This Damned Thirst for Survival

Jiang Luo leaned against the sink, playing with his lighter, the iron one sounding crisp as the flame flared up and went out, “On second thought, I’m not really interested in the secret you’re talking about either.”

He lied.

No one, more than Jiang Luo, would want to know the secret of Chi You.

Jiang Luo has a cat’s claw in his heart, which makes him want to strip Chi You of his mysterious skin, just as he strips the evil spirit of his civilized and scandalous attire to reveal the stench of his crawling, ghostly appearance.

But he acted like it, ” Chi You , the initiative is mine. I’ll play if I want to and not if I don’t, not to mention, you’re not very sincere.”

The evil spirit raised an eyebrow and said, “How so.”

Jiang Luo said, “You let me find you, but you are more than one person.”

“Ah, you’ve found out.” The evil spirit said sadly.

Jiang Luo laughed coldly, “Your puppet is you, and the person possessed by you is you …… If the rules of the game are that I capture either of you at will, then I am happy to continue the game.”

The evil spirit said, “No, of course it is the real me you need to find.”

He thought for a moment and thoughtfully added, “Possessed me in a human body.”

Jiang Luo hung up the phone with a blank expression.

Ten seconds later, the phone rang and picked up again and the evil spirit sighed, “Well then, I’ll give you one last tip.”

Jiang Luo received a photograph.

The photograph shows a lip that is smiling.

The man’s lips are high and full, with a rosy pout.

The evil spirit said, “One minute.”

Jiang Luo gazes intently at this photograph.

He quickly compares the lips with every face he has met here, but Chi You’s smile adds to the difficulty of the search. Jiang Luo’s memory is good, but not so good that he can recognise a person with just one mouth.

After half a minute, he wisely abandoned the idea of finding Chi You tonight and instead pondered what Chi You’s punishment would be, and whether he could hide from it, or use it to go back.

Jiang Luo hung back in thought as a minute quickly passed and the evil spirit’s voice rose slightly, “It is time for you to submit your answers.”

Jiang Luo was calm, a complete contrast to Chi You’s emotions. He tries, “What will you do if you answer wrong.”

“A small punishment?” Chi You said deliberately, “Who knows.”

It’s like an unknown gift, and even though one knows it’s not good, one can’t help but guess how bad it can be. Jiang Luo drapes the towel around his neck and speaks directly about the one person he suspects.

” Xi Si .”

Second place in Next Stop, Idol, a gentle, good old boy. Jiang Luo now feels false and hypocritical whenever he meets such a nice guy who wants for nothing because of Chi You, who loves such characters after all.

The evil spirit mused, “Well ……”

Jiang Luo’s heart beats a little faster.

In the next instant, the evil spirit regrettably told him the answer, “Unfortunately, you were only half right.”

Oh, Xi Si is only his puppet, but not the one who is bent over him.

Jiang Luo was prepared for defeat, but after hearing the evil spirit admit it, his face darkened.

“How come you’re everywhere,” Jiang Luo’s mouth lifted, “Chi You, there’s not a shadow of you in all the trainees, is there?”

Chi You said slowly, “That’s a good idea.”

He added in a pretentious manner, “I didn’t think you’d guess wrong – even though I hate to, I’ll have to be ruthless and give you a little punishment.”

“After all, I’m very much a gamesman.” He said.

The tone of Chi You’s voice grows more and more excited as he says he has to, a seamy twist of repressed madness that gives way to a murderous perversion.

Jiang Luo ended the call with a twitch of his skin.

The water is running in the bathtub and the bathroom is silent. Jiang Luo waits tensely for a few minutes, but nothing happens. He simply walked out of the bathroom, but the moment he did so, the clean and tidy bedroom suddenly turned into a shabby and gloomy mess.

There are rats crawling on the floor, yellowing curtains and fabrics littering the floor, Jiang Luo’s head down, a spider crawling by his feet.

He crushed the spider and took a look around.

It’s like a standard haunted building scene in a horror movie, and if this image could be captured in a horror movie, it would create a 100% scary effect.

Jiang Luo closes his eyes, follows the layout of the bedroom as he remembers it, and lifts his steps in the direction of the bed.

The distance between the bed and the bathroom is three metres, and when you leave the door you turn right. Once the three metres were reached, Jiang Luo opened his eyes.

In front of it is a puddle full of intertwined and crawling snakes.

The snakes were as dense and twisted as knotted rope, hundreds of them at a glance.

Jiang Luo is more than sure that this is just a hallucination that the evil spirit has made him see.

Most of the killings by evil spirits rely on hallucinations, inspiring fear in the human mind, and then forcing people to die with fear.

Jiang Luo is not afraid of snakes.

But he was afraid of being nauseous.

Hundreds of flowering snakes fluttered and hissed their letters. Jiang Luo stands by the puddle for a moment, then turns and opens his arms and falls back towards it.

The wind whipped up his hair and the next moment Jiang Luo fell into the soft bed.

Unexpected.

Jiang Luo rubbed the soft, smooth silk pillow and the corners of his mouth curled up. It’s just an illusion, won’t he just keep it open?

As long as one doesn’t look, doesn’t believe, and treats it all as a cloud, then this illusion will have no effect on Jiang Luo.

On the contrary, it is only if one goes on the attack and is afraid that one steps into the trap laid by the evil spirits.

Jiang Luo repeatedly reminds himself to ignore everything.

The next moment, he felt a cold hand clutch his ankle.

Jiang Luo doesn’t waver half as much as if the hand didn’t exist.

But a few more ghostly hands reached out and bound Jiang Luo’s hands and feet. There was something wrong with having the dark-haired young man lying in a large shape like a sacrifice.

Jiang Luo’s skin jumped several times before he finally opened his eyes.

Hundreds of blue and white ghostly hands were stretched out on either side of his bed. As if waiting for him to open up, the ghostly hands touched Jiang Luo in unison when his breathing stalled, covering the dark-haired youth from head to toe, revealing only his eyes.

The last hand came down from the sky and slowly approached Jiang Luo’s eyes, and Jiang Luo heard a soft laugh from Chi You, “I am so kind, how can I bear to punish my ‘beloved’.”

He said languidly, “I thought about it and decided to give you another chance to find me.”

“In the hands of a thousand ghosts, guess which one is my hand?”

“It’s this,” a ghostly hand slid flirtatiously from Jiang Luo’s waist, “or this.”

Another cold hand slowly brushed Jiang Luo’s thigh.

On the huge bed, the dark-haired youth was held by a thousand ghostly hands and locked firmly to the bed. The youth under the ghosts fought to struggle but to little avail.

The image is horrific and frightening, with only a few strands of black hair falling from the bed beneath the ghostly hands. One hand after another grabbed Jiang Luo’s clothes, his bathrobe balled up into a pile of scrap cloth.

“Fuck. Fuck you,” Jiang Luo cursed through his fingers with difficulty, “Chi You .”

Jiang Luo was given a punishing pinch on the back of his neck and Chi You said, “Don’t swear.”

*

As the night wore on, Lu Youyi and the dead ghost didn’t stay in Ye Xun’s room for long and went back to their dormitory first.

Ye Xun had been waiting for Zhang Feng to come back, he had rubbed Xiao Fen’s hair over and over again and when Xiao Fen was dry, Zhang Feng finally came back.

At the sound of the door, Ye Xun looked out, but when he saw Zhang Feng clearly, his pupils suddenly tightened.

“Back?” Another person from the same dorm greeted, ” Zhang Feng , it’s raining heavily, where have you been?”

Zhang Feng’s voice was laced with laughter, “I went out for a walk and got caught in the rain, I’ll take a shower first.”

He walked easily on his feet to his locker to find a change of clothes, singing the theme song from Next Stop, Idol on his lips.

Zhang Feng is a completely different person from before, the depression, panic and fierceness that he hid in his body have all disappeared. It was as if he had solved a troubling problem and his mood was as good as anyone could see.

A layer of sweat slowly emerged from the tip of Ye Xun’s nose.

Zhang Feng, who had finished his clothes, turned towards the bathroom and noticed Ye Xun looking at him, then turned his head to Ye Xun and instead of being hostile and harsh, he said in a friendly manner, ” Ye Xun, what are you looking at me for?”

“Did I get something on my face?” He looked up and touched his face.

Ye Xun swallowed, chills running up his spine.

Zhang Feng’s face is clean and clear of everything.

Smooth and delicate skin, no acne marks, no dimples or bumps.

There are also no more five senses.

Hers is a faceless face.

*

But Zhang Feng and his flatmates didn’t notice anything was wrong.

Zhang Feng picked up a mirror and, with his face missing five features, approached it and murmured, “There’s no dirt.”

He looked around in the mirror, carefully touching his face without his features. Ye Xun’s scalp slowly tingled. He tried to hold his expression steady as he watched Zhang Feng put the mirror down and go into the bathroom.

After Zhang Feng closed the door, Ye Xun exhaled. He walked over to his roommate who was studying at the table and whispered, ” Zhang Feng has a fever, his eyes are a bit red.”

“Did he?” The housemate froze and asked back, “Isn’t he exactly the same as he was this morning? I didn’t see his eyes go red.”

Ye Xun stood in place for a moment, shook his head, retreated to the bed and hugged Xiao Fen, took out his mobile phone and sent a message to Jiang Luo and the others.

But before a message could be sent, there was another knock at the door.

Ye Xun paused, hugged Xiao Fen and approached the door, stopped when he was about to open it and withdrew his hand, “Who is it?”

Zhang Feng in the bathroom heard the voice and raised his voice, ” Ye Xun, who is it?”

After a moment, he added, “If anyone comes looking for me, just say I’m not in.”

Ye Xun thinks that Zhang Feng was probably afraid that people would come and ask him about the time he almost got into a fight with Zhang Cheng during the morning recording because he was pointed out by him that there were ghosts around.

Ye Xun said, “Good.”

The housemate had her headphones on and was concentrating on the lyrics, not hearing their conversation.

The knock on the door outside was still ringing, a knock that seemed to strike at Ye Xun’s heart. Ye Xun pursed his lips, moved a chair and cautiously peeked his eyes out through the glass opening above the door.

His movements are careful and his position is concealed so that not only is he unnoticed, but he can also see the man outside from a height. The man outside is knocking on the door in silence, and Ye Xun can only see the swirl of his hair and the back of his head. This man looks vaguely familiar to him.

He had just finished thinking this when the man suddenly raised his head and locked eyes with Ye Xun.

He smiled stiffly, showing a face that belonged to Zhang Feng, “I forgot my keys, can I have them, to open the door?”