The First Death and a Monstrous Rebirth

‘Damn it! What the hell is this abomination?! Is Cthulhu invading Earth? Is it still possible to shout ‘Hail Cthulhu’ now?

Huang Xiu swallowed with immense difficulty.

Large beads of sweat seeped from his forehead, tracing paths down his cheeks and disappearing into his collar.

“Heh…”

Pale white mist escaped his lips, which peeled back to his ears, as the Pig-Headed Teacher revealed a cruel smile.

A colossal wave of malice washed over him.

Huang Xiu clenched his jaw so tightly it ached.

The veins on his hands, clutching the wooden stick, bulged conspicuously, and his fingertips turned bone-white.

The courage he had painstakingly mustered, like a balloon punctured by a compass, silently dissipated into the air.

He managed a strained, unsightly smile, “Brother Pig, about this…”

The next second, a silver gleam whistled through the air, instantly filling Huang Xiu’s entire field of vision.

Bang!

The sharp, enormous compass instantly pierced Huang Xiu’s stomach, pinning him firmly to the ground.

There was not a shred of pain; only a sudden warmth below him, followed by an immediate loss of sensation from his waist down.

Blood streamed down his legs, dripping onto the floor.

“Cough… cough, cough.”

Huang Xiu coughed up a mouthful of bloody spittle, and all his strength vanished as his blood continued to drain away.

Yet his right hand still clutched the wooden stick tightly, as if attempting to grasp his very life.

The Pig-Headed Teacher slowly approached Huang Xiu, the pungent, musky scent of pig growing increasingly intense.

With his life rapidly ebbing away, Huang Xiu gradually felt an overwhelming sense of tranquility and cold.

In that moment, he understood that he was about to die.

Was he… truly dying?

“But… it seems I haven’t deleted my browser history!”

Huang Xiu’s head slowly drooped, his pupils beginning to unfocus.

His consciousness gradually blurred.

“I must leave a clean name behind…”

His voice became faint, barely audible.

“They say your life flashes before your eyes before you die. Lies, all lies… Why don’t I see anything…”

****

The Pig-Headed Teacher walked closer.

A large hand, caked with a reddish-white mixture of chalk dust and blood, seized Huang Xiu’s head.

It forced him to tilt his head back.

His lifeless pupils reflected nothing but the Pig-Headed Teacher’s grotesque form.

“Oh… I see it now…”

Everything before him began to blur, and numerous figures started flashing through his mind.

They were like a series of colorless, black-and-white slides.

Fang Yongyi, Fang Miaoging, Shi Lei, his adoptive parents… countless faces he could no longer clearly recall… and the aunties and director from the orphanage…

These were all the people he had known, all the experiences he had lived, from childhood to adulthood.

Suddenly, the image of Fang Yongyi slowly opened his mouth and said, expressionless, “Live, Huang Xiu, live!”

Then came Fang Miaoging.

“Live, Huang Xiu, live!”

…One after another, they all echoed, “Live, Huang Xiu, live!”

The voices grew louder, reverberating in his ears, gradually merging into a deafening roar.

They seemed desperate for Huang Xiu to live, imbued with an intense longing.

But… Huang Xiu didn’t care.

He was weary, wishing only to close his eyes for good.

Wait… Since this was a recollection from adulthood back to childhood… could he perhaps recall the very beginning, recall his… birth parents?

The birth parents he had never met, who had abandoned him.

Huang Xiu’s consciousness suddenly sharpened by half a measure, and he tried to widen his eyes, desperate to see his birth parents clearly.

This was his obsession—who had abandoned him!

Yet all he saw before him was a void, a blankness; there were no birth parents to be found.

In that moment, the tape of his rewinding memories jammed.

A surge of inexplicable fury erupted from the depths of Huang Xiu’s heart, burning through him, consuming him entirely.

It left him blazing hot, his heart filled with seething resentment.

Why him? Why did he, of all people, have to die? Why not Fang Yongyi? Not Shi Lei? Not Fang Miaoging?

With so many people in the school, why was it his turn?

“Live, Huang Xiu, live, you must live!”

The overlapping roars gradually distorted, losing all emotion, transforming into the buzzing hum of flying insects.

“So noisy! So noisy!”

Huang Xiu strained to straighten his neck, staring at the Pig-Headed Teacher with lifeless eyes.

“I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die!” he roared.

His eyeballs rolled wildly in their sockets, flickering, gradually forming double images, while prominent veins bulged around his eye sockets, stretching all the way to his temples.

Creak, creak!

As his eyeballs spun frantically, Huang Xiu’s hair began to grow incessantly, and his entire skeleton let out a series of cracking, popping sounds.

Amidst the explosive sounds, his skin rapidly whitened at a visible pace.

His physique, in turn, became gaunt, or rather, slender.

Huang Xiu released the wooden stick, then fiercely gripped the compass piercing his body, attempting to stand.

Accompanied by excruciating pain, he slowly straightened his body.

The next second… *schlick*!

His head, along with a scorpion-like spinal column, was ripped clean from his chest.

Blood splattered, sprayed, and shot forth, staining the white wall crimson.

The red paper of the March monthly exam report card, affixed to the wall, became even redder, almost black, with the fresh blood.

Caw, caw, caw!

A raven spread its wings and flew past under the moon, emitting a harsh, piercing cry.

In that single instant, the Pig-Headed Teacher had actually ripped Huang Xiu’s head clean off!

His body slumped limply once more, yet remained propped up by the compass, with blood splashing onto a small potted plant on the classroom windowsill.

It was a small cactus.

Hardy and requiring infrequent watering, most classes at No. 1 Middle School had one or two of them.

Blood droplets clung to the cactus’s sharp spines.

Logically, the blood droplets should have fallen due to gravity.

However, the blood droplets did not fall; instead, they rapidly seeped into the cactus’s body.

A strange phenomenon occurred.

The surface of the cactus began to glow with a sanguine light.

Immediately, its green stem violently grew and expanded, swelling and bursting the small plastic pot, causing the cactus to tumble onto the floor.

But the transformation did not cease.

Ultimately, it transformed into a giant, cylindrical cactus, standing as tall as a person.

Its spines, like steel needles, glinted with a faint, cold light.

That sudden, inexplicable rage had imbued Huang Xiu with a powerful life force, sustaining him even though he was not yet completely dead.

It allowed him to witness the final scene.

His eyes slowly closed.

The world before him gradually shrank, darkened, like a curtain falling on a stage.

In the final moment before the curtain dropped, he saw the cactus unleash countless steel-like needles, assailing him.

Immediately, the Pig-Headed Man’s screams echoed in his ears… and Huang Xiu completely lost consciousness.

****

“Ding, ding, ding!”

“Ding, ding, ding!”

“Ding, ding, ding!”

“Ding, ding, ding!”

Bang!

“F*ck, whose alarm is that? Turn it off!”

His roommate, Guan Shuai, abruptly poked his head out from under his blanket.

He had started ‘Original Demon’ (TL Note: A popular gacha game, a common trope for ‘Genshin Impact’ in Chinese web novels) last night, playing happily all night, and now he just wanted to sleep straight through until the afternoon.

Woken suddenly by the alarm, he was seething with anger.

He looked left and right, finally pinpointing the alarm’s location, then tapped the wooden board of Huang Xiu’s upper bunk, calling out, “Brother Xiu, Brother Xiu, quickly turn off the alarm, stop sleeping!”

Immediately, Huang Xiu’s bloodshot eyes snapped open.

He had just thought to get up and run.

He found that before his eyes was the familiar wooden board of the upper bunk, and in his ears, the familiar ringtone of his phone.

He… was he… not dead?

He instinctively turned off the phone’s alarm, then reached his hand under the blanket, feeling his stomach. It was smooth and intact, and even his clothes were undamaged.