Setting aside the chaos unfolding outside, Leng Jing and the White Marten sprinted upward, finally reaching the fifth floor of the tower. During their initial ascent, they had been in too much of a hurry to observe their surroundings closely. Now, upon closer inspection, Leng Jing noticed that the doors on the fifth floor were different from the others; the paint was old and peeling. As they pushed the door open and entered, a musty, damp odor wafted toward them. It took the White Marten a long time to adjust to the gloom, feeling a stifling oppression as if caught in a nightmare.
When they could finally discern the features of the dim corridor, they realized it was nothing like the magnificent, pristine top floor. Instead, it exuded an aura of antiquity. The white walls on either side were stained and grimy, and the green paint that had once covered the lower half of the walls had mostly flaked away. The floorboards were worn smooth, and several old benches lined the walls, with spittoons tucked into the corners. The doors on either side were ancient wooden planks, each topped with two glass panes separated by a wooden bar. Some of the glass had long since fallen out, while others were heavily cracked and held together by adhesive tape.
Leng Jing looked up at the signs above the doors. On the damaged and incomplete plaques, he could vaguely make out words like "Internal Medicine" and "Ward." It seemed this place truly was a hospital.
After standing there for a moment, Leng Jing realized the corridor was no longer as dark as when they had first entered. Instead, it was filled with the light and atmosphere of a late afternoon. The dim, yellow glow of the setting sun filtered through the glass windows of the ward doors, gradually brightening the hallway. There was no one else around; the silence was absolute.
The White Marten held its breath. Suddenly, a pained, moaning sound echoed from the room beside them. The sign outside this room read: *Ward 1*.
Soft sunlight streamed through the glass above the door of Ward 1, creating the illusion that it must be a warm autumn day outside. Yet, the moans coming from within the room were so agonizing they made one’s heart feel heavy with dread. Leng Jing lifted the White Marten, gesturing for it to look through the upper glass pane to see who was moaning.
*This is animal abuse!* The White Marten offered a silent protest, terrified of making a sound. It had no choice but to grip the doorframe tightly with its claws and cautiously poke its small head out to peer into the seemingly bright ward.
In the next instant, Leng Jing, who was holding the marten aloft, felt the creature’s body tremble violently. Before the poor White Marten could report back, it foamed at the mouth and entered a state of suspended animation, slumped and motionless like a discarded toy.
Leng Jing curled his lip. He fished a plastic bag—leftover from a supermarket trip a few days prior—out of his pocket, stuffed the marten inside, and carried it away.
There was no need to see what was in that ward. As the moans from Ward 1 continued, the corridor began to grow noisy. Countless desperate whimpers and endless whispers drifted from all directions. A few minutes of listening would be enough to drive an ordinary person mad with despair. Leng Jing, however, remained indifferent, walking toward the deepest part of the corridor.
Turning a corner, he entered the consultation area. These rooms were where doctors saw patients. Unlike the tightly shut wards, the doors here were wide open. Leng Jing leaned toward the first consultation room. Inside, a doctor in a white coat and a mask was examining a young boy whose back was to the door. The doctor said in a calm voice, "It’s nothing serious. Just a scraped knee. We’ll just have to amputate the leg."
The boy began to wail loudly, and a nurse, also masked, handed a large saw to the doctor.
The nurse’s entire body was covered except for her arms, which were a withered, ashen gray, resembling dead branches. She actually took the large saw and began to saw into the boy’s body. Amidst the boy’s successive screams, two bloody legs really did fall to the floor. The boy was in such agony that his head snapped back, allowing Leng Jing to see his face—it was an upside-down face, pale and ghastly, which gave Leng Jing a sinister grin.
Leng Jing quickly hurried past that room. In the several rooms that followed, various monstrous doctors were torturing and mutilating equally twisted and horrific patients. The blood flowing from these gruesome consultation rooms converged, forming a crimson path that led toward a hidden side corridor.
Leng Jing gritted his teeth, gripped the plastic bag containing the White Marten, and walked toward the end of the blood-stained path.
The final corridor was decked entirely in deep purple—deep purple floors and half-painted purple walls. There were no more windows to let in light, only dim, yellow fluorescent lamps overhead. The straight corridor stretched toward a door at the very end. This door was different from the others, inset with four large panes of glass, but behind the glass was a thick, impenetrable darkness. The moment he stepped into the purple corridor, Leng Jing found it difficult to breathe. Every step required immense effort. Though the corridor was only a dozen paces long, it felt infinitely distant; with every step forward, the door seemed to recede further away.
After only ten steps, Leng Jing was panting for breath. He looked down at the plastic bag in his hand and saw that the White Marten had already deformed into a twisted lump of fur. Even the sneakers on Leng Jing’s feet had fused with the floor, making them impossible to pull free.
He had no choice but to continue barefoot. Looking back, the exit of the corridor seemed infinitely far away, yet the dark door at the end remained just as distant.
This was the power of Qing Yue—the infinite distortion of time and space.
"Aaaaaahhh!!!" Pressed by the immense pressure, Leng Jing finally erupted. He gritted his teeth and began to sprint toward the final door. First one leg, then the other, until he was running with all his might.
This terrifying sprint was nearly ten times the speed of his usual high-speed flight in his "Dragon Ferrari" form. The surrounding scenery blurred due to his velocity. The clothes on his body could not withstand the spatial friction and disintegrated into dust, though the plastic bag holding the marten remained clutched tightly in his hand. The Ugly Little Snake’s speed and Qing Yue’s distorting power entered a peculiar tug-of-war.
"Roar!!!" The human-shaped Leng Jing gradually transformed into a vigorous white dragon mid-sprint, roaring as he charged with even more frantic speed. Just as the tension between the two forces reached its breaking point, a wall suddenly appeared before the madly dashing Leng Jing.
Leng Jing came to a sudden halt. Although he managed to shift back into human form in time, he still took a heavy tumble, slamming his head against the door. It seemed Qing Yue had finally acknowledged him, granting him the right to enter.
"Dragon!" A harsh, raspy voice drifted from behind the door. "Come in! Look at me!"
"Qing Yue!" Leng Jing scrambled up and pushed open the final door.
The ultimate scene finally appeared: a purple room, a red bed—a vast expanse.
Everything was exactly as the nursery rhyme described: a purple room, purple floor-to-ceiling curtains, and a purple carpet. Inside the final door was indeed a purple room.
But upon the large bed in the center was a sprawling, bloody mass of flesh. Leng Jing didn’t know what to call that "thing"; it looked like a person who had been suddenly flattened, collapsing into a vast heap.
This was the true form of "Qing Yue."
"Dragon... *giggle*... you finally see me..." A round orifice within the "vast heap" emitted that grating voice. "*Giggle*... your wish has finally been fulfilled... you can... die... along with this painful world... perish... I... shall become the new god..."
"Impossible, Qing Yue. Look at what you've become because you forcibly absorbed the power of Chaos," Leng Jing said, standing naked beside the sprawling mass.
"*Gurgle*... I don't care... *gurgle*... Do you know? After I began to 'collapse,' I took the initiative to ask the Director to increase the dosage... *gurgle*... Hahahaha... I am the ruler now..." The mass seemed to be laughing. A thin sprout of flesh extended from the heap, slowly coiling around Leng Jing’s wrist. "Leng Jing, come and merge with me! You will feel the ultimate pleasure of fusion!"
The moment the flesh sprout touched Leng Jing’s arm, a violent transformation suddenly erupted from its tip. The furniture in the room began to shake, and the mass shrieked, "What trickery is this? What did you put on your arm?"
Leng Jing replied, "It’s Manifestation Powder that someone specifically brought in. Qing Yue, although this stuff is almost useless against you, it can at least let you see clearly what kind of thing you really are."
"Aaaaaahhh!" the mass screamed in agony. All the surrounding scenery changed; it was no longer a finely furnished room. Instead, every wall and floor was covered in a layer of raw meat, and all these chunks of flesh were connected to the Qing Yue on the bed.
To Leng Wuchen and the others who had escaped outside, this was a spectacular and disgusting sight. The entire Wanxiang Building began to disintegrate and deform. It turned out that a gargantuan layer of collapsed flesh had been enveloping the original Wanxiang Hospital, and the area of this flesh was expanding rapidly. Every place where time and space had been distorted was within the reach of this collapsed flesh. Leng Wuchen and the others, riding on the back of the 700,000-year-old Dragon Ferrari, rose into the sky. They saw that the entire Great Snow Valley, and even the areas near the capital of the Snow Dragon Kingdom, were covered by the collapsed flesh, which continued to spread at an extreme speed.
If this continued, the flesh would eventually cover the entire world.
At the center of Wanxiang, the core room had vanished. Leng Jing stood within the walls of meat, facing the core of Qing Yue—a bizarre fleshy monster twisted from Qing Yue’s brain. Leng Jing couldn't help but ask, "Qing Yue, is your true wish really to destroy the world? Why did you drag this out for a thousand years? You actually want to return to the Sea of Chaos, don't you?"
"That's right!" Qing Yue’s brain answered in a sharp, piercing voice. "I want to go to the Sea of Chaos! This tiny world cannot contain me! I want to find my companions! Dragon, you must come with me!"
"Fine, I’ll go with you." Leng Jing pulled out the White Marten and threw it away with all his might.
At that moment, the collapsed flesh that spanned thousands of miles suddenly retracted. The central mass of meat grew higher and higher, eventually rising from the ground to form a spiral, reaching toward a rift gradually opening in the sky.
The thrown White Marten was caught by the 700,000-year-old Leng Jing. Under the elder's power, the marten was restored to its original state.
The group watched helplessly as Leng Jing and the flesh monster rose into the sky together, finally disappearing into the rift of the Sea of Chaos.
The legend of the Wanxiang Building finally came to an end. Leng Jing vanished along with Wanxiang and Qing Yue into the vast, unknown space. One legend ended, and simultaneously, a new chapter for the Ugly Little Snake was about to begin.
Following Leng Qingqing’s wish, the 700,000-year-old Leng Jing left behind an unstoppable incantation within the Three Realms. This power would become the start of a new phase in the Ugly Little Snake’s life. Please look forward to the final volume of Li Mao’s brain-dead fantasy BL novel, the main romance arc—*The Quest for the Snake*!
The next chapter enters the new arc, *The Quest for the Snake*. Please stay tuned.
Chinese | English | Notes/Explanation
--- | --- | ---
病房一 | Ward 1 |
内科 | Internal Medicine |
显形粉 | Manifestation Powder | A powder used to reveal the true form of illusions or hidden entities.
溃肉 | Collapsed Flesh | Refers to the festering, distorted mass of meat that Qing Yue has become.
混沌海 | Sea of Chaos | The primordial realm from which powerful entities originate.
寻蛇记 | The Quest for the Snake | The title of the upcoming story arc.
狸猫 | Li Mao | The author's pen name (literally "Civet Cat").
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The Ugly Little Snake: My Dragon Son | Chapter 79 | The End of Wanxiang | Novela.app | Novela.app
