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Chapter 49: Are you curious about me?
An Wujiu’s words, “I don’t want to kill anymore,” were tinged with a lazy sense of annoyance.
The gun fell with a sound, and the black mist still lingered. A nauseating smell of blood gradually filled the air, likely emanating from the continuously “killed” black mist.
Continuing the fight would either lead to complete control or the loss of the last bit of strength.
However, choosing not to kill this time meant that the remaining people would continue to lose their will, their minds controlled by this black mist.
An Wujiu always thought that it was necessary to eliminate it to pass the level, but a sentence from Josh made him speculate.
Outside the door, there were roars, and inside the door, there were cries. The languages were of the same origin.
Perhaps the game rules were not like this.
Perhaps they were just misled by the danger.
“Did you kill all those monsters outside?” An Wujiu faced the Gate of Heaven without looking at him.
“More or less,” Shen Ti said briefly and calmly, as if killing were a trivial matter to him. “In any case, they no longer have the ability to reproduce.”
An Wujiu felt strange, but he didn’t press on this point and instead asked another question.
“So where are they now? Disappeared?”
Shen Ti lowered his head, touched the still warm muzzle, and said, “Right outside.”
The black mist continued to roam and wail within this enclosed space, and the smell of blood in the air became increasingly strong. Though elusive, the mist’s impact didn’t seem entirely random. It crazily collided with almost every “nest,” as if struggling.
After hearing this, An Wujiu surveyed the factory.
And what he had in mind was directly spoken by Shen Ti.
“Are you looking for the surrogate women in the factory?”
It was only at this moment that An Wujiu turned to look at him. The black shadow would occasionally appear above them, like a dark cloud shrouding a certain moment. The intermittent dim light illuminated Shen Ti’s face, and his eyes radiated an unnamed divinity.
Shen Ti slowly moved his neck and said casually, “I noticed when I came in that there’s no so-called ‘product source’ in this factory. It’s empty here; maybe the information obtained in that ordering room was correct—there’s a shortage of supply here.”
“You guessed wrong; there was before the power outage.”
An Wujiu had seen it, even though at that time his gaze was focused on Zhong Yirou.
Shen Ti raised an eyebrow, “So, what you mean is that they all disappeared at the moment of the power outage?”
An Wujiu lifted his head, looking at the ever-moving black mist. It continued to howl tirelessly, relentlessly colliding with everything.
Every now and then, it would penetrate An Wujiu and Shen Ti’s bodies because they were the last two who couldn’t be deceived by it and also the final targets.
His gaze gradually shifted downward, landing on the factory door that he entered from outside but never observed from within. It was then that An Wujiu discovered that the inside of the door was painted with patterns.
It was a golden birdcage.
The mist roamed around the room, but strangely, it couldn’t touch the door.
As the lingering mist with a bloody smell dispersed, Shen Ti looked at An Wujiu’s face and saw a subtle smile gradually appearing at the corner of his mouth.
“Can that door still be opened?” He nodded slightly toward the direction Shen Ti had come from just now.
“Completely sealed,” Shen Ti replied. “I double-checked after closing it.”
An Wujiu seemed skeptical, picked up the gun from the ground, and fired several shots at the door.
There was no movement; not a single trace was left.
He opened the panel, put away the gun, and behind him was the Gate of Heaven, radiating a divine glow. However, he walked alone toward the tightly closed factory door.
After a few steps, he turned around, facing backward. His deep, abyss-like eyes were looking at the black mist currently in the corner of the ceiling, smiling with arms outstretched.
“Come on, you wanted us all to watch you, right?”
An Wujiu raised an eyebrow. “Seeking revenge, huh?”
“Then hurry up.” He wore an expression as if waiting for his demise, hands in his pockets, repeating those words as if continually pressuring and suggesting to the mist, “Come on, control me.”
The next moment, the black mist hovering in the air actually descended toward him as he wished.
Just before hitting the target, An Wujiu dodged.
Then he tilted his head and gave a provocative smile to the mist.
“Sorry, you didn’t hit.”
He rolled up his sleeves, revealing pale forearms. Like a coach encouraging his own player, he clapped his hands toward the mist. “Come on, you can control people, right? Control me.”
What was originally a cycle of hunting turned into a one-on-one bullfight.
Shen Ti stared into An Wujiu’s eyes. Although he was still provoking, vortex-like spots would occasionally appear in his eyes, similar to when their minds were controlled earlier.
But in An Wujiu’s pupils, those spots kept appearing and being suppressed.
He was wrestling with the force controlling him, becoming more and more frantic and uncontrollable.
As An Wujiu verbally attacked the mist, it swelled even more, nourishing and spreading little by little.
“Don’t you want revenge anymore?” An Wujiu dodged all attacks from the black mist, but due to prolonged direct exposure, extreme anger and sadness engulfed him, attempting to overturn all of his rationality, with his brain emitting terrifying screams and cries along with the mist.
His speech became faster, and the vortex in his pupils did not dissipate.
“Do you want to control me… Because you have been trapped by others your entire life, right?”
“Is it because of poverty? Long-term objectification that you’ve taken for granted? Or the worship of commodities.”
In the dimness, unclear and infuriated, the dark mist attacked An Wujiu. He couldn’t completely dodge it in time, and his arm was hit.
His arm couldn’t move at all, but he continued to smile. The naked pain almost split his body apart. In a moment, some perspectives that didn’t belong to him flashed before his eyes.
The vision seemed blurred by tears, not his tears, and all that could be seen was a transparent canopy and many mechanical arms, a sharp knife cutting open the body, extracting the most valuable things.
Emptied, completely emptied.
Stitches, one by one, adorned the truth of commodification.
“Many of you have even paid for it with your lives and died on the operating table. Your intact, vibrant lives are simply seen as commodities for sale, living like livestock, producing, and creating value again and again. But the children you carry for ten months may not necessarily have a better future.”
“They can be chosen as goods at will.”
While speaking, An Wujiu retreated backward until his back touched the factory door.
He looked back and hammered the door with his hand, confirming its sturdiness.
There were not many chances.
“Come here, hit me here,” he said, staring directly at the approaching black mist.
“The abandoned ones are just outside the door.”
In the last second, he moved his body away.
The howling giant black mist surged, carrying the deepest hatred, the greatest helplessness, and the most powerful maternal instinct, hitting the door that imprisoned them heavily.
Fiercely, it shattered.
An Wujiu turned his face, looking at the departing black mist.
His voice was soft, like the drifting mist, shedding off extremism and madness, saying to them in the end.
“Fly freely.”
During this process, Shen Ti always held his gun, trying to protect An Wujiu, who risked everything. But in the end, the gun didn’t work. He stored it in the panel, traversed through the darkness, and reached An Wujiu’s side.
The shattered factory door seemed like the rebellious souls had torn open a crack in the darkness, and An Wujiu stood at the border between light and darkness, appearing especially lonely.
Shen Ti walked to his side and heard the cries of a baby.
At the bright end of the corridor, the young women running forward seemed to sense something, turned around, and smiled at An Wujiu.
In an instant, they disappeared again. The wailing throughout the entire floor completely dissipated, and everything returned to calm.
“You figured out that the women trapped here disappeared, the black mist struggled in the factory, and guessed that it was their souls.”
“So you deliberately provoked them, led the black mist here, and then let them go.”
Shen Ti looked at An Wujiu and noticed his eyelashes trembling slightly, like a butterfly about to fly away.
But An Wujiu turned his face, once again adopting a disdainful and indifferent look, laughing as he turned away: “Do I look like such a noble person?”
Five golden shards appeared in the void, shimmering with light.
[innocent]
[children]
[truly]
[destroyed]
[revenge]
Innocent; children; truly; destroyed; revenge.
Or some seemingly related words.
Without hesitation, An Wujiu grabbed the floating shards in the air, holding them in his hand. It seemed like he was collecting his commission.
He continued his previous sentence, “Just finding a way to complete the game.”
As he accepted the shard rewards, the Gate of Heaven slowly opened, and the rotating staircase inside led to the fourth floor of this containment center.
Wu You was the first to wake up. His legs were pinned under Nan Shan, and he felt a bit numb. After struggling to sit up, Yang Erci followed, and her wound finally stopped bleeding. They helped Nan Shan and Zhong Yirou, who were still unconscious. The last to wake up was Josh. His eyes suddenly opened, and he mumbled, “Wujiu, their language is the same…”
Josh sat up abruptly and said, “Wujiu! The monster outside is this black mist’s child!”
Shouting out, his mind cleared a bit. Originally looking for An Wujiu, what he saw instead was Shen Ti laughing harder and harder.
“Am I… Did I say something wrong?” Josh scratched his tousled hair, “I mean, it’s the truth, right?”
“Very clever.” An Wujiu’s mouth curled into a smile, “You guessed it all. It’s a pity you were controlled; otherwise, you might have been able to deal with them yourself.”
With complimentary words, An Wujiu walked toward the Gate of Heaven in a seemingly indifferent manner.
“Is it… is it resolved now?” Josh got up from the ground, feeling a bit weak. It seemed like his chest was leaking air, and he couldn’t catch his breath.
An Wujiu shrugged, pointing lazily with his thumb at Shen Ti behind him. In an encouraging and cheerful tone, he said to Josh, “Go and thank him.”
Shen Ti’s smile faded, and he stretched his hands upward, giving a big lazy stretch.
“Some people really hate being heroes.”
The exchange of mysterious words between the two left Josh bewildered in the middle.
“Who exactly killed that black shadow…”
This time, Yang Erci didn’t question An Wujiu about the key fragments because she hadn’t expected An Wujiu to come.
Perhaps part of the motivation was to find the Gate of Heaven on this floor, but he came too timely and too quickly, not entirely for personal gain.
She looked at An Wujiu, and An Wujiu glanced at her.
“What? Can’t you do it? Don’t you like holding her in your arms?” He finished his sentence, and Yang Erci, usually calm and composed, had her expression changed, much to An Wujiu’s satisfaction.
But what Yang Erci said took him by surprise.
“Thank you.”
An Wujiu turned his face, looking forward toward the stairs, without responding.
Nan Shan gradually woke up from his unconsciousness, but he didn’t have the strength to continue. He said to Wu You, who was supporting him, “Just leave me on this floor.”
Wu You remained silent for a few seconds and then said in a very disdainful tone, “I finally dragged you here, and you say you’re not going up?”
“I’ll do it. If the little brat keeps pushed down like this, he won’t grow taller.” Seeing this, Shen Ti approached and supported Nan Shan’s arm on his own. He usually wouldn’t do such things, as he didn’t quite understand the motivations behind helping each other in the personal matches in the Holy Altar. He could see human nature very clearly, but understanding the complex emotions between people was challenging for him.
“By the way, did your peach wood sword go back?” Shen Ti supported Nan Shan, moving forward step by step.
“Yeah… in my sleeve.” Nan Shan thought about the use of the sword by Shen Ti, and doubts surged in his mind again. Weakly turning his face, he stared at Shen Ti, “Are you…”
He paused for a long time, seeming to want to ask something, but ultimately didn’t.
“Do you want to ask if I’ve learned Taoist techniques? Or where do I come from?” Shen Ti asked himself, then answered himself, “No, I haven’t learned, and I have an ordinary origin.”
Nan Shan smiled and accidentally coughed a few times.
“Bro, your face is not something ordinary origins can have. Are you Chinese?”
Shen Ti smiled and, on a whim, said “Thank you” to Nan Shan in Russian, a language that randomly popped into his mind, unrelated to him. Hearing the compliment about his appearance, Shen Ti’s first instinct, however, was to look toward An Wujiu.
The white patterns on the side of his neck were particularly clear, and the hem of his shirt was lifted by the wind, revealing his waistline.
Shen Ti didn’t know which country he belonged to, whether he had the blood of Caucasians or Asians flowing in his veins, or what his ancestors’ appearance might have been.
He even felt that he didn’t have ancestors—no ties at all.
The door to the fourth floor opened, and this floor didn’t have any particularly peculiar scenery either. It reverted to a circular structure, similar to the first floor, clean, neat, and bright.
The charms cast by Nan Shan still had an effect, and his sealed stamina had recovered slightly. So, he told Shen Ti, “One person is enough for support,” and Shen Ti wisely handed him over to Wu You, preparing to move forward to find An Wujiu. However, he noticed that An Wujiu was standing in place and not moving.
It seemed like he was waiting for him.
This inexplicably brought a few moments of delight to Shen Ti.
When An Wujiu turned his face, he met Shen Ti’s gaze. As Shen Ti approached, he leaned toward his ear.
“The background you told me last time, it was false, right?”
Shen Ti thought for a while, recalling which instance was the last and what he had made up.
“You mean the one about my dad being a drunkard?” He openly admitted, “Yeah, I told you last time; I lied to you.”
An Wujiu lazily raised his eyes, showing no anger but only careful scrutiny, as if trying to see through the person in front of him.
He had experienced this mentality too, right after encountering An Wujiu.
An Wujiu didn’t speak, but doubts arose in his mind. The person in front of him could manipulate the peach wood sword and fight monsters alone outside, yet he had no traces of slime on him. He could even stop the monsters’ division with a sword.
He was not controlled by the black mist, and even with direct eye contact, his willpower didn’t waver.
“Do you find me intriguing?” Shen Ti smiled, his gem-like eyes radiating colorful light.
An Wujiu disliked things he couldn’t understand, and he only needed the chaos he created himself.
“Yeah, I find you super intriguing,” An Wujiu smiled.
“But it’s okay; one day I’ll peel your skin, disassemble your bones, and eat you thoroughly.”
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With both of them being like this, I wonder who’d be on top
flirting i see