The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 25: Old Man Zhang

Gao Yang, Officer Huang, and Wu Dahai lifted the blue fabric and walked out of the arcade.

Wu Dahai reached up to pull the roller gate down as he said, “Don’t resent me, Old Huang. I’m merely a cog in the organization. The rules are made by the higher-ups.”

Meanwhile, Qing Ling had been standing silently outside the arcade.

“Qing Ling? Or Little Qing Ling?” Gao Yang asked tentatively.

“Qing Ling.” She turned to him. “You won?”

“Yeah.” Gao Yang smiled wryly. “But it’s just a warm-up. There’s a second test.”

Qing Ling didn’t seem surprised. “Thought so.”

“So I was the only one naive enough to believe I only have to win the games?” Officer Huang felt a pang of embarrassment.

“It doesn’t actually matter whether you’re good at the games or not. I’m mainly testing your patience while observing your character at the same time. Power isn’t the only metric for whether you get to join our organization.” Wu Dahai proudly rubbed his nose.

“Now that we’ve passed the character evaluation, is it time to test our strength?” asked Gao Yang.

“Right on. We don’t allow dead weights into our fold. Those whose Talents are outside the top 100 in serial number are not in our consideration.”

Might as well spell my name, Gao Yang thought weakly. It seemed he would have to try to cover his Talent up. If it didn’t work, it would be fine for Qing Ling and Officer Huang to join first. He could accumulate Luck points over time and save up enough to finally comprehend a new Talent. It wouldn’t be too late to join then.

“May I take this?” An old and husky voice came from not far away.

Gao Yang glanced sideways and saw an old man dressed in tattered clothes. On his hunched back was a dirty trash bin, and he was holding a pair of tongs.

Standing beside Officer Huang’s patrol car, the old man pointed at the empty cola can on the hood with his tongs. “May I have this if you don’t want it?” he asked again.

“Oh, sure. No problem.” Officer Huang helpfully walked up to his car and drained the remaining cola from the can before crushing it, throwing it into the trash bin on the old man’s back.

“Hoho, young men sure are strong.” The old man’s wrinkled face arranged into an amicable smile.

“Of course. I graduated from the police academy. I’ve been training every day.” Officer Huang took out a pack of cigarettes from his breast pocket. “Want one, sir?”

“Sure.” The old man’s muddled eyes glinted for a moment.

Like he had done this a thousand times, Officer Huang took out a cigarette and put it between the old man’s lips before lighting it up.

“Hm...pretty good.” The old man took a drag and savored it. Without saying thanks, he slowly turned around and walked away.

All four of them watched the old man go.

“Picking up trash even at such an old age,” Officer Huang said sympathetically. “Life hasn’t been treating him well.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you’ve seen how he was when he was young.” Wu Dahai scoffed. “I grew up in this neighborhood. Every kid on the street was afraid of him.”

“Really?”

“He was a butcher, a violent man. He resented his wife for not giving birth to a son and beat her up every day. She ended up in the hospital many times. Then finally, his wife couldn’t take it anymore and killed herself by drinking pesticide. That day, their daughter had just finished her college entrance exams. His wife only endured until then because she didn’t want her death to impact her daughter’s performance.”

None of them knew what to say.

“His daughter cut ties with him once she entered college and never came back. After his wife’s death, Old Man Zhang didn’t know what to do with himself. He stopped butchering pigs after some time and spent his days drinking. Losing the clarity of his mind, he then got into gambling and lost his house. He has been living on welfare and picking trash since then.”

Wu Dahai lost all his frivolousness, his eyes darkening. “All his life, he looks least like a man now, but I think he acts most like one.”

Wu Dahai scoffed. “Of course, he’s actually a monster.”

“Lower your voice,” Officer Huang reminded him. “He’s not far enough to not hear it.”

“It’s okay. He’s a wanderer. He’d filter it out even if he heard me.”

“He fell,” Qing Ling interjected.

Wu Dahai turned around. Old Man Zhang had fallen to the ground.

“Old Man Zhang?” Wu Dahai quickly walked up to him. “You alright?”

The cool breeze of night swept over them. Gao Yang looked at the old man lying prone on the ground. Something felt wrong to him. He couldn’t put his feelings into words, but it seemed to be an alarm sounded by his instincts, honed by his now keener senses.

“Wait!” Gao Yang called out to Wu Dahai. “Don’t!”

Wu Dahai was less than three meters away from the old man when he stopped. “What?”

The next second, everyone other than Wu Dahai saw it—Old Man Zhang got up!

He didn’t crawl up to his feet like a regular human would; instead, his stiff body seemed to defy gravity as an invisible force propped him up.

Qing Ling conjured her long sword, while Officer Huang unholstered his gun.

Gao Yang quickly backed away. He knew he was useless in fights at the moment, and the best thing he could do for the team was not drag them down.

Their actions told Wu Dahai that something was wrong. He quickly whirled around and saw Old Man Zhang standing with his limbs stiff and his neck bent at an unnatural angle, like a chopstick with the tip broken. His mouth twitched quickly as white foam came out. Slurring, he kept repeating, “Human, human, humanhumanhuman...”

Suddenly, his skin melted at once like an invisible fire was burning all over him. Vapor of blood burst out as his bloody muscle tissues became exposed. At the same time, his body shook madly, and clumps of blood burst out.

Old Man Zhang went from groaning in pain to howling fervently, “Human! Human! Human!” His chest swelled up at a terrifying speed with his rib cage breaking through his flesh. It then opened wide to the sides like the mouth of a cannibalistic flower. Within his chest was a repulsive lump of flesh covered in human facial organs.

To put it into words, it looked like the result of someone wrapping countless eyes, mouths, ears, and noses in thick layers of plastic before melting everything in an oven.

The lump of flesh slowly bloomed like a flower bud.

Old Man Zhang’s upper body became the stem propping the flower bud up, while his lower body corroded and melted to become roots burying into the ground.

In only half a second, Old Man Zhang had transformed from a man to a twisted, bloody cannibalistic flower.

“What monster is that?” Qing Ling frowned.

“I don’t know.” Officer Huang lowered his voice.

“Kill him?” asked Qing Ling. “Or run?”

“Run. It doesn’t seem like he can chase after us, and he’s lost his intelligence...” Before Officer Huang could even finish, Old Man Zhang’s large intestine splitted into several bloody vines of flesh, one of which swung toward Wu Dahai like a whip.

Wu Dahai jumped and turned to run, but the vine wrapped around his ankle and yanked, making him fall to the ground with a heavy thud.

“Don’t touch me! Piss off, I said piss off...” Wu Dahai struggled on the ground, reaching out with both hands to find anything to grab onto, but to no avail.

He was so close to getting yanked to the feet of what had been Old Man Zhang and becoming the monster’s food.

Bang!

A bullet broke the vine wrapping around Wu Dahai’s ankle.

It sputtered a mist of blood and retreated. The severed part of the vine let go of Wu Dahai as well before slithering back to Old Man Zhang’s body like an agile snake, becoming one with the monster again.

It took no time for the broken vine to regenerate.

Swoosh, swoosh, swoosh—

This time, three vines flew toward Wu Dahai at once.