Chapter 115: The Human Skin Drum (19)

To this, Tang Mu merely replied, "I am not your personal nanny. Would you like me to schedule your bedtime for you as well?"

"You!"

"Enough, stop arguing." Qiao Yuan frowned, signaling for both sides to be silent. "Only a dozen or so of us managed to escape. I fear that more than twenty people have been alienated or killed tonight. I have also questioned the strange creature that brushes the white paste; it said that once this paint comes into contact with moonlight, it accelerates the catalysis of the alien species and provides them with a constant source of energy."

"Some of these creatures are already wandering the corridors. They will soon find the exit and rush out to slaughter us. We must find a way to survive the night!"

"But what can we do? The lock on the main gate has long been broken..."

"Ask the villagers for help!" It was unclear whether Qiao Yuan’s judgment was failing him or what, but he actually proposed, "If they refuse to talk, we will use some 'gentle' methods to force them!"

No sooner said than done. The moment the words left Qiao Yuan's mouth, he used a yellow talisman to drag a villager out from a haystack, where the man had been stealthily observing the hostel.

The yellow talisman was affixed to the villager's back. Once attached, the villager was forced to obey the commands of the talisman's owner; if he resisted, he would spontaneously combust.

This villager was wrapped tightly in strips of cloth from head to toe. Aside from his eyes, his entire body was hidden in shadow.

"For every poison, there is an antidote within ten miles. I do not believe your claims that there is no solution to this substance. If you refuse to speak, I will throw you inside. Even if the alienation rate is only 50 percent, you cannot be certain that you will fall outside that 50 percent every time, can you?"

The creature Qiao Yuan had captured clearly knew far more than what Tang Mu’s group had learned. Yet, the villager kept his mouth shut tight, refusing to utter another word.

"You two, strip off his clothes," Qiao Yuan signaled to Lu Zhengqing and Zhu Ya'an.

Zhu Ya'an was drowning in the grief of her boyfriend Qi Yangbo’s death and could not spare a thought for Qiao Yuan’s command. Seeing her state, Ge Wenqian stepped forward to assist.

Bound by the yellow talisman, the villager could do nothing to stop them as Ge Wenqian and Lu Zhengqing went to work. Soon, the cloth wrappings covering his skin were stripped away. Only then, under the moonlight, could everyone see the secret that these heavily wrapped villagers could not allow to be made public.

"Ugh!"

Many of the group began to retch. Where normal skin should have been, the man’s body was densely covered in greenish-blue moldy lumps. Like fungal spores using a human as rotting wood, they were fiercely absorbing the nutrients from his body and thriving.

However, this village was already bizarre; it was no surprise to find anything growing on these strange creatures.

"I really don't know what the 'Gestator' promised you that would make you willing to use your own bodies to feed these alien species just to follow her orders!" The fat man spat at him, cursing with a face full of rage.

"What exactly is this 'Gestator' you keep mentioning? Where is she? Do you dare take us to see her?"

"See the Gestator? You're dreaming!" At the mention of the "Gestator," the villager became exceptionally manic, his devotion to her extreme. "She ensures our village has favorable weather and endless descendants. She allows us to live even when we are deathly ill. Why should I tell you her location? So you can kill her?"

"Favorable weather and endless descendants?" Someone couldn't help but sneer at this. "I don't know what bizarre methods you use to propagate, but looking at the number of children in this village, they don't even make up one-tenth of your adult population! Even if we assume one man and one woman per household with one child, the children should account for at least 50 percent of your adult population!"

"That... that is because..." The villager hesitated for a long moment before his expression turned vicious again. "It is because there are few women in the village! We cannot reproduce in the normal way, so of course, we must resort to extremes!"

"Since it is an extreme method, isn't failure to be expected?"

"And in this building, those of you who were not successfully gestated are all failures! Failures have no need to exist!"

The moment the villager erupted, the green fungus on his body suddenly burst open. Clouds of green powder dispersed into the air, covering everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Seeing the green spores drifting toward him, Tang Mu moved away instantly. Unfortunately, he still caught a little. As for the others, they were covered in far more of the green powder.

"What is this stuff?"

"Ha! Who told you to strip my clothes and expose my skin? This is the price you have to pay!"

The villager had chosen self-detonation just to protect the Gestator. This was something Tang Mu had not anticipated.

Because the fat man had been the closest to the villager, he was covered in the most powder. As soon as the spores touched human skin, they began to ravenously drain the body's nutrients, growing thousands of green fungal clusters. These clusters ranged from a tenth of a millimeter to two centimeters in size.

It was excruciatingly itchy. Furthermore, the green fungus on the fat man continued to spread, mature, burst, and release more powder, accelerating the infection.

"Ahhh! It itches to death!" Because the itching was unbearable, the fat man scratched himself frantically. The more he scratched, the faster his skin tore and bled, allowing the mycelium to infect him even deeper, reaching into the flesh where he could no longer reach. The mycelium burrowing into his flesh caused a bone-deep, agonizing itch, forcing him to claw and tear at his infected skin even more.

Unless one wrapped their entire body tightly in cloth, there was no choice but to have one's skin infected and one's flesh consumed entirely!

"Red threads within the curtain, bound in silk and canopy. Obey this command with haste!"

Tang Mu quickly summoned his red-threaded bells, using the threads to weave a fabric that wrapped his entire body tightly.

Almost the moment he saw Tang Mu use the red cloth to cover himself, Qiao Yuan shouted, "Help the association members! I’ll give you an extra 5 percent of the profit when we settle!"

Fine. For the sake of that 5 percent, Tang Mu begrudgingly wrapped the members of the A-Yu Association in red silk.

"What exactly is this?" someone screamed, clawing at themselves so desperately it seemed they would not stop until they had ripped the very flesh from their own bones.