Chapter 22

Chapter 22: Blood-Red Roots

No one liked going to work, especially not having to clock in on time the morning after working late.

Lin Jianyuan always felt an overwhelming sense of dread the day after overtime—a fierce, gnawing discomfort: Why the hell am I back at work already?

It made perfect sense, really. He had left the office at nine thirty last night, and now here he was, forced to show up bright and early again.

Most of his twenty-four hours had drained away right here in the office. Of course it felt like the soul-crushing grind would never end.

What truly sucked was this: despite all the overtime, he always felt oddly unaccomplished.

Looking back, he realized he hadn’t done much of anything. Most of his time had been flushed away on pointless crap.

Like right now.

His phone chimed. Lin Jianyuan glanced at the screen and couldn’t hold back: “Shit.”

“What’s wrong, man?” asked Pei Shuo beside him, looking up at once.

Qin Shi and Su Zhiwei turned their heads too. Lin Jianyuan had no strength left to complain—he simply held up his phone for them to see.

On the screen was a message from accounting, claiming one of his reimbursement invoices was too blurry to read.

Qin Shi asked, “Wasn’t Yu Hui in charge of the final review?”

“That’s right,” Lin Jianyuan replied.

Everyone shot him a look of instant sympathy.

Pei Shuo, totally bewildered, blurted, “Is a blurry invoice that big a deal? Can’t you just take a new photo and send it over?”

Lin Jianyuan’s face darkened. Qin Shi explained for him, “All reimbursements have to go through the OA system. Tons of uploads, endless forms, and an army of approvals. Getting it past Jiang Chen is okay, since you can bug him in person. But at headquarters, it’s a nightmare—super slow reviews, and you’re not allowed to follow up. Try it, and you’ll get chewed out.”

“Exactly!” Su Zhiwei chimed in. “Last time, my client dinner bill got stuck for no reason too—they said the business meal wasn’t justified. What, does eating with a client mean I like the client? Fuck that! If they think it’s not justified, I think it’s not justified! Entertaining clients ought to count as overtime pay—and emotional damages for having to kiss their asses!”

Qin Shi sighed. “Worst part is every time something gets sent back, you have to restart the whole process. Our garbage system doesn’t save your progress. Any form that’s rejected, you fill it all out again from scratch. It’s a fucking hassle.”

Pei Shuo finally got it. “Ohhh. I see.”

Lin Jianyuan scowled, kicked out his chair with a thud, and stood up.

Pei Shuo startled. “Bro?”

“Going for a smoke,” Lin Jianyuan muttered.

Pei Shuo and Qin Shi exchanged a glance, recognizing just how fed up Lin Jianyuan was. No one said a word.

Lin Jianyuan’s mood didn’t improve by the time he reached the smoking area outside the office.

While waiting for the elevator, he’d gone over the submission process again, flipping through the ten-plus invoices he had uploaded. No matter how hard he squinted, he couldn’t tell which one was blurry.

He messaged Yu Hui to ask. After ages, Yu Hui finally replied with a single line:

“Check for yourself.”

Lin Jianyuan was so pissed he nearly kicked the trash can across the lot.

What a fucking moron! If you find a problem in the review, is snapping a photo or screenshot that hard? You can’t just say which one’s blurry? Would it kill you to be clear?

Check for myself? I’ve checked every damn one—none of them are blurry!

And even if there is a problem, what the hell was initial review for? You say nothing then, wait till every last boss has approved, and only in the final check do you tell me it’s blurry, kicking the whole thing back for me to do again?!

Fucking bullshit!!!

So angry he almost tore up the invoices and quit trying to claim them. Altogether, they were just a few hundred bucks—he spent more on medication than that.

But if he didn’t file, he’d be paying out of his own pocket for work. Hell no! Why should he pay to work? Not a chance!

The thought of having to re-enter that mountain of shit forms, glitchy OA system and all, left Lin Jianyuan fuming. He crushed his cigarette out viciously.

Let the world burn.

He pulled out his pack for a third smoke, but before he could light it, the squish toy thief suddenly shouted, “Lin Jianyuan!”

Little Stone said, “Wait, isn’t this...”

Lin Jianyuan looked down to see a single writhing thread of blood squirming out of his cigarette pack.

Shit. Not this again!

I’m pissed off enough already!

Fury boiling over, Lin Jianyuan grabbed the blood thread and yanked it hard!

Rip. The cigarette pack shredded in his grip.

Lin Jianyuan blinked, confused. “What?”

The squish toy squeaked, “Eek!”

Little Stone echoed, “Eek!”

Though it was only a cigarette pack torn apart, both stress-relief toys shrieked as if he’d yanked out their very spines.

Lin Jianyuan was completely baffled, scrambling to gather cigarettes from the floor.

What the hell? Wasn’t I pulling the blood thread? Why did the pack explode?

He looked again—the blood thread in his palm had somehow grown impossibly long.

One end coiled in his fist, the other snaked in a wavering line toward the office building entrance.

No—that wasn’t the right word.

Lin Jianyuan frowned, watching the blood thread wiggle and twist, struggling to burrow into his palm.

It felt as though the “head” of it was in the building—the blood thread there was clearly much thicker.

And what he held was just a tiny, trailing end.

So was this thing actually growing out of the office building? What the hell was happening?

“Heading out?” Other bleary-eyed workers on their smoke break greeted him casually.

Lin Jianyuan, face thunderous, just grunted, “Yeah.”

Little Stone whispered, “What’s he up to? He’s not actually going after...”

The squish toy replied smugly, “Just watch.”

Lin Jianyuan followed the blood thread, heading down the stairs.

He passed the storage room, the parking garage, and the maintenance closet... The blood thread led him all the way to the building’s lowest level.

Blood threads multiplied around him, thickening in number. The lights dimmed—not because of weak bulbs, but because the blood filaments had woven themselves densely over the glass.

Countless blood threads wavered in the air too, swaying like sea anemones.

As he approached, they swarmed over, trying to burrow into his skin.

The tangled mess of blood threads annoyed him at first glance. Frowning, he bunched them up, wound them together like a ball of yarn, and kept moving.

Little Stone gasped, “How can he touch the Blood Thread with his bare hands?!”

The squish toy said, “Beats me. He can stomp on me bare-footed, too.”

Little Stone started, “That’s only because you—” but his voice trailed off.

Squish toy: “Because what?”

Little Stone: “Huh? I didn’t say anything.”

Squish toy: “???”

Lin Jianyuan ignored their nonsense and kept following the blood thread.

He found himself in a long corridor, stifling and hot, the walls veined with rusted iron in a mesh of blood threads.

The overhead fluorescents flickered with horror-movie menace.

So much that it hurt to look.

After a few steps, Lin Jianyuan had had enough and called building maintenance.

The maintenance team was actually pretty efficient.

Before long, the lights stopped flickering. The stifling corridor’s ventilation system whirred back to life.

The whole space felt fresh again!

Little Stone: “?”

The squish toy boasted, “Told you.”

Little Stone muttered, “He really is that good? Wait, so it wasn’t just that you’re useless?”

Squish toy: “I heard that! Damn it!!!”

“You’re fucking noisy!” Lin Jianyuan roared suddenly.

The two toys fell instantly silent.

Suddenly, all the overhead lights died. The world plunged into darkness.

The freshly repaired ventilation system sputtered out. Somewhere in the metal-clad ducts, something thundered along with a rapid, crawling clatter.

The air stagnated again. The heat rose fast.

At the end of the hall, a faint red glow flickered—blinking in and out, pulsing with some dangerous rhythm.

Squish toy: “Lin Jianyuan!”

Little Stone hissed, “Something’s coming!”

“Shut up!” Lin Jianyuan barked, hands darting out left and right!

A split second later, two sharp whooshes sliced through the darkness—along with screams.

Little Stone shrieked, “Aaaaah why’d you throw me!!”

Squish toy wailed, “How could you throw me too! Lin Jianyuan, you ungrateful bastard—”

Thud. Thud. Two heavy thumps sounded in the dark.

Whatever the hell was rushing down the hall—Lin Jianyuan had nailed it!

Judging by the noise, the thing was huge.

Which was probably why he could hit it by flinging blindly in the dark.

Serves it right for being that big.

Lin Jianyuan whipped out his phone and switched on the flashlight.

The sight before him left him stunned.

Vessels—countless blood vessels.

A teeming mass of vessels, thick and thin, snarled and tangled together like the roots of a thousand-year-old tree, blocked the full width of the hall.

Had Time Thief not stolen their speed, they would have flooded toward Lin Jianyuan in a torrent of bloody red.

But too bad—the squish toy had landed smack on it.

So its network speed lagged.

Lagged badly. Really badly.

Under his phone’s beam, those interwoven blood vessels could only ooze forward sluggishly—and not toward Lin Jianyuan, but toward the floor.

Yes, the floor.

Because the second throw—Little Stone—had hit its mark too.

So all this wriggling, pulsating mass of blood vessels was, in fact:

Faceplanting.

Faceplanting with murderous rage.

Lin Jianyuan shone his phone’s light over the heap, frowning. “Just what the fuck is this thing?”

The squish toy thief got up, grumbling, slowly puffing back from flat to a full, bouncy shape.

Little Stone lay peacefully on the ground, narrating in a dramatic voice: “This is a C-class Aberrant, Blood Thread.”

“I know it’s Blood Thread,” Lin Jianyuan said, visibly annoyed. “I’m asking what it is in the real world.”

Little Stone: “Huh?”

Squish toy: “Don’t mind him, the guy’s nuts. Lin Jianyuan, don’t be offended, I’m not insulting you. You’ve been to the psych ward, right? The doctor said so, you really are nuts.”

Little Stone: “...”

Lin Jianyuan’s brows were furrowed tight. He knew it—hallucinations could never exceed his own understanding.

If he didn’t know what this was, there was no way his hallucinations could.

Still, that didn’t stop Lin Jianyuan from disdaining them. “Pair of idiots.”

Squish toy & Little Stone: “???”

Who’s an idiot?

Maybe check who’s holding down the enemy for you, huh??

Beside the slow-motion, faceplanting root-mass of vessels, the squish toy thief bounced around in a fury, cursing nonstop from its snail mouth.

Little Stone, meanwhile, lay as lifeless as a corpse, bravely whispering, “That’s okay, I know you’re just upset. You don’t mean it. I won’t hold it against you...”

One toy was hopping mad; the other, stone-dead in spirit.

Anyone would have thought Lin Jianyuan would at least toss them a few words of comfort, maybe pick them up off the floor.

But he didn’t.

He simply circled the toppled roots with his phone light, studying them for a while. Finding nothing, he turned and walked away.

“What? You’re leaving? You’re ditching me?!” squealed the squish toy, frenzied. “Lin Jianyuan, come back! You heartless bastard! Use and toss—classic scumbag!!”

“Wait—hold on,” Little Stone remarked in surprise. “He’s heading the wrong way. That’s not where we came from.”

Squish toy: “Huh?”

Squish toy’s snail eyes widened. Only now did it realize—Lin Jianyuan wasn’t abandoning them. He was heading alone to the far end of the corridor—to the room where the Blood Thread’s core lay!

“Hey! Come back!” squish toy cried out, voice growing desperate. It squirmed forward with all its might, but couldn’t time-jump to Lin Jianyuan’s side—not while it was holding the Blood Thread frozen. If it let go, the Blood Thread would break free in an instant!

All it could do was shout, panicked: “Lin Jianyuan! Come back! That’s where the Blood Thread’s core is! The core is stronger than C-class! Go in and you’re dead, come back right now!!!”

But Lin Jianyuan seemed oblivious to its cries.

He lifted his phone high and strode straight toward the end of the corridor.

Deep in the shadows, the red light pulsed—flaring on and off like a dire warning.

Lin Jianyuan held his phone aloft, the pale LED beam illuminating only a scant patch before him—it was as if a child holding a candlestick was about to step into the abyss.

“Lin Jianyuan!” The squish toy was screaming itself hoarse.

“You’re quite the softy,” Little Stone remarked drily. “Don’t tell me you actually think he’s your master?”

Squish toy shook its shell angrily. “You don’t get it!”

Little Stone replied, “I really don’t. He’s never even nice to you...”

“Idiot! If anything happens to him, I die too! And so do you! Xie Yu, that pervert, he’ll never let us off!!!”

Little Stone: “?”

Suddenly, the beam from his flashlight was swallowed by darkness. Lin Jianyuan vanished at the corridor’s end.

Little Stone stared into the black void, baffled, realization striking late. “Huh???”

The squish toy watched helplessly as Lin Jianyuan was swallowed by the dark, its snail face twisting in despair.

Little Stone: “Xie Yu is a pervert?”

Squish toy: “?”

Is that really the issue here?!