258 We're all Mad

 

Of all the individuals Han Fei had encountered, Spider was undeniably the most complicated one. He had 9 different personas, sometimes even he couldn’t recognize himself. Consumed by the bloody torrents, the curse on Han Fei was suppressed and his wounds healed. Strength returned to him but the pain didn’t alleviate, if anything, the pain had gotten more intense. Han Fei inspected his wounds and realized that each wound possessed 2 kinds of curse. The Spider did not know how to remove Butterfly’s curse, so the only thing he could do was to apply a deeper curse on Han Fei, to use poison to fight poison. Spider bore the sin and murder accumulated at Cattle Alley alone, now he was applying a small part of it on Han Fei’s wounds.

The pain caused Han Fei to roll amidst the blood water. Seeing how energetic Han Fei was, Spider left him be and turned his attention instead to the Doctor and the Reader. The black blood threads around his heart disappeared but the strange butterfly pattern had imprinted itself on the heart. It had become a part of the heart of Kindness. The heart was now inside Spider but Spider didn’t dare to use the power of the heart lest the pattern of the Butterfly continued to spread. The wound on his chest closed and Spider rebirthed through the flesh from endless pig-faced monsters. His body was slowly returning to normal, his every movement influencing this dirty world. His face became more defined. Spider stood on the ruins of the House of the Butcher and found himself surrounded by 3 scary figures.

As the manager, he was the most powerful threat at Cattle Alley, even in his current state, no one would win him in an individual fight. However, if the 3 figures worked together to attack Spider, then the situation would be different. Therefore, the result of the fight depended not on Spider but on the out of control Xu Qin. If Xu Qin decided to work together with the Reader and the Doctor to become the next manager at Cattle Alley, then things would be very dangerous for Spider. However, if Xu Qin went after either the Reader or the Doctor, then the situation would be heavily weighted against the two subpersonas.

The Reader and the Doctor understood that. When the Reader turned to glance at Xu Qin, the woman who originated from curses was already charging at her. There was no reason, and no explanation, the Reader couldn’t understand why Xu Qin would come after her. She did notice that Xu Qin was staring at the book she was holding, examining the broken Han Fei in her paintings.

While Xu Qin and the Reader were caught in a fight, the Spider made his move towards the Doctor. All the hidden blood vessels inside the ruin, the blood and carcasses on the ground were all under the Spider’s control. The Doctor merely changed his physical appearance to look like the Spider and used the black blood threads to simulate the Spider’s ability but the Spider was above these tactics, after all, his spider web was this whole world. Once one was inside the Cattle Alley, one wouldn’t be able to escape, not even the Butterfly. The blood and flesh moved, everything within sight mobilized to stop the Doctor. Before the Spider even got near, there were already plenty of wounds on the Doctor’s body.

To assimilate the Spider’s heart, the Doctor was already wounded. His chest was sliced open by Rest in Peace and one of his legs was cut off during the chaos. Facing the Spider alone, the chance of the Doctor winning was zero.

The Doctor turned to the Reader but she was not in a good state as well. Xu Qin was like a mobile gate of curses, the 13 table knives opened an unimaginably horrifying door. The two frontlines were crushed. The outsiders bought by the Doctor knew things were not looking well, and they hurried to escape from the House of the Butcher. More blood and flesh gathered around Spider. A large and thick blood vessel connected Spider with the ruin underneath him. Blood submerged Cattle Alley and the Doctor’s last hope. The Doctor’s sharp appendages were grabbed by hands that materialized from the blood. The large body felt like it was sinking into quicksand, the more he struggled, the quicker he sank.

The Doctor was a rare Large Lingering Spirit but he was no match for the Spider at Cattle Alley. Everything around him was made into a big net to entrap him. Han Fei finally witnessed the true terror of the manager. Each manager had their own unique talent. The Spider’s talent was webbing, he could turn everything within his sight and possession into an invisible web. He had complete control over Cattle Alley because everything in this place had fed on his blood and flesh before. There was no screaming or hysterics, the way Spider killed was uniquely serene and gentle.

“No wonder the people from Ziggurat didn't dare to come here before Spider’s consciousness shattered. The moment they step into this place, they’d die.” Han Fei was envious of the Spider’s ability, compared to his ability of summoning Huang Yin, it was far more useful. The appendages that grew out from the Doctor’s back were yanked off one by one. He splashed in the blood water. Spider looked at the man silently, there was no pity, no joy, not even excitement in his eyes. It was like he had already foreseen this ending many times.

The Doctor cursed and growled as his body was slowly pulled underwater. Eventually only a numbered mask remained of the Doctor. Then, the blood water floated into the Reader’s room and digested the Ruffian and the Student. Spider’s eyes scanned the different masks before turning to the Reader who was still fighting Xu Qin. His expression finally changed. It was colored by loneliness and confusion. In Spider’s world, the Reader was his own friend, the only persona who could understand him and listen to him. But from some moment onwards, the Reader started to change.

Spider then realized the Reader was not a friend but a disease. He started to take medicine and undergo psychiatric interventions and counseling. He was finding a time to greet everyone farewell and achieve final rest. However, Butterfly’s intervention ruined everything. Even though Spider had not killed anyone in real life, and had not violated any law, he knew that his hands were bloody because he had to kill 8 different versions of himself. Other people would never understand Spider, even the most professional psychologist couldn’t really walk into his heart. Spider had always been lonely.

After the Reader saw the disappearance of the Doctor, she knew everything was over. Struggle would be a waste of time. “Spider, you are always so lucky, but do you really plan to spend the rest of your life forever inside Cattle Alley?”

After evading Xu Qin’s curse, the Reader grabbed at the book and then she tore them into bits and threw them into the air. The first few pages were about Han Fei but every page after that was pictures of Spider painted in different horrifying deaths. Each of the paintings contained an immense curse!

“You have a pair of eyes that can see the truth, and that is why I wish to bring you to witness the world with me. We could have been partners but you resisted me from real life to the mental world. You resisted me just to protect that little bit of humanity?! Why?” The curse on the book was triggered all at once. The pattern on the Reader’s face started to spread.

The Spider’s reconstructed face sighed deeply. He looked at the Reader for a long time before he asked the question which had been buried deeply inside his heart. “When you first appeared inside my mind, were you the Reader or the Butterfly?”

The Reader answered with an explosion of her soul. As her body blasted everywhere, the half wing of a blue butterfly flew at Spider’s heart at amazing speed! The Reader’s last attack was to send the other half of the Butterfly pattern into Spider’s heart!

“No matter, I already have an answer.” Spider had regained his sentience but looking at the flying butterfly, he did something inexplicable. He tore open his healed chest and dug out the half heart with Kindness. He studied the pattern on the heart like he was admiring the prettiest gem in the world. “There was never the Reader to begin with, we are all just mad and delusional.” He mumbled to himself. Spider only lifted his head when the half butterfly came incredibly close to him. His hands that held the heart suddenly tightened. Before the butterfly could touch it, Spider personally crushed his heart!

The butterfly pattern lingered on the broken flesh. The kindness and humanity inside the heart were transported by the Spider into Xu Qin. The layer of curse was peeled back. When Xu Qin was enveloped by Kindness, her expression turned difficult and pained. Her eyes gave a glimpse of the immense battle happening inside her heart. After giving the Kindness as a gift to Xu Qin, Spider used the last of his energy to raise a large wave from the blood pool and slam it against the ruin of the House of the Butcher.

Blood rained from the sky. The butterfly wings were crushed and the wave also washed away most of the curse around Xu Qin. Spider stood at the space where the House of the Butcher once stood. “I’ve been constantly searching and thinking and I ended up trapped inside the world that I built, bound by the web I weaved. Thank you for cutting open a gap for me to escape.” Spider picked Han Fei out from the pool. He could see the humanity shining within Han Fei and Spider’s eyes colored with unbridled envy. “With regards to how to survive in despair, you’ve given me a new answer.” After dropping Han Fei beside Xu Qin, Spider’s body weakened and thinned. He reached his hands into the pool of blood and soon straightened up with broken pieces of heart in his palms.

The heart pieces in his left palm were rotten and ugly, while the pieces in the right palm were bleeding with fresh blood.