Chapter 471 - 413: Chaisi: Resident, Resident, Arm, Arm

Chapter 471: Chapter 413: Chaisi: Resident, Resident, Arm, Arm

...Fu Tailan had escaped from his grasp again.

Gunfire tore through the night, a constant tremor in the curtain of rain. Chaisi poured every ounce of his strength into pulling the trigger.

He knew the direction the SUV had sped off in, knew Fu Tailan had stopped once along the way, and had even guessed that Carter wasn’t dead. He knew everything, yet could do nothing.

Everything he did was always just a futile effort.

’It felt like his entire life could be summed up by that one thought.’

He was out of bullets, but Chaisi, as if refusing to accept his fate, pulled the trigger several more times. The only response was the dull, empty click of the hammer, the gun unable to spit out a single another round.

He flung it violently into the distance. The pistol slammed onto the road, sending up a spray of white water. Countless bright droplets leaped into the glow of the headlights, and for an instant, it seemed as if they would hang forever suspended in the drizzling air.

’...If only time could freeze at this very moment.’

But of course, that was impossible.

The spray fell, dejected, plunging back into the dim depths to be shattered to smithereens.

Chaisi slowly turned his head, his gaze falling on the two figures before him.

Unloading an entire clip had only made the Resident wave its arms and slip a few times in the rain.

When he looked again, its chest—a lattice of crisscrossing bones—was nearly upon him.

Chaisi stared at it, rooted to the spot.

’He knew he was no match for it. He knew there was nothing he could do. Still, he refused to back down.’

"Brother Chaisi," Han Liuyue cried out urgently from behind him. "What are you doing? Get away from it!"

’And then what? Get in the car and run?’

’If he ran, would the Resident see the error of its ways and head back to its Nest?’

The Resident took another step toward Chaisi. The thigh protruding from its chest swayed and sank, landing with a SPLASH in a puddle.

The SUV driver before him could no longer be called human by any stretch of the imagination.

The driver’s original head had been replaced by a swirling mass of black mist. From this mist crawled another body, one that looked as if it were haphazardly pieced together from countless human parts. One of its hands had twenty or thirty fingers, while the other was a thick stack of four or five palms.

The Resident’s chest was a dense, crisscrossing mass of bones, their contorted shapes pushing out from under its dark, oily skin. The leg it used to approach Chaisi was crowded with innumerable knees of all sizes, packed so tightly together they resembled a great, blooming bouquet of flesh and bone.

It had two bodies, but not a single head.

The Resident’s entire body had burrowed into the Human World, but its head remained trapped in the black mist.

As it dragged itself step by step toward Chaisi, weathering the bullets, the original driver’s body was yanked along, stumbling behind. It was as if someone had fashioned a drawing compass from two headless bodies.

A bullet zipped past Chaisi and struck the Resident square in the sternum, knocking it back. It stumbled two steps away from him. The bullet lodged itself shallowly between bone and skin, unable to penetrate any deeper, before becoming another piece of futile scrap falling to the rain-slicked ground.

"Brother Chaisi!"

Han Liuyue grabbed Chaisi’s arm, yanking him so hard he stumbled. The jolt finally seemed to snap him back to his senses. "That was my last bullet! We have to go, now!"

Still in a daze, Chaisi glanced past her.

The driver who’d gotten out of the other SUV wasn’t dragging a Resident’s body behind him.

Perhaps realizing it was useless to shoot only the Resident, Han Liuyue had fired I-don’t-know-how-many rounds into the driver’s own chest. Now, it was a mangled ruin of flesh and blood; you could almost see the road behind him through the gaping hole.

But despite taking so many bullets, a fatal amount for any man, the second SUV driver remained standing ramrod straight on the road.

He too was headless, a similar mass of black mist swirling above his neck.

The only difference was that the black mist on the second driver’s neck was gradually dissipating. By now, it was almost completely gone, leaving only a smooth, grayish-white brain perched atop the stump of his neck.

The brain slowly swiveled to face them, as if something were peering out at the Human World from the fissures and folds of its gray matter.

"The Black Abyss Belt," Chaisi said suddenly. "That black mist on their heads... it must be the Black Abyss Belt."

Han Liuyue had barely escaped the Black Abyss Belt with her life once before. A quick glance was all it took for her to reach the same conclusion.

"It’s not dissolving them," she said, her face pale but her voice steady. "Does that mean... the Black Abyss Belt loses its dissolving effect in the Human World?"

She shook her head. "That’s not important." Then, grabbing Chaisi’s arm with all her might, she tried to drag him away with the stubborn force of an ox.

"Who cares what they like to wear as a hat! Brother Chaisi, we need to go, now! They’re closing in... Why are you so heavy?"

He let her pull, as unmoving as if a small dog were tugging at his pant leg.

"You go. Take Uncle Kai to the safe house." He grabbed Han Liuyue’s hand and peeled her fingers off his arm. "Leave these two Residents to me. I’ll cover your escape."

Han Liuyue stared at him, dumbfounded. "Cover our escape? How?"

Chaisi tossed her the keys, jutting his chin toward the car. "Go now. Don’t make me say it twice."

Han Liuyue’s lips tightened into a thin line. She caught the keys but didn’t move an inch.

"I’m not looking for a way to die,"

Chaisi sighed to himself, watching the headless, double-bodied Resident approach him again. "I have a way to hold them off and buy you some time."

The headless, double-bodied Resident wagged an index finger at him, as if to say, ’You’re not good enough.’

Chaisi ducked low, stretched out an arm, and grabbed the deformed car door he had ripped off and thrown to the ground. With a sudden burst of strength, he heaved the entire door into the air. He didn’t even have to shout "Move!"—Han Liuyue was already scrambling backward.

The next second, the heavy, twisted metal door went flying horizontally, smashing squarely into the Resident’s supporting leg.

The dozens of knees of all shapes and sizes took the full force of the blow. Some bent backward, others scattered to the sides, some even slid down to the creature’s shin. Though the Resident wasn’t seriously injured, it lost its balance and collapsed heavily into the puddles.

Without pausing for a breath, Chaisi spun and landed a vicious kick on the knee of the brain-headed driver behind him.

The driver, after all, still had a human body and couldn’t withstand Chaisi’s strength. The muffled CRACK of the breaking kneecap, though wrapped in flesh and skin, was still loud enough to make one’s skin crawl.

Losing a supporting joint, the brain-headed driver staggered. Half of its body collapsed while the other half remained upright, like a Lego figure that had been knocked apart on one side. Seizing the moment while both Residents were down, Chaisi roared at Han Liuyue, "What are you waiting for? Go!"

"Ah, right!" Startled, Han Liuyue seemed to finally remember her usual obedience. She backed up a few steps, then turned and bolted for the car.

Panting, Chaisi pulled his gaze away from her retreating form, only to find to his displeasure that both Residents were already back on their feet.

’It’s still a human body... yet it can stand on a shattered kneecap.’

’Is it because the person is already dead? Because it can’t feel pain? Is that why it can still stand, even with shards of bone digging into its thigh?’

There was little to say about the other Resident’s body. It grabbed the car door, flung it aside, and by the time it stood up, the bouquet of flesh-and-bone on its leg had already returned to its original state.

"Two freaks, and neither one of them can talk."

Chaisi gave a soft, scornful laugh, raising a hand to slick his wet hair back. "I thought for sure I’d have to listen to a Resident’s filth today... Guess I’m lucky."

He heard Han Liuyue start the engine but didn’t have time to look. Flanking him on his left and right, the two Residents continued to close in, one step at a time.

"Come on," Chaisi said with a grin, shrugging off his soaked jacket and tossing it aside. "I haven’t moved an inch. Let’s see which one of you can make me."

The headless, double-bodied Resident suddenly raised an arm high. Joint after joint unfolded in midair, like an endless insectile limb. As its arm swept through the night sky toward Chaisi, it left a countless, overlapping trail of afterimages.

An arm with a watch an arm with a bracelet a tattooed arm a hairy arm a thin arm a white arm a thick arm arm arm arm arm arm

whose arms are these why did so many people forget their arms lose them collect them collect them this is the correct way for arms to exist birds of a feather flock together arms should be with other arms my own arms need to join them right—

A sharp, long blast of a car horn, held down with unrelenting force, jolted Chaisi from the powerful, absolute logic of the Resident.

He twisted away sharply, yanking his arm back just an instant before the Resident’s appendages would have swept over it, narrowly dodging its twenty-odd fingertips. But just as he thought he was out of reach, before he could even breathe a sigh of relief, another joint on the Resident’s arm suddenly unfolded, extending a new section of limb.

The Resident seized Chaisi’s arm.

arm arm arm must send these two out of place lonely outsider arms on my body back to their brethren right now