Chapter 24-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player

Dozens of fingernails scraped and clawed at the ground beneath the overturned van, the nails peeling back and snapping off to reveal blanched flesh beneath — yet not a single drop of blood.

The people still on the basketball court gathered to watch the unsettling scene. Anyone who had survived this long was quick-minded. Only the drunk man kept cursing and staggering forward. He kicked the white van and laughed at the people pinned beneath it.

"Old Zhang, get back here!" His companions called out to him urgently from behind. No one dared go closer.

"What are you all whimpering about — go die, the lot of you! I'm going to be the last one standing — mmmph mmmph mmmph!"

Something suddenly seized the drunk man's ankle. He crashed to the ground. A person in a red cap crawled out from under the van and came face-to-face with him.

The corners of the red-capped figure's mouth were split wide open, a gaping maw taking up most of the face. The white crustacean parasite lodged in the mouth moved like a nimble tongue — it pried open the drunk man's jaws and wriggled its white body inside, its mouthparts latching onto his tongue.

"Lin Huijun — burn them!"

Bai Shan called out. But Lin Huijun's reaction hesitated for just a beat.

In that single moment of delay, the drunk man's body collapsed like a punctured balloon. Simultaneously, the body of the red-capped figure — sharing the same "white tongue" — swelled, and swelled, and swelled again, like a balloon being inflated without stop. When it reached some critical threshold, it burst with a bang.

"Ahh!" Someone screamed.

Pale white larvae erupted from the body like scattered rice thrown across the ground. They began hatching the moment they landed. White grubs broke free from their eggs — long and flat, segmented bodies encased in white shell, rows of stubby legs along the underside — crawling in a dense mass across the pavement.

Their flat heads bore a pair of perfectly round black eyes. If there hadn't been so many of them, Bai Shan might have found them almost cute.

If her memory was right, these were isopods — specifically cymothoa exigua, also known as tongue-eating lice.

Their primary hosts were fish. They would enter through the gills, clamp onto the fish's tongue to feed on blood, and once the tongue withered and fell away, the louse would take its place, functioning as the fish's tongue in a shared existence. In the lice's juvenile stage they were all male. When one found a fish to parasitise, another would eventually arrive, and one of the two would become female, producing larvae that would flow out of the fish's mouth and seek their own hosts.

And now this creature had parasitised a human being.

Tens of thousands of larvae began to scatter in all directions, their tiny stubby legs carrying them in search of new hosts.

Lin Huijun's fist ignited in flame. She hesitated no longer. While most people were retreating, she surged forward — planting one foot hard on the hood of a grey RV nearby and using it to launch herself up onto the vehicle's roof.

The car was trying to drive away. The windshield was suddenly shadowed by a dark shape, the roof caved in, and the people inside cried out in alarm. Two children in the back seat clung to each other.

Lin Huijun didn't stop for a moment — she crossed the roof at a run and leapt off the other end. A burning fist fell from above and slammed into the larva-covered ground.

Flames spread outward from the point of impact, scorching ring after ring of outward-crawling white larvae. Only a dozen or so faster ones managed to escape the fire at the edges.

Lin Huijun had barely exhaled in relief when a numb, belated pain crept through her right hand. Then a rush of dangerous wind sounded behind her.

No time to think — she pulled back her right foot and spun around to meet the threat. A grey RV screamed past inches away from her, and a human body became a fleeting shadow, smashed into the basketball hoop across the court.

"Watch out for the parasitised ones."

Bai Shan called out from behind.

The grey RV that had lurched forward stopped again. Shaken voices spilled out from inside.

The people who had been pinned under the white van had all crawled free. They walked without difficulty. Apart from skin as pale and bloodless as paper, they appeared no different from ordinary people. Sounds of human language came from their mouths.

"Where. Can. We. Go. Home."

"What. Happened."

"Save. Us. Please."

The mutated tongue-lice had eaten their tongues and taken their place, producing human speech — every syllable clear and precise, yet carrying not a trace of emotion, like items rolling off an assembly line.

Two young men in hiking gear took a few steps forward — then their bodies abruptly deflated. An uncountable number of white larvae poured out from their mouths, and in no time at all the pavement was submerged again.

Nearby, the remaining figure murmured: "Talent. First. Skill."

"Beast. Form."

The thin shadow cast on the pavement stretched and widened in an instant, becoming a monstrous silhouette. The beast-formed man dropped to all fours and ran. The transformed creature threw back its head and let out a roar that startled roosting birds into the night sky — but the next moment the roar cut off with jarring abruptness. A streetlamp came flying in from one side, arrow-straight, and drove itself directly into that gaping maw.

Bai Shan stood on the roof of a nearby black RV, right hand raised, then thrust forward. The streetlamp had impaled the creature's skull.

Not far away, a pile of construction materials had been stacked. [Tyrannical Command]'s fifty-metre diameter just reached them. Bai Shan focused her mind, and the rebar lying quietly in the pile suddenly began rolling toward the basketball court at speed.

"There's something rolling over there!"

"Run — forget the car — just run!"

Someone had been keeping watch at the edge of the court, eyeing the larvae on the ground, still thinking about going in to collect some experience points. Then the grinding crash of colliding metal made their skull ring — bar after bar of rebar came barrelling in, jostling and thundering like a wave of iron.

Lin Huijun, who had been steeling herself to activate her ability again despite the pain, saw what was coming, startled for a split second, then sprinted clear.

The thumb-sized white larvae couldn't move quickly. Their fragile bodies hadn't managed to crawl out of the basketball court before bar after bar of rebar rolled over them mercilessly. Those tiny legs, straining with everything they had, couldn't escape. The metal bars, cold with a scattered gleam, rolled over the whole of the basketball court — tents, folding chairs, cars that hadn't managed to drive away were all swept up and folded into the iron tide.

Bai Shan drove the rebar forward with [Tyrannical Command], rolling it all the way until the last bar had left the court. Then she squeezed the left hand around her right wrist — the one bearing the wristband — and let her ability sweep through, confirming there was not a single living creature left on the court.

As for the few insects that had scattered beyond the perimeter, there was nothing Bai Shan could do. Small creatures like these were sometimes harder to deal with than something colossal.

Bai Shan dropped lightly from the RV roof and landed on the ground. The moment her feet touched down, a panel flashed open before her.

[Congratulations, player has unlocked the achievement "The Greatest and Most Despair-Inducing Event in Insect History"!]

Well — this was the first time in nine playthroughs she had ever unlocked this achievement. It made her feel as though killing tens of thousands of larval insects was somehow a grave and terrible act.

[Item acquired: "Parasitic Tongue"!]

[Parasitic Tongue (A-rank) Function: Nobody knows whose tongue this is. Stuff it into someone else's mouth, and they can only tell the truth.]

The truth?

Bai Shan's eyes lit up. She liked this item very much.

With this tongue stuffed into someone's mouth, no one could lie to her face.

She didn't enjoy contact with people and was too lazy to deal with social back-and-forth. But the journey ahead would inevitably involve no small number of human entanglements. With [Parasitic Tongue], she could save herself a great deal of effort.

The game panel vanished. A middle-aged woman came storming up to Bai Shan, jabbing a finger at her face.

"Were those rebar just now under your control? You wrecked my car!"

"Do you have any idea how important a car is? Back in normal times I'd have you brought in by your parents — minimum compensation, a hundred thousand!"

Bai Shan stared at the woman who had suddenly charged at her. Behind the cold composure there was a faint flicker of bewilderment. Her gaze drifted downward, and she spoke abruptly: "Be quiet."

"You're telling me to be quiet? We're not the kind of family you can walk over — even now, everyone still has abilities, and —"

Bai Shan's right hand shot forward and grabbed the woman's lower face, covering her mouth.

"Hey, what are you doing!"

"Let go of my mum! I'll fight you!"

The woman's family came running over furiously too, surrounding the two of them.

Under the middle-aged woman's indignant glare, Bai Shan's left hand plucked something from her shoulder and held it up for her to see.

The middle-aged woman saw the white larva in front of her. The fury drained from her face, replaced by shock. Bai Shan released her grip. The woman sucked in a sharp breath. Her noisy family was muted all at once, frozen in embarrassment where they stood.

The white larva was dropped onto the ground. Bai Shan's boot came down on it — once, twice, grinding.

She paid no further attention to the family standing there in awkward silence, and waved over the red-vest workers hurrying toward them from a distance.

"Tell the mayor to have everyone open their mouths for inspection — conduct a rapid sweep to find out if anyone in the village has parasites in their mouth…"

Bai Shan was still speaking when Mayor Zhong Xile arrived on the scene. Someone had already briefed her on what had happened during her approach, but even then, hearing Bai Shan's account made the chill seep right through her winter coat.

"Mutated tongue-eating lice — or we might as well call them tongue-eating human-lice now. They take up residence in the mouth, feed on blood and flesh from inside the body, and control the host."

"The group from the white van had been stranded at Qianxi Forest Park. My guess is they were parasitised while they were there."

Zhong Xile's face went instantly white. Qianxi Forest Park was very close to town. The Qianxi stream that ran through the whole town had its source there.

Bai Shan continued: "The tongue-eating lice spread through water sources and infected fish. A few also escaped the court just now."

"Parasitised people can still be made to use their talent abilities under the creature's control."

With each word, the weight on Zhong Xile grew heavier. She felt as though her soul was drifting free of her body. She was nearly murmuring to herself: "Can the parasitised people be saved?"

Bai Shan considered, then replied: "Normal tongue-eating lice can be removed with tweezers, or salt water can make them detach — but these ones have mutated, so it probably won't be that easy."

The truth was, ordinary tongue-eating lice weren't especially alarming. Inside a fish's mouth, they were in some ways a benign parasite — they simply replaced the tongue. Compared to certain more sinister ocean parasites, such as shark barnacles and crab barnacles, tongue-lice were relatively mild-mannered.

Crab barnacles, for instance, injected their cells throughout the host's body, taking complete control, castrating the host, even altering its biological sex — and that was without mutation. Bai Shan didn't dare imagine what they might be like after mutation.

Right now, the mutated tongue-eating lice were enough to push this town to the brink of collapse.

Dealing with the parasites would draw on an already thin workforce, which meant progress on the monster-hunting teams would slow. Time was already critically short.

It was nine o'clock on the night of February first. With the Phase One deadline of noon on February third, there were fewer than two days left.

Lin Huijun told the mayor that she was available to help wherever hands were needed. The mayor smiled at her tiredly, then led her staff back to the office to work through the night on countermeasures. She wouldn't be sleeping for the next two days.

Lin Huijun watched the mayor's hurrying figure disappear, full of worry. She turned and saw Bai Shan already climbing back into the RV, so she followed.

"Bai Shan, you really know a lot," Lin Huijun said sincerely.

Bai Shan kicked off her shoes, shrugged off her jacket, and stretched out on the bed with lazy ease. "Not everything worth knowing comes from textbooks. I've always been a very dedicated learner, thank you."

"You don't actually think I spend all day playing games, do you?"

She suddenly sat up and looked at Lin Huijun with narrowed suspicion.

"Of course not." Lin Huijun looked away.

"My mum took me fishing once, and one of the fish we caught had one of those things in it." Bai Shan was thinking back. "I thought it looked kind of cute poking its head out of the fish's mouth, so I looked into it properly."

Lin Huijun heard the word "cute" and her expression went complicated. "Bai Shan — what exactly is cute about that creature?"

Bai Shan gave it genuine thought. "A round, flat body. Round little black eyes. Clean white colour. All classic cute elements."

With Bai Shan's analysis laid out like that, Lin Huijun found her own mind actually matching the description to some genuinely adorable creatures. She had to concede: "You have a very personal interpretation of cute."

After the exchange, the unease in Lin Huijun's chest eased a little. She looked out through the window into the dark outside and sighed. "I never want to eat fish again after this."

Between the game's arrival and now, they had been dealing with fish at every turn. Giant fish, electric fish, fish parasites.

"This time it was a fish parasite. Last time I almost got killed by the fish from your neighbour's flat," Lin Huijun said, still shaken at the memory.

Bai Shan had been on the verge of closing her eyes. At Lin Huijun's words, they snapped open. She looked at her and asked: "The fish from my neighbour? What do you mean? When?"

"The day you killed the mutant banyan tree. You told me to wait on the twenty-fifth floor. On the way there I walked past your neighbour's flat — I heard what sounded like a baby crying inside, and I wanted to let them know they should leave..."

Bai Shan sat up from the bed, her dark pupils contracting slowly.

"I pushed the door open, and two or three electric catfish came crawling out at me. I killed them all with the Frozen Tilapia."

"The sound from inside went quiet. I didn't want to waste your time, so I didn't go in. I went to wait in your family's RV."

The neighbour's flat. A baby crying.

Liu Chaoyun and Chen Xinyi — were they still alive?

Bai Shan had assumed they'd died that chaotic night. She hadn't expected those two to have made it out.

"If they were safe enough to be back in that flat by then, when I blew up the building they would have gotten out. You don't need to worry —"

Bai Shan stopped mid-sentence. She looked at Lin Huijun, and asked again: "You said electric catfish crawled out from the neighbour's flat and attacked you?"

"Yes."

Lin Huijun replied, noticing that Bai Shan's expression had shifted.

Bai Shan raised a hand and pressed her fingers to her brow.

On the second day of the game, when they'd gone back to the building, the bodies and mutated catfish had all vanished. Bai Shan had instinctively assumed the banyan tree had consumed everything.

But if it hadn't been the banyan tree — if the electric catfish outbreak that night had never happened, the building's residents wouldn't have gathered in the first-floor lobby. The disaster that followed wouldn't have happened. The mutant banyan tree would never have had the chance to catch everyone in one sweep and grow powerful overnight.

So who had been the true beneficiary of that night's chaos, if not the banyan tree?

"…Liu Chaoyun."

Could you really have been that ruthless?

Bai Shan had no way to be certain. It was all only her conjecture. They had long since left Rong City. Everything and everyone there was behind them now.

Going forward she would only keep moving further away. Whether Liu Chaoyun and Chen Xinyi were dead or alive, the chances of them ever meeting again were slim.

"Go to sleep. We're getting up at six tomorrow."

The fifth night since the game descended. After a spell of commotion, silence settled again.

*

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Author's Note:

Bai Shan is INTP — when she's interested in something she'll dig into it completely, but when she's not interested she can barely summon the motivation.

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