Mu Yufeng hastily wiped the blood from her hand, countless gruesome urban legends flashing through her mind in an instant.
A vicious dog playing with its owner accidentally breaks the skin, and once tasting human blood, its feral nature awakens, tearing its master to pieces…
A pet python that always slept coiled up suddenly starts lying perfectly straight next to its owner, secretly measuring whether its body is long enough to swallow them whole…
An elderly person living alone dies suddenly, and by the time they are discovered, their head has been chewed into an unrecognizable bloody pulp by their pet cat…
Mu Yufeng shuddered, cursing her brain for retaining such morbid sensationalist junk with such vivid clarity.
Mu Yufeng hid her bleeding hand behind her back. The little monster’s gaze tracked the movement, her eyes narrowing like a feline coiling to pounce on its prey.
“Wait!” Mu Yufeng cried out. “You can’t bite me! I… I’m your big sister!”
She scrambled to her feet; height was her sole advantage against this creature. At this moment, her trusty crowbar was nowhere in sight, and the Bowie knife lay on the floor right between them. Mu Yufeng silently cursed herself. Basking in the cozy fire had baked away her common sense. How could I have let my guard down?!
The little monster glanced up at her, leaned forward, and picked up the hunting knife from the floor.
Oh no. She knows how to use a knife—she didn’t even blink when carving up that rabbit.
A cold gleam flashed off the blade. With a swift flick of her wrist, the knife descended—
—and shaved off a slice of rabbit meat.
Her knife work was masterful, slicing the meat thin and even, like something crafted by a master at a Japanese restaurant. Pinching the slice of rabbit sashimi, she furrowed her brow, sniffed it cautiously, and forced it into her mouth, chewing a few times before gulping it down whole.
She didn’t vomit.
She ate with refined grace—not like a monster at all, but remarkably like a human.
Then again, she already possessed human features. Having grown a little, the dark bluish-black patterns across her face were more pronounced. Based on Mu Yufeng’s limited knowledge, she resembled the humanoid zombies outside that she had knocked out, yet she was far more formidable—exerting what felt like an absolute bloodline suppression over them.
She was rational, capable of speech, and… exercised restraint.
When staring at Mu Yufeng’s blood, desire had been written all over her face. Yet Little Yezi had forcibly curbed it, turning her murderous intent onto an innocent rabbit instead.
She actually hasn’t eaten in a long time. She must be starving.
The thought stirred a pang of guilt in Mu Yufeng for a fleeting second. She watched the little monster deliberately chew through a few more slices of raw meat, wipe the blade clean, and set it down.
“Are you full?” Mu Yufeng asked meekly.
“Yeah, pretty much,” the little monster spoke again.
Having eaten, she seemed to have recovered from ultra-power-saving mode. Tilting her head, she struggled to organize her words for a moment before looking at Mu Yufeng and saying slowly, “Bugs surrounded you.”
The firelight illuminated half of the little monster’s profile, leaving the other half swallowed by shadow. When she stared intently, her dark irises barely reflected any light, resembling some lifeless, inorganic substance.
This eerie statement, paired with those pitch-black eyes, sent Mu Yufeng leaping in fright. But then the child added, “They didn’t attack. Just surrounded you.”
Mu Yufeng took a few seconds to process this before attempting to translate it into plain terms: “Your eyes can see in the dark, and when you came back, you saw the bugs were only encircling me without attacking?”
The little monster nodded.
That doesn’t make sense. When Mu Yufeng had battled the swarm, she had struck the lighter and witnessed a bug flying straight at her face before hacking it in two. Besides, she had been startled awake because one was literally crawling on her face!
If what she’s saying is true, what was I doing just now? Slashing at thin air?
Mu Yufeng dashed back toward the doorway where she had been swarmed. Thick dust coated the floor, covered in the dense tracks of the crawling swarm—except by the wall where she had been leaning, where the tracks were markedly sparse.
“You bled,” the little monster said.
Of course I know I bled! Mu Yufeng thought. You were practically drooling over it a second ago!
Yet the little monster wasn’t pointing at Mu Yufeng’s hand. She pointed to a patch of bare floor by the corner and said, “There is blood there.”
Mu Yufeng looked down at her wound. It had formed a fragile scab by now, but right after the struggle, her finger had been dripping blood straight onto the floor.
Crouching down, Mu Yufeng inspected the dried droplets of blood. Sure enough, there were no bug tracks anywhere near them. Even as the little monster had driven the swarm back with the brazier, the insects had carefully skirted around those few drops of blood.
It struck Mu Yufeng then: the first time she was trapped in this lobby, pursued by the swarm, she had desperately pried open this side door, scraping her fingertips raw. When she finally slipped through and turned to slam the door, she had seen the swarm hesitating less than two meters away.
Back then, she had assumed she was just lucky, that the bugs hadn’t caught up. But what if, just as the little monster said, the bugs had only encircled her?
Mu Yufeng shuddered.
She marched back to the stairwell, shoved aside the chair barring the door, moved the brazier away, and peeked through the hole gnawed by the bugs. Inside, faint iridescent green carapaces glistened in the gloom.
The insects grew restless once more.
Mu Yufeng picked up a bloody scrap of rabbit fur from the floor and tossed it through the hole. Far from being deterred, the insects swarmed over it. Within seconds, the cluster dispersed, leaving only a few stray hairs behind.
The swarm continued to creep forward. With Mu Yufeng’s body blocking most of the firelight, they drew closer and closer.
Staring at the scab on her finger, Mu Yufeng gritted her teeth and ripped it open. The searing pain brought tears to her eyes in an instant.
Blood welled up immediately and dripped from her fingertip. With a soft splat, a tiny crimson blossom bloomed just inside the doorway.
The insect tide froze dead in its tracks.
They were terrified of her blood!
The realization brought tears of sheer exasperation to her eyes. If I’m literally the ultimate weapon against these bastards, what the hell was I doing nearly getting chased to death over and over again?!
The little monster reacted swiftly. Shoving Mu Yufeng aside, she hauled the brazier back, its blistering heat forcing the bugs to retreat once more into the dark corners, before dragging the chair back into place to seal the hole.
Her gaze locked onto Mu Yufeng’s bleeding fingertip again. She looked deeply unsettled, her small fists clenching involuntarily.
Mu Yufeng quickly wiped away the blood. Since she had only torn open a small corner of the scab, the bleeding stopped rapidly, though it left an ugly, jagged crust.
Mu Yufeng stared at her hand, lost in thought.
If human blood worked, why hadn’t Fatty mentioned it instead of just tossing her a tiny lighter?
Or is it that human blood isn’t effective—only my blood is? After all, the rabbit’s blood did nothing to deter them.
Mu Yufeng drew in a sharp breath and turned toward the little monster. The child was currently skewering the leftover rabbit meat onto twigs, mimicking Mu Yufeng’s actions by roasting them over the brazier with an air of complete nonchalance.
She was the one who noticed the bugs’ anomaly, and she accurately linked it to my bleeding hand. Should a monster cub possess such terrifying powers of deduction?
