What do you mean by saying that the corpses I sew are all ominous creatures?

That's neither yin energy nor evil energy.

It has a rotten smell, rather than a pleasant one.

"It's on the third floor."

Lu Yan whispered, "Be careful when you go up there. The sense of space around that secret room is very chaotic."

I touched the bone needles and scalpel in my pocket and nodded.

The motion-sensor lights in the corridor flickered on and off, and the wooden floorboards creaked jarringly.

We arrived at a heavy, dark wooden door at the far end of the third floor, and Lu Yan stopped.

"This is it. One of our men went in, and he came out insane, constantly shouting 'There are people in the painting.'"

I stood in front of the door, closed my eyes, and tried to summon the last trace of malevolent energy from the little finger of my left hand.

In an instant, my senses penetrated the wooden door.

I saw.

Behind the door was not a secret room at all, but a pitch-black shadow.

In the center of that shadow sat a blurry figure.

He was looking down, and his hands seemed to be mechanically kneading something.

The sound that thing made made the hairs on my body stand on end.

That was the sound of paper being torn into pieces and then forcibly pieced back together.

"Director Lu, you stay outside and keep watch. Don't come in unless I make a sound."

I whispered a few words.

Before Lu Yan could answer, I pushed open the heavy black wooden door.

A strong smell of ink and paper wafted over me, instantly engulfing me.

The moment I stepped into the room, the door behind me slammed shut with a loud bang.

The light disappeared.

In the darkness, I saw the man named Su Wen raise his head.

His face had no features, only dense lines composed of extremely small characters.

What he was holding in his hand was not a newspaper at all, but a piece of human skin, a piece of human skin covered with tadpole-like writing.

"You...are you also here...to repair books?"

His voice sounded like countless people whispering at the same time, overlapping each other, sending chills down your spine.

I smiled, and my right hand had already silently gripped the black bone needle.

"I don't repair books. I'm clumsy with my hands; all I can do is sew."

As soon as I finished speaking, the air in the secret room seemed to freeze.

Su Wen's face, devoid of features, twitched slightly.

The tadpole-like human skin scroll in his hand, covered in tadpole-like script, suddenly emitted a dark yellow light, and the characters, like living insects, crawled all over his body along his arm.

"Sew...sew...I want to...sew too..."

He let out a roar, and like a wild beast, he sprang up from behind the desk.

His movements were extremely fast; his hands, covered in dark patterns, were claw-like and aimed straight for my throat.

I snorted coldly, my gaze hardening.

"Since it's already rotten to the core, stop coming out and disgusting people."

I lightly touched the ground with my toes, slid half a step back, and slightly hooked my left little finger.

The malevolent energy line I had sewn under the skin was instantly activated, and a cold and violent force exploded along the meridian.

His right hand slid smoothly towards his waist, and the willow-leaf knife was already in his palm.

I sidestepped Su Wen's attack, and with a slash of my willow-leaf knife, I aimed for his wrist.

"cut!"

With a soft "plop," no blood splattered.

I severed Su Wen's wrist cleanly at the root, but what gushed from the cut was not blood, but thick, unyielding ink.

The ink that fell to the ground was still wriggling, trying to crawl back into his body.

Su Wen seemed to feel no pain. At the point where his wrist was broken, countless tiny characters rapidly intertwined and, in the blink of an eye, condensed into a dark claw, which swept towards me once again.

This thing's regenerative abilities far exceed those of ordinary zombies.

"Text revitalization... So that's what it's all about."

My eyes turned cold, and I stopped holding back.

My inner energy surged wildly, and I moved like lightning, cutting in close to his flank.

The scalpel left afterimages in the air, each strike landing precisely on his vital joints.

Shoulders, knees, elbows...

I swung the knife twelve times in succession, each cut piercing to the bone.

The malevolent energy surged wildly into his body through the wound, disrupting the connection between the words.

Su Wen let out a painful roar as his body began to collapse under the impact of the baleful energy.

The text patterns began to flicker, as if they had encountered their nemesis.

"My book...my book..."

He frantically waved his arms, trying to grab the tattered human skin scroll that was floating in mid-air.

I seized the opportunity, and with a sudden movement of my left hand, my reinforced little finger precisely struck his chest.

That used to be where the heart was, but now it's empty.

"Seale your acupoints with malevolent energy! Kneel down!"

The murderous aura I had gathered at my fingertips pierced his chest like a steel nail.

The surge of malevolent energy instantly halted the flow of words within his body. Su Wen's twisted body trembled violently, and with a cracking sound from his legs, he knelt heavily on the ground.

In an instant, those dark hands and feet scattered into pools of foul-smelling liquid.

I didn't look at Su Wen, but instead turned my head sharply and stared intently at the tattered scroll of human skin.

This is the root of all evil.

The tadpole-like characters on the scroll shook violently in the air. As if sensing the danger, they began to peel off the paper, forming a tiny whirlwind of characters that tried to sweep towards me.

"Ghost Needle, fix!"

I made a grabbing motion with my left hand, and black bone needles instantly appeared between my fingers.

Instead of directly piercing those words, I infused the bone needle with malevolent energy and, mimicking the technique used to stitch up wandering souls, drew a semicircle in mid-air.

A thread of malevolent energy instantly took shape, like a fine net, tightly trapping the whirlwind of words.

The words collided with the malevolent energy, producing a hissing sound, like a red-hot iron block falling into ice water.

I felt the bone needles trembling violently. The power emanating from the tattered scroll was extremely strange. It was not only trying to corrode my evil energy, but also trying to penetrate my soul along the threads.

"Behave yourself!"

I gritted my teeth, and the cold current between my brows surged again, forcibly suppressing the discomfort.

I walked step by step toward Su Wen, who was kneeling on the ground, or rather, toward the tattered scroll in front of him.

At this moment, Su Wen was completely limp, and the lines on his face were rapidly fading, revealing a pale face filled with despair.

"Help...help me...it's...eating me..."

Su Wen's lips moved slightly, emitting a faint cry for help.

I glanced down at him, feeling no pity, only a strange sense of wariness.

The corpse was completely dead; what was speaking now was merely a wisp of residual consciousness left in the brain by the tattered scroll, like a recorded echo.

I stretched out my right hand, and the tip of the scalpel gently lifted the tattered human skin scroll.

Upon closer inspection, I found that this skin was extremely smooth, and I could even see tiny pores.

I suddenly felt a chill.

This thing is not an ancient book at all, but a living person who was skinned and made from his skin.