Layers of human shadow rushed to the stone plate. The leading man pierced the mysterious woman through her chest. Blood sprayed like wine. It dyed her dress red. Some blood also landed on the invaders’ lips.
The woman didn’t resist. She watched as the invaders cut her with their weapons. Then, they pounced at her like hungry wolves as they munched on her body. Those who didn’t get the chance could only surround the outer circle. They licked the blood that flowed out and grinned with satisfaction.
Everything happened under the bloody mist. The scene looked like an oil painting. Under the night, it radiated a feeling of sadness and isolation.
Chen Ran enjoyed the influence the carving applied to their subconscious. He didn’t think the invaders did anything wrong. The only thing that he felt was not enough was the lack of good background music. Such a religious and satanic image was not paired with great music. It was… such a waste.
It was like you were on a holiday at the beach. The azure sea lapped before your feet. The waiter walked over silently. Everything was so peaceful. However, the next second, the professional waiter raised the tray of the best caviar in the world and smashed it into your face.
That was how Chen Ran understood the painting.
This was clearly not something Jiang Cheng, who was still struggling to put food on the table, could understand.
The woman was flooded by the heavy waves of human shadow. Throughout this process, she didn’t struggle or make any noise. Jiang Cheng forced himself to look away from the woman. His eyes moved along the edges of the stone plate. He was not a hunter. This was his survival instinct. This painting brought him great discomfort. He could sense a feeling of dissonance underneath the sense of discomfort. For Jiang Cheng, the discomfort was the impact brought by the image. After all, cannibalism was no longer an accepted action in the modern society.
However, the dissonance meant that there was something wrong with the picture. Then, his pupils narrowed. He found it…
No. Not those people… But that woman!
The stone plate was filled with people. Some were eating her flesh, but the majority were not as lucky. They stayed around the stone plate and knelt greedily on the ground to lick at the blood. Rudimentary calculation put around ten people on the stone plate. Around a hundred people were surrounding the stone plate. The whole plate was red.
Where did so much blood come from?
There was only one woman, the elder and half of the woman of the girl on the stone plate. So…
When Jiang Cheng saw the little girl’s broken body, Jiang Cheng had to stop. He saw… the edge of the girl’s lips curl up. She… was smiling?!
The body of the girl who was brutally sliced into two was smiling?!
The next second, Jiang Cheng’s breathing became heavy despite how stable he was mentally.
The man who was dismembered, the woman who was disembowelled, the elder who was beheaded, the children who were covered in blood…
Everyone who was killed… was smiling.
Their pale faces were coloured by blood, but it didn’t affect their creepy smiling faces. The scariest thing was Jiang Cheng could feel that their smiles came from their hearts. They didn’t hate the people who butchered them. If anything, they were thankful to the people who killed them.
A cracking sound echoed in Jiang Cheng’s ears. The image in his mind started to change. The bloody barrier started to move.
His heart shook. He sensed that something was about to happen. The next second, everyone on the stone plate collapsed on the ground. They rolled around in the blood like they were in extreme pain. Their mouths were wide open, like they were screaming. However, even if they tore their mouths open, Jiang Cheng couldn’t hear them.
A middle-aged man, who was convulsing on the ground, stared at his arm. The skin on his arm slowly bulged until… his skin turned red and translucent.
The next second, a thick bone spur pierced through his skin. A set of fishgill-like skeletal constructs appeared on the man’s arm.
The mutation spread like a disease. A young boy’s back was torn apart. The flesh under his skin blurred. The exposed spine was thicker than that of an adult man's. Then, a pair of bloody wings spread along the spine.
The boy monster screamed and fell to the ground.
Some of them had sharp horns poking out of their heads. The others grew two long appendages that would make it easier for them to crawl.
Some of them had mutated to become monsters that were more than two meters tall.
The pain of the mutation was clear. The mutated people bit each other to vent their pain and unwillingness.
Jiang Cheng’s fists were so tight that his fingers were pale from the lack of blood. The scene before his eyes turned his world upside down. This was not a sacrifice… but an evolution, like the angels of Gomorrah.
The difference was that these people's evolution ignored all kinds of rules. From the angle of evolution, they would be considered failures. They didn’t fit the requirement for the most basic biological survival. The meaning of their existence was to taunt some kind of power. It was to challenge the official religions, to show them that there was still hell on earth.
After the blood mist dissipated, the ugly creatures started to move towards the forest. Their size was large, but they were strangely slow, like babies learning how to walk. Soon, all of them disappeared from the stone plate.
Jiang Cheng stared in the direction of where they had left. It was the direction of the sea.
Instantly, the image described by the aged woman appeared in his mind. The ships were mysteriously attacked, and there were heavily armed units on the ships.
The last recorded call by the captain after they were attacked.
He shouted, “It’s hell! The door of hell has opened!”