Tianjin, starting with unorthodox methods to achieve immortality

Chen Mo worked alone for half a day, and it wasn't until the sun was about to set that he finally moved all his things to the dormitory.

Because he had just made a contribution, Director Sun arranged a single room for him this time.

The inspection bureau's dormitory is in the backyard. You pass through a courtyard with two sycamore trees, and it's the two-story building on the north side.

The canteen of the inspection bureau is located on the first floor.

He carried his luggage up the stairs next to him. The stairwell was piled with broken furniture, covered in dust.

The room was very small.

The room was about ten paces square, with a wooden plank bed against the wall, covered with a thin mattress.

There was a two-drawer table by the bed, its surface polished to a shine by being coated with tung oil.

The windows were covered with old newspapers, and the light that came in was grayish-white, making the room somewhat dark.

There was a musty, damp smell in the air; it was clear that no one had lived there for a long time.

Chen Mo tried to push the window open.

The window frame was stuck, and he had to use some force to push it open a crack.

The wind squeezed in, carrying the dampness of the river.

Outside the window is a small patch of wasteland in the backyard, overgrown with weeds. Beyond that is a low wall, and beyond that is the river.

The river wasn't wide, and on the opposite bank were some low-lying houses with smoke rising from their chimneys, a bluish-gray color that turned pale gold in the setting sun.

Two small boats were moored on the riverbank, with wooden oars across the gunwales, but no one was there.

He leaned against the windowsill and looked out for a while, feeling somewhat at ease.

Suddenly, I remembered my university days in my previous life, when I also lived in a dormitory.

He was taking a nap on the top bunk while his adopted sons played video games below.

The old ceiling fan overhead creaked and groaned from morning till night.

Back then, I always felt that time was passing too slowly, that the dormitory was too small, and that the fan was too noisy.

But now, looking back across these decades, it has all become a homesickness that can never be returned to.

Chen Mo stared blankly for a while, then sat back down on the bedside.

The pale golden light outside the window was fading, the river was darkening, and the smoke from the chimneys on the opposite bank was dissipating.

The room grew increasingly dark.

He pulled the lump of flesh out of his pocket.

It's still warm.

His body was yearning, as if there was something in there that he desperately needed.

It's an indescribable feeling; it's not hunger, it's not craving, it's an emptiness that seeps from the very marrow of your bones.

It's as if the body knows what it's lacking, and that it's been lacking it for a long time.

Chen Mo hesitated for a moment before stuffing the lump of meat into his mouth.

It didn't have the fishy smell I expected, nor did it taste like meat.

The moment it enters your mouth, it turns into warm juice that flows down your throat on its own, without needing to be swallowed.

He didn't even have time to taste it before it was already in his stomach.

Then, he heard his own heartbeat.

Boom!Boom!Boom!

Each blow felt like a heavy, loud slam into my eardrums.

Something is moving under the skin, climbing up the bones one by one.

He closed his eyes.

In the darkness, something is opening its eyes.

----------

The basement of Xikai Church.

The basement was more spacious than I had imagined.

Countless sticky threads hung from the dome, gleaming with a dark silver luster in the candlelight.

The spider web was covered with white egg sacs, some of which were already shriveled, while others were trembling slightly.

The silk threads converge at the deepest shrine, where a colossal spider statue sits.

The statue is entirely black, with its eight limbs deeply embedded in the wooden base of the shrine.

The surrounding stone walls are covered with niches of all sizes, densely packed, stretching from the ground all the way to the dark heights beyond sight.

Each niche contained a small skeleton, some yellowed and brittle, others still retaining their soft curves.

The baby's skull drooped slightly, as if it were asleep.

Andrei and Joseph knelt before the shrine, their blurry shadows reflected on the smooth stone floor.

The bishop did not turn around.

He was wearing a dark red ceremonial robe, his back to them, and was gently brushing away the dust that had accumulated at the feet of the statue with a long-handled silver brush.

"The people from the Bureau of Strange Things came this afternoon." The bishop's voice was very soft, as if he were talking about something insignificant.

He said that Xikai Church has always kept to itself and that he hopes what happened last night will not happen again.

Andrei and Joseph knelt before the shrine, not daring to raise their heads or respond.

They certainly knew what "last night's events" referred to.

The bishop finally stopped what he was doing.

He gently placed the silver brush on the edge of the shrine and turned around.

In the candlelight, his face was still human, but his eyes were not.

Where the eye sockets were originally, eight pairs of jet-black compound eyes were now densely packed together.

There were no whites of the eyes, no pupils, only endless darkness, and sixteen tiny points of light within that darkness.

All those eyes turned at the same time, looking at the two people kneeling on the ground.

Andrei stopped breathing, and cold sweat began to bead on his forehead.

"In a while, the headquarters will send three priests over."

Andrei suddenly raised his head, a glint of light flashing in his eyes.

Three?

Great.

He lowered his eyes, and a slow smile curved his lips.

When the time comes, as long as there is a priest to cooperate with him, even if that kid grows wings, he won't be able to escape his grasp.

"News has come from the Moon Worship Cult that their covert measures may have taken effect..."

When the time comes, as long as there is a priest to cooperate with him, even if that kid grows wings, he won't be able to escape his grasp.

"News has come from the Moon Worship Cult that their covert measures may have taken effect..."

The bishop was speaking when his face, which had always been as calm as still water, suddenly lost all color.

Sixteen eyes passed over Andrei and Joseph, casting their gaze in a certain direction in the void.

"The aura of divine transformation has vanished."

--------

Inside the dormitory, Chen Mo's situation was not good.

The boundless essence of life surged wildly within him like boiling magma, causing the Painted Skin Demon Skin to go completely berserk after being stimulated.

The face changes drastically at a frequency that is difficult to detect with the naked eye.

From a beautiful young girl twisted into a withered old man, and then from an old man exploded into a burly man with a bushy beard, every face was screaming silently.

His back arched violently like a shrimp, and a series of popping sounds like bones breaking came from under his skin.

After a few moments of calm, eight bloody holes suddenly burst open in the flesh below the shoulder blade.

Chen Mo screamed in agony as eight pale white bone spurs burst out of his back, like eight giant white bone spears piercing out of his body.

They grow wildly the moment they detach from the body, instantly transforming into eight terrifying arthropods covered with jet-black bony carapaces.

Each one was as thick as a baby's arm, almost reaching the ceiling in length, and its edges were covered with sharp, barbed bone spurs.

The arthropods crashed down with a deafening roar!

The bed frame shattered into countless fragments with a loud crash, and all four bedposts broke off at the base.

The iron bed frame collapsed as if struck by a giant hammer, the twisted metal emitting a piercing noise.

After an unknown amount of time, Chen Mo's face froze on his own image, but a more terrifying change occurred deep within his eyes.

The pupil suddenly split open, and the eyeball instantly split into hundreds of tiny compound eye particles, densely filling the entire eye socket.

Chen Mo let out a long roar, and eight skeletal limbs on his back stretched out simultaneously, their tips like spears piercing into the wall. The brick and stone wall was easily pierced through like tofu, and rubble fell down in a flurry.

With all eight limbs exerting force simultaneously, the entire body is lifted high and suspended in mid-air.

He hung there, no longer resembling a human, but a monster that had just shed its human skin.