Infinity: Kill your way through the movie world.

A wave of forbidden knowledge swept across the entire realm of life and death.

Old Mo dismantled himself into pieces, Eve used her festering body to preach, and beyond these two torrents of madness, a third force was surging.

It wasn't on the abandoned altar outside the city, nor in the streets and alleys of the city, but in an abandoned factory in the east of the city.

That factory used to be a steel mill.

Long ago, when the world still had industry, black smoke billowed from the chimneys here, molten iron was smelted in the furnaces here, and workers sweated here.

Now the chimney has collapsed, the furnace has cooled, and the workers have become living dead.

The factory's perimeter wall had mostly collapsed, the iron gate was crooked, and pieces of rust were falling off the gate.

A large hole had collapsed in the factory roof, through which one could see the gray sky. The machines were still there, but they were all rusted shut. The gears couldn't turn, the conveyor belts were broken, the buttons on the control panel were shattered, and the screens were black.

Kane is in this factory.

He didn't come here to seek refuge or hide; he came here to work.

His body was already mutilated—his left arm was severed cleanly at the shoulder, the cut was a bloody mess, covered with dark scabs.

The right leg is missing below the knee, and the fracture is uneven, revealing exposed bone.

A deep laceration ran down his neck, exposing the bone, with the flesh turned inside out and the blackened trachea showing; he had gouged out his right eye, and pale red mucus oozed from the empty eye socket, dripping down his cheek and onto the ground.

He used to smash his broken limbs with stones, repeatedly cut his skin with a knife, and burn his remaining limbs.

He thought that would kill him, but he didn't.

Now he doesn't want to die. He wants the devil to eat him. If the devil eats him, he will die. It's more thorough, more irreversible, and more reassuring than self-harm.

The moment the forbidden knowledge was branded into the depths of his soul, he was scraping the flesh from his severed arm with a rusty piece of iron.

There was a thick layer of dark red scab at the cut of the severed arm, beneath which was pink tender flesh, and beneath that tender flesh was the stark white bone.

He scraped very slowly and with great force. The metal sheet wasn't sharp, so scraping it felt like cutting cowhide with a dull knife.

Minced meat fell from the cut and landed on his crossed legs, like scraps of plaster scraped off an old wall.

Doesn't he feel pain?

pain.

But he didn't care; he hadn't cared about the pain he'd endured for twenty years.

When that fire exploded in his mind, the piece of iron in his hand paused for a moment.

His body froze, as if someone had pressed the pause button.

Then his mouth started twitching, from his mouth to his cheek, from his cheek to the corner of his eye, and from the corner of his eye to his forehead.

His entire face was twitching, like a broken mask, an overloaded engine, or a volcano about to erupt.

Then he laughed.

A silent laugh squeezed out from deep in his throat, a laugh like the growl of a wild beast.

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down, and air leaked from the trachea through the cut wound, making a hissing sound.

He laughed so hard he trembled, his severed arm dangling in the air, his crippled leg kicking on the ground, and a piece of metal falling to the ground with a clanging sound.

"Die!" He finally laughed, his voice hoarse and shrill, like fingernails scraping against glass. "I will let all the demons devour me! I will vanish completely!"

He stood up.

Stand on your left leg and hold onto the wall with your right hand.

His body was swaying, but his eyes remained focused.

His left eye—the only one left—was bloodshot, with a layer of pale red, sticky liquid on the surface of the eyeball, but the pupil was bright.

It wasn't just any ordinary brightness; it was the brightness of red-hot iron, scalding magma, or the brightness of a star in its final moments before it exploded.

He started walking around the factory.

It wasn't aimless wandering; it was searching.

He was looking for tools.

The factory was full of tools, tools everywhere: pliers, wrenches, hammers, hacksaws, machetes, electric drills.

Some tools are rusty, some have dulled blades, and some have broken handles, but they are still usable.

Kane walked to the wall and picked up a hacksaw from the ground.

The saw blade's teeth were worn down, but a few were still relatively sharp. He then picked up a machete; the blade had a nick, but the edge was still intact.

He found a corner, sat down against the wall, and placed his tools in front of him.

He is waiting.

He doesn't wait for others to come to him; he waits until he's ready.

He needs helpers, he needs many people, he needs a lot of flesh and blood.

He is not enough on his own; the amount of flesh one person can cut is limited, and the amount of sacrifice he can offer is also limited.

He needs a group of people who are just as crazy, just as desperate, and just as unafraid of pain as he is.

He doesn't need to go to them; they will come to him.

Because he knew that news of his presence here would spread.

It wasn't him who spread it; it was that 'knowledge' that spread it.

Those who, like him, have embraced forbidden knowledge will find him by following that feeling, not because he is a leader, but because he is the direction.

Just like a compass pointing north, just like a sunflower facing the sun.

The first group of people arrived.

Two young men, one missing his left hand and the other missing his right foot.

They weren't cut off, they were rotten.

Their hands and feet were rotten. When they rotted to a certain extent, they fell off. The parts that fell off were still alive, so they picked them up themselves, wrapped them in cloth, and hung them around their necks.

They entered the factory and saw Kane. There was no small talk, no greeting, not even a word. They simply walked up to him, sat down, picked up their tools, and began cutting.

The second group of people arrived.

Five people, three men and two women.

One of the women had half her face missing, not from being cut off, but from being mangled.

Half of her face was rotten, revealing her cheekbones and upper jawbone. Several blackened teeth were still hanging on the upper jawbone. Her tongue protruded from the gap, drooping without being covered by lips.

Her eyes were wild, but not in a mad way that meant she had lost her mind; it was the kind of wildness that comes from having found a goal and being willing to do anything to achieve it.

The third group of people has arrived.

There were more than a dozen people, men and women, young and old.

Some of them were missing arms, some were missing legs, some had festering sores all over their bodies, and some had cracked skin.

They carried knives, saws, axes, and hammers.

They entered the factory as if it were a church, a holy place, a place where they could find release.

No one asked questions, and no one needed explanations.

They all knew about forbidden knowledge.

Kane looked at them, not counting, not keeping track; he didn't care how many there were, the more the better.

The more people there are, the more meat there is.

The more meat, the more offerings.

The more offerings there are, the faster the barrier breaks.

He stood up and hopped on one leg onto an old, rusty oil drum. The drum was made of iron, about half a meter high, and covered in rust.

He stood there, his mutilated body swaying, but he steadied himself by gripping an iron chain hanging from the ceiling with his right hand. He looked down at the people cutting themselves, said nothing, and waited a long time until all eyes were on him.

Then he spoke.

His voice was hoarse and deep, like muffled thunder coming from underground; every word struck the hearts of those people like a hammer.

"Feed our flesh and blood to the demons of hell, open the barrier and let them out to devour us, ending this damned immortality." His right eye shone brightly, and in the hollow socket of his left eye, pale red mucus dripped down his cheek, into his mouth, which he licked and swallowed.

“I don’t want you to die, I want us to die. Not our own deaths, but being devoured by the demons. Once devoured by the demons, nothing will remain. No more pain, no more itching, no more hunger, no more cold, no more thoughts. Quieter than sleep, more void than before birth.”

Those people looked at him with no fear, no hesitation, only a fanaticism as bright as his.

Then they lowered their heads and continued cutting.

The factory has been turned into a slaughterhouse.

It's not a slaughterhouse for killing livestock, it's a slaughterhouse for killing yourself.

People sit on the ground, lean against the wall, or lie on the control panel.

They sawed off their own arms with hacksaws, chopped off their own legs with machetes, and smashed their own fingers with hammers.

The pieces of meat fell to the ground, were picked up, and put into a bucket. The buckets were made of tin, some as tall as a person, others as big as a washbasin.

The bucket was filled with meat—not the neat, clean kind sold in supermarkets, but rotten, broken pieces, bloody, pus-filled, bone-scarred, cursed meat that reeked of decay and a sweet, foul odor.

The meat was still moving.

It wasn't the muscles twitching; it was the fragments of cells trapped inside the flesh struggling.

They are looking for a host, wanting to return to a living person's body, wanting to continue living.

But they couldn't find their way.

They were packed in iron drums, piled up in the corner, and pressed under heavier chunks of meat.

They were screaming, not a scream of sound, but a shriek on a spiritual level. The shriek pierced through the iron barrel, through the walls, through the gray fog, and reached the outside.

Kane doesn't use a knife.

It wasn't because he couldn't use it, but because he felt the knife wasn't fast enough.

He used tools, mechanical tools.

In his hands, the rusted machines in the factory became instruments of torture.

He inserted his amputated leg into the gap of a hydraulic press, cranked the handle, and the pressure plate slowly descended.

The bones creaked and groaned under the pressure, like stepping on dry branches.

He gritted his teeth and continued shaking.

The pressure plate pressed down to the bottom, and the bone broke into powder, which was squeezed out from the gaps in the pressure plate.

He scooped up the pile of powder and put it into an iron bucket.

It wasn't because he considered bones as offerings, but because he felt that nothing that fell from his body should be wasted.

He used an old abrasive wheel cutter to cut off his severed arm.

A grinding wheel is dull and can't cut bone, but it can grind.

He pressed the severed arm against the grinding wheel and pressed the switch.

The grinding wheel whirred and spun, grinding against the bone with a piercing scream.

Bone fragments flew everywhere, landing on his face and in his eyes. He didn't close his eyes, letting the fragments pierce the surface of his eyeballs, causing a sharp, needle-like pain.

He doesn't care.

Those young self-harmers and deformed individuals followed his example.

Someone used a hacksaw to saw off their own calf. They sawed for half an hour until the bone broke, but the skin was still attached.

He used his teeth to bite through the skin, then lifted his lower leg up above his head like a trophy.

Someone drilled his own palm with an electric drill. The drill bit came out through the back of his hand, along with flesh and bone. He pulled the drill bit out and threw the palm into a bucket.

More and more mechanical tools are being used in factories.

Those rusty, falling-down tools that should have been scrapped were transformed into sacrificial relics in the hands of these people.

They don't feel pain, not because they don't feel pain, but because pain no longer frightens them.

Pain is temporary, but death is eternal.

They traded pain for eternity.

The pile of flesh and blood grew higher and higher.

When the metal drums were full, they were piled on the ground. When there wasn't enough room on the ground, they were piled on the worktable. When there wasn't enough room on the worktable, they were piled on the truck.

The truck's tires were flat and the cargo box was rusty, but it could still carry things.

They loaded buckets of flesh and blood onto the truck, piling them up like a small mountain.

The flesh and blood were mixed together, making it impossible to tell whose it was.

Left arm, right leg, fingers, soles of the feet, ribs, spine, skull—not a complete skull, but a smashed skull, gouged-out eyeballs, severed ears, and pulled-out teeth.

They were piled together, emitting a strong stench of blood and decay.

The smell wafted from the factory, onto the streets, beyond the city walls, and onto the altar.

Those who were waiting to die on the altar smelled it, not with their noses, but with their souls.

They knew that more people were being sacrificed, more flesh and blood were piling up, and the barrier was about to break.

As all beings eagerly awaited their return, the barrier between life and death trembled.

It wasn't the faint, almost imperceptible tremor of before; it was a distinct, heart-beat-like pulsation.

On the gray-white sky, those spiderweb-like cracks were expanding, from as thin as a hair to as thick as a cotton thread, and from as thick as a cotton thread to as wide as a chopstick.

The edges of the crack were not smooth; they were jagged, as if something had been gnawing them from the inside out.

That's the obsession with death gnawing at us.

It is the thought of 'wanting to die' accumulated by countless immortals over countless years, which has turned into invisible teeth, gnawing at the barrier solidified by the creative qualities.

In hell, the howls of the hungry souls grew clearer and clearer.

It's not the kind of blurry sound that used to come from a very, very far place, the kind that you have to strain your ears to hear.

It was a clear, sharp roar, like a scream exploding in your ears.

They knew someone was opening the door for them.

They waited outside for countless years, crashed into things for countless years, starved until their souls shattered, starved until their consciousness blurred, starved until they had only one thought left—to eat.

Now that the door is about to open, they can't wait.

They were roaring, crashing, desperately pounding against that barrier with their very souls.

The barriers are shaking, and they are shaking too.

With each impact, the soul shattered a little, the fragments drifting in the darkness of hell, where they were devoured by other hungry souls.

They don't care.

As long as you can eat live, fresh, piping hot creatures, it's worth it even if they're crushed into powder.

Kane stood on the highest control panel in the factory, looking down at the people cutting themselves.

His right eye was blindingly bright, and the mucus that had flowed from his left eye socket had dried and formed a pale red crust that clung to his face.

His severed arm and leg were still bleeding, not fresh blood, but a dark red, sticky, almost congealed tissue fluid.

He didn't bandage it, didn't stop the bleeding, and didn't treat it.

Let the blood flow, let the flesh rot, let the bones expose—all that blood, flesh, and bone is a sacrifice; not a single drop can be wasted. (End of Chapter)