged into the building by cursed beings and tortured to death. If you swallow it all at once, of course your stomach will burst, meow."

Bai Ziheng remained silent.

He absorbed the hyena core smoothly last time.

Although the hyena was an A-rank anomaly, he could communicate with it and understand why it was fighting.

The absorption process is more like a battle.

After the fight, he took away the power, and the opponent was finally free.

But this aggregate of resentment is not a living being, it never has been.

They are the dead trapped inside the building after being devoured by the cursed creature.

Their obsessions have long been crushed into fragments by time, leaving behind no complete consciousness and no clear emotions.

There was only instinctive pain and fear, resentment, and the desire to live.

He tried, just like last time, to enter that dark space of consciousness.

But there was nothing there for him to talk to.

Only countless faceless faces emerged from the darkness, surrounding him, their mouths opening and closing without making a sound.

He wanted to ask them what they wanted, but he couldn't bring himself to ask.

Because Bai Ziheng knew what they wanted.

They just wanted to survive.

The answer was too simple, so simple that he had no way to respond.

The dead cannot be brought back to life.

He understands this principle, and so do they, which is why those mouthless faces are forever silent.

He has a huge stomach that can devour everything, and fragments of domineering power.

There was a monster imprisoned in the abyss waiting to solve all his troubles.

But he lacked the ability to bring the dead back to life.

He couldn't possibly stand in that darkness and shout something like, "I will bear the burden of everything for you."

Then golden light descended from the sky, and everyone passed away peacefully in smiles.

That approach might work in comics and novels, but he's not the protagonist in a comic.

He can't even bear the burden of his own karma.

"...Human obsessions are truly terrifying things."

Bai Ziheng said in a low, hoarse voice.

"This is only a small fragment you've touched."

The cat then draped the towel over the edge of the basin and shook the water off its hands.

"The boss absorbed most of the resentment for you, but that tiny bit almost burned your brain."

"I know."

Bai Ziheng leaned against the wall, looking up at the shaky fluorescent light tube on the ceiling.

The pale light from the basement shone on his face, illuminating the faint bluish-gray under his eyes.

If he cannot fully absorb this aggregate of resentment, his strength will not be able to improve.