SWNOVELXO Chapter 8: Chapter 8: The Master's Coffin-Brand Recorder: Swallow the False-Death Pill!
The cramped, sheet-metal phone booth felt like a tin can hurled into the crucible of hell. The pinprick of crimson light suspended at an impossible distance overhead burned into my retinas like molten steel poured directly onto the cornea, etching an indelible brand of terror. The light itself radiated no heat; instead, it emanated an absolute, marrow-deep chill capable of freezing the soul solid!
*BOOM!!!*
Precisely as the sanguine light locked onto me—
The heavy, ice-cold "Audial Phantasmagoria Headset · Modified Type One" strapped to my skull detonated! A shriek of unprecedented, soul-shattering intensity erupted from its depths, threatening to shred eardrums and cranial bone! The welded, serpentine XLR converter cables snaking from its earcups snapped taut! Black oil dripped in frantic rivulets! Internal circuitry—ghostly blues, sickly greens, bruised violets—overloaded, blazing with incandescent white fire, spasming violently!
Intense psychic shockwaves merged with physical vibrations, drilling like high-voltage augers into my temples! The kaleidoscopic chaos before my eyes dissolved into viscous crimson! All sensation narrowed to the boundless, skull-filling shriek and the all-pervasive, absolute lock of the crimson light!
"Ghhhk—!" Even a scream was strangled; an invisible vise crushed my throat! Every bone, sinew, and nerve fiber screamed under intolerable strain!
Simultaneously—
*THUD! THUD! THUD!*
Outside the booth, deep in the alley! The three figures in bone-white robes and peaked caps—the White Impermanence officers! Under the annihilating pressure of the crimson light's descent!
Like broken marionettes! Not only were their foreheads glued to the ground! Their entire bodies visibly collapsed inward! The hard concrete beneath them liquefied into quicksand! They sank deeper! Pristine robes smothered in foul, black slurry!
Pinned! Buried alive! Like three ants drowning in an abyss of despair!
The entire world!
The very fabric of time and space!
Froze solid!
Frozen raindrops hung suspended in the murky air like billions of crystallized tears.
Twisted shadows cast by alleyway buildings were nailed to the walls.
The flickering remnants of incandescent light were arrested.
I slumped on the icy metal chair, every muscle fiber spasming violently under the locked light and headset's shriek, yet utterly paralyzed!
Air congealed like hardening asphalt; each minuscule breath was a struggle to claw oxygen from solid cement!
Absolute stasis! Absolute silence! Absolute prelude to annihilation!
Only two points—
The jade hairpin and the "Judge-Pen" that had pierced the phone, secured in Sister Meng's oiled chignon behind me!
Within the thick, blood-like, solidified crimson silence—they flickered! Flickered like the faintest of fireflies!
With barely perceptible wisps of spectral white and ghostly green luminescence!
Sister Meng!
She stood with her back to me, framed by the booth's open metal door! Engulfed entirely by the overwhelming crimson radiance! The silhouette of her scarlet qipao seemed stripped of all color within the all-consuming red glare! Only a stark, black outline remained—unyielding, refusing to bend under the absolute terror!
*BOOM!!*
The headset's berserk shriek peaked! The XLR connector welded to the earcup shell could no longer withstand the dual pressures!
*Splortch!*
A muffled rupture! The cheap plastic sheathing encasing the internal wires cracked like eggshell! Exposed copper wires writhed like exposed veins! Overloaded energy arced and spat within! A stench of scorched insulation mixed with rancid oil flooded my nostrils!
At this absolute instant—consciousness teetering on the brink of oblivion, soul poised for erasure by the crimson light—
*Phut!*
*Phut-phut-phut-phut-phut—!!!*
A sound! Minuscule yet jarringly familiar! A crisp, escaping-air hiss!
Utterly unexpected!
Erupted from my chest! From the inner pocket pressed against my heart!
The old newspaper-wrapped box! The "severance pay" from my master—the "Master's Magic Speaker"!!!
Within this frozen, silent space! Under the annihilating crimson lock! This sound pierced the absolute stillness like the universe's first breath!
Then—
Like opening Pandora's Box crammed with madness and absurdity—
*Shhhh—PHUT-PHUT-PHUT-PHUT!!!!*
Countless beams of crude, violently saturated red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, purple light—like seven rabid, oil-paint serpents—erupted violently from the cracks of the cheap plastic box!!
The plastic casing vibrated with a furious, subwoofer-like drone!
The utterly flat, emotionless electronic nursery rhyme blared at maximum volume across the frozen death-scape!
"Beep-beep! Little Ye walks down, down, down! Plays his life all around! Danger? Too much! Beep-beep! Master's Magic Speaker! Auto-Enchantment Online! Beep-beep! Saves your old life on your own! Beep-beep! Take the pill! Beep-beep!"
Gaudy! Blinding! Chaotic!
The carnival-of-madness rainbow swirl! Against the pure, terrifying, world-ending crimson light above! It tore open a tiny, frenzied bubble of chaotic light pollution less than half a meter before me!
Like a crudely blown, cheap soap bubble desperately adrift in a sea of annihilation!
Yet, the moment this insane bubble of light appeared—
The stasis!
The crimson absolute stasis freezing soul and spacetime!
Within this small, chaotic, polychromatic bubble—it loosened! A hairline fracture!
*Urk—!*
A surge of scalding heart-blood erupted uncontrollably! Splattering violently onto the casing of the yellow phone convulsing before me! Hot blood snaked down the grease-smeared plastic!
My body convulsed violently from the backlash, threatening to tear apart! But as the blood sprayed—my body wrenched a sliver of control from the paralysis!
Fingers! Could move!
Primal survival instinct, a dying beast's final lunge, surged beyond thought and fear! Under the swaying shelter of the tiny, chaotic rainbow bubble! My right hand, fueled by my body's last dregs of strength—a ghostly claw snapping its chains—lunged into my jacket! Tore viciously!
*RIIIIP!*
Thick old newspaper shredded!
The plastic box—spewing cheap rainbow light, vibrating madly, blaring its idiotic jingle—was seized in my sticky, vomit-scented palm!
The box was cold! Trembling violently amidst the clash of crimson and garish colors! The robotic voice still shrieked: "...Beep-beep! Take the pill! Beep-beep!..."
Take the pill?
What pill?!
The False-Death Pill?! Mentioned in my master's recording?!
Swallow it and play dead?!
The thought flashed like lightning—
*Phut!*
A faint, unnervingly clear hiss of escaping air!
Emanated from an infinitesimal crack on the side of the vibrating, light-spewing plastic box!
Immediately!
A thin, jagged-edged, ash-gray fragment—like a fish scale blown by wind—shlicked out! Propelled by the box's violent tremors!
It spun through the air!
An old-fashioned, laminated photograph?! Its back adhered to a narrow strip of coarse, ochre-yellow paper—its surface rough as ground glass... a talisman fragment?!
Scrawled on the talisman were a few crude, frantic symbols in dark crimson! The strokes saturated with a... dried, blackened... brown stain?!
Not ink! Was it...
Blood?!
This old photograph bearing the tattered blood-talisman tumbled through the fierce conflict of crimson light and chaotic rainbow pollution!
And landed—plop—with perfect accuracy! On my thigh!
Face up!
Vision, racked by violent spasms and near-death agony, focused fiercely!
The photo was black and white!
Extremely blurred! Grainy as if transmitted through a faulty fax machine multiple times!
Yet this indistinct image... pierced my pupils like a white-hot needle! Laden with a familiar malice!
The background...
Qingwei Temple!
That dilapidated, creaking wooden hall door!
Two figures stood before it.
The one on the left!
Me! Ye Thirteen! But younger, perhaps fifteen or sixteen! Worn Taoist robes, face still carrying a trace of youthful idiocy, grinning foolishly at the camera.
The familiar speckled hen was tethered nearby!
The one on the right!
Master! Qingxu!
But in this photo, he lacked his usual miserly scheming or furious disappointment!
His expression... was profoundly strange!
Not a smile! Not anger! A frozen amalgam of utter terror and desperate ferocity! Like a cornered desperado! Veins bulged on his forehead, lips clamped shut, eyes bloodshot!
His right hand... in an awkward, contorted gesture—as if pulled by something yet also actively reaching out—
Rested on the shoulder of the person beside him!
That person!
Dressed in... a robe... deep, somber crimson, patterned with profound cloud motifs like coagulated ancient blood?! Official headgear with slightly tilted wings!
A face—square-jawed, imposing, radiating innate authority yet laced with an indescribable, iron-blooded menace!
Dense, ink-black beard! Especially the eyes...
The photo was blurred! But the light within those eyes... like the deepest abyss! Or a thunderous, raging sea! Even through this cheap, grainy photo—that terrifying aura of supreme judgment, holding dominion over life and death! Struck like a physical blow! Piercing the soul!
Zhong Kui!!!
Master and Zhong Kui?! Arm-in-arm?!?!
*BOOM!!!*
My head felt struck by an invisible sledgehammer! Shattered memories, chaotic clues—the spectral mountain bus, the Netherworld Field Office, the Demon-Slaying Sword's lock-on, the twenty-year cold case... exploded like matches tossed into boiling oil!
As my mind blanked under the photo's impact—
Deep in my trouser pocket!
The old flip phone Master gave me before I descended the mountain! (He'd shoved it at me, saying "emergency contact," though I knew he'd likely have it off). Soaked by freezing rain, stuffed back in carelessly moments ago...
Without warning!
It! It! It! Vibrated violently!!
Not ringing! An intensely rhythmic, frantic tremor! Shaking my numb thigh muscle!
Within this crimson-locked, deathly silent space where only the chaotic rainbow bubble swayed precariously!
The vibration was faint yet distinct! Like a dying heart's final struggle!
Then—
*Crackle... phut... click... click...*
A series of sounds—like mangled tape, faulty key contacts, dying persistence—forced their way out of the old phone in my pocket! Not loud, yet piercing the headset's shriek, the frozen spacetime's oppression!
The cheap, palm-sized color screen of the old flip phone, under this absolute terror, flickered with astonishing tenacity! A pitiful, near-extinguished white light, trembling violently!
The white light struggled to carve a minuscule fissure in the blood-stained backdrop.
Within that fissure!
Screen center! A crude, DOS-like black text box—like a tombstone embedded in viscous blood-mud—emerged laboriously!
Within the box! Lines of pixelated, bone-white Song typeface! Stuttered out, word by agonizing word, like a dying tortoise crawling:
[Signal unstable... Forced activation... Mas...ter pre-rec]
[Message... Detected... Demon-Slaying... Sword... Field lock...]
[Target... Ye Thirteen...]
[Emergency... Protocol... Initiated...]
"[Swal... swallow False-Death... pill!" The words pulsed with violent interference ripples, screaming with final effort!
"[Target location... confirmed... Dig up my... grave! Urn bottom...!... Dig!]
[Half-pack Meng Po Soup base... I... stole... from that batch... back then... enough to feign death...]
[Swallow! Now!... Dig up... swallow it! That female ghost!... She... is your... life-extending medicine!... Hear me?! Swallow... BEEP—]"
The final "swallow" seemed crushed by signal jamming! The text box exploded into a burst of white static snow! A piercing "BEEP—!" shrieked! The entire screen convulsed violently!
But in the frame before the static—
Below the grainy black-and-white photo of Master and Zhong Kui arm-in-arm in the text box!
Utterly abruptly—like a watermark—
A line of tiny, impossible-to-ignore blood-red code flashed:
[Signal Origin Sync Lock: Hell - Tenth Layer · Confinement Niche #9999 · Perpetual Penalty Zone]
Hell?! Tenth Layer?! Confinement Niche?!
Master... in Hell?!
As my brain turned to ash under this hellish coordinate and Master's final, shrieked command—"Dig up the grave! Swallow the False-Death pill under the ashes! Swallow that female ghost to extend your life!"—in that split second—
*HUMMMM—!!!*
The terrifying crimson light overhead abruptly intensified! Like the annihilating eye of judgment achieving final focus!
In the void directly above the phone booth!
A thread of pure, concentrated crimson light—as if distilled from celestial sin-fire and netherworld blood—materialized!
No roar! No impact!
Only the absolute descent of death!
Soundless!
Downward!
Towards me in the booth!
Like a white-hot wire slicing through butter!
It plunged!!!
Time seemed to stretch infinitely thin.
In my vision—
That thread of pure crimson light!
It pierced the frozen air! Pierced the chaotic rainbow bubble!
Pierced the headset's shriek!
Pierced the blood I'd sprayed on the phone!
Aimed at my brow!
Finished...
As the icy touch of death brushed the core of my soul in the final picosecond—
*"GET THE FUCK—OFF!!!"*
A shriek sharp enough to pierce hell itself! Detonated like a nuclear blast at the heart of the frozen space! A sonic wave of unimaginable ferocity!
Sister Meng!
Her unmoving silhouette—that black outline like a spine holding up the sky under the blood-sea pressure!
As the crimson thread descended—
She moved!
Not turning!
Her entire body uncoiled like a spring compressed to its limit! Or like Mount Buzhou bearing the sky's collapse for eons!
Violently!
Upward! Against the current! Straightened her spine!!!
Scarlet qipao hems flared like blood-tides!
Her left hand! The one hanging limp at her side! Unshackled like a demon's claw! Wreathed in an indescribable, heaven-rending, earth-sundering aura of baleful fury! From below! Fast! Fast as an inverse lightning bolt of blood! Slashed upward! A vicious claw tearing directly at the annihilating crimson thread above!!!
The claw-shadow!
Tore through the light-pollution bubble!
Tore through frozen spacetime!
The claw-shadow's edge! Seethed with a layer thick as tar—pure, condensed hatred, malice, curses, resentment... the absolute compression of ultimate negative emotion—pure! Profound! Absolute death-black!!!
Red and Black!
Annihilating Judgment and Avīci Curse!
In the infinitesimally narrow space just before my brow—
*COLLIDED!!!*
Soundless!
Yet surpassing the detonation of a billion stars!!!
The world before my eyes!
Dissolved into pure light! And pure darkness! Tearing, colliding, boiling, annihilating!!! An absolute vortex of destruction!