Reincarnated In a Cthulhu World And Everyone Is Obsessed With Me - Chapter 32

Chapter 32: Blood-Thirsty Blade – Even if you shut me in a nutshell.

Xia Mingyu returned to the black and white world.

The monochrome forest was devouring the surrounding Domains at a staggering speed. More innocent people were being alienated, dragged into this endless slaughter. Humans and monsters had lost their distinguishing features; all were killing each other to gain rebirth through death, silence through chaos.

If Sanctuary were here, Xia Mingyu would want to ask: What terrifying level has my mental pollution reached now?

He was still thinking with the mind of “Xia Mingyu,” but his brain was a cacophony of different perspectives and streams of information, nearly drowning him. With the dissipation of the Phantom, the Domain had lost its pillar, yet it continued to expand and merge by sheer inertia. The Yin-Yang hung high above, and the pupil within it stared down.

Xia Mingyu—no, he should be called the “Rule,” the Master of the Domain.

He realized the only solution: he had to travel to every merged Domain and overwrite them with the rules he had established. When the rules were broken, everyone would be saved.

As he set his laws, the Shining Trapezohedron developed its first crack. This was the abandoned nest of a fallen god, occupied for eons by the Phantom. The opening of the Domain had awakened the Haunter of the Dark. Everyone summoned here would have to make a horrific sacrifice.

…

Xia Mingyu snapped his fingers, peeling away the illusions to reveal a shining, celestial “staircase.” It spiraled up and down simultaneously. In the Trapezohedron, the certainty of space was broken.

Xia Mingyu was bleeding. He was exhausted. His wounds and his blood did not come from this moment alone, but from the combined effects of the deep past and the abyssal future. The causality of the Möbius strip was wrapped around him; the waters of the Klein bottle were about to submerge his head.

Yet, his steps remained steady. This was the ambition of life.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince says: “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space.”

Even as the King of the Nutshell, he possessed infinite space. The Trapezohedron developed its second crack. Brilliant light leaked out, coupling with the vacuum of spacetime like decaying Higgs bosons, falling from Xia Mingyu’s fingertips like shooting stars.

…

Xia Mingyu stepped onto another level of the staircase, landing directly into a merged Domain. A Facehugger waited below, its maw open. His twin blades were ruined. He pulled his energy gun and fired, but the first shot missed.

He hadn’t lied; he wasn’t good with firearms, especially during a dynamic fall. He had one bullet left. He landed, stood up, and took a deep breath.

Aim.

He pulled the trigger. There was no recoil. The bullet was gone. He didn’t hesitate; he turned and fled toward higher ground. He was in a real forest now. Nearby, he saw the smoke of a campfire.

As he ran, he wondered: Where did that last bullet go? He remembered the others clearly, but this one seemed lost in a past time-node.

He reached the edge of the campfire. The Facehuggers slowed down, seemingly afraid of the fire. At the edge of the light stood a girl. She held a staff, and frost was slowly extinguishing the flames.

“Nuowei?” he whispered.

“Xia… Mingyu… sir…” The voice was hers, but it carried a wet, vibrating resonance. “Save… save me…”

She turned around. Her face had no features—only the circular, multi-fanged maw of a Facehugger. In an instant, the creature burst from the human flesh. It was a blasphemous sight, a desecration of the human form.

Xia Mingyu grabbed a heavy bow from the ground. He had no arrows, so he tore branches from a nearby tree. Using his mental power like a razor, he shaved the wood into sharp bolts. By the time the creature finished its transformation, he had five arrows.

He fired. The arrows, reinforced with mental energy, pinned the monster to the ground. Facehugger blood splashed across his face.

Xia Mingyu’s face was deathly pale, yet his eyes were sharp. With the blood on his cheeks, he looked like a resilient plum blossom in the frost, a blood-thirsty blade wandering the dark night.

He walked toward the dying creature. In a monster’s dying moments, its materials are at their highest quality. He pried open its maw. His movements were orderly and calm, like a surgeon at an operating table. Precision, ruthlessness, order.

The earth shook. A swarm of Facehuggers was approaching. Xia Mingyu reached deep into the maw, searching for the “skeletal tooth” that connected to the creature’s heart.

The monster made a final struggle, moving its bone to pierce through the back of Xia Mingyu’s hand. He didn’t flinch. It was as if this level of pain was trivial to him. He realized the creature’s trap, but he had already removed its outer teeth; it couldn’t bite him.

He gripped the internal bone and pulled. It was long and flexible, the hardest part of the beast. In its final breath, the creature released a mating pheromone. Facehuggers have an extreme obsession with humans; they either want to eat them or “mate” by using human bodies as incubators for their young.

Xia Mingyu looked at the dissolving monster with indifference. “Thank you for becoming my weapon,” he said softly.

He swung the bone. It was now a long sword of cold, white light. His right hand was a bloody mess, but his expression was unshakable. As he swung, his mental power overflowed like starlight and ocean waves.

A new blade was forged. Cold, sharp, and stained with his own crimson blood. Around him, giant trees collapsed from the aftershocks of his power.

Facing a thousand monsters alone, Xia Mingyu stood in the center of the chaos. Just him and a single sword.

It was enough.