Chapter 62: To Protect Them, Please Kill Me!
Standing behind Gong Qian, Yu Xian looked at the motionless figure on the ground. "Hu Weijie! Think about your wife! Think about your daughter! Wake up!"
His nose twitched, and he noticed that the scent coming from Hu Weijie changed dramatically. Just moments ago, he had smelled like a wild beast, but right now, he smelled more like someone who had awakened from a long slumber.
A spark of hope appeared in Yu Xian's eyes. He continued calling out the man's name. "Hu Weijie! Hu Weijie! Hu Weijie!"
Hu Weijie slowly rose to his feet, his body flickering and warping like a glitched 3D model. One moment, a fox's head protruded from his shoulder. Next, his mouth transformed into a bird's beak. Then an arm would become a snake. Yet amid all the chaos, his face gradually became more and more like Hu Weijie's.
Hu Weijie looked at Yu Xian. "I am Hu Weijie, but I'm already dead."
Yu Xian and Gong Qian exchanged puzzled glances. Dead? He has clearly regained consciousness. Why, then, is he claiming to be dead?
Hu Weijie looked at the two of them with an utterly calm expression. "You're here to investigate Peng Zu, aren't you? Sorry. I know him by only that name. Beyond that, I know nothing."
Yu Xian fixed his gaze on Hu Weijie. "While that is part of it, your wife and daughter are incredibly worried about you. They came to the police hoping we could find you."
From Hu Weijie's tone, Yu Xian could sense that the man had already given up on life. It was the same tone his father had once carried when he, too, had longed for death. Perhaps because he understood that feeling all too well, Yu Xian instinctively tried to comfort him. He wanted to rekindle Hu Weijie's will to live.
With his head lowered, Hu Weijie muttered in a tone utterly devoid of any attachment to life, "Stop lying. They wouldn't worry about me. I'm just a failure. Someone entirely expendable... a placeholder."
Yu Xian shook his head. "They do care about you. I'm not lying. I don't know why you've misunderstood them, but they definitely love you."
He took out his phone. Opening a recording of his earlier conversation with Hu Xian'er and Hu Tu'er, he pressed play.
As the voices of the mother and daughter echoed through the air, Hu Weijie froze. Though not a single word in the recording explicitly mentioned love and neither of them had openly wept over his disappearance, connecting his wife's and daughter's words with fragments of their past daily life brought him a sudden, crashing epiphany.
—Dad is just a quiet person.
—He’s a bit of a wanderer.
Hu Weijie finally understood how his wife and daughter truly felt. So, that's how they see me.
It wasn't that his daughter didn't love him. She simply thought he was a quiet man and had grown accustomed to his silence. His wife viewed him as a restless soul, a wanderer, which was why she had always quietly accommodated him, indulging his stubbornness and his constant absences, not because she didn't love him.
He had been entirely trapped within a world of his own making, obsessing over the title of the Seven Heroes. To prove that he deserved the title of one of the Seven Heroes, he had been willing to pay any price. He had committed one foolish act after another, and in the end, he had destroyed himself.
But everything was too late. I understood it all far too late.
Black tears streamed from Hu Weijie's eyes. His body suddenly went berserk. A grotesque mass of chaotic, mismatched organs erupted from his lower torso. He stared at Yu Xian, crying out in grief and absolute despair, "Kill me, quick! This body is a monster. It cannot be allowed to exist in this world!"
As he had said earlier, Hu Weijie was already dead. The body standing before them was not his. It belonged to the Perfect Lifeform created by the man known as Peng Zu.
The day Hu Weijie injected himself with the drug was the day the Perfect Lifeform found him. Since he lacked the strength to fight back, the Perfect Lifeform had ultimately devoured him alive.
However, he had injected an enormous quantity of the drug beforehand, and the drug contained vast amounts of concentrated nutrient solution. Therefore, the Perfect Lifeform could not completely digest him in a short period of time.
During this digestion period, the Perfect Lifeform had also devoured the large number of foxes Hu Weijie had prepared for himself. As a result, demonic energy infected it, causing it to mutate. Driven by the influence of demonic energy, the Perfect Lifeform instinctively sought recognition. If it succeeded, it would become even stronger and flawless.
However, things had gone wrong. Yu Xian had mistaken the creature for Hu Weijie and repeatedly called out Hu Weijie's name. His actions, instead of allowing the Perfect Lifeform to complete its transformation, had inadvertently given Hu Weijie's lingering consciousness an opportunity to awaken.
Nevertheless, Hu Weijie knew all too well that the Perfect Lifeform was already instinctively fighting back. He couldn't hold on for much longer. Very soon, the Perfect Lifeform would obliterate his consciousness and transform into something far more terrifying. There was a chance it would even threaten all of Silver City, which was home to the two people he loved most, his wife and his daughter.
Hu Weijie plunged his hand into his chest, violently ripping his heart out, and screamed at Yu Xian and Gong Qian, "Kill me! Do it now!"
Yet, the instant he threw the heart away, a brand-new heart rapidly grew back within his chest cavity. Right upon this new heart, a chillingly cold, detached eye opened.
Hu Weijie tore at his own flesh with his hands, flinging chunks of meat everywhere. "Die... Just die!"
But no matter how hard he ripped and shredded, his body regenerated at a terrifying speed.
A hundred meters away, Yu Xian and Gong Qian watched the scene unfold, completely stupefied. Gong Qian’s face was a mask of sheer shock. "Why is he mutilating himself like that?"
Yu Xian stared at Hu Weijie with a conflicted expression. "I-I don't know. But it feels like he's trying to protect something precious to him. I can actually feel his desperation!"
The look in Hu Weijie's eyes was identical to the one his father had worn when he secretly sought death after being diagnosed with ALS. Without realizing it, Yu Xian clenched his fists. Does he also have someone he doesn't want to burden?
Gong Qian hesitated. "Should we stop him? The Peng Zu he mentioned should be the person we're looking for. If he can describe what that person looks like, our chances of finding him would be much higher."
At that moment, Hu Weijie let out another desperate roar. "Kill me! This body isn't mine! I was eaten by the monster! This is the monster's body! It's waking up!"
A new arm suddenly burst from his back and immediately grabbed the hand he was using to tear at his own chest, preventing him from ripping out his heart again.
From the moment Hu Weijie began mutilating himself until now, less than thirty seconds had passed. Both Yu Xian and Gong Qian were still shaken by what they had just heard.
This body doesn't belong to Hu Weijie? Its true owner is something else entirely?
A spark of clarity burst through Yu Xian's mind. He roared, "Vice-Captain! Cover me!
Countless silver threads surged forth and rapidly wove themselves into a suit of armor that covered him from top to bottom. Then, using a spatial bubble, he blinked to Hu Weijie's right side. "Hu Weijie! Don't let it interfere with me! Help me!"
A rogue arm immediately lunged to swat Yu Xian away, but Hu Weijie used another arm to grab and pin the uncontrolled limb.
Yu Xian snapped open the visor of his helmet, baring his fangs straight at Hu Weijie's neck. He sank his teeth into the flesh. Hu Weijie quickly cooperated, softening the skin in that area. Otherwise, given the creature's durability, Yu Xian's fangs wouldn't have been able to pierce its hide at all.
Hu Weijie had no idea what Yu Xian was trying to accomplish, but the two people before him were the only people left in this world whom he could trust. Even as he endured the sharp burst of pain from Yu Xian drinking his blood, he gritted his teeth and continued to fight back the limbs trying to strike Yu Xian down.
After consuming the Blood of Pangu, Yu Xian had acquired the rarest ability a vampire could awaken, one that allowed him to extract a target's memories through their blood. He had to harvest Hu Weijie’s memories before the man died to uncover the truth about Peng Zu. If they didn't eliminate Peng Zu once and for all, tragedies like this would keep happening indefinitely.
Right then, a gigantic arm transformed into a massive serpent and lunged toward Yu Xian with its jaws wide open. However, before it could touch him, Gong Qian's fist smashed it into the ground. She landed beside Hu Weijie and began to bound and leap, systematically breaking, shattering, and crushing every single rogue limb that Hu Weijie couldn't control.