Face Easter 3The Law of Hunger

The night draped over Chen Zhi's research lab like a sheet of rotting silk—heavy, suffocating, and damp. Outside the window, a stray cat let out a shrill wail that pierced the stillness—then was silenced, replaced by the slick, dragging sound of something wet being pulled away. Silence fell again—deeper, more dreadful than before.

Under the skin of Liu Ming's arm, the remnants of last night's encounter—the black lines that slithered like living things—finally receded. The low heat emanating from the protective talisman pressed against his chest had forced them into submission. They curled inward like retreating parasites, leaving behind a web of faint, purplish bruises. Every heartbeat seemed to squeeze those bruises tighter, bringing a sharp and lingering ache with each throb—a mark left by Bai Ye's failed attempt at possession.

The study reeked of old paper, dried ink, and something else—an acrid bitterness, like crushed herbs left to spoil. Heavy tomes lay open across the wide rosewood desk, their curled, yellowing pages resembling edges singed by flame.

Chen Zhi's withered fingers hovered over one illustration in particular—a deeply unsettling image. A twisted, blurred human-like figure crawled on all fours, gnawing hungrily at a mass of unrecognizable, bloody flesh. Beside it, notes were scribbled in a dark brown ink that bordered on black, the script warped like tadpoles swimming across the page.

"She made a fundamental mistake," Chen Zhi said, voice rough and gravelly, like rust scraping across iron. "One that turned her from predator to prey."

He looked up. The glint behind his glasses was as sharp as a scalpel, slicing straight into Liu Ming.

"The Flesh-Eaters… creatures like her… Their power doesn't come from consuming flesh. Quite the opposite. Directly feeding on human meat, especially fresh human meat, is like drinking poison."

Chen Meng stood beside Liu Ming, eyes fixed on the scabbed-over claw marks on his wrist from the night before.

Chen Zhi continued, his tone carrying a faint tremor. "They're nothing like vampires. Vampires need blood to survive—that's their 'bread.' But for Flesh-Eaters, human flesh—especially flesh soaked in fear and agony—is more like a powerful hallucinogen. It grants them a sudden, euphoric high… and it destroys them."

Liu Ming felt a wave of nausea rise from deep in his gut. Bile burned the back of his throat.

The images from last night surged back with terrifying clarity: Bai Ye's festering right cheek glistening under the moonlight with a pearlescent sheen; the fluid dripping from her face sizzled when it hit the ground, like acid burning through stone. Her left side, still intact, possessed an unnatural beauty—eerily delicate, suffocating in its allure. And her breath, when she leaned in close—thick, sweet, like rotting meat and fresh blood fermenting together in a slaughterhouse corner—nearly made him pass out.

"This past year," Chen Zhi said, rapping his knuckles hard on the disturbing illustration with a dull thud, thud, "she's been like a beast lost in a garbage heap. Rats in the sewers. Stray cats wailing in alleys. Drunks dying alone on park benches… even—" His eyes cut sharply toward Liu Ming's now-ashen face. "Even those unlucky bastards she lured into dark alleys."

"She's been feeding on whatever she can get—primitive, inefficient, and deadly. Every bite, every swallow, chips away at what makes her a Flesh-Eater. Her transparency—no longer controllable. Her shadow-stepping—sluggish and glitching. Worst of all… her core is collapsing in on itself. The rot is accelerating, devouring her from the inside out."

He reached into the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a heavy, lead-lined box radiating a cold, unnatural chill. When he opened it, the interior was lined with thick black velvet. Resting inside were several grotesque teeth—twisted and alien.

They were pitch-black, like obsidian soaked in shadow. Instead of being smooth, their surfaces were covered in tight, spiraling patterns—like ancient, blasphemous runes etched into enamel. The tips were razor-sharp; the roots unnaturally curved, as if evolved to better hook into flesh. Even lying still, they exuded a presence—an icy, fetid aura that seemed to drain the room of warmth.

Chen Zhi didn't touch them directly. He reached instead for a slender pair of tweezers tipped with ivory. His movements were painstakingly careful, as though handling a volatile explosive. With the tweezers, he gently lifted one of the teeth and held it under the bright beam of the desk lamp.

The light revealed something truly unsettling.

Though it appeared solid, the tooth was hollow. A fine, tubular passage ran through it from tip to base, its inner walls paper-thin and semi-translucent, almost like the wings of a cicada. At the root—where the curves bent sharply—traces of dark red crystalline residue clung to the inner surface. It looked like dried, coagulated blood—aged, compressed, and long forgotten.

"This tooth," Chen Zhi said slowly, his voice heavy, worn thin by time and secrets, "comes from Varanasi, India. Fifteen years ago."

Through the glare of the lamp, his gaze grew distant, drawn back to a city soaked in incense, death, and ancient mysteries.

"I met a scholar there—Professor Ashok Mehta. He studied ancient pathology and supernatural phenomena. The most brilliant, and the most insane man I've ever known. His lab was an old house by the Ganges, the air always thick with incense, herbs, and sulfur."

Chen Zhi's eyes clouded slightly as memories surged—of that stifling room cluttered with jars, relics, and dust-covered tomes.

"He was already dying when I arrived—nothing but bones and willpower. But his eyes… his eyes still burned. He knew his time was short, and he wanted to pass on his findings to someone who could understand the darkness. He showed me this."

He gestured to the tooth with the tweezers.

"He said it came from a being that had—how did he put it?—'devoured itself from within.' Not a god, not a demon, but a human twisted beyond recognition. A creature cursed, or mutated, until it fed on rot and agony. Mehta called it The Putrid Shedder—a name whispered only in fringe cults and plague chronicles."

"He said such beings face two fates: either they rot into oblivion, driven mad by endless hunger… or they find a host. A living being they can cling to. They feed not on flesh, but on emotions—shame, fear, isolation, despair, and hatred. Through this bond, they can survive. Even begin to heal. But the price is steep. The host is bound forever—until death.

"The professor told me this tooth," Chen Zhi's voice dropped lower, "was shed by one of those creatures just before it fully dissolved."

He lifted the tweezers, tilting the tooth so the light glinted off the dried residue within.

"When he found it, its owner was already reduced to little more than a husk—its powers depleted, crawling on all fours like a vermin beneath the shadows of Varanasi's alleys, gnawing on carrion and rats. And it only accelerated its demise."

He pointed at the root of the tooth with surgical precision. "See these wear marks? These tiny fractures? He said that was the price for succumbing to the hunger—for feeding on flesh rather than emotion. Every bite hastened its fall. Every indulgence was another step toward the abyss."

The memory flickered in Chen Zhi's eyes. "The professor wrapped the tooth in a burial cloth covered in Sanskrit verses, already soaked in his own blood. He coughed violently as he pressed it into my hands."

'This tooth carries the creature's hunger and its curse,' he'd warned. 'It yearns for a new host. A vessel. A soul riddled with darkness. Never—ever—let it come in contact with fresh blood… especially that of someone with cracks in their heart.'

"He died shortly after giving me the tooth."

Chen Zhi placed the tooth back onto the black velvet with painstaking care, as though its mere presence was corrosive. He closed the lead box with both hands. A deep thud echoed through the quiet room. But just before the lid sealed fully, Liu Ming thought he saw it—

A tremor.

A near-imperceptible shiver rippled through the tooth, like it had been stirred by an unseen resonance.

Liu Ming froze, blood draining from his face.

Chen Meng stepped forward. Without a word, she grabbed his wrist and pushed his sleeve past his elbow. Her fingers were ice-cold.

Under the desk lamp, the truth revealed itself.

The black lines beneath Liu Ming's skin had not fully vanished. They had only gone dormant.

Now, they glimmered faintly in the shape of a complex, twisted sigil. An ominous, dark-red rune pulsed under his skin like a parasite etched into his veins.

"I… I don't understand…" Liu Ming's voice came out thin and weightless, like a whisper from the bottom of a well. "If parasitism is the only way she can survive… even grow stronger… why didn't Bai Ye do it sooner? Why wait until now? Why until she's so weak?"

A short, cold laugh escaped Chen Zhi's lips. He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses hard against his shirt sleeve, as if scrubbing away something vile.

"Pride," he spat. "A deep-rooted, diseased kind of pride!"

He pulled out a faded high school class photo, edges curled with age. In one corner stood Bai Ye, face perfectly composed, smiling just right. On closer inspection, one could see the faint unevenness beneath her right cheek, subtly concealed beneath careful makeup.

"Look at her! Has she ever needed anyone? Has she ever depended on anyone? She weaved lies and traps like a spider, manipulated every emotion around her, fed off people like toys."

"She's always had control. Always stood above the rest. And now you expect her to degrade herself—cling to a host, live off his fear and shame, even protect him to stay alive? She would rather rot in filth than stoop so low!"

Chen Zhi's voice rose in pitch, echoing through the room.

"To her, hunting and devouring—even if it destroys her—is better than submitting to dependence. She'd rather die as a predator than live as a parasite! That grotesque arrogance buried deep in her soul… that's what's killing her."

Just then, a cold, damp wind slipped through the sealed window. It smelled of earth, mold, and a faint trace of rot.

The lamp flickered. Shadows danced violently on the wall.

Liu Ming's eyes widened.

That scent—sickly sweet, tinged with rust and decay—was spreading through the room again.

Chen Meng opened her black notebook, flipping quickly to a page with a blurry surveillance photo. Bai Ye stood at the empty counter of a bookstore, slightly tilting her head—gazing into the reflection in the glass display.

But it was her right hand that drew all attention.

Her decayed, grotesque right hand… was becoming translucent.

"Five days ago," Chen Meng said sharply, pressing her pen hard into the image, "her 'physical manifestation' began to destabilize. She's running out of time. If she doesn't complete the possession ritual before the next full moon…"

"What happens?" Liu Ming's voice trembled.

Chen Zhi pulled a heavy, pitch-black notebook from the shelf—its cover blank. Inside was a sealed glass vial. There was no formaldehyde—only a slowly shifting mass of pitch-black gelatin, constantly changing form in the dim light.

It was thick like crude oil, yet somehow fetal—curled like an embryo. Eyes floated beneath its skin.

Liu Ming's gut twisted in revulsion.

"She'll regress," Chen Zhi whispered, voice low as a funeral bell. "Back to her original form."

He gestured to the jar.

"Her consciousness will be shredded by hunger. Her power will collapse. The rot will devour every trace of her identity. She'll become this—a mass of instinct, a 'husk of hunger' trapped in eternal rot."

"She'll be able to smell food. But never reach it. She'll sense life. But never taste it. She'll be lost in a purgatory of craving—a punishment worse than death."

Liu Ming felt the room spin. His back was drenched in sweat.

He remembered that final moment—Bai Ye within the red light of the ritual circle. He'd expected rage. Hatred.

But her eyes…

There had been something deeper.

Not anger.

Fear.

A pure, primal fear. Not of him.

But of the abyss.

She had stared at him like a drowning woman reaching for one last piece of driftwood.