Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 13: Sleepwalking in Dreamland

1642: You Won't Be Abandoned

When Xie Feng woke up, she was lying in the bathroom, the air thick with the pungent stench of blood and bodily waste.

She wished someone could censor what her eyes were seeing because the moment the bathroom scene became clear, she couldn't hold it in anymore. She lunged toward the sink and emptied everything from her stomach—pulling her arm out, the wet squelch of rotten flesh stirred under her touch, a sensation she knew she would never forget for the rest of her life.

Xie Feng turned on the faucet. For the next several minutes, all she could do was vomit. Her mind was blank, unable to process anything else.

She caught a glimpse of her blood-soaked arm and quickly thrust it under the running water. As she rinsed, she gagged and threw up several more times—fragments of nerves wedged under her nails, shards of bone slipping off her skin. The blood was so thick it seemed to rinse away layer after layer, as though she would never reach her own flesh.

Amid the sound of water and retching, she still caught a faint rustling, the soft whisper of fabric shifting—someone seemed to be approaching. Xie Feng straightened up from the sink and turned toward the bathroom door.

Dong Luorong never stepped into view.

The two of them, one inside and one outside, waited in silence for a while. Finally, a soft voice broke through the stillness.

"Xie Feng?"

The moment her name was called, something inside Xie Feng cracked open, letting all her bottled-up emotions spill free.

"I... did I really evolve? Was it me... who did that just now?" she asked, her voice trembling, almost breaking into sobs.

"You... you can still talk? Are you going to kill and eat me too?" Dong Luorong asked cautiously from the other side of the door, her voice filled with hesitation.

Xie Feng wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She stumbled out of the bathroom into a dimly lit room, where only a single desk lamp was on. The faint light from outside filtered through the relentless gray rain, casting a hazy mist into the room.

Dong Luorong sat curled at the edge of the bed, her legs drawn up. Blood from her body stained the white sheets in patches of red. Her face looked like frozen snow, paler than the bedsheet beneath her. She stared at Xie Feng, as fragile as a tightly bound paper doll, ready to crumble with the slightest touch.

"I don't eat people," Xie Feng blurted, suddenly realizing she needed to make that clear. "I don't... you don't need to be afraid of me!"

At least, she hoped she didn't. The state Qiu Chantian had been left in made it impossible to tell if he'd been eaten or not. Xie Feng quickly ran her tongue along her teeth—her mouth seemed clean enough.

Whatever Qiu Chantian had been talking about with eating people, it didn't seem to apply to her.

Dong Luorong gave a small nod, but she didn't dare move right away. After a few seconds, she asked, "What's going on... do you know?"

Xie Feng felt like she knew, but at the same time, she didn't. She looked down at her hands and said, "I have a vague idea, but it's blurry. I need to test it out to be sure. But he's dead... really dead. I killed him. What about you? What are we going to do now?"

Dong Luorong shivered, as if a cloud of confusion had drifted across her face.

After fighting for her life, she seemed to have run out of strength. Whether it was from exhaustion or injury, she now looked lost and fragile, as if she no longer had the energy to think clearly.