Strange game designer.

Chapter 834 Eight Heads
"Grandpa?"

The elderly man with a full head of white hair gripped the edge of the sink with both hands, his eyes almost bulging out of their sockets as he stared intently at his reflection in the mirror.

"That's right, you didn't miscount! There's one too many! There's one too many!"

Grandpa's emotions became increasingly volatile. Dr. Gao took out a medicine bottle from his pocket, poured a few pills into his palm, and walked to Grandpa's side: "Didn't your seven heads grow back slowly before?"

"I haven't grown any new hair in a long time!"

"Is this eighth head different from the others?" In Dr. Gao's view, Grandpa was the most learned and intelligent person in the family. His seven heads thought about problems from different perspectives, storing a wealth of knowledge that helped the family overcome many difficulties. As he aged, Grandpa's health deteriorated, and those heads brought him more pressure than anything else.

"It's different. This head is still conscious. Chop it off! Chop it off!"

"Grandpa, don't worry." Dr. Gao slowly brought the medicine closer to Grandpa's mouth from behind. "Could you explain it to me in more detail?"

“This is a head younger than me, over sixty years old, what a damn thing! It looks honest and kind, but its eyes are full of poison, and it smells of pungent flowers and blood. This head is looking at me! It was staring at me even as I was talking!” Grandpa spoke very quickly, his palms slapping the air next to his shoulders as if something was biting them.

"The scent of flowers and the smell of blood? Over sixty years old?" Hearing his grandfather's description, Dr. Gao, who was about to secretly feed him the medicine, stopped in his tracks: "This newly grown head looks so much like a gardener's?"

"Snapped!"

Grandpa slammed his hand on the wall next to the mirror; he was losing control of his emotions.

Without further hesitation, Dr. Gao decisively shoved the medicine into Grandpa's mouth: "It must be because you watched too much news about the gardener's case during the day. Its brutality and horror deeply affected you, causing your once-stable mental state to change again. It's alright, Grandpa, that head will disappear by dawn. It's different from other heads; it's someone else's head..."

Before he could finish speaking, Dr. Gao felt a sharp pain in his wrist. His grandfather, who was usually the most rational person, bit him and ran towards the living room door.

In a daze, Dr. Gao saw that his grandfather seemed to have several human heads growing on his shoulders, and they chuckled.

"Grandpa! Come back quickly!"

Grandpa casually opened the living room door without locking it. Before Grandpa left, someone in the house had already gone out.

"Uncle! Grandpa ran out!" Dr. Gao went to the kitchen to look for his uncles, but the three uncles were wrestling and fighting over a kitchen knife in the same body, so he couldn't count on them at all. He also couldn't find his mother in the other rooms. Helpless, Dr. Gao could only grab one of his uncles' coats and put it on before chasing after him.

"Old Ma, which way did my grandpa go?"

"She's gone downstairs!" Old Ma was jolted awake from his dream. "When it got dark, I saw your mother leaving the house mysteriously. She must have gone to the 'forest'."

"The old are a worry, and the young are a worry! Let's go! Let's go catch up with Grandpa first!" After untying the reins, Dr. Gao and Old Ma had just stepped out of the building when he felt very uncomfortable. Looking towards the other side of the community, he saw two households across the street with their lights off immediately drawing their curtains.

My gaze shifted, and I noticed the bushes in the neighborhood swaying slightly; something had just crawled over them.

"It seems like we're being watched? Who could it be?" Dr. Gao recalled what his grandfather had said during the day—that the neighborhood where the strangled man was found wasn't safe: "Is it a psychopathic killer like the gardener? Or one of Officer Xue's men?"

Without thinking too much, Dr. Gao ran to the gate of the community. The doors and windows were tightly closed. The community security guards knew better than the residents to protect their own safety. He knocked on the door for a long time but no one answered.

Turning around and walking outside the residential area, he didn't see his grandfather, but instead spotted his mother's headscarf. His mother was a mushroom (a type of mushroom), and didn't like sunbathing, so Dr. Gao gave her a beautiful headscarf for her birthday. His mother always carried it with her and never lost it.

Picking up the headscarf, Dr. Gao's eyes were no longer calm.

"Auntie has probably gone to the forest. We'd better hurry over there, or she might be taken away and become part of the forest." Old Ma said seriously. There is a forest in this city that only appears at night. In recent years, the size of that forest has continued to grow, which is a real headache.

"Let's go, to the forest!"

Riding the old horse, Dr. Gao turned into a side road and circled to the edge of Autopsy Avenue. There was still a long way to go before the next block, but the old horse suddenly stopped. He tilted his head back, pawed at the ground with both hands, and exhaled, "The forest has spread to Autopsy Avenue! I see it!"

Following Old Ma's gaze, the silvery moonlight shone on the buildings, like a thin layer of snow or a soft veil. The night breeze stirred, and the moonlight rippled gently on the water, reflecting on the exposed limbs.

They crisscrossed each other, relying on one another, their hair cascading over their flesh and bones, a sight both beautiful and poignant.

The body is the trunk of a tree, the arms are the outstretched branches, the fingers are the leaves, the wounds are the flowers, the heads are the fruits, and the drooping hair is the cool breeze in the forest.

This urban forest, which only appears at night, is made up of many people who seem to suffer from some kind of syndrome, imagining themselves as a kind of vegetation, growing together in the darkness and under the moonlight.

“A few weeks ago, this forest was far from the Autopsy Avenue, but in such a short time, the trees have grown all the way here.” Horses can graze, but the old horse showed no interest in the vegetation in front of it.

Have you seen my mom?

"No."

"You stay here, I'll go take a look." Dr. Gao had just taken a step when Old Ma grabbed his clothes.

"I will go with you."

No one knows when the forest appeared in Xinhu. When people saw it, the woodland had already reached a certain size, with all kinds of "trees" growing together, absorbing the moonlight, beautiful yet dangerous.

A resident once tried to enter the depths of the forest, but he never came out. Experts analyzed that he also became part of the forest, transforming into a tree or a flower.

Dr. Gao's mother had left home twice at night before, and was found on the edge of the forest both times. Mushrooms belong to the forest, but mothers belong to home.

"quick!"

Approaching the forest, the dense limbs resembled intertwined branches under the moonlight. Most of the people who made up the forest had their eyes closed, and they remained motionless, as if they had truly become trees at some point.

"Don't disturb them," Dr. Gao said, grabbing the old horse by the neck. "And don't eat the fruit in the forest."

"clear."

A man and a horse cautiously traversed the forest. The trees bent and piled up, growing ever taller. Moonlight filtered through the gaps in their arms, casting dappled shadows on their faces, creating an atmosphere that was both serene and eerie.

(End of this chapter)