Chapter 10: Existence Precedes Essence
Bai Lengci was awakened by a faint itch.
He opened his eyes, his consciousness still somewhat hazy, only to be met with a scene of chaos.
On the kitchen tiles lay scattered chicken feathers stained with dark red blood.
Some were even stuck to his clothes, and his mouth felt itchy.
Reaching up to touch it, his fingertips brushed against a few fine down feathers.
Last night… or rather, that feast in the darkness.
The strange satisfaction brought by the warm plasma sliding down his throat.
And at the end… the exhaustion welling up from deep within his body.
That made him fall asleep right on the tiles.
There was no hunger in his stomach, not even fullness—only a peculiar… calm.
He pushed himself up from the cold floor, his body seeming lighter than before he had fallen asleep.
But his joints carried a strange and indescribable stiffness.
He walked to the bathroom and turned on the faucet.
Water splashed over his face, washing away the down feathers and the lingering scent of blood.
He raised his head and looked into the mirror.
The reflection in the mirror made him freeze.
That face… its contours vaguely resembled his, but it felt… veiled by a thin layer of gauze.
He leaned closer to the mirror.
It was not an illusion.
His cheeks, forehead, jawline… his entire face seemed to be covered with a thin, translucent “plastic wrap.”
Instinctively, with wet fingers, he gently touched the edge near his cheekbone.
“Chi-la—”
A faint tearing sound.
That dry, transparent layer of skin peeled off easily.
Beneath it, the skin revealed was no longer sickly pale, but rather… bloodless, almost translucent white.
“Molting?”
A word he had only seen in animal encyclopedias absurdly popped into his mind.
He rolled up the sleeve of his pajamas.
The same thing on his arm!
A thin, transparent layer of dead skin was silently peeling away.
Cool and delicate to the touch, carrying a perfection not of a human.
He pulled open his collar and looked at his chest and abdomen.
Around his navel, the peeling skin covered a larger area.
……
Water was the best catalyst.
Bai Lengci lowered his head, looking at his body in the mirror.
After the old skin shed, all his skin had become that same bloodless, luminous white.
Delicate, smooth, cold, as if crafted from the finest white porcelain, covering well-proportioned muscle lines.
This body was beautiful beyond flaw, yet also beautiful… without life.
Bai Lengci’s gaze—or rather, hers—finally settled on the most secret part of the body.
The stream of water gently washed over that newly born, private and sacred place.
All the details completed themselves in an instant, as if brushed into existence by the stroke of a divine hand.
There was no tearing pain, only a sense of… water flowing naturally, fruit ripening and falling of its own accord.
As though this body was merely shedding an erroneous disguise, returning to the most perfect form it was meant to have.
No scream of shock, no cry of collapse.
Bai Lengci simply gazed quietly at the breathtakingly beautiful woman in the mirror.
Her skin glowed white as jade, flawless.
Her features were exquisitely perfect, brows like distant mountains brushed with ink, eyes like starlight reflected in a cold pool, and a slender, elegant nose.
She slowly lifted her hand.
Those hands were still distinct in their joints, yet they seemed more slender and graceful, fingertips glistening.
Then—
Her fingertips slid downward.
They brushed ever so gently across the delicate and mysterious edge of that cleft.
An extremely subtle, never-before-experienced tingle of sensitivity and numbness, like a strange current.
It spread instantly from that point of contact, making her body quiver with the faintest tremor.
This feeling… was unfamiliar.
It belonged to this brand-new vessel.
She withdrew her hand and looked again at the mirror.
The woman in the mirror also gazed back, eyes calm and without waves.
Man?
Woman?
In the blurred memories of the orphanage, gender had never brought warmth or convenience, only the occasional disdain of the caretakers.
“A boy and still so weak, truly useless.”
Being adopted and then sent back had only taught him the hardship of survival and the essence of being a “burden.”
Illness had long blurred his sense of focus or recognition toward his own body.
It had only ever been something that hurt, that weakened, that required medicine to maintain—a troublesome container.
When scavenging knowledge and solace from the internet—
He had already touched upon more fundamental questions.
Descartes whispered in *Meditations on First Philosophy*:
“I think, therefore I am.”
The existence of thought proved the existence of “I,” unrelated to this decaying fleshly shell.
Sartre declared in *Being and Nothingness*:
“Existence precedes essence.”
Man first exists, encounters himself, appears in the world, and only then defines himself.
Gender, identity, roles… these were all “essence” imposed afterward, not the foundation of existence.
So, whether this shell was man or woman—did it really hold essential meaning to him?
It was merely a vessel carrying the consciousness called “Bai Lengci.”
A vessel that could fall ill, feel pain, grow hungry (though now it seemed to have evolved, mutated into craving blood).
But ultimately, it was still a vessel destined to perish.
The vessel had changed.
But within—“I.”
That consciousness that thought, that perceived, that existed in the world—what of it?
Bai Lengci extended her finger and gently wiped the mist from the mirror, making that inhumanly beautiful reflection even clearer.
“Existence… precedes essence.”
She silently whispered to the self in the mirror.
The voice dissipated in the narrow bathroom, carrying a calmness that was almost divine.
She turned off the faucet.
Only the faint sound of water droplets sliding down her luminous skin remained in the bathroom.
Bai Lengci dried her body.
The new skin absorbed water swiftly, turning dry in no time.
She dressed in clean clothes.
The touch of fabric against the new skin became strangely vivid, as though every fiber was conversing with this brand-new vessel.
Walking to the kitchen, she looked at the mess of chicken feathers and the dark red bloodstains on the tiles.
She picked up a broom and began to clean.
The broom brushed across the floor, producing a soft rustling sound.