He Can Rest Easy

Seeing WhatAreYouLookingAt standing there in a daze, Ren Yi decided to explain a bit more to his teammate.

"Do you think that a part of my body—the body of an Anomaly—isn't enough to poison this mutant beast to death?" he asked earnestly.

"No, I don't doubt for a second that you have the power to poison it," WhatAreYouLookingAt said, her lips twitching slightly.

It was clear that Extinction wasn't just eating; it was digesting, rapidly converting the energy from its food into its own flesh and blood.

Whether from the perspective of an Anomaly or biology, the outcome for any flesh-and-blood creature attempting to digest the body of an Anomaly was never going to be pleasant.

Ren Yi looked WhatAreYouLookingAt up and down before suddenly saying, "Even though I'm the one feeding 'me' to it, you're not off the hook. Give me an eye. It's better if we deal with it using our abilities, so we need it to grow an eye first."

"This body will be ruined if I do that."

Despite her grumbling, WhatAreYouLookingAt obediently plucked out an eye. The scene was far more gruesome than Ren Yi's own self-mutilation.

Without batting an eye, Ren Yi took the eyeball she handed him. He placed it next to his own and tossed them both, landing them precisely in the path of the rolling jawbone.

The two eyeballs lay there in the bloody mess on the ground—one glowing with an eerie, translucent white light, the other still dripping with fresh blood. From a distance, they looked like two macabre lamps, radiating an indescribable eeriness.

It didn't take long for the jawbone to slowly roll over.

As it neared the two eyeballs, it suddenly stopped. The flesh within the cracks of the bone writhed slightly, as if trying to discern whether these things were edible.

After a few seconds of hesitation, it ultimately couldn't resist the instinct to complete itself. Its jaw opened slightly, cautiously nudging WhatAreYouLookingAt's bloodied eyeball. Confirming there was no immediate danger, it swallowed it in one gulp.

Then, with more writhing of its flesh, it swallowed Ren Yi's eyeball as well, wasting not a single scrap.

In the next second, the previously withered flesh on the jawbone began to surge and pile up frantically, bulging along the edges of the bone. A thin membrane quickly spread over it as blood vessels raced beneath the surface.

In an instant, two eyeballs—one large and one small—burst through the flesh. Their eyelids flickered and slowly opened.

The translucent white eyeball on the left held a trace of confusion. In the right eye, however, the sclera was shot through with blood vessels, and deep within the pupil lay a madness born of soul-crushing torture—definitely not the simple ferocity of a beast.

Before it could do anything else, its pupils constricted violently. Its entire mass of flesh froze instantly, and even its rolling motion ceased.

It clearly saw the faint, looming True Form behind Ren Yi. However, it wasn't suppressed by instinct; rather, it reacted exactly like a Participant in an Instance seeing an Anomaly reveal its True Form.

It used those two newly grown eyes to stare fixedly at Ren Yi, not looking away for even a second.

Yet, despite its paralyzing fear, it didn't stop. After a brief moment of hesitation between attacking and fleeing, it did something Ren Yi hadn't expected.

It began to roll again, moving determinedly toward the mass of newborn mutant beast flesh.

It was as if some obsession forced it to ignore the terror before it, driving it to kill those newborns at all costs.

Meanwhile, its flesh continued to writhe as if trying to sprout new limbs. But just then, a sudden change occurred.

The flesh on the jawbone began to grow uncontrollably. Countless tiny nodules sprouted within the once-uniform mass, swelling rapidly like inflating balloons.

Upon reaching their limit, they burst with a wet pop, turning into wisps of red-and-white gas with a sickly sweet scent that drifted away into nothingness.

Ren Yi saw the pupils of Extinction's two eyes contract sharply. Its rolling became erratic and stumbling as dark red blood dripped continuously from the cracks in the bone, leaving a trail on the ground.

Yet it kept advancing. Even as its flesh burst and withered, leaving its body increasingly frail, it continued to crawl forward with grim determination.

Finally, it reached the writhing ball of flesh.

The sharp point of the bone stabbed deep into the mass, instantly piercing and crushing the newborns within.

Having finished its task, it seemed to lose all strength. The jawbone trembled slightly, and its eyes began to grow cloudy.

Suddenly, it pivoted, hurling its newly grown eyes toward the sharp claws of the dead female mutant beast nearby—it was trying to commit suicide.

But just as the bone tip was about to strike its eyes, it froze.

The vision before its eyes suddenly shifted.

Ren Yi, who had been a source of immense threat, suddenly transformed into a seven-and-a-half-foot-tall, one-eyed giant.

A sudden wave of dizziness hit it, as if someone had slammed a club against its head. Its consciousness began to blur, the images in its vision twisting and overlapping as the writhing of its flesh gradually ceased.

In the outside world, Ren Yi slowly withdrew his True Form.

Now that Extinction had grown eyes, they could finally use their abilities.

He had just used an illusion to swap his and WhatAreYouLookingAt's positions in Extinction's sight. Thus, what Extinction had been staring at so intently was actually WhatAreYouLookingAt's eyes.

At that very moment, WhatAreYouLookingAt's Possession was triggered.

As the illusion dissipated, Tarol's body nearby suddenly went limp and collapsed to the ground.

Simultaneously, Ren Yi saw a translucent humanoid figure emerge from Tarol's body. Surprisingly, the soul was human in shape—a quiet-looking girl with short hair.

Wait, what?

At the sight of this soul, Ren Yi's eyes widened, his face twisting into the most shocked expression WhatAreYouLookingAt had ever seen from him.

WhatAreYouLookingAt's soul gave Ren Yi a curious glance, but with time of the essence, she vanished into the jawbone in an instant.

The jawbone on the ground trembled incessantly. The light in its eyes flickered—one moment filled with the previous agony and madness, the next with a calm clarity. The two emotions wrestled within its gaze.

Ren Yi walked over slowly, glancing at the crushed remains of the newborns with an expressionless face.

He remained silent for a few seconds before slowly crouching down. His gaze fell upon Extinction's trembling eyes. With a slight movement of his fingers, he manipulated his Seed to weave an illusion.

Soon, Extinction's struggles ceased. It went still, its two eyeballs turning upward to look at Ren Yi.

It was clear that WhatAreYouLookingAt had succeeded.

【It suddenly stopped struggling. What did you do?】

Extinction only had half a jaw and no way to speak, so WhatAreYouLookingAt could only type in the Anomaly Web.

Ren Yi responded within the Anomaly Web as well.

【I showed him a vision of the Calamity Rule being executed and told him that the Calamity would soon sweep across this entire world.】

【Everything is destined for destruction; no new life will ever be born again.】

【Therefore, he no longer needs to be trapped in this twisted body, nor does he need to keep killing his own mutated descendants.】

【He can rest easy now.】