From the moment this wild plan took shape in her mind, Lin Sanjiu knew the window for her counterattack would be brief.
When the fleshbound suddenly froze, that was her first signal.
"Hmm? Wha... what..."
The dominant head's voice trembled and wavered, quickly moving from the other end of the experience hall toward where it had swallowed the human body. Yes, it now sensed something was wrong, but it wouldn't—or couldn't—believe it without seeing for itself.
Lin Sanjiu's muscles were tensed, her eyes glinting with a cold light in the darkness, like a leopard waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The fleshbound had completely forgotten about her and didn't even bother to conceal the position of its dominant head. The large, wide face emerged from a curtain of dangling flesh, rushing toward the mass of flesh still enveloping the man's body. With a squelching sound, the flesh parted, revealing shredded clothing, indestructible Special Items, a flashlight crushed beyond recognition, and shoes and belts so deformed they were barely identifiable—all regurgitated back into the world.
But the man's body didn't fall out.
He was still there, or at least his general shape remained. Stripped of everything else, he was now just a bare body, back facing outward, his arms seemingly stretched out in an embrace toward the fleshbound. His head and front half had completely melted, fused into the fleshbound.
Several thick, steel-like veins extended from beneath the fleshbound's skin, piercing directly into where the man's face and chest used to be. Upon closer inspection, the veins could be seen pulsing faintly.
"This is..."
The dominant head's thick lips trembled violently. It glanced at the disfigured body, then quickly turned away, along with the layers of flesh behind it, rushing toward the pile of shredded clothes and items on the ground.
The experience hall echoed with a twisted, incoherent sound—a mix of crying, laughing, and howling, like a wolf caught in a fit of deranged laughter. Whatever it was saying, if it was saying anything at all, was impossible to understand.
It had clearly forgotten that someone who was just there was now gone.
"No, no, impossible..." The dominant head kept repeating the same words, its gaze flicking between the broken remnants on the floor and the body with the black smoke-covered head. The face contorted more and more, a grimace of confusion and fury. "This is me—this is me —"
Yet even as the fleshbound screamed, the thick veins connecting it to the man's body remained firmly embedded in his head, pulsing rhythmically, like a baby desperately sucking milk.
As if once it started, it couldn't stop. Driven by the deepest, darkest desires, this duoluozhong and the man within it were relentlessly consuming themselves.
"No, I'm over there, I'm over there..."
In a frantic swing, the dominant head drove the mound of flesh over to the other body. Due to the dim light in the hall, it pressed its nose almost against the man's chest. The small label on his chest was clear: the number 8.
As if fate wanted to relish its reaction, at that exact moment, the black smoke around the man's head suddenly vanished—not with the gradual dispersal of typical smoke, but in a blink, as though someone had wiped it away completely.
The dominant head stared at the unfamiliar face, caught between rage and despair, its throat gurgling until it let out a low, whimpering cry. "Old Sa... so it's really you, Old Sa..."
It was clear now that the one who had put the 8th worker to sleep was the mastermind's own ability. Because just as the mastermind was about to be absorbed into the fleshbound, the 8th worker began to wake up. His eyelids fluttered, and his head turned slightly.
"Old Sa? Are you waking up?" The dominant head suddenly raised its voice, a hint of joy flickering across its features. "Open your eyes. It's me, Xiao Chen!"
As it spoke, the layered mass beneath it crept toward the 8th worker, opening a dark, gaping maw beside his head, a predator poised to devour its prey. One more gulp, and the worker would undoubtedly become another part of the fleshbound. 𐍂ᴀɴŎꞖĚs
In that instant, realizing it could consume a familiar consciousness while awake, the fleshbound was overwhelmed with uncontrollable joy, momentarily forgetting its own predicament.
When Lin Sanjiu leapt down from the ceiling's light fixture, the fleshbound was still lost in the surge of emotions, only realizing too late the sound of wind behind its head.
By the time it felt hands gently covering its head on both sides, it was already too late.
That "overused" ability the fleshbound had dismissed ended up being its undoing. Between Lin Sanjiu's hands, the dominant head exploded into a spray of bone shards and flesh.
At the same time, the 8th worker's scream echoed through the experience hall. His luck was debatable; the first thing he saw upon waking was a massive duoluozhong head exploding in front of him. As bits of flesh and blood flew, Lin Sanjiu landed on the fleshbound's collapsing body, pushed off with a kick, and landed on solid ground. She grabbed the worker by the collar, yanked him up, and barked, "Shut up!"
Choked by her command, the worker's scream died with a strangled hiccup. He stared at Lin Sanjiu, eyes widening in horror.
Lin Sanjiu smirked coldly. "Oh, you recognize me now?"
The worker's face twitched violently, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets. He managed to twist his head slightly away from her grip, glancing fearfully at the crumbling flesh mound beside them. In a trembling voice, he stammered, "Th-this... how... it wasn't me, I was just playing along... I didn't know..."
Everything else could wait, but there was one answer Lin Sanjiu needed immediately.
"First, tell me, does experiencing a duoluozhong have any lasting effects on humans?"
The worker froze, seemingly surprised this was her first question. As a staff member, he should have been familiar with this common query from visitors. It seemed to anchor him back to reality, and he quickly blurted out, "Y-yes!"
"What is it?"
He recited the answer like a textbook: "After immersing oneself deeply in a duoluozhong's mental world, it's essentially like experiencing two completely different personalities and worldviews... The duoluozhong's mental world is formed purely from the dark side of human nature, which shares a foundational link with human psychology. Because of this, even a brief experience can leave long-lasting effects..."
Lin Sanjiu grew impatient with his tour-guide-style explanation and cut in. "What kind of effects?"
"Some characteristics of the duoluozhong, like their way of thinking or how they perceive people and problems, c-could stay in the human brain..." the 8th worker stammered. "The more recent the experience, the stronger the effect..."
Lin Sanjiu didn't realize she was letting out a small sigh of relief.
So that's what it was. It made much more sense now.
The duoluozhong named Yao Han couldn't have known the tour guide's actual personality. No matter how good its acting skills were, how could it know exactly what to imitate?
Sometimes the guide acted like herself, and sometimes she displayed jarring, unfamiliar behavior... It turned out to be the influence of the duoluozhong. From another perspective, since the person inside the guide's body was still her, she didn't bother hiding these inconsistencies. After all, who would feel the need to prove they were themselves?
At Lin Sanjiu's repeated calls, the tour guide emerged slowly from a corridor, cautious and frightened, like a small animal peeking out of its burrow. In a trembling voice, she asked, "Really? S-so those thoughts in my head... they're because of the duoluozhong's influence?"
Lin Sanjiu didn't ask her what those thoughts were. When the guide brought them up, her face turned pale, as if those thoughts disturbed her deeply. She looked too drained to even repeat them.
"Why would anyone want to experience that kind of thing?" Her face twisted in disgust, one hand clutching her chest. "I... I wish I could dig those thoughts, those memories... out of my head. Why? Why would people like you..."
The 8th worker, still held by his collar, hadn't resisted at all, as if he didn't have the strength. At her words, he muttered, "You might not understand... but a lot of people come specifically for that..."
"I don't get it," the tour guide blurted out, echoing Lin Sanjiu's thoughts. "Why?"
"B-because dark things are more destructive!" the 8th worker whimpered, his face contorted. "I'm a coward by nature. The reason I agreed to R Chen's suggestion to secretly experience a duoluozhong was that I wanted to become more ruthless, more intimidating... Besides, when you think like a duoluozhong, who can hurt you? I even heard some people learned duoluozhong abilities from the experience!"
He hiccuped, then continued, "I didn't expect that once I got in there, even though I knew who I was, all those concepts—what I could or couldn't do, what was right or wrong—just disappeared. My consciousness was like water; if it poured into a square pool, it naturally took the shape of a square. It wouldn't even think of becoming a circle, you know what I mean?"
To her surprise, Lin Sanjiu found that she did understand.
She let go and gave him a slight push. The worker staggered back a couple of steps.
"I didn't mean to hurt you, I swear. I'll never do it again... I'll pin the whole thing on R Chen — no, this was all his idea to begin with! I won't say a word about you, please, just don't hurt me..."