Puzzle Madness

Chapter 85 Chewing the Illusion of Love
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This answer was obviously beyond the section chief's expectations - she did not run away, but just stared blankly at Doudou walking slowly towards her.

When the two of them were close enough to face each other, Doudou stretched out his arms, passed over the section chief's chest and ribs, and met at his spine; each hand grasped the other's wrist - that's how you'd see wrestling matches on the sports channel.

This time, he successfully touched the section chief's body. Those invisible giant hands or other things seemed to tacitly approve of Doudou's behavior.

Even amidst the pervasive odor of blood and rust, one could smell a faint scent of perfume, coming from the section chief's shiny maroon shirt.
After a moment of hesitation and daze, the section chief finally slowly opened his arms and patted Doudou on the back; thus the hug was completed.

"You're right, Doudou. Hugging is acceptable."

However, Doudou did not let go of his hand.

He spoke with a blank expression, but in a smiling tone:

"I've caught you, Auntie. Let me see if I can kill you now."

The section chief chuckled, her eyes narrowed. It was as if she understood Doudou's malicious intentions and thoughts, and even resonated with them:

"Great! I was wondering how I could kill you too. Awesome!"

[It has to be fast enough, huh! ]

Doudou took a deep breath, his nostrils filled with the smell of the butcher shop in the vegetable market. His neural recruitment capabilities were fully mobilized, just for the upcoming muscle explosion.

【one two three--】

Hum hum hum hum.
His arms suddenly tightened with a force greater than that of a hydraulic press: even if he held a piece of steel in the shape of a human—or some other alloy with greater toughness and resistance—it would deform, stretch, and even break in this embrace.

Ping!
Doudou's arms were suddenly empty, and his elbows pressed against each other, causing his chest muscles to ache.

The hands collided, and the sound was like the sound of a huge bell, echoing far away; the air flow swept away the red puddles on the ground.

He looked up and saw the section chief floating in mid-air. She covered her mouth, blood oozing from between her fingers. Her ribs were dented inward, clearly all the bones were broken. However, because of this, she was able to avoid Doudou's subsequent attack.

The section chief slipped out of Doudou's embrace like a loach - at the moment when Doudou's arms began to close and press, [maternal love] seemed to have crushed the section chief's ribs first; then she lifted her up and held her in the air.

Bang bang bang bang
With a crisp sound, the section chief's chest and abdomen inflated again, and the broken bones returned to their place: when she landed on the ground, she was intact again.

"It still doesn't work. Auntie, that thing of yours is too fast. It feels like it has nothing to do with my speed of exerting force. Oh."

Doudou shook his head, feeling a little lost: he had tried every possible method, from long-range throwing, charging after disrupting the line of sight, to imprisonment and then annihilation, but he still failed to kill the section chief.

[No, there's no way I can get past that transparent hand and kill my aunt.]

But in the blink of an eye, his mood brightened up again. Because the disappointment that also flashed across the section chief's face made him suddenly realize what had just happened -
He wasn't the only one who had just failed.

Now Doudou understood why she had proactively asked herself whether she had discovered the [criteria] for maternal love. She had wanted to trick Doudou into approaching her without hostility, touching her body before attacking.
"Oh—Auntie, do you think that if we have physical contact, your big transparent hand will protect you and affect or hit me?"

"This way you can defeat me through a defensive counterattack, which is indeed an idea; but it seems your guess failed. But it's worth a try, after all, I haven't been able to catch you before."

"You're so confident! I actually think that if I could touch your [motherly love], you'd lose."
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The section chief was grinning. The blood in the corners of her eyes had dried up, turning into raised scabs that looked like black eyeliner. From the moment he heard her voice on the speaker until now, this was the first time Doudou had seen her in such a relaxed state.
"Yes, this was one attempt where we both had a chance of success; but we both failed. Still: it's nice to have someone you can keep up with your thoughts, right?"

"It's normal for experiments to fail. Just keep trying—what we've discovered already is astonishing enough."

She waved her hand and looked at Doudou, who lowered his head and supported his chin with his hand:

"You understand? This is truly, truly incredible: practicality reaching this level of madness is so rare—and now it's not just you, but me too."

"Of course, I'm no match for you, Doudou. You're more than an entire mobile unit. Add in your thinking ability, and perhaps even more. As for why this is the case, I'll figure it out sooner or later."

"This city really has a kind of magic, something that can't be found anywhere else. Not only has it induced so many new cases, but it also has people like you—"

The section chief suddenly stopped moving; his smile of surprise became even brighter:

"No. Not this city."

"It was you, wasn't it? You, Doudou. You raised the concentration of heart ether throughout the city. You made the ecstasy of others stronger. How did you do it?"

There was no response. Seeing Doudou still clutching his chin, lost in his own thoughts, the section chief quietly covered his mouth with his hand:
"I'm sorry to bother you—why don't you think about it first? Let's finish the experiment at hand."

A deep silence fell between the two, each trying to figure out how to completely destroy the other.

I've been thinking in the wrong direction. I shouldn't be trying to figure out how to deal with my aunt's maternal love. I should be thinking about how to deal with this maternal love!

[Hmm, what's rejected, what's accepted—is there any difference? What's the difference? Is there any way to stop a mother's love from protecting her? It's difficult, it's part of her.]

What kind of person is her aunt? How can I see and touch that hand? What is love, the thing that maternal love can illuminate? She can touch it, but I can't; is that right?

Doudou looked at the woman opposite him who was wrapped in her own flesh and blood as clothes: she stood quietly opposite him, her eyes staring straight at the white tips of her shoes; she seemed to be accustomed to being alone like this.

In the quiet night, the sound of roosters crowing was heard - dawn was approaching. This slightly interrupted Doudou's thoughts, making him wonder where the local chickens and ducks raised in the city usually stayed. Are they only found in the vegetable market?
About half an hour had passed since the Section Chief and the [Witch in the Building] devoured each other, and he and Doudou had come all the way to the forty-plus floors of Shouzhu 151. He was very satisfied with this short and interesting confrontation.

But as long as Doudou doesn't witness the bloody head shatter, the struggle isn't over. Doudou knows that only death can bring both the end and the wholeness of a relationship.
But how does a relationship begin?
Ah. I see. It's actually quite simple.

【Just say what others want to hear. 】

He jumped lightly in front of the section chief and his toes landed on the empty space in the blood puddle.

The section chief's iron face was reflected in his emotionless eyes, and he spoke:

"I love you mom."

hum.

There was a moment of silence around.

The dust in the air flickered, then coalesced into a solid form. Like a red traffic light visible again after removing polarized red sunglasses, a foreign object suddenly appeared in Doudou's field of vision.
They've always been there--
A huge, translucent hand, its fingers gathered around Doudou and the section chief. The arm slipped through the hole in the building's window, and the other end extended to the end of the sky.

It's like a hand made of stars from the sky:
The crystal is translucent and shrouded in a hazy milky color; although the surface is as smooth as a mirror, it cannot reflect any color or pattern, only some circular palm prints and fingerprints entwined in it.

On each fingernail grew delicate clusters of flowers—those were even smaller, ten fingers the size of normal human fingers: they held the section chief's veins and bone spurs like needles and thread. "It's more beautiful than I imagined, a bit like an ice sculpture. You've been able to see it, haven't you, Auntie?"

Doudou raised his hands, feeling the warmth around him, the bright, sun-like heat:
"So this is love? That's why people can't control their emotions. Those few words, never heard before, are like a spell."

The section chief shook her head, a more complex expression emerging from her impassive face. She sighed long and woodenly, as if wanting to spit her entire soul out of her body; her bloody chest rose and fell violently.

"You really are smarter than I thought."

Doudou placed his palm against one of the giant thumbs. This was the first time he and the section chief had come into physical contact during tonight's chase.
"I know. I'm the best."

The skin was like crystal, yet it had the softness and elasticity of a human body. Doudou felt the warmth he had felt from the molten steel in the steel mill.

He raised his head, his mouth stretched wide, his eyes reflecting a bright light—it looked like a smile, but it was something more hideous and shocking:

"I want to see: Is love strong? Can it last long?"

"Oh, right. Also, are humans the only ones who possess love?"

blah-
Doudou's five fingers, like nail guns, hammered into the crystal-like skin. He clenched his hand, curled his huge fingertips into a ball, and pulled them in front of him. Tiny specks of light emanated from the gap.

Ping!
Doudou bit forward, passing through these things that looked like flesh and blood, and colliding with them, making a sharp scream of metal striking each other.

The crumbs that were broken off during chewing turned into even smaller particles that scattered like mist and light; they slowly overflowed from the corners of Doudou's mouth and nostrils, and then disappeared.

The attachment was bitten away by Doudou in an instant, revealing the pale, gray, but pulsating bones underneath.

These bones were engraved with words - those messy, black letters and phonetic symbols, which Doudou could not understand at all; he could only guess that it was the French that the section chief spoke.

They rise and fall on the surface of the bones, like little beating hearts.

Doudou doesn't care what emotions these words contain or what feelings they want to express.

Snapped!
Doudou folded, twisted, and broke it into pieces, then stuffed it all into his mouth.

One after another.

Doudou was moving faster and faster. He began to leave afterimages in the human retina, as if he had three heads and six arms moving simultaneously, or like a chaotic and complex storm.

He heard mournful cries, hearty laughter, nagging whispers, and cold scolding; all mixed up in a chaotic mess, a paste like sticky tears. Doudou didn't understand the specific meaning of these words, nor did he care - but he found that none of them contained the same emotion as the few words he had spoken to the section chief earlier.

He doesn't care about these things.

"Oh, will I get a stomachache tomorrow if I eat this?"

Doudou thought so and swallowed the last part of his palm into his mouth:

The arm that extended from the Zenith constellation into the Shouzhu 151 building gradually dimmed, and the tip was the white bone left by Doudou's rupture.
No matter how big the palm was before, the forearm became thinner as it went further back.

Doudou grabbed the bone and pulled it back like in tug-of-war.

Like a sword-swallowing juggler, he stretched his neck and stuffed the seemingly endless arm down his throat.

Bo:
With a slight sound, there was no longer anything in the sky that Doudou could continue to pull and swallow into his stomach; and the entire floor became empty again.
-
Snapped! Bang bang!

Doudou patted his still flat belly, put his hands on his chest and clapped:

"Wow! Done! Auntie, you're pretty amazing! I never thought you could survive this long in my hands. Seriously, you've survived the longest! You're amazing!"

He reached out and dug his hand into the center of the section chief's body—slightly below the xiphoid process of the sternum—and then his palm appeared behind her. A bloody mass was pushed out of her torso like a building block by Doudou's hand and fell to the ground.

Doudou retracted his hand and shook off the body fluids:

"Ha, I can bump into you anywhere now."

The section chief stared blankly at Doudou as he thrust his hand through her body like lightning, without making any attempt to dodge.

This time, there was nothing to fill that empty blood hole—
Puff, puff:
A little black blood flowed out of the corner of the section chief's mouth and flowed into the puddle on the ground.

She held the horrific wound in her empty hands and sat back on the ground, splashing a cloud of red water.

The section chief looked up, only to see faces hidden in the shadows. Dawn was approaching, and the moonlight was fading; the last glint of light was cast behind Doudou, leaving only a dark, dark darkness ahead of him.

"Haha."

The section chief let out a short but joyful laugh, and the hollow in the center of his body was filled with the sound of water.

"You're amazing, Doudou. You have absolutely no emotions—so when you tell lies, they sound like the truth."

Doudou frowned, obviously disagreeing with her words:
"Huh? I don't have any emotions? I thought I was very emotional. Don't slander me just because you lose."

He squatted down beside the section chief, scratched his nose and looked thoughtful.

"When love disappears, it's time for people to die. Isn't that right?"

Doudou saw that even without the repair and protection of [maternal love], the section chief's body still possessed extraordinary strength; she might not even be as weak as she looked now.

But it doesn't matter - as long as the section chief stops running around so fast. To Doudou, it makes no difference how hard her body is.

She struggled to move her elbows that supported her body. Her face was bloodshot, and only her dark blue eyes blinked suddenly:
"--I wish you were my child."

The section chief blurted out these words, but her facial muscles didn't form an expression of either sadness or joy. Even as she stared into those cold blue eyes, her voice still sounded quite soft.

Doudou shrugged, disagreeing with this statement:
"Auntie, you have your own children. You should learn to appreciate the strengths of different people. I can't fly. Everyone has their own strengths. Oh! Your daughter can be resurrected after death, and even chew your head to evolve with you. Isn't that amazing?"

(End of this chapter)