# 38
**Chapter 38: Monster**
Lin Qiye set the letter down, his expression rather odd.
He had expected the letter to contain the asylum’s secrets, or perhaps a message from some mysterious powerhouse, or even a revelation about the truth of this world…
But… what the hell was with this elementary-school-sixth-grade-composition vibe?!
Was the previous director of this asylum really a little girl?
That made no sense!
What kind of little girl could beat the Goddess of Night in a contest of creation?
From this bizarre letter, Lin Qiye could glean very little. Before him, the asylum had been in the hands of another girl, who had taken a few items from the patients.
At that thought, Lin Qiye’s brows knitted again.
The letter had said “a few patients.”
Which meant, besides Nyx, she had opened the rooms of several other gods—and won an item from each through some kind of “contest”?
What kind of monster was she…
Still, she had mentioned something beneath this office?
Lin Qiye crouched, sending his mental perception carefully through the floor. Just before hitting the twenty-meter mark, he brushed against something… different.
“There’s a mechanism in this room?” He looked up at the wall behind the office.
In his senses, a hidden passage lay behind that wall, and the way to open it—
He focused a moment longer, then stood, walked to the corner bookshelf, and pressed a hidden latch.
The wall behind the office slid silently aside, revealing a pitch-black corridor.
Without hesitation, Lin Qiye descended.
The passage was long and deep; he walked for quite a while before reaching the end.
When he opened the final door, he froze.
Before him stretched a dim, damp hallway, its sides lined with grim, shadowy cells!
Yes, cells.
Unlike the six patient rooms upstairs, these were real prison cells, the iron doors covered in dense patterns whose purpose he couldn’t guess.
Lin Qiye advanced slowly, mental power on full alert.
A secret block of cells beneath the already-mysterious Asylum of the Gods—nothing good could live here.
Strangely, every cell stood empty.
“Abandoned, maybe?” he muttered, continuing on.
Soon he reached the end.
But the instant his gaze fell on the last cell, his pupils shrank!
In the corner crouched a burly figure. Hearing footsteps, it turned its head stiffly—
revealing a pale, hideous ghost-face!
Ghost-Face King!
Lin Qiye’s eyes flared with killing intent as he instinctively stepped back.
The beast snarled and lunged—only to be flung back by an invisible force the moment it touched the bars, slamming against the rear wall.
Lin Qiye’s frown deepened.
Hadn’t he already killed Ghost-Face King? Face chopped into eighteen pieces, body carted off by the Night Watch… how was it here?
Then the familiar panel appeared before his eyes.
"
Sinner: Ghost-Face King.
Decision: As a mythic creature slain by your hand, you may choose its soul’s fate:
Option 1: Obliterate its soul, erasing it utterly.
Option 2: Raise its fear of you to 60 and hire it as an asylum orderly; it will tend patients and protect you.
Current fear value: 1.
"
Now he understood.
Besides the six mystery patients upstairs, the asylum could convert mythic creatures he personally killed into orderlies.
So every mythic thing he slew might become future staff?
Did that… include ancient gods?
If—just if—he someday killed a true deity, could he make that deity his janitor?
His heart began to race.
"Roooar!!"
Ghost-Face King’s roar yanked him back. He regarded the snarling monster, gaze cooling.
“You’re strong,” Lin Qiye said calmly. “You’d make a fine orderly…”
The beast quieted.
Lin Qiye reached out as if to stroke its ghastly face.
Killing intent flickered in its eyes, but survival instinct quelled it. It knew its two possible fates, and that this puny human held the switch.
It lowered its head, docile as a hound.
Lin Qiye’s palm touched the ghost-face, gently rubbing.
“You slaughtered many—doesn’t matter, I didn’t know them.” His eyes narrowed, cold light glinting. “But you killed someone important.”
Suddenly, his fingers tightened!
"Screeee!!" The ghost-face contorted, shrieking. It thrashed, trying to escape—futilely.
This was Lin Qiye’s asylum.
He was its director.
If he wanted it dead—
it had to die!
Murderous light flared. With a final wail, Ghost-Face King ballooned like an over-inflated bladder—
then exploded!
Blood and gore painted the cell, only to be devoured by walls and floor within seconds. A River-realm mythic creature—gone.
The cell itself was a living, man-eating beast.
Lin Qiye’s white coat was spattered crimson. He stared at the empty cage, voice flat.
“You were strong, but… my asylum doesn’t welcome you.”
Hands in his pockets, he turned and walked away.
In the gloomy corridor, the blood on his coat seeped inward and vanished—
as though the coat, too, were a man-eating monster.