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Translator's note: Meat Mountain is actually called "肉山" in the original text, which is also the nickname for Roshan given by Chinese Dota players.
Fang Xiu quickly walked to the door. Endless Specters poured out from the door, but they avoided him, charging toward Yang Ming and the others instead.
Fang Xiu muttered to himself, "The Other Side? Let me see the truth of this world."
He stepped through the door, and the world changed dramatically.
The sight before him showed rare fluctuations.
"Is this the Other Side?"
The sky was black, the earth white, full of scars, like a world from a black and white photograph.
Desolation and silence dominated this world.
The air was filled with a layer of gray fog, making everything seem unreal. Endless Snakeworms floated in the air, wildly flying around like locusts.
Not far away, a vast black mountain range stood, as if cutting across the world.
The strangest thing was that Fang Xiu saw humans here, lots of them.
In the gray fog, there were many human figures, blurred but definitely real.
These people looked just like those in the streets of the present world. Some were on the phone, some were going to school, and some were using the bathroom.
Fang Xiu couldn't see any human buildings, but he could see human walking and doing activities.
He suddenly realized something.
"These are people from the present world! I can see the Specters of the Other Side wandering in the present world, and here in the Other Side, I can see the activities of people from the present world! What is going on? Why can my vision cross between the two worlds?"
Fang Xiu suddenly started coughing violently, covering his mouth and nose with his hand as black blood poured from his mouth, nose, and even his eyes.
"Is the fog poisonous? Or is this place just not suitable for humans?"
In the next moment, his ability to absorb pain activated, and Fang Xiu's injuries instantly healed.
He walked forward, determined to discover the ultimate truth.
His blood kept pouring out, and his skin began to decay, but it quickly healed, repeating in a cycle.
As time passed, the effects on him lessened as if his body was adapting to the environment.
Fang Xiu's eyes sparkled. He guessed it might be the effect of the Type-III drug, allowing him to perfectly merge with the Specters, plus the power of the Specters he possessed, so he was gradually adapting to the environment.
It seemed this really was the Other Side, the world of the Specters. This was a forbidden zone for living beings, and only Specters could survive here.
Just then, a sound like a mix of crying and laughing came through the wind.
The gray fog in front of Fang Xiu cleared slightly, allowing him to finally see the true face of the black mountain in front of him.
It wasn't a mountain at all, but a mass of rotting, blackened flesh piled up into a meat mountain. The meat mountain was writhing. Its strong stench of decay spread, attracting countless Snakeworms.
Dense swarms of Snakeworms flung themselves onto the meat mountain, frantically gnawing at the flesh, burrowing in and out.
Fang Xiu activated his Blood Pupil and looked up. When he looked at the peak of the meat mountain, his pupils contracted instantly.
The meat mountain was alive.
On its peak was a huge, rotting head with two thick, decaying arms that were constantly waving. The arms grabbed countless Snakeworms from the air and stuffed them into a gaping mouth.
The skin around its mouth was festering, and many Snakeworms burrowed out of the decayed spots, but most were swallowed into its stomach.
Each time the meat mountain swallowed a large amount of Snakeworms, rotten flesh would grow on its body, only to be devoured by other Snakeworms in a frenzy.
The meat mountain and the Snakeworms were eating each other.
The meat mountain used its own rotting flesh as bait to attract Snakeworms, then it ate them, and the cycle repeated.
Just as Fang Xiu saw the true nature of the meat mountain, its feeding motion suddenly paused.
A terrifying gaze fell upon him. In just an instant, Fang Xiu felt every cell in his body trembling, as if unable to withstand some kind of pressure and beginning to self-destruct.
He turned his pain-absorbing ability to the maximum to barely stop it. However, his body's collapse was irreversible. Large amounts of blood oozed from his skin, gradually turning him into a bloody, standing mess.
In the next moment, countless silver hairs pierced through his body, stitching and supporting it, which barely kept Fang Xiu from falling.
Unspeakable whispers started to echo in his ears, which gave him a splitting headache. The whispers could even drive one to madness.
It instantly reminded Fang Xiu of the Specters he had once seen standing in the sky above the real world—the Specter with a huge, bloody tumor-covered eye and giant white wings; the bride with a rabbit head, the Buddha with a tumor on his hair.
The meat mountain felt no different from those Specters.
Fang Xiu had once been baptized by those Specters, and thanks to that, now he had some resistance to the meat mountain. So, he didn't collapse immediately.
Suddenly, Fang Xiu felt the chilling sensation on his back disappear.
Without looking back, he knew that No Turning Back had run away, cleanly and decisively.
At that moment, a giant hand composed of rotting flesh descended from the sky.
The hand was riddled with holes, with countless dense Snakeworms burrowing through the flesh.
A tremendous force struck, and Fang Xiu's vision was completely obscured. Rotten flesh completely enveloped him, slimy and foul-smelling. The Meat Mountain had grabbed him.
A sensation of weightlessness came as he was lifted into the air and placed near Meat Mountain's mouth. Then, along with countless Snakeworms, he was thrown inside.
Throughout the process, Fang Xiu made no movements, not because he didn't want to, but because he couldn't.
In the presence of Meat Mountain, his power was completely suppressed. It was a huge gap in power levels, as if the monster were from a higher dimension.
Fang Xiu couldn't even mobilize his Spiritual Energy.
After entering Meat Mountain's body, intense pain enveloped him. Every cell in his body was dissolving. It was a type of pain that could make a well-trained agent break down.
But that was not enough to make Fang Xiu collapse. He had been reborn through pain before, so he wouldn't die from it this time.
Soon, he couldn't feel his body at all, as if everything about himself was being dissolved.
Indescribable murmurs crazily rang in his ears, like billions of people screaming.
Massive and incomprehensible amounts of information crazily flooded his brain, causing his mind to shatter as well. His consciousness, overwhelmed by the influx of information, was like a balloon being frantically inflated, on the verge of exploding.
Fang Xiu knew clearly that once his consciousness exploded, he would truly die. Even if he could trigger a death reset, he would become an idiot, a madman.