Chapter 695: The Smell on That Uncle
That day, Uncle Wan took several aunties with him to participate in the game, and they didn’t come back until dusk.
But only Uncle Wan came back by himself.
Uncle Wan was covered in blood, his eyes bloodshot, and he smelled both angry and scared.
I was glad my sister felt unwell that day and didn’t go out with him, or I might not have seen her again.
“Damn it… ‘Earth Tiger’… how ridiculous…” He stumbled back to our secret base, shivering all over, then plopped down right in front of me and my sister. He didn’t even look at us, just muttered to himself.
I felt even more afraid. He seemed dazed, just like Dad when he was drunk.
My sister, Siwei, caught the scent of the blood on him and also gave off a smell of fear. Then she asked softly, “What about Sister Fang and the others…?”
“All dead… not a single one left…” Uncle Wan lifted his head, trembling all over. “I kept thinking it wasn’t real… So this place really does kill people… What the hell kind of place is this…”
“‘Earth Tiger’?” My sister was taken aback. “Wasn’t it always ‘Human Tiger’ before? There’s an ‘Earth’ one too?”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it too…”
Uncle Wan rubbed his hands together, as if recalling what had happened. I could see that his hands were also covered in dried blood.
His scent carried both “heaviness” and “fear.”
“A big group of us was locked in a round arena… that tiger made us kill each other… But how could we possibly listen to it? All of us stood there in the arena, not moving an inch…”
He kept rubbing his hands.
“What happened next?” my sister asked.
“Then that tiger… dropped a machete in the middle of the arena…” Uncle Wan gave a bitter laugh. “How ridiculous… That’s how people are. When everyone’s empty-handed, nobody intends to attack anyone else. But once there’s a knife in the center…”
Listening to Uncle Wan, my sister’s expression turned grave, and her scent began to grow sad.
“Everyone started scrambling for that knife…” Uncle Wan continued his story. “For a moment, chaos broke out. But I knew that some people grabbed the knife not because they really wanted to kill—they just didn’t want it to fall into someone else’s hands… Because only when the knife is in your own hands can you think it’s safe. But once it’s in someone else’s, all you can feel is fear. That tiger took advantage of that…”
“That makes sense.” My sister nodded. “So… you survived in the end?”
Her tone turned a little stiff, and her scent became wary.
“Yes.” Uncle Wan answered with a heavy scent.
“So…” My sister started rubbing her hands too; she smelled nervous. “You killed Sister Fang and the others?”
“I…” A strange look flickered across Uncle Wan’s face. He looked down at his bloodstained hands, then stammered, “How could that be…? They were the ones trying to kill me, I was just defending myself…”
After Uncle Wan said that, his scent changed, and I suddenly froze.
At that moment, a strange, faint fragrance began to emanate from him. It was even similar to my own scent.
It was just as fragrant as my smell, only slightly different, like two different bars of soap.
And at that moment, two words appeared in my mind— “Amplification.”
It was a kind of fragrance called “Amplification.” It overpowered all other smells, drilling straight into my nose, and I couldn’t avoid it.
“Uncle…” I finally couldn’t help saying, “You smell really nice.”
“Nice…?”
He and my sister both looked at me, confused expressions on their faces.
Uncle Wan glanced down at the large bloodstains on his body, and a hint of irritation emerged in his scent.
“Are you mocking me, kid…?” he asked in a hoarse voice. “I’m covered in the stench of blood… and you say I smell ‘nice’?”
I got scared and shuffled back behind my sister. I thought what I said was something an adult would like, but somehow he got angry.
Whenever I complimented adults before, they would be happy.
My sister blocked me behind her and looked up at Uncle Wan. “Brother Wan, calm down first. Yingxiong rarely speaks, so let’s hear what he has to say.”
“Hear what he has to say…? Ridiculous. I must have been too nice to him.” Uncle Wan laughed. “I thought having nine survivors in our room would give us an advantage over the others, but who knew there’d be a kid holding us back? Can’t do anything, just causes trouble. Now so many people are dead, and he dares to make sarcastic remarks…”
“I… I’m not causing trouble…” I hid my head behind my sister’s back and said quietly, “And I’m not making ‘sarcastic remarks’… You can both smell it… Uncle Wan smells really good. That fragrance is called ‘Amplification’.”
“Amplification?” Uncle Wan looked at me skeptically, then raised his arm and sniffed it. But the next second, I felt he got even angrier.
“I can’t believe I actually believed your nonsense…” He slowly stood up and walked toward me and my sister. “Don’t you think I’m troubled enough already? People died… People died, do you understand?!”
I was so scared! So scared!
He felt just like Dad!
He shoved my sister to the ground, grabbed me by the collar, and dragged me aside. “Do you think I won’t hit you?! Are you messing with me, you little brat?!”
I was going to get hit…
“You son of a—!”
As soon as Uncle Wan started his next sentence, his voice suddenly boomed with tremendous volume. I felt like my ears were going to be deafened.
“What?”
He covered his mouth in disbelief, but the rumbling loud sound still echoed through the room.
My sister got up from the floor, pushed Uncle Wan away, and helped me up.
“Yingxiong, are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine… I’m fine…” I was trembling all over.
Then she turned to Uncle Wan. “Brother Wan… just now?”
“I don’t know either…” Uncle Wan was stunned, still covering his mouth.
My sister checked on me, then immediately stood face-to-face with him. “Brother Wan, I don’t think you need to be like this… You went out to participate in the game and failed, and it has nothing to do with Yingxiong. No matter what, you shouldn’t take your anger out on him.”
Uncle Wan didn’t even bother to reply to my sister. He just kept touching his throat, then tentatively made loud sounds, but sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
“Amplification…?” His eyes widened. “This is ‘Amplification’…?”
After testing it a few times, he turned his gaze back to me, came over, and grabbed my shoulders firmly.
“Kid… What does ‘Amplification’ mean?!”