The city path fell into a brief silence.
Dawn was approaching, and the people startled awake by the commotion had already climbed out of their beds along both sides of the path. Some lit lanterns, others pulled back their curtains. The long corridor remained dim and dusty, but there was enough light for everyone to clearly see the middle-aged woman in the midst of her transformation.
She wasn't evolving; any posthuman could tell at a glance.
The typical signs of evolution, such as fainting, trembling, or loss of control, were entirely absent. She didn't even seem aware that her arm had suddenly grown to an impossible length and continued talking to her neighbor. "So then I thought, no, that won't work, so I went back to her..."
The middle-aged woman paused, seemingly struck by the sudden silence that had engulfed the corridor.
"What's wrong?" she asked, puzzled as she looked at her neighbor, then at Lin Sanjiu and the others. "What happened to you all?"
As she spoke, she seemed to want to turn around to see why everything behind her had gone quiet. When she turned her head, it smoothly rotated 180 degrees on her neck, the back of her head, covered in hair, now facing her chest. "Why are you all staring at me?"
Lin Sanjiu heard Eight-Heads De gulp as he searched for something to say. That tiny sound, suddenly breaking the silence, seemed to draw the woman's attention like the scent of blood attracts a predator. Her head shifted slightly toward Eight-Heads De's position.
In the next instant, Lin Sanjiu grabbed Eight-Heads De by the shoulder and yanked him backward, flipping him onto the ground.
The middle-aged woman's head hovered over where Eight-Heads De had just been standing. Her eyes fixated on the man lying on the ground, then shifted toward Lin Sanjiu, and back again to Eight-Heads De.
A trace of confusion and fear finally crossed her face. "What's happening to me? I thought about it, and then I came here so quickly..."
As if remembering something, she slowly turned her head back.
Her elongated neck stretched across a pottery workshop, two racks draped with fabric, a home belonging to a pair of siblings, and a room with skateboards hanging on the wall. Veins pulsed beneath her skin.
"She's mutating!" someone's voice—it was unclear whether it belonged to a posthuman—exploded in the corridor. The shout jolted everyone back to their senses. Lin Sanjiu's mind snapped into action, and she summoned the black scale she had torn from the lake-bottom fish. It had a round opening just the right size for gripping. As she prepared to charge at the woman's suspended neck, a hand suddenly grabbed her.
She didn't need to look to know who it was.
"Wait!" Eight-Heads De shouted frantically. "If we draw blood, it changes everything. Let's try to capture her first..."
Was he so blinded by his ideals that he couldn't see the reality before him? Lin Sanjiu was about to argue when the middle-aged woman seemed to realize something. Her neck retreated rapidly, but the elongated part of her body wouldn't retract. It swayed uncontrollably in the air like a snake carrying a human head.
"Wait, wait..."
Other posthumans didn't share Eight-Heads De's hesitation. Just as he turned to address the crowd, a flash of cold light streaked through the air, aimed directly at the arm still stretched across the corridor—
"Stop!" Eight-Heads De's shout came a moment too late.
The cold light sliced cleanly through the arm. A small section with the hand still attached flew into the air, while the larger part of the limb fell to the ground. Ṝ𝓪NŐВЕ𝐒
In that fraction of a second, Lin Sanjiu instinctively waited for a gush of blood from the severed limb. If not blood, then at least the viscous fluid of a duoluozhong.
Immediately, a torrent of arms sprayed out from the severed limb. Like a massive surge of liquid, the multitude of arms filled the air in an instant. A dense cluster of writhing limbs, resembling countless sea anemones, surged silently toward the posthuman who had been brushing his hair just moments ago.
The man, whose combat ability was low, had barely scrambled to his feet when the horrifying tide of arms engulfed the ground where he was fleeing. He stumbled and fell, and in a silent frenzy, the swarm of arms descended on him like a dark cloud. Before he could let out a scream, a rapid, metallic pattering sound erupted, like raindrops striking a metal sheet.
He looked up, stunned.
The black scale, nearly half as tall as Lin Sanjiu, wavered in mid-air under the impact of the flailing arms. It had intercepted the onslaught, saving the man's life. Lin Sanjiu had flung the scale forward using Higher Consciousness just in time, though she lacked the precision of direct muscle power.
"Get over here!" she shouted to the man, then turned and yelled down the corridor. "Don't cut her—"
The words caught in her throat.
In the brief moment she had focused on saving the man, the middle-aged woman's head had already fallen to the ground. The severed stump of her neck wavered, swaying out from her chest cavity as though contemplating its next move.
The decision came quickly. Countless tiny necks sprouted rapidly from the wound. Each new neck ended in a miniature head, every one bearing the same face as the woman on the ground.
They all looked confused. Their mouths opened in unison, brows furrowed, and their combined humming voices vibrated through the corridor.
"Strange as it is, this feels pretty good."
"T-this..." The man who had been brushing his hair staggered to Lin Sanjiu's side, narrowly avoiding the sweep of the heads. His face was ashen. "How do we kill her..."
"We can't kill her," Eight-Heads De said, still trying to de-escalate the situation. "She might have been forced into this state. Please, help me subdue her—"
"She's more duoluozhong than a duoluozhong," Lin Sanjiu muttered. "And I don't even know how to subdue her..."
"Her weak point is the torso! Don't cut, blow it apart!" A posthuman's shout echoed from farther down the corridor.
The middle-aged woman's body stood alone in the middle of the space, her hands extending toward one end of the corridor, her heads stretching toward Eight-Heads De, while her legs remained inexplicably human.
"I said, don't attack!" Lin Sanjiu's furious shout came a second too late.
A small explosive device streaked through the air with a sharp whistle, embedding itself in the woman's torso. She shattered as easily as any ordinary human body. In the burst of dust, smoke, and screams, countless new torsos erupted into existence.
Her chest poured forth more torsos, and her thighs generated even more. She seemed to multiply endlessly, like the Daoist saying "One gives birth to two, two give birth to three, three give birth to all things." The corridor could no longer contain her.
Like a flood, the swarm of middle-aged bodies surged down both ends of the corridor, sweeping away those who couldn't move in time. Even Lin Sanjiu dared not face the onslaught head-on. She grabbed ahold of Eight-Heads De and turned to run.