Volume Three: The Two-Faced Demonic Infant - Chapter 154: The Two-Headed Infant

Granny Jin was a woman of vast experience, and she told Xue Quangui with absolute certainty that the child in Shao Xiaoyao's belly was by no means a stillborn.

Trusting Granny Jin implicitly, Xue Quangui assumed that Shao Xiaoyao simply lacked proper nutrition, which was why the fetus was developing at a slower pace. Consequently, he bought her large quantities of tonic foods to nourish her body.

Sure enough, seven months into Shao Xiaoyao's pregnancy, her belly suddenly began to grow again.

Moreover, the rate of growth was astonishing, changing almost day by day. Soon, before she had even reached the eighth month, Shao Xiaoyao's belly had grown to a terrifying size—so much so that she could no longer move about freely.

Because the skin of her abdomen was stretched to the limit, the blood coursing through the blood vessels beneath the surface was faintly visible.

Even stranger was the fact that despite Shao Xiaoyao's desperate efforts to nourish herself, her appetite remained robust every day, and her food intake was prodigious. Yet, compared to her distended belly, Shao Xiaoyao herself was wasting away day by day.

The slender, fragile Shao Xiaoyao, burdened with a belly utterly disproportionate to her frame, looked like some grotesque deformity—terrifying to behold.

During this period, Granny Jin pressed her ear against Shao Xiaoyao's belly every day to listen for any movement.

One day, Granny Jin approached Xue Quangui with an air of profound mystery and told him in stern, solemn tones that, judging by her years of experience, all the energy Shao Xiaoyao derived from her food was being entirely sucked away by the child in her womb. Worse still, even that was not enough, and the infant had begun consuming Shao Xiaoyao's vital life force. This phenomenon was abnormal, and in her opinion, it would be best to get rid of the child as early as possible.

When the pregnancy first began, Xue Quangui had also wanted to terminate it. But now that the child was seven or eight months along and delivery was imminent, Xue Quangui could not bring himself to do it; after all, it was his own flesh and blood.

On the other hand, he harbored wishful thinking, hoping that Granny Jin was merely alarming people with sensational talk. Therefore, Xue Quangui still insisted that Granny Jin help Shao Xiaoyao deliver the baby.

With no other choice, Granny Jin demanded that Xue Quangui stop providing Shao Xiaoyao with rich tonics.

Yet, deprived of supplements, Shao Xiaoyao grew even more emaciated, and every day she cried and screamed frantically for food. Terrified that something might happen to her, Xue Quangui had no choice but to resume her nutritional supply.

Just as Shao Xiaoyao completed her eighth month of pregnancy, sudden labor pains struck that very night, signaling the onset of childbirth.

Xue Quangui rushed over to Shao Xiaoyao's house that same evening. Granny Jin was bustling about in a flurry of intense activity, preparing to deliver the baby.

Preparations began at eight in the evening and dragged on until midnight. Shao Xiaoyao suffered agonizing torments, yet the child simply refused to crown. Bathed in sweat, Granny Jin bustled about, utterly at her wit's end.

Seeing that the time was about to pass one in the morning, Granny Jin grew somewhat angry. She stood before Shao Xiaoyao, shouting in a loud voice, waving the scissors prepared for cutting the umbilical cord, while chanting unknown scriptures unceasingly. Finally, she shouted sternly: "The first cut offers sacrifice to the heavens, severing a hundred feet of black hair; the second cut pays homage to the earth, parting a path to the netherworld; the third cut honors humanity, summoning the three souls and seven mortal spirits back to their rightful places at once, lest they scatter into oblivion and fall astray from the cycle of reincarnation..."

Accompanied by Granny Jin's thunderous cries, the weeping of an infant echoed through the room.

Xue Quangui, waiting outside, finally heaved a sigh of relief, overwhelmed with joy. But no sooner had the baby's cry rung out than they heard a heart-rending, blood-curdling scream from Granny Jin.

Pale with fright and casting all caution to the wind, Xue Quangui rushed headlong into the room from outside.

The scene that met his eyes left him dumbstruck; his legs went limp, and he slumped directly to the floor.

Shao Xiaoyao lay unconscious on the delivery bed, her eyes tightly closed. Granny Jin was cowering in a corner, out of her mind with terror, her eyes fixed in horror on the space between Shao Xiaoyao's legs.

Xue Quangui saw a newborn baby resting between Shao Xiaoyao's legs.

The infant was entirely crimson, covered in wrinkles. What terrified him beyond measure was that the creature had two heads.

Right beside the normal head grew another, slightly smaller head.

The normal head had its eyes tightly closed, emitting piercing, ear-splitting cries. Meanwhile, the smaller head also possessed a face, the eyes of which were wide open, parting its lips in a bizarre, eerie smile at Xue Quangui.

The infant had only pushed its head out; its body was still inside Shao Xiaoyao's belly, and it was currently struggling to wriggle its way out.

This was no normal infant by any stretch of the imagination; it was unequivocally a monster. That was Xue Quangui's immediate impression.

Pointing at the baby, Granny Jin muttered frantically, "A ghost fetus! This is a ghost fetus! We cannot keep it, we cannot keep it..."

Hearing Granny Jin's words, the baby's small head turned toward her, its eyes flashing with venomous malice, while its jaws emitted a chilling, grating sound of grinding teeth.

"Quick! Use the scissors! This ghost fetus must not be kept..."

Granny Jin shouted at the top of her lungs toward Xue Quangui.

Right beside Xue Quangui's feet lay Granny Jin's delivery scissors. Hearing her words, a sudden surge of vicious courage welled up within Xue Quangui. He snatched up the scissors, lunged forward, and with a single snip, sheared off the smaller human head.

The severed little head rolled across the floor a few times until it came to a stop right against the toe of Xue Quangui's shoe, where it suddenly clamped its teeth viciously onto his shoetip.

Xue Quangui had never witnessed anything so horrific; paralyzed by shock and terror, he lost consciousness and collapsed onto the floor.

When Xue Quangui finally drifted back to wakefulness the next day, he found himself still in that very room. The small head was still clamped onto his shoe, though the eyes on that head were now closed. The bloody corpse of the infant lay right in the center of the room.

Granny Jin was nowhere to be found.

Lying on the bed, Shao Xiaoyao was likewise at death's door. Trembling with fright, Xue Quangui mustered his courage to dispose of the infant's corpse, then rushed Shao Xiaoyao to the hospital. After a brief period of treatment, he brought her back to that same house.

From that day onward, Shao Xiaoyao muttered obsessively about her child day and night, and not long after, she breathed her last right there in the room.

I waited quietly until Xue Quangui finished recounting the entire ordeal, without inserting a single word.

By the time he concluded, beads of cold sweat covered his forehead. He wiped them away casually, picked up his water glass, drained its contents in one gulp, and slumped back against the sofa, as utterly exhausted as if he had just run a marathon.

Let alone him, even as I listened to his tale, goosebumps broke out all over my skin. One could only imagine the immense visual shock that scene must have dealt to Xue Quangui.

I could not help but remark, "You've got quite a bit of nerve, actually daring to take matters into your own hands and..."

Hearing my words, Xue Quangui shuddered violently and waved his hands repeatedly. "I don't know, I don't know why I had such courage back then. My mind was in complete chaos; there was only a single thought in my head—to kill that child. It was only after I had done it that terror finally set in. Even now, thinking about it makes my heart pound with fear."

I nodded. By Xue Quangui's account, that house had indeed become a thoroughly haunted dwelling.

I asked him, "So you want me to go and deal with that haunted house for you?"

Xue Quangui nodded frantically. "Yes, yes, yes. That house is empty right now, Daoist Master, you simply must do me this favor."