Chapter 780: Brutality

Face after face melted against my palm; it was not a pleasant feeling. I stared at that waxen visage, my tone chilling. "Are you the owner of White Rose?"

Her figure vaguely suggested a woman, but her face kept sloughing off and shifting—one moment an old man, the next a child.

The occasional car passed on the street outside, its headlights illuminating the beauty parlor for a fleeting instant. The surroundings were terrifyingly quiet. The only sound was the steady tick-tock of a clock echoing from somewhere unknown.

"What are you looking for?" a dry, rasping female voice asked from that hideous face. Between the blurred features and nauseating tone, it felt like maggots had crawled over my shoes—a sensation that made me want to kick them off and scramble away. "Are you looking for your own face, too?"

The neck of the woman in my grip suddenly stretched forward like a striking viper. She thrust that face—one nobody would ever want to look at twice—right up to mine, her teeth snapping inches from my eyes. The stench she exuded caused the yin energy around me to surge, washing outward in a frenzied storm.

That elongated, deformed neck finally stopped less than a centimeter from my face. I could clearly see the overlapping visages shifting across it.

"Have you lost your face, too?"

The chilling words slipped from a rotting mouth, pressed squarely into my line of sight.

Tightening my grip, I clamped down hard on the woman's neck. I narrowed my eyes, my heart calmer than it had ever been.

Fear and panic were luxuries I had long since discarded. Phantoms wailed at my back as a bloody haze blurred my vision. "Yin-Yang Has an Order!"

The Eighteen Yin Apertures opened wide. Streaks of yin dragons converged into my palm, shrouding my arm in a layer of shadow invisible to ordinary eyes.

The woman's face shifted faster. I had no idea what this thing was. The tactile feedback against my palm told me she was a living person; only human skin possessed that kind of elasticity. Yet, the melting, rapidly morphing features mere inches away repeatedly reminded me that this entity was absolutely not human. She felt like a manufactured monster, harboring a sin and malice that filled me with pure disgust!

"Are you going to talk or not?" I squeezed harder, ready to crush this hideous creature.

"Can't you find your face, either? You're here looking for your own face, aren't you? Your face was stolen, wasn't it..."

Each sentence echoed endlessly through the dark, cramped space like a death curse, boring into my ears as if designed solely to torture me.

"If you won't talk, then go to hell!" The brutality buried deep in my heart erupted. The aftereffects of devouring nearly a hundred obsessions kept me teetering on the edge of losing control.

With emotionless eyes, I watched the woman's neck twist and deform bit by bit in my grip.

Perhaps sensing the threat to her life, the woman's face stopped changing. Her features withered like dead flowers as all the overlapping visages began weeping, screaming, and groaning in agony. "This is my face! It's my face!"

The shrieks were piercing, but I remained unmoved, my hand locked like a steel vise.

With her windpipe crushed, she was rendered voiceless. The woman's face finally froze in place. Her features had been carved off, the raw wounds smeared with colorful cosmetics.

"Have you changed your mind now?" I hadn't given up, deciding to ask this monster one last time. Her appearance was far too abrupt. I was almost certain she was closely connected to the other Streamer, and perhaps even to the Red Building!

Footsteps suddenly rang out near the entrance. I frowned slightly as the Seductive Ghost sent a warning. Then, a blinding yellow beam from a flashlight swept up from downstairs, hitting me dead on!

"Who's there! Don't move!" A security guard from the pedestrian street had likely been drawn over by the woman's screams. Noticing something amiss, he had entered the building and stumbled right into me. This guy was experienced. He didn't impulsively rush over; instead, he immediately grabbed his walkie-talkie to report in. "Thief spotted in White Rose! Second floor of White Rose!"

As an ordinary person suddenly barged in, I glanced over my shoulder. A strange sensation slid across my palm—something extremely slippery, like touching the belly of a carp.

"Something's wrong." I whipped back around, only to find that the woman had slipped from my grasp and retreated a few meters away, writhing like a snake.

In that brief moment of distraction, she had slithered right up to the nearest mirror.

"Are you here to find your face?" The holes on the woman's face stretched outward in a grotesque mimicry of a smile. Without a hint of hesitation, I lunged forward into a bow stance and executed the Eight-Step Crushing Fist. With my current abilities, if this strike landed flush, it would be more than enough to blow her head apart.

Bang!

An explosive boom echoed across the floor. The mirror shattered, sending shards flying everywhere as my fist smashed right through the glass.

I scanned my surroundings. A faint black silhouette was rapidly darting toward the direction the security guard had come from—the exit.

"Trying to run?" I stood with my face turned aside, countless negative emotions churning like a tidal wave in my mind.

"Squat down and don't move! I've seen plenty of petty thieves like you. Come with me quietly and you'll suffer a lot less. I studied Sanda before I became a security guard!"

The guard held up his flashlight. He completely failed to notice the black silhouette that had already slipped into the shadows. The glaring beam of light was focused entirely on me.

"I'm clearly trying to save you people, so why are you always so blind? Do you all have a death wish?!" Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out the black-and-white Good and Evil Asura Mask. I didn't want to expose my face, nor did I want to kill the guard, so the mask was my only option. However, since I was already influenced by the obsessions, wearing the Good and Evil Asura Mask would likely make me even more brutal.

A cool sensation spread across my skin as the mask covered my features. Hiding beneath it and looking out at the world, things suddenly seemed much easier. The concerns in my heart slowly slipped away, and a thick crimson hue gathered in the depths of my eyes.

"What are you trying to do? Don't do anything stupid! It's just theft right now, but if you dare resist, it becomes a much worse crime..." This was probably the guard's first time encountering someone like me—someone who, instead of running, calmly put on a mask like a killer preparing to silence a witness.

"Thief spotted at White Rose Beauty Parlor. There's something wrong with this guy; he might be a repeat offender. Send backup immediately! Send backup immediately!"

The guard shouted frantically into his walkie-talkie. By this time, I had already dashed down the stairs. With my Heart Aperture opened, my physical capabilities had risen to the level of a monster in the eyes of ordinary people; there was simply no comparison.

"You said you studied Sanda?" Covering the walkie-talkie's mouthpiece with my palm, I looked at the cold sweat dripping down the guard's face. I didn't give him a chance to speak, shoving his face hard into the floor before leaping right over him.

Kicking open the shop doors, I looked out at the silent street. The buildings on either side stood quietly in the dark like lambs waiting for slaughter, while a distorted figure fled into the distance.

Her legs were folded together like twisted dough. Her deformed neck slumped against her shoulder as she moved rapidly in a bizarre, unnatural gait.

"I'm fed up with being led by the nose. You're not getting away tonight. Whoever dares to stop me, I'll slaughter them all!" The Blood Fox was eager to act, the blood surging through my entire body boiling with the sin brought on by the obsessions. The Red Mansion Live Broadcast had been far too oppressive; the negative emotions pent up inside me needed to be unleashed.

Beneath the mask, the last trace of human emotion faded from my eyes. The facade of mercy and goodwill peeled away to reveal undisguised madness. This was my true nature, repressed by reason deep in my bones—a nature I barely understood myself, slowly returning as the Dao Locks were continuously broken!

A full-power sprint! Every muscle burned. The yin energy howled without the slightest restraint.

"Stop right there!"

"I found the thief! Right here, he... he's charging right at me!"

"Where's the captain? Someone hurry!"

"Is he even fucking human? Call the police! Hurry, call the police!"

The security guards stepping out of their booth and the sanitation workers cleaning the pedestrian street were completely dumbfounded. I hadn't wanted to be so high-profile, but that face-shifting phantom was my only clue. To catch her now, I couldn't care less about anything else.

"Judging by the direction she's fleeing, it seems she's trying to lure me downtown. It's heavily populated there; it really would be hard to make a move." Despite my savage, bloodthirsty appearance, my gaze remained exceptionally calm. "But so what if we reach downtown? I've had enough of this money-obsessed city. It's time to wake them up with something a little more exciting."

Three Dao Locks had been opened, and my Daoist arts were on the verge of breaking through to the next realm. Most importantly, my ghost art had reached the fifth tier. I didn't even have a clear understanding of my own strength anymore.

"Perhaps I can change my approach to solving these problems. After all, I'm no longer the paranoid, terrified rookie I was during my first live broadcast."

I raised my hand, and the light seemed to be devoured. The spot where I stood was distinctly darker than anywhere else, as if even the starlight was unwilling to draw near.

"I can't tell how deep the waters of Jinghai run. Since that's the case, I might as well muddy them completely and draw all the monsters and freaks out into the open." I formed a ghost seal with my hand, and the Nether Runes on my palm emitted a gloomy light, resembling a spectral eye of the Underworld. "Yin-Yang Has an Order!"

"I command the Azure Plague Ghost of the East, essence of rotting wood; the Red Plague Ghost of the South, essence of blazing fire; the Blood Plague Ghost of the West, essence of vile metal; the Black Plague Ghost of the North, essence of turbid pools; the Yellow Plague Ghost of the Center, essence of imperial earth!"

Dark clouds had rolled in at some point, obscuring the stars and moon. The streetlights along the entire road flickered erratically, the bulbs swaying as if terrified of something.

Five boundlessly massive shadows converged from the five directions of heaven and earth, manifesting into ferocious, terrifying giant ghosts.

"Catch the person ahead, dead or alive!"

With my ghost art breaking through to the fifth tier, I could now practice the even more powerful ghost-controlling arts. Because time was so tight, I hadn't yet had the chance to sit down and sort through the various methods I had acquired. Once I caught Zhu Li and completed the commission from the Underworld, my strength would likely experience another qualitative leap.

With the Five Directions Plague Ghosts blocking her path, the phantom had nowhere to run. Just as she was about to be crushed by the giant ghosts, several pale Blue Talismans suddenly flew out from a three-story building at the end of the pedestrian street.

Seeing those bizarre Blue Talismans, my movements slowed slightly. These talismans looked strikingly similar to the Dream Dao Talisman that Chen Jiuge had used.