Chapter 711: As usual
The old phantom of the last teammate swayed and slowly collapsed like a falling mountain.
A gentle puff of gray-white smoke supported him from behind, letting him lie steadily on the ground.
Only at this moment did the string that had always been stretched tight within Hugo finally seem to snap. An invisible weight dropped from his shoulders. He stood there unsteadily and staggered; even though he hadn’t been subjected to any external force, he nearly fell.
Some warm liquid ran down his chin.
He instinctively wiped it with the back of his hand and glanced at it.
Red.
Hugo withdrew his gaze, seeming to have long since calmly accepted it, even grown accustomed to it.
He looked up toward the distance.
The dead lay quietly in the ruins, dark red blood soaking their faces and chests. Their chests were calm, no longer rising and falling. All their past fatal wounds had been perfectly replicated, appearing on their bodies once again, dripping with blood and incredibly distinct.
They just lay there motionless and silent, their eyelids slightly lowered. In the gaps, the light belonging to the living had fled, nowhere to be found.
Just then, a very light sound came from beside him.
A short figure landed gracefully and stood by his side.
Hugo turned his head to look.
“Is it over?” Orange Candy asked.
“En.”
Hugo lowered his eyes. His pale, bloodstained fingers brought a crumpled cigarette to his lips, but he didn’t light it.
He bit the filter, his voice very low and light, almost dissipating into the surrounding dust and smoke.
“It’s over.”
Orange Candy hesitated, seemingly wanting to say some words of comfort, but this really wasn’t her strong suit. After mumbling for a long time, she only squeezed out a dry sentence: “But, fortunately Dan Zhu’s real body wasn’t here, otherwise, I really wouldn’t have been able to stall for too long over there—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Hugo seemed to realize something. His gaze flickered, and he turned his head to look at Orange Candy:
“Wait.”
“Hmm?”
“The Dan Zhu we faced was a clone.”
Orange Candy froze. At this moment, she seemed to realize something as well, and her expression suddenly tightened.
With almost no hesitation and no pause, the two turned around at the same time and sprinted toward the distance in unison!
Not good.
You have to understand, in their original plan, Hugo was supposed to hold off Dan Zhu. But unexpectedly, what he encountered were the Nightmare-corrupted old friends and the corpses controlled by Dan Zhu—this meant only one thing.
…Dan Zhu’s real body went to where the others were.
Meanwhile, on the other side.
The visibility deep within the walls was terrifyingly low.
No. 8 led the way in front, with Chen Cheng and the others following behind.
The remaining path here had been churned full of holes by Dan Zhu’s vines. By the faint light, the walls could be seen taking on a bizarre, sticky red-black color, like the membrane of internal organs, rising and falling with breathing as if alive.
“How much longer do we have to walk?”
The overly long path was making Chen Cheng lose patience.
“Almost there, almost there,” No. 8 walked ahead, giving the exact same answer as five minutes ago.
“…” Chen Cheng frowned. He suddenly lunged forward and grabbed No. 8’s shoulder: “Wait!”
He forcefully turned the other around and glared at him:
“Where exactly did the Tarot Master tell you to take us?”
Just now, No. 8 had caught up with them and brought the Tarot Master’s instructions—he would take them to a position suitable for sniping Dan Zhu. However, they had been walking for too long and still hadn’t reached their destination.
Under the faint light, No. 8’s gaze shifted, seeming somewhat lacking in confidence.
Under Chen Cheng’s aggressive momentum, he didn’t last a few seconds before compromising, saying helplessly: “Alright… actually, I don’t know exactly where to go either—the Tarot Master just told me to take you far away from where he is, so I can only take you around in circles—he is the acting captain, and I can only follow orders…”
Hearing this, Chen Cheng’s breath hitched, his heart as if seized by an invisible hand.
The Tarot Master told them to get far away from where he was?
But why?
It was clearly supposed to be Hugo handling the frontal confrontation, and him handling the flanking snipe. Could it be—
Realizing something, his pupils shrank drastically.
Chen Cheng tightened his grip abruptly, his voice seemingly squeezed from between his teeth:
“…Take us back.”
“But…”
“Now!!!”
“Alright, alright,” No. 8 leaned back, raising his hands in surrender. “I’ll take you back right now.”
The stairs stretched into the darkness as if endless; no matter how they ran, they couldn’t reach the end.
Wen Ya and Chen Cheng sprinted forward madly. A fire seemed to burn in their minds, and the cold wind howled. In the shadows, countless indistinguishable voices seemed to whisper, pouring into their ears along with the sound of the wind.
As time ticked away, the ominous premonition gradually magnified.
Must be faster, faster!
It seemed only this way could they catch up with the footsteps of the grim reaper.
Finally, after an unknown amount of time, No. 8 stumbled to a stop, his voice sounding somewhat unsteady from the rush: “We-we’re here.”
In the lurking darkness, a door-shaped light opened before their eyes.
Their vision was split by the glaring light.
The next second, time seemed to freeze along with it.
The Prophet hung his pale face, his body pinned among the thorns, his expression calm as usual.
He slept in the overwhelming blood-red color that almost drowned the whole world, like an unfinished short poem that abruptly stopped.
Drip, drop.
Viscous blood dripped down from the blood-red thorns before him, spreading into a sea of the same color beneath his feet.
Long before their arrival…
It had already pierced the Prophet’s throat.
*
—”I cannot be killed.”
Such a light and airy sentence, but it landed like a heavy hammer in everyone’s hearts.
Under the horrified gazes of the crowd, Zhang Yunsheng slowly stood up straight. His eyes were bottomless like black holes, and a calm smile that sent chills down the spine hung on his lips.
Forced by the red light, the ghost infants that originally surrounded him had to retreat into the distance. They stared closely at his figure with livid eyes, their eyes filled with wariness and fear toward their creator:
“The-the bad guy is back!”
“Mommy, that wasn’t him just now, it wasn’t—”
Even though the temperature in the carriage hadn’t dropped, everyone felt a chill over their whole bodies.
A ghost infant at Wen Jianyan’s feet suddenly hugged his ankle tightly and screamed: “Mommy, the train is leaving, you’re going to leave here soon!”
Almost as soon as its voice fell, the violent shaking overturned once again!
The whole world seemed to be thrown into a washing machine, the blood-red skylight cut into broken light and shadows by the fragmented windows.
Under Nightmare’s protection, Zhang Yunsheng, bearing a secret smile, turned around in everyone’s chaotic and inverted vision, and walked away step by step. The space of Fukang Comprehensive Hospital was stretched and twisted, its fragments rapidly melting into the darkness, left behind like a phantom dream, and in a blink of an eye, it disappeared far away.
And Wen Jianyan could only watch all this helplessly, with no way to stop it.
This time, the spinning of the world lasted longer and further than last time, as if it would continue forever—just when they suspected the train’s tremors and shaking might never stop again, the engine’s roar finally began to gradually weaken.
The shaking red and black blocks disappeared, and the train carriage returned to its original appearance.
Furthermore, because they left Fukang Comprehensive Hospital, the ghost infants also lost the environment where they could appear unconditionally. Amidst the tremors and shaking just now, they had disappeared one by one, returning to their initial state of slumber.
In the chaotic carriage, once again, only they remained.
Wen Jianyan staggered to his feet. He tightly gripped the back of the seat next to him, bent down, and violently dry heaved.
The others also swayed as they straightened up, all looking extremely pale.
Wu Zhu reached out and pressed his hand on his back where the spine protruded, his broad palm covering almost half of his back. Wen Jianyan grabbed his arm with a backhand grip, his knuckles turning white from the force, his voice suppressed: “I’m fine!”
He swayed, hastily wiping his mouth with one hand, and lifting his head with the other, using Wu Zhu for support.
Under the faint light, cold sweat dripped from the young man’s forehead, his face pale as paper, but his eyes were bright and sharp like sparks. He looked at the others: “Go, we chase.”
What?
Hearing this, everyone couldn’t help but be startled.
“Wait, Pinocchio, calm down.” Figaro’s expression was grave, full of apprehension. “Don’t forget what he just said…”
If the enemy couldn’t be killed, what was the point of chasing him?
“Or is it,” Blond took a shallow breath, seeming to think of a possibility, and looked up at Wen Jianyan with a trace of hope, “that he’s lying?”
However, Wen Jianyan’s answer exceeded their expectations.
“No.”
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and stood up straight, “He’s not lying—”
“In a sense, we really can’t kill him.”
Zhang Yunsheng cannot be killed.
Although it was hard to accept, unfortunately, he had just personally proven… this point was unquestionable.
“But that’s not because he’s some untouchable, invincible existence.”
Wen Jianyan raised his eyes and slowly spat out a sentence that shocked everyone:
“It’s because, on a material level, he died a long time ago.”
That fire was not an ordinary fire.
It was the karmic fire born from countless vengeful spirits, the terrifying existence condensed from the resentment, hatred, and sorrow of countless orphans. It was the massive effort Nightmare had spent years creating, the precious asset it couldn’t bear to let go of even if the orphanage was destroyed, but instead chose to preserve in the form of an instance—as long as there was fuel, it couldn’t be extinguished, and would burn on forever and ever.
During the time Zhang Yunsheng stayed in Fukang Comprehensive Hospital, he had probably always been using Nightmare to maintain and repair his body. Precisely because of this, the “hospital director” left in this instance was a person covered in bandages and crooked stitches.
And in Yuying Comprehensive University, the documents Wen Jianyan found mentioned “healing”—the highly respected Mr. Zhang Yunsheng became the principal of the university after his stubborn disease was cured—what a touching story.
But the image he left in the instance was a “black shadow”.
A silhouette as if gouged out of space, a bottomless pitch-black void, a hole with no face, no form.
And every time Wen Jianyan looked at it in the instance, he had the illusion of being watched by some living creature.
Nightmare didn’t heal him, but changed his way of “existing”.
He turned from a “person” with a physical body into a “brain” floating in nutrient fluid, deeply hidden within the Lucky Cruise Ship.
This wasn’t an active request, but a forced choice.
—The current Zhang Yunsheng was a shadow lingering in memories, a soul wandering in instances.
Hearing Wen Jianyan’s words, everyone’s expressions didn’t lighten up at all; instead, they became even more solemn.
“But if that’s the case, how are we supposed to kill someone who doesn’t have a physical body…” Blond muttered with a dark expression.
After going around in circles, the problem returned to the starting point. Didn’t a person who couldn’t be killed again mean they couldn’t be restricted in any way?
“Just now,” Wen Jianyan said slowly, “Doctor Lin Qing did it.”
Although it was very brief, during that time, Zhang Yunsheng truly “died,” once again becoming a lifeless walking corpse.
However, this state didn’t last long.
As the body regenerated and recovered, he regained his mobility once again.
He raised his eyes, dark fire flashing deep within them, his voice very light:
“And what we need to figure out next is how to make this state of his persist.”
*
Although they had prepared themselves mentally that opening the door wouldn’t lead to the inside of the train, the moment they pulled open the carriage door, everyone still lost their voice.
This time, what appeared before them was a bizarre picture beyond anyone’s imagination.
Overhead, a blood-red wound had unknowingly occupied more than half of the sky. Countless eyes like blood grapes crowded out of it, rolling around, looking as if they were about to hang down in strings all the way to the ground, bringing a suffocating sense of oppression.
And below, was an extremely twisted world that seemed to only appear in nightmares.
Buildings of different styles, sizes, and eras merged together crookedly, intersecting and overlapping irregularly in a way that completely defied the laws of physics. And what glued them together was some sticky, flesh-like substance. They throbbed thump-thump, growing and squirming as if alive, with blood-red capillaries crawling all over the walls, extending from one place to another.
It was like the product of countless things being smashed and then haphazardly pieced back together.
Staring at this shocking, physics-defying scene, Wen Jianyan was also somewhat stunned.
“So, where are we going next?” Figaro asked.
“…”
Rarely, this time, Wen Jianyan, who always seemed to know everything, had his gaze falter. He pursed his lips tightly, looking around, and didn’t immediately answer the question.
He knew the core areas of all the instances he had experienced like the back of his hand.
But the problem was, this place wasn’t any of them.
It was more like a twisted collection of countless instances.
Every corner here felt somewhat familiar, but combined together, they were mutated into a completely unfamiliar appearance.
Under such chaotic and bizarre circumstances, even Wen Jianyan found it very difficult to momentarily determine exactly where Zhang Yunsheng would be.
…After all, there were too many choices, too many possibilities.
Suddenly, a string of joyful music wafted over from the side. The melody was clearly very cheerful, but because of the intermittent key changes, it seemed incredibly eerie, sending a chill down one’s spine.
This melody was incredibly familiar, inexplicably evoking some bad memories.
Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but be startled, and abruptly turned his head to look.
Not far away, a mascot wearing a green frog suit stood motionless, holding a bunch of colorful balloons in its hand. Its head tilted to one side; one side had turned a dirty crimson-black color, as if roasted by fire or stained with dried blood that couldn’t be washed off, while the other side was still as bright green as ever.
“Welcome to Fantasy Amusement Park, I’m your good friend, Croak-croak!” From under the headgear came a chillingly cheerful voice, “For your wonderful playing experience, please m-m-must follow the ru-ru-rules here—”
Like a cassette tape recorder, its voice changed key and distorted, beginning to repeat weird sounds.
“Trust the frog, trust the frog, trust the frog—”
Glub, glub.
From the bottomless darkness behind it, countless sticky, translucent red gelatinous substances began to flow out, with large and small black dots squirming inside.
They poured out continuously, flowing toward them as if they had a life of their own.
“Hiss,” Even the experienced Figaro couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath. “So disgusting…”
“Frog eggs…!”
Wen Jianyan’s pupils shook, and he cried out in alarm,
“Careful, whatever you do, don’t touch them!”
Unlike in the previous instance, frog eggs were not monsters, but they were far more terrifying than any monster they had encountered before. The pollution they brought was a pollution at the rule level, and now, enhanced and mutated by Nightmare, they had probably mutated into terrifying entities that couldn’t be understood.
Do not approach, do not touch, do not confront!
“You included!” He looked at Wu Zhu and warned.
The group turned around and ran forward wildly.
The scenery around the road on both sides was bizarre and twisted, like falling into a long nightmare from which one couldn’t wake up.
In the flesh-and-blood factory, a moss-covered European-style mental hospital sprang up from the ground. On the empty playground, a roller coaster with a bent track crossed through. Old residential buildings stacked one on top of another, compressed layer by layer like sardines in a can.
Suddenly, everyone stopped in their tracks.
Extremely tall buildings appeared ahead; one building grew diagonally out of another, and the buildings on both sides leaned toward the center. Looking up, it almost gave the illusion that they were about to collapse on their heads.
The dense windows were pitch-black, like neatly arranged small squares, a dark mass that blotted out the sky and sun.
“Wait, I remember this place…” Ji Guan looked around, suddenly realizing something, and spoke abruptly. “This is Antai Residential Complex!”
Although he entered this instance in the latter half, his memory of the overall architectural style here was still fresh.
Wen Jianyan turned his head and looked back—
In the frog eggs, the pinprick-sized black dots moved increasingly frantically and quickly, hatching into bizarre-looking small bugs in the blink of an eye.
They squeezed together densely, struggling and squirming in the red slime, swimming desperately toward them.
…Other than continuing forward, they had nowhere else to go.
Wen Jianyan withdrew his gaze and took a deep breath: “Let’s go, we’ll cut through the complex.”
“As fast as possible, try not to stop!”
Everyone strode into the neighborhood.
A window on the left front suddenly lit up.
A very dim light, yellowish, but it looked extremely glaring in the darkness.
Next was a second, a third… In the originally pitch-black residential buildings, windows began to light up one after another. In the blink of an eye, a large swath had lit up continuously, like pairs of opening eyes.
And behind each window, stood several dark figures.
Their faces blurred, motionless.
Blond just glanced up and couldn’t help but shiver, hastily withdrawing his gaze.
“In there…” Blond’s face was deathly pale, his head lowered deeply, as if he didn’t dare to look up again. His voice seemed to be squeezed from between his teeth: “…are all paper effigies.”
Behind every window stood a few smiling paper effigies. Some big, some small, men, women, old, and young, standing together like a big family. Their bizarre corners of the mouth stretched widely to the roots of their ears, and each one had been dotted with blood-red eyes. Heads bowed, they stared straight at them as if alive.
“Rustle”, “Rustle”…
Dense sounds rang out from all directions.
Accompanied by the slight sound of paper rubbing, one paper effigy after another stepped out from the shadows of the corners. Wearing bone-chilling smiles, they slowly walked toward them.
Wen Jianyan felt a chill down his spine, couldn’t help taking a step back, and bumped into Wu Zhu.
Wu Zhu steadied him with one hand while raising his head.
He stared at the unfathomable darkness in front of him and suddenly spoke:
“Stop.”
Almost the moment his voice fell, some subtle presence in the air seemed to change—”Sha-sha” “Sha-sha”… “Thump-thump” “Thump-thump”—bizarre sounds arose from deep within the stairwells. In the corners beyond everyone’s sight, grotesquely shaped, indescribable entities were twisting and expanding. In a silent yet loyal posture, they tightly entangled those paper effigies, forcing them to be fixed in place, unable to advance even half a step.
Wen Jianyan froze, subconsciously turning his head to look at Wu Zhu behind him.
Wu Zhu lowered his head, his eyes reflecting the sky, presenting a blazing golden-red color:
“Don’t forget, I used to be the ‘evil spirit’ here.”
Yes. A fragment of Wu Zhu was once suppressed here and called the ‘evil spirit’.
“My consciousness was divided, my mind chaotic, and I didn’t actively attract believers,” he lowered his eyes and recalled. “However, various biological spirits lurking in the shadows would always appear. They instinctively sensed my existence. Some submitted to me out of fear, some could vaguely perceive the status I once held in this world, and some merely coveted my power—but no matter which kind, they let me drive them, called me father, and worshipped me as a god.”
It was just that these memories were blurry and incomplete, mostly long periods of blackness symbolizing deep sleep. The rarely occurring waking moments were also filled with unprovoked rage, intense hatred, and unfillable hunger.
Until one day, he was awakened from a broken lens.
Since then, the divine light gradually brightened.
“I can have them hold these paper effigies, but only for a while,” Wu Zhu raised his head and looked at the surrounding darkness once again. “They are not things with conscience or sanity, and their obedience to me is not stable. It’s fine if they don’t show themselves, but once they do, they will soon be corrupted and assimilated by Nightmare.”
“In that case,” Wen Jianyan gave him a look and continued, “we can’t waste any time.”
“…Go!”
Under his lead, the group sped up, sprinting madly along the massive, slanted buildings on both sides.
Suddenly, Wen Jianyan’s gaze inadvertently swept over the side of the street, and he paused abruptly.
A small shrine, about knee-high. Enshrined within was a Bodhisattva statue, sitting cross-legged on a lotus. Its three faces faced different directions, holding peculiar ritual implements and skulls in its hands. It should have been a compassionate smiling face, but because of its raised eyes and wide-open pupils, it appeared indescribably bizarre.
The Evil Bodhisattva.
Whether it was “Granny Wen” in this instance, or the old woman called “A-MA” by A-Yuan in the small town, they were all its believers and followers. And it was the source of all the brass props used to divide, suppress, and restrict the god.
“Don’t look at it!” Wen Jianyan grabbed Wu Zhu’s wrist. “Let’s keep going!”
Turning a street corner, a bronze statue of the Evil Bodhisattva appeared there again.
He didn’t know if it was an illusion, but it was much taller than the previous one.
On the brass face, the brows were kind and the eyes benevolent.
Everyone quickened their pace, not looking sideways, and ran quickly past it.
The buildings on both sides leaned toward the middle even more severely, as if they were about to collapse in the next second. However, the narrow, winding path in front of them seemed endless; no matter how they walked, they couldn’t get out.
Soon, a third Bodhisattva statue appeared not far ahead.
The illusion had become a set fact.
This time, it was already taller than a person.
Those three Bodhisattva faces with different expressions faced different directions, but each one was lifelike. No matter what angle they stood at, they could feel its gaze.
In this bizarre atmosphere, everyone realized something was wrong.
“This isn’t right, we’ve been passing the same Bodhisattva statue the whole time, we’ve been going in circles…!” Blond looked around, his tone tinged with a bit of anxiety and panic. “Every time we go around, it gets a little bigger!”
Even worse, every time it grew bigger, it looked a bit more vivid than before.
At first, it was just an ordinary sculpted idol, but now, a chilling surge of vitality inexplicably arose among its facial features.
If they continued forward, it would sooner or later break out of control.
But could they just stay where they were?
The massive amount of frog eggs had converged into a river behind them. In the few short seconds they had paused, the sticky river had already followed their trail and arrived.
In just a few short minutes, they had completely hatched from their egg membranes, growing pale, wet, and sticky legs and arms.
They clearly had human bodies, but bore frog heads.
Large, bulging, slime-covered, sluggish eyes watched them from the top of their heads. Red membranes tore open on their bodies, revealing dense, follicle-like eyeballs inside. Their human-like mouths opened and closed, letting out frog sounds:
“Croak-croak.”
“Croak-croak.”
“Croak-croak.”
At the same time, the surrounding paper effigies also broke free from the shadows’ control, little by little. Bathed in the increasingly intense red light, wearing bone-chilling, terrifying smiles, they walked toward this direction slowly but unshakeably.
No way forward, no door backward.
Seeing the situation gradually approaching the edge of losing control, suddenly, without any warning, a sharp roar rolled over from the side—
Everyone was startled and reflexively looked in the direction the sound came from.
White light tore open the darkness, stinging people’s eyes. They had to raise their hands to block their eyes from the overly glaring light.
Boom!!!
The next second, accompanied by a loud noise, a large building on one side was violently smashed open from the outside. Dust flew, and bricks scattered.
Only then did everyone see clearly that it was a roaring train rushing toward them.
Unlike the train they had ridden before, its size was a whole circle smaller. Although it still had an old-fashioned style, its surface was painted in bright colors, making it look like a large toy train.
A swath of frog people was knocked down, their pale limbs squelching as they were rolled under the wheels, and their sticky serum burst apart, plastering the ground.
Blond’s gaze fell on the train body, and he froze.
He recognized it.
This was… the crazy little train from the Fantasy Amusement Park instance? But why would it…
Before the train completely stopped, the train door smeared with frog serum was opened from the inside.
Then, a familiar face appeared in everyone’s line of sight.
Blue hair hung over her shoulders, her profile lines sharp and fierce.
“Sister Bilan…?” Blond stared at her blankly. Suddenly, his eyes felt hot, he sniffled, and his voice trembled: “Sister Bilan!!!”
Yun Bilan held the door with one hand, raised an eyebrow, and on that pale, cold face that had already lost the aura of the living, showed a smile just as usual:
“It’s me.”
She turned sideways, clearing the way: “Get on the train.”
*
A rotten yet intense floral scent floated in the air, urged by the sweet, rusty smell of blood to become increasingly heavy and sticky. It felt as if it would stick to the skin and seep into the marrow forever and ever, lingering and following like a shadow.
Blood.
There were massive patches of fresh blood on the ground.
They poured from the Prophet’s throat—viscous, dried, dark red blood, pooling on the ground into a shocking red.
The cold breath of death lingered at the tip of the nose.
“No.”
Wen Ya involuntarily took a slow step forward.
She only felt her eyes burn, her pale lips trembling as they opened and closed, but she could only let out a repeated single syllable, so soft it could barely be heard.
“No…”
It can’t be.
It shouldn’t be like this.
It shouldn’t be like this!!
She couldn’t help but take another step forward, but the steps beneath her feet were soft, light, and floating like stepping on clouds, completely lacking a sense of reality.
Just then, hurried footsteps came from behind.
The next second, the footsteps stopped abruptly.
Wen Ya turned her head blankly and saw Hugo and Orange Candy rushing over from behind.
Orange Candy’s gaze passed Wen Ya and landed on Su Cheng in the back, her pupils widening abruptly in shock.
Hugo’s expression darkened. He strode forward, squatted down in front of Su Cheng, and touched his neck with his hand.
Soon, he stood up and, under everyone’s gaze, slowly shook his head.
…They arrived too late.
The skin on Su Cheng’s neck was already completely cold, his pulse dead silent, devoid of all vitality.
Death had quietly arrived long before everyone got there.
Beyond the reach of medicine, irreversible.
All at once, everyone fell silent, as if the world went mute along with them.
Their gazes fell on the center of the ruins covered in thorns.
Small blood-red flowers bloomed luxuriantly on them, glaringly red as if having drunk their fill of blood.
They grew beside the dead Prophet, wrapping around the top of his head like a martyr wearing his crown.
“…………How long has it been?” Orange Candy clenched her teeth, her expression dark.
“Long enough,” Hugo’s gaze lingered on Orange Candy for a moment, and as if seeing through her thoughts, he spoke directly. “Your talent won’t work.”
Orange Candy’s talent was already overdrawn to its limit. Even a rollback of a few seconds would bring irreversible consequences.
And what they faced now was a time gap of several minutes, or even tens of minutes.
This was an impassable chasm that couldn’t be bridged even if she traded one life for one.
A fleeting moment, yet it was already enough to draw the line between hell and the human world.
Everyone who could change this outcome had been personally sent away. The Prophet, who could observe the future, had thus blocked all possibilities of survival, making himself the sole lone wanderer among everyone.
Since earlier, Chen Cheng had remained standing not far away, not saying a word.
He stared fixedly at Su Cheng’s corpse, his eyes unblinking, his eyes filled with subtle, inscrutable emotions.
Suddenly, he spoke:
“Did this guy just shoo everyone away and silently, willingly go to his death?”
“Bullshit, I don’t believe it!”
“Get out of the way!”
As he spoke, Chen Cheng suddenly strode forward, his steps carrying wind, rudely waving the others aside.
Just like that, he charged in front of Su Cheng as if entering an unpeopled land.
Chen Cheng bent down and began to roughly search Su Cheng’s corpse.
Flipping through every pocket on him, trying to search for any clues left behind by the other—
“Chen Cheng…” Wen Ya took a step forward.
Chen Cheng turned a deaf ear.
Indeed, he didn’t have much interaction with the Tarot Master himself, barely even conversing. The brief few meetings they had outside of instances were entirely unremarkable from any angle.
However, they had participated in the same top ten selection match as opponents.
With weapons drawn and tensions high.
In this world, no one understood his opponent better than he did.
The Tarot Master in that instance, beneath his seemingly gentle exterior, was ruthlessly merciless toward both his enemies and himself. All his actions and choices served the purpose of achieving his goal—this was an absolutely goal-oriented utilitarianism, disregarding any means or cost, even seeing himself as an existence that could be sacrificed.
He could coldly kill anyone blocking his way.
And at the final juncture, for some unknown obsession, he would abandon an easily attainable victory without the slightest hesitation.
This kind of person would not commit suicide in such obscurity and without any reason.
Unless… it was necessary.
Suddenly, he abruptly stopped his movements.
Chen Cheng lowered his eyes, his gaze falling on the Prophet’s cold, stiff fingers that had dropped to the side.
He reached out, lifted the other’s palm, and pried it open bit by bit.
Pat.
From between his lifeless, pale fingers, a crumpled piece of paper fell down, landing in the cold, sticky pool of blood.
Chen Cheng bent down, picked it up, unfolded it, and flattened it.
It was a tarot card soaked in blood, damaged beyond recognition.
—It was also the final prophecy left by the Prophet.
