Chapter 140#
The White Rabbit · End#
The white rabbit wore a strange smile on its face as it stepped toward Yu Feichen, one step at a time. Its two eyeballs were practically glued to his face.
——The posture was utterly obscene.
“Dear guest, oh, how I wish I could lock you away in this room.” The white rabbit drew close to Yu Feichen, sniffing the air around him with lust-addled hunger.
This sent a wave of revulsion crawling through Yu Feichen.
Over the course of an entire epoch, many people had come at him. Those who had gone this far — groping included — this was the first.
Greed, stupidity, cowardice… based on those established qualities, the purple mushroom was almost certainly lust.
Had he known it would turn out like this, he would have simply beaten the white rabbit to death from the start.
Just as the rabbit’s hand was about to touch the side of Yu Feichen’s face, it was blocked by the hilt of a blade.
The cold gaze looking down from above only made the white rabbit more desperate to drag this human away.
One hand blocked, it reached out with the other — the half-severed human hand stretched toward Yu Feichen again — and the rabbit murmured obsessively: “Human, human, the face…”
Five grey mushrooms appeared suddenly before the white rabbit’s eyes.
The hand cradling those five mushrooms looked so pleasing to the eye — so much better than its own wretched pair.
Yu Feichen: “Eat them.”
The white rabbit looked at Yu Feichen and swallowed.
“And then I can have you, dear guest!”
The rabbit devoured the grey mushrooms eagerly. The instant they were gone, it felt the whole world become a little more beautiful.
To obtain this human’s face, it would pay any price!
“Now eat these.”
Green mushrooms this time.
Watching the green mushrooms disappear into the three-lobed rabbit mouth, Yu Feichen let out a sigh.
It seemed the purple mushroom was the most potent of the cold-coloured ones after all. Under the drive of desire, there was nothing a creature wouldn’t do.
Greedy, stupid, lecherous — standing before him now was a rabbit of five complete vices.
The rabbit’s obscene posture was somewhat diluted, replaced by feverish greed, its eyes nearly radiating a red glow: “Your face — give it to me, give it to me…”
In the blink of an eye, the human had somehow moved to the sewing table in the far corner of the room. The white rabbit scrambled after him.
As it closed in, Yu Feichen asked one final time: “Where is the route to the City of Mist?”
“The route? The route… I don’t know.” The white rabbit was tripped up by a large iron ladle and snatched it up by reflex, drawing ever closer to Yu Feichen: “Your face, your face… hehehe.”
After growing larger, its original men’s boots had been stretched to ruin. The white rabbit was barefoot — not the rabbit hooves it should have had, but two human feet. Further up, at the ankle, half a human shin had been stitched on; the severed ends at the ankle and shin didn’t match in size, clearly taken from different people. Only above that did the furred rabbit legs begin.
The tattered human hand reached out toward Yu Feichen.
The sewing table faced a mirror. On its surface, besides needles and thread, lay a pair of silver scissors and a whetstone.
Yu Feichen picked up the scissors.
“What do you want my face for,” he said, eyes lowered, with unhurried indifference, “to stitch it onto your own?”
As he spoke, he leisurely ran the scissor blades across the whetstone a couple of times.
“Hehehe… hehehe… your face is so pretty, it’s mine now.” The white rabbit raised the iron ladle high above its head — the scene a near mirror image of when Yu Feichen had used a signpost to bludgeon it earlier.
“Why not take several parts at once?”
“You can only take one at a time, fool.”
“I’ll teach you.” Yu Feichen smiled slightly.
The smile was small, and carried nothing remotely kind, yet the white rabbit was once again thoroughly disoriented.
Yu Feichen pointed to their reflections in the mirror.
“The face is one part, but a whole skin also counts as one part,” he said. “If you peeled off an entire skin, you would have not only the face, but the whole body.”
The white rabbit’s mouth fell open: “Foolish, foolish me — so that’s how it works!”
“Come then.” Yu Feichen held out the scissors. “Start by taking off your own skin.”
“Yes — I want to swap out my whole skin!”
The rabbit seized the scissors and, without a moment’s hesitation, cut straight down the centre of the skin on top of its own head. The speed was so startling that even Yu Feichen was left genuinely impressed. The rabbit’s loss of reason had reached this point — though there was nothing particularly surprising about it; the creature’s intelligence had, after all, nowhere lower to fall.
After the scissors opened a large gash, the white rabbit thrust in its hands, gripped both sides, and tore downward with force.
In a fairy-tale cozy little room — the sewing table bright, the rug soft, firewood crackling in the stove — a white rabbit peeled away its entire skin, just as a person might shed a piece of clothing.
The rabbit skin dropped to the floor. What stood before Yu Feichen was… a skinless, rabbit-shaped creature. Its flesh and the outside world were separated by nothing more than a thin, colourless fascial membrane, like a living anatomical model.
And this white rabbit was still alive.
Red eyeballs rolled in eye sockets stripped of their lids. The white rabbit fixed its gaze on Yu Feichen and handed the scissors back: “Hehehe, now it’s your turn.”
Yu Feichen didn’t take them.
The rabbit held the scissors, their gleaming tip aimed at him, raised high, drawing closer and closer: “Hehehe, your turn, your turn.”
The stench of blood hit him full in the face.
Yu Feichen looked directly at it.
“Why do you want a human body?”
The white rabbit paused and considered.
“Your face is so pretty, but you’re too foolish.” The lipless jaw moved. Perhaps the white rabbit was smiling.
It said: “Of course… of course it’s because I want to go to the City of Mist. If I replace everything with human… parts, the City of Mist will open its doors to welcome me. Hehehe, hehehe…”
So there was that angle as well.
Holders of keys were dropped into this place, their task to find clues from NPCs leading to the correct route into the City of Mist. But the locals had been given their own tasks too — complete them, and they could also enter the city. The white rabbit’s task was to capture enough humans to piece together a complete human shell.
In other words, the white rabbit had no knowledge of any so-called “route” to the City of Mist. That had been nothing but a lure.
Mid-thought, the white rabbit lunged its scissors at Yu Feichen.
But Yu Feichen said suddenly: “The City of Mist has already opened its doors to welcome you.”
The white rabbit: “What!”
“Look over there.” Yu Feichen pointed to the iron pot roiling on the other side of the room.
“That is the entrance to the City of Mist. Only the brave may step inside.” He spoke like an expressionless recording on repeat.
The white rabbit’s feelings were considerably more abundant: “Is this the City of Mist testing me?”
“Of course — are you not a brave rabbit?” Yu Feichen stepped up to the iron pot.
One second before the rabbit leaped in, it raised its head and answered: “I certainly am.”
The skinless white rabbit entered the pot. High heat. Blood and froth surged to the surface in an instant. The smell of meat drifted through the air.
If an opponent were simply dim, Yu Feichen would feel only contempt.
But if they were extraordinarily dim — that was another matter entirely.
“If I were you,” Yu Feichen said, “I would start by giving the guest a few warm-coloured mushrooms. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves from finishing off the green and grey ones too.”
Because greed was already there to begin with.
Having said that, he composed his expression, and slowly pressed the heavy lid down onto the pot.
His gaze swept across the many human-skin maps hanging on the walls. They charted only the different origins of those people — their routes all came to an abrupt end upon arriving at the white rabbit’s territory. The onward path was not on this wall.
Yu Feichen walked back to the sewing table.
Where the route to the City of Mist lay — the instance had, in truth, already hinted at the answer long ago.
He moved aside the rabbit skin on the floor.
On the reverse side of the back pelt, a complete map had been tattooed there in plain sight.