Chapter Fifteen: White

Early in the morning, the daughter-in-law spotted a set of dentures left in the bathroom—belonging to her senile father-in-law. Fuming, she stormed into the dining room.

“Old fool, why do you throw everything into the toilet? If you clog it, you’d better unclog it yourself!”

This senile old man had long since been a source of irritation for the entire family. Just yesterday, he had gone missing for half the afternoon, only to be brought home by a kind stranger later that night.

But suddenly, she noticed the old man's sparkling eyes and his neat, intact teeth. Her heart skipped a beat, and the harsher words she’d been about to spit out died on her lips.

Her husband, unconcerned, asked, “What did Dad lose this time?”

She shook her head. “Nothing… it’s nothing.”

The old man said stiffly, “Eat. Eat.”

She sat down, suddenly drenched in cold sweat, and the whole family stared at her in confusion.

Only she knew: the dull-witted old man before her was absolutely not the senile father-in-law she knew.

Then who was he? What was he?

That very night, she fled back to her parents’ house, heedless of anything else.

As she left by taxi, she didn't notice the faintly violet, glowing eyes that shimmered in the darkness from an upstairs window.

—

“Well now, Secretary Tang, you’re here at last. Come in, Little Cui is waiting for you.”

A middle-aged woman, heavyset and garishly made up, led Tang Haoming to a bedroom door, fluttered her lashes coquettishly, and sauntered away.

In recent days, with the city embroiled in one crisis after another, Tang Haoming had been under immense pressure. He’d finally found a way to vent, and hurriedly opened the door.

Inside was a collection of candles, belts, restraints, whips, electroshock pads, and other items—Tang Haoming was clearly an enthusiast of such games.

A woman dressed in leather and a short skirt sat on the edge of the bed.

But right now, he was dissatisfied. “Didn’t I tell you to tie yourself up? Why are you just standing there?”

“Cry, scream—why are you as stiff as a log?” Tang Haoming shouted at the unmoving woman.

Suddenly, the woman grabbed a whip, stood up, and seized Tang Haoming by the neck with one hand, lifting him off the floor. No one could have guessed how a woman weighing barely fifty kilos could hoist a seventy-kilo man with ease.

The loss of control sent Tang Haoming into a panic. “What are you doing? I’m the S, you’re the M! If you don’t behave, I’ll call for help!”

His fevered brain still failed to grasp the reality. But what happened next chilled him to the bone.

The woman opened her mouth wide, and a purplish, grotesque, mutated octopus slithered out, as if irradiated, crawling from her mouth down her jaw, over her shoulder and arm, and onto Tang Haoming’s face.

He struggled desperately, punching the woman with all his might, but her body and grip were as unyielding as iron.

“Mmm! Mmm! Mmm!”

The tentacles forced open his clenched jaws, inch by inch invading his mouth. He tried to bite down on the vile thing, but the strength he faced was overwhelming.

He could feel the sticky sensation within his mouth, the cold touch probing into his ears, and he emitted muffled cries, just like the women he had once humiliated.

At last, Tang Haoming ceased his struggle. After a brief moment of vacancy, his eyes were filled with a purple gleam.

The woman released “Tang Haoming.” “Tang Haoming” said, “This man is valuable. He’s close to the highest echelons of power in this city.”

The woman replied, “Then keep moving up—parasitize the one at the very top.”

“That’s not possible—danger is approaching. Doing so would risk exposure.”

Their conversation seemed like a dialogue, but in truth, it was but a single voice organizing its thoughts, for their consciousnesses were entirely linked.

They both shared a single name—Adonsa.

Scenes like this played out in every corner of the city.

Lovers in passionate embrace, when suddenly one feels the other’s tongue probe almost to their epiglottis, tries to push them away, only to find those embracing arms unbreakable as chains, something slithering continually down their throat.

An icy-faced employee enters the boss’s office alone. The boss, just about to explode in rage at catching an affair with the secretary, finds both himself and the secretary seized by ironclad hands at the throat. In their final moments of suffocation, a purple glow fills their vision.

A drunken lout, feigning madness, drags a woman into an alley to assault her, only to be pinned to the ground by overwhelming force, staring in terror as crystalline purple tentacles extend from the woman’s approaching mouth.

A gang of delinquent youths tormenting a homeless old man; one boy is suddenly tackled, and the old man vomits a suffocating, horrifying substance onto his face. As the others laugh and beat the vagrant harder, none notice the boy’s unnatural spasms or the flash of purple now glimmering in his eyes.

On the first day, a black dog brought down a vagrant.

On the second, the vagrant attacked a housewife taking out the trash.

On the third, the housewife kissed her husband.

On the fourth, the fifth, the sixth…

The commonplace dramas of human life, all tinged now with a strange, eerie purple, became terrifyingly ambiguous. Everything was turned upside down, and yet seemed as ordinary as ever.

Adonsa’s splinters had scattered throughout this beast-like metropolis, proliferating and spreading like cancer cells, shifting and parasitizing from host to host.

Whether Zhang, Li, Wang, or Zhao—every one of them was a fragment of the vast entity known as Adonsa.

These fragments absorbed some of their hosts’ emotions and memories, wielding formidable learning abilities to play their assigned roles, absorbing all knowledge of human society, emerging from the shadows to act brazenly in the light of day, staging one supernatural scene after another.

From cargo transport to administration and finance, vast stores of knowledge passed through the void, causing Adonsa’s understanding to grow at a terrifying rate—becoming a monstrous intellect unprecedented in human society.

A bloated behemoth, swallowing all emotions and memories, learning all knowledge and culture, was rising soundlessly from the heart of the city.

At first, Adonsa might have been awkward, clumsy even, but with its astonishing capacity to learn, it would soon surpass its original hosts, performing far better—beyond imagination.

Mere knowledge alone could not instantly increase Adonsa’s power, but it made Adonsa a ghost haunting the city. Should it unleash all its splinters at once, it could remake the city in an instant.

But the time was not yet ripe. It would continue spreading, reaching out toward a broader world, extending its tendrils silently, becoming a malignant tumor parasitic in human society.

It was a long process, yet with Adonsa’s exponential rate of division, not so unattainable after all.

It drifted silently through the streets and alleys; sometimes two splinters would brush past each other, sometimes another swift parasitism would take place in a forgotten corner. Few ever realized that everything around them had already been replaced by a façade of false prosperity.