Shen Feng took the punch head-on.
The side of his face that was hit swelled almost instantly, and a trace of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
Not daring to give the woman on the ground time to react, I grabbed the gun Suo Tian had left on the bedside cabinet earlier and rushed forward, pressing it hard against the forehead of the woman who hadn’t yet recovered.
“You’d better behave yourself too.”
The moment I said that, the woman who had been about to strike Shen Feng again immediately shifted her target.
She turned and glared at me fiercely, clenching her fist as if ready to charge—but before she could move, I pulled the slide back with a sharp click, imitating her earlier action, and said coldly:
“I won’t hesitate for even half a second to pull the trigger either. You can try—see whether you’re faster, or my finger is.”
Her expression froze, and her steps faltered in hesitation.
The woman I was holding at gunpoint rolled her eyes and tried to move her hand, but Jundi, who had just rushed up, grabbed her and pinned her down.
“Auntie, you’d better stay put. Chen Yang can’t handle a hit from that elbow.”
Jundi used considerable strength.
With her wrist already injured and bleeding heavily, the woman didn’t have much strength left and was easily subdued.
As he twisted her arm behind her back to restrain her, she let out a pained groan.
I glanced at Jundi, a bit worried he might snap her arm.
The woman standing before me stared with her eyes wide open, bloodshot, glaring at me with intense hatred.
To be honest, I couldn’t understand why—she seemed indifferent toward everyone else, but toward me, it was as if she bore a deep grudge.
Before I could make sense of it, she spoke, glaring viciously at the restrained woman for a moment before turning back to me:
“A pregnant woman… truly filthy, bringing calamity upon others.”
As soon as she said this, even Suo Tian showed a puzzled expression.
Then she scanned all of us, her face taking on a crazed look as she continued:
“The almighty god saves mankind…”
She suddenly snapped her gaze back to me.
“…yet because of filth like you, demons from hell have been unleashed!”
As her words fell, lightning flashed outside, the cold light illuminating her twisted face.
Then, with the rumbling thunder that followed, she burst into manic laughter.
“It’s useless! Filth like you— the almighty god will destroy you along with the demons!”
The moment she finished speaking, something clicked in my mind.
I suddenly recalled the scene in the pavilion and fixed my gaze on her.
“So back in the pavilion, your intention was to take me away, wasn’t it?”
As soon as I said that, she burst into laughter, staring at me.
“Eliminating impurity for the god—that is my duty.”
I looked back at her.
At least now I could confirm that she was the “Aunt Qing” who had been chatting with us outside earlier.
In the very next second, before anyone could react, she suddenly leapt backward—moving with an agility completely unfitting for her age.
With a swift roll, she grabbed the gun that had been kicked away.
Shen Feng, injured, couldn’t react in time.
Though he wanted to stop her, it was already too late.
The moment she got hold of the gun, she turned and aimed straight at me.
“Die!”
But before her finger could pull the trigger, a flash of silver streaked through the air—a steel blade pierced deeply into her left temple.
Her eyes widened as she collapsed to the ground with a heavy thud.
The woman we had restrained let out a loud cry and burst into tears.
From the woman lying in that mirror room, we could already piece together part of the truth… and the corpse pit in the grass.
Aunt Qing was clearly not just a simple housewife as she had claimed.
Han Xue had pointed out earlier that there was dirt under her fingernails.
The most likely explanation—and now it all connected—was that she had dug that pit herself.
Individually, the details might have seemed disconnected, but once everything was pieced together, the coincidences formed a disturbingly coherent picture.
The two identical women before us—one named Zhang Qing, the other Zhang Lu—were the wives of the former vice-captain of Team A.
Yes, both of them.
In this world, there were no rules against it—so long as it was consensual.
In the apocalypse, the two sisters had attached themselves to the vice-captain, which could even be considered a fortunate match.
But half a year ago, he had left on a mission and had never been recalled by headquarters.
Since then, the sisters had remained hidden in this villa district, gradually forgotten by others.
They had some combat ability—it was said they had once jointly run a taekwondo studio.
As for why they had become like this now, no one could say.
The bizarre words the woman spoke before her death only reminded us of the lunatics from the temporary shelters in the past—beyond that, there was no way to trace the root of it.
After her death, we searched behind the mirror room and, in an even more concealed space barely two square meters in size, we found Taozi and Lili—also unconscious.
We carried the two of them—together with Han Xue and Zhou Wen—to the sofa, and used cold water to wipe their faces for quite a while.
It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that they gradually came to.
After waking up, Taozi told us what had happened after they left with Aunt Qing.
It was pretty much what we had guessed.
When they escorted her to that house, they noticed something strange—none of the surrounding houses had any lights on.
Lili grew cautious and wanted to leave, but before she could warn Taozi, someone covered her nose and mouth with a cloth that had a strange smell.
After that, they remembered nothing.
Later, in a room on the second floor covered with white sheets, we found several human heads hanging in midair, hooked by wires—already decayed, with only rotting flesh remaining.
Beneath those heads was something resembling an altar, even with a long-burning lamp placed there.
When Suo Tian saw the altar, he let out a soft “hmm,” then stepped forward and crouched beside it.
He looked up at the heads hanging above, then stood and walked around the room.
I found his reaction a bit strange and asked, “Did you find something?”
Suo Tian glanced back at me and nodded. “In that shelter before… I saw a room very similar to this altar.”
Almost instantly, I thought of Old Man Song’s strange little guard room.
Han Xue, Lili, and the others were still downstairs.
After roughly checking the second and third floors, we went back down to the first floor.
The woman on the operating bed… had already been put out of her misery by someone.
Taozi curled up in Zhou Wen’s arms, chatting intermittently with Lili, both still shaken.
Han Xue sat on the floor beside the sofa, leaning against her knees—she seemed to have been affected heavily by whatever drug she’d been given and hadn’t fully recovered yet.
Uncle Gazi didn’t dare touch anything in the house.
He could only stand by anxiously, not knowing what to do.
When he saw us come down from upstairs, he quickly stepped forward and asked, “How is it? Did you find anything?”
Shen Feng probably didn’t want to frighten Taozi and the others, so he waved his hand at Uncle Gazi. “Upstairs is empty. Nothing there.”
Only then did Uncle Gazi pat his chest in relief. “That’s good, that’s good.”
After speaking, he glanced at the woman tied up on the ground, avoiding looking at the one with her head pierced, and sighed. “What a sin… treating human lives like grass. Aren’t they afraid of retribution?”
The woman who had been hanging her head lifelessly suddenly raised it when she heard this.
“Impure lives… leaving her with just a human skin— even God would thank us.”
I suddenly remembered the “god” she had mentioned earlier and was about to ask, but stopped myself halfway.
Even if I asked, the answer would likely be nothing but madness.
I sighed and swallowed the question.
Shen Feng looked around the room and asked, “What do we do now? Spend the rest of the night here, staring at a few corpses?”
At that, Han Xue, Lili, and Taozi all shrank back instinctively.
Suo Tian glanced toward the mirror room and said, “We’re going back.”
“Go back?” Uncle Gazi looked at the person on the ground.
“What about… this place? And there’s still someone here. Should we take her with us?”
Hearing this, Suo Tian looked at the woman tied in the corner.
After thinking for a moment, he walked over, crouched in front of her, and spoke to her in a low voice.
No one heard what he said, but the woman’s expression changed drastically.
She stared at him, about to say something—but before she could speak, her eyes suddenly widened.
When Suo Tian stepped aside and gestured for us to leave, the woman who had still been sitting there blankly was finally revealed—there, embedded in her chest, was a dagger driven deep.
Zhou Wen was the first to lead Taozi out.
Lili and Han Xue supported each other as they followed.
Uncle Gazi wasn’t used to scenes like this—he stood there in a daze for a moment before letting out a long sigh and turning to leave.
Shen Feng, Jundi, and I walked out last.
I turned back to glance at the shattered house, then at the woman in the mirror room, frowning…
If I wasn’t mistaken, those two women’s deranged beliefs included a deep hatred for all pregnant women.
The woman whose abdomen had been hollowed out… must have been pregnant before.
Because in the corner of that ritual room on the second floor, I had seen several glass jars.
Inside them were reddish, human-shaped lumps of flesh, soaked in some kind of liquid.
I had only taken a single glance before Suo Tian pulled me away, but I was certain—those were undeveloped fetuses.
The next day, Suo Tian would send people to investigate the place.
For now, there was nothing left inside that posed a threat, so there was no reason for us to stay.
We decided to lock the door and head back to rest.
Walking beside Suo Tian, he held an umbrella and glanced down at me.
Seemingly satisfied that I was dressed warmly enough, he reached out and pulled me a little closer into his arms.
…
Just like that, no one was injured.
Though shaken, we finally let out a deep breath of relief.
This sudden ordeal had, at last, come to an end.
In the pouring rain, that house—concealing blood and sin—stood in silence, as if watching us leave… while, from the house opposite, a figure in a raincoat stood by the window, quietly observing us as we disappeared into the distance.
— The end of the Chapter–
TL note : Join Patreon to support the translation and to read up to 50 chapters of the release :
https://www.patreon.com/DeCakraWnloverz
