Chapter 698: Lovers
Staring at the familiar yet unfamiliar face not far away, Wen Ya’s eyes widened slightly:
“Su…”
“Get back!”
A sharp light flashed in Orange Candy’s eyes. She twisted her body and drew her blade, the rust-mottled blunt knife whistling as it slashed straight at the corpse that had unknowingly approached from behind. Due to a miscalculation in height, she didn’t slice its neck as usual, but embedded it deeply into its shoulder.
Damn it.
She gritted her teeth and yanked the blade out.
Wen Ya also snapped back to reality: “Don’t get tangled up with them!”
The moment her voice fell, the surrounding ground suddenly sank, grabbing the feet of the surrounding corpse horde tightly like a quagmire.
Her voice sounded like she was weeping blood:
“Let’s go!”
Unleashing such a large-scale talent again while protecting their bodies, mouths, and noses from pollen erosion was like having her tendons pulled and bones scraped, and it could only be maintained for an extremely short period…
However, this momentary hindrance was enough.
The two stumbled and rushed into the stairwell.
The “door” barely closed behind them, emitting a loud “bang.” In the nick of time, it firmly blocked the out-of-control, tidal wave of cold corpses, as well as the intense, almost tangible foul floral stench in the air.
“…”
Inside the narrow, dark stairwell, the rapid panting of several people echoed.
“Are you two okay?” Su Cheng’s voice rang out in the dark.
Wen Ya panted, subconsciously raising her hand to touch her chest. The coldness of the thorn piercing through her chest still lingered there, giving her the momentary illusion of wind howling through it, but the solid feeling under her palm told her—she was still alive.
She took a deep breath: “I… I’m fine.”
“That’s good,” the other seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “We spent too much time on the way, I was very worried we wouldn’t make it in time.”
After being destroyed and reconstructed, the internal structure of the cruise ship had become extremely chaotic and complex. Even No. 8, who was originally a part of the cruise ship, found it difficult to figure out which passage led where, and could only grope forward little by little in the dark under the ambiguous guidance of prophecy.
“It was close, but…” Wen Ya let out a laugh, which pulled at the dull pain in her chest—after her body relaxed, the side effects of overusing her talent only now began to show. With just a shallow shake, all her internal organs began to ache fiercely, her lungs whistling hollowly like a broken bellows—she arched her back and began to cough agonizingly.
In the dark, Su Cheng hurriedly stepped forward and reached out to support her.
To the side, Orange Candy leaned against the wall to rest for a good while before staggering to her feet.
“…That shameless old witch.”
She gritted her teeth,
“Just wait, the next time I see her, I will absolutely do what I said—”
“Right, and you,” Orange Candy turned her head, looking in the direction where the coughing was gradually stopping, her tone even worse. “Get this straight, if you die, I’ll turn into that dead witch’s puppet too!”
“Cough, cough… okay,” Wen Ya let out two final muffled coughs. Supported by Su Cheng, she straightened up, her hoarse voice carrying a bit of a smile, “I understand, I’ll definitely protect myself next time and not be a burden to you.”
Orange Candy let out a cold snort through her nose and didn’t speak again.
Seeing Wen Ya straighten up, Su Cheng let out a shallow breath of relief. Just as he was about to let her go, his hand was suddenly grabbed by the other.
He froze.
The woman’s fingers were slender and cold, still carrying a faint smell of blood. They firmly grasped his arm without applying much force, yet making it impossible to break free—the touch was just like Wen Ya herself, peaceful and restrained.
“Although it’s a bit late to say this, but…”
In the darkness came Wen Ya’s still hoarse voice: “I’m very glad to see you again, really.”
—And this wasn’t just because he appeared here so timely, solving their urgent crisis.
After speaking, Wen Ya let go of his hand.
The corridor was pitch-black; you couldn’t see your own fingers in front of you, and not a trace of light penetrated, making it impossible for the people inside to see each other’s faces.
It was dead silent all around for a moment.
“…Yes,” finally, the Tarot Reader responded softly and slowly, “Me too.”
“Alright, you can catch up on old times later.”
Orange Candy interjected, mercilessly shattering the atmosphere of the moment.
“Don’t forget what we came here to do.”
“Hey, Prophet, before you saw us, did you run into anyone else?”
“Right.” Wen Ya’s tone also became solemn. “Chen Mo and the others lost their tracks before us, and sent us a distress signal before that. We followed their last coordinate location to get here.”
In the end, not long after stepping out of the stairwell, they crossed paths with Dan Zhu.
Recalling the terrifying strength the other displayed in the battle just now, Wen Ya still felt a chill down her back.
Didn’t that mean Chen Mo and the others…
“…”
The person opposite paused, then answered.
“No.”
“You two are the first people I’ve seen.”
Hearing his answer, Wen Ya’s breath hitched, her heart suddenly sinking as if plunging into a bottomless abyss.
“Wait, aren’t you a Prophet? Then calculate it!” Orange Candy’s brows furrowed, her tone becoming a bit anxious. “Whether you use a crystal ball or do some kind of ritual, at least give us some information!”
Su Cheng hesitated for a moment: “…Alright, I’ll try.”
In the darkness, they heard the rustling sound of friction, as if an invisible deck of cards was being spread out in front of them. The darkness that blinded their eyes didn’t affect the owner of the cards in the slightest—he smoothly drew and read the cards.
Listening to the faint sounds in the dark, Wen Ya only felt her heart dangling precariously in midair by a thin thread, waiting in fear and trepidation for the pronouncement of fate.
Finally, the other spoke:
“They are safe—at least for now.”
Hearing this, Wen Ya let out a long breath, her sweaty palms relaxing.
“…”
This time, Su Cheng hesitated for a longer time,
“I hope that’s truly the case.”
Sensing the weirdness in his tone, Wen Ya frowned: “What’s wrong?”
Why did he sound so uncertain?
“For some unknown reason, my Tarot recently…” Su Cheng paused, seemingly weighing his words, “has been a bit strange.”
“In my recent prophecies, I drew several very bizarre cards.”
In the dark, Wen Ya couldn’t see his face, but she could hear the undisguised confusion in his voice.
“This kind of situation has never happened before—”
Wen Ya’s expression turned grave: “…How bizarre?”
“Don’t be nervous, it’s not what you think,” Su Cheng sensed her anxiety from her tone and hurriedly denied it. “It’s just that out of a total of five divinations, I drew… uh… four times…”
He paused, his tone wavering: “The Lovers.”
Unlike before, his talent was no longer limited to just reading card faces; it had evolved into a more precise, more terrifying existence. But the problem was, his cards told him that in all these prophecies, “The Lovers” meant simply “The Lovers,” without any extended meanings.
Precisely because of this, the result seemed even more bizarre.
Didn’t it know what kind of hellhole this was?
“…Uh, hm?”
When this term came out, Wen Ya was also stunned.
“Right, it really is very strange, isn’t it?” Su Cheng lowered his hand, the pitch-black, eerie Tarot vanishing from his palm.
“Actually, if I hadn’t truly found you guys this time, I would have suspected that my ability was starting to malfunction—but fortunately, at least in this aspect, I am still accurate.”
“Hey…” Right at this moment, No. 8, who hadn’t spoken since earlier, opened his mouth: “We’ve stayed here long enough… time to go.”
His voice was slightly tense, still maintaining vigilance.
“Yes,” his words seemed to remind Su Cheng. He straightened up and added, “We have to leave here, we don’t have much time left.”
“Why?”
Orange Candy frowned,
“Is there a problem?”
“There’s a reason Dan Zhu never showed up and could only fight you remotely by controlling corpses,” Su Cheng said slowly. “We are both proxy captains, to some extent checking and balancing each other—during the time you were gone, I trapped myself deep within the cruise ship, and similarly, forced her to be unable to leave her room.”
Wen Ya’s expression darkened bit by bit: “And now that you are with us, that means…”
“Yes.”
Su Cheng’s tone was calm.
“Dan Zhu is free.”
Deep within the cruise ship.
The massive room was enveloped in a layer of hazy, ambiguous red light. Flower branches of the same color twined along the walls, seemingly writhing at an extremely slow speed. In the gaps between them, pale, sluggish faces could vaguely be seen, having become the nutrients for the flowers to grow and bloom.
Suddenly, the woman seemed to sense something. She slowly raised her head, revealing a bizarre face—half bright and beautiful, half entwined with flower branches.
Even in this state, she still possessed a demonic, charming beauty.
“…Disappeared?”
Dan Zhu’s thoughtful gaze fell on midair as she muttered to herself.
She supported herself on the headboard, stood up, and walked outwards step by step.
Fingertips painted with scarlet nail polish landed on the door. Accompanied by a “creak,” the cabin door in front of her slid open outwards.
Dan Zhu took a step out—stepping on solid ground.
She was standing in the corridor.
It was dead silent all around.
Dan Zhu closed her eyes, tilted her head back, and took a deep sniff.
“Heh.” A trembling trace of a smile brushed past her plump lower lip, the corners of her mouth curling up.
“Hahahahaha!”
The woman, whose body was half eroded by her talent, leaned against the wall. Her low laughter gradually amplified, until it became unbridled, making her double over with mirth.
Accompanied by her laughter, the bloody, sweet, and rotting floral scent overflowed the entire space like a tidal wave.
At the same time, the number of online viewers in the live broadcast room [Flower] skyrocketed.
The originally intermittent, broken image suddenly became stable at the same moment. That face, which looked even more demonically charming due to her wild laughter, appeared clearly on the screen. In an instant, all the viewers seemed to be bewitched, their emotions becoming equally heightened and crazy. The barrage scrolled up densely, seemingly also celebrating her return.
Finally, Dan Zhu stopped laughing. Her fingertips brushed past the corners of her eyes, gently wiping away the tears she had laughed out.
“To save two irrelevant people, he proactively gave up the only effective restriction on me… how cute.”
The smile on her face faded:
“How stupid.”
In the current cruise ship, although both she and the Tarot Reader were proxy captains, the disparity in their strength was extremely unbalanced. Dan Zhu had basically taken the entire cruise ship into her pocket, while the Tarot Reader was only using his talent to eke out a meager existence in the cracks—losing control over the captain’s room meant completely handing over the only bargaining chip that could rival her.
More importantly:
The power that had originally fixed the cruise ship in place and simultaneously prevented Nightmare’s intervention had yielded a long time ago. With the instance opening once again, Nightmare had once again entrenched itself deep into the cruise ship, seizing control once more.
A voice whispered in her ear, granting her authority.
Dan Zhu walked carelessly down the corridor, her scarlet, tattered dress swaying with her steps, revealing her bare feet. The ground beneath her feet left blood-red traces as she walked—as if walking on thorns, the flowing blood eroded fatal flowers onto the ground.
Following this, tidal wave-like tremors surged from beneath the ground. The walls, floors, cabins, keel… all groaned in submission, and the entire picture unfolded within her mind. Of course, this wasn’t completely complete yet, but… it was enough.
The corners of Dan Zhu’s mouth curved into a wonderful arc.
Yes, she was only one step away from truly becoming the real captain of this ship.
Wen Jianyan abruptly halted his steps, raising his head to look up into the air.
The hull of the ship was vibrating.
It was as if something had awakened.
That irresistible force was squeezing the entire cruise ship inward. The gaps that originally lay across the floors and walls were being compressed at a speed visible to the naked eye, like a loosely structured ball of paper being pinched tighter bit by bit. And they were like tiny insects trapped inside the ball of paper, only able to helplessly crash around along with its movements.
Without exception, the others also noticed this unusual situation, their faces collectively showing grave expressions.
“What’s going on?” Chen Mo frowned tightly. “Why suddenly—”
Before his words could fall, Blond’s expression suddenly changed: “Not good!”
He stared intently not far ahead, raising his voice: “The elevator is about to disappear!”
A certain bad premonition suddenly arose in Wen Jianyan’s heart. He said sharply:
“Quick, get over there!”
Before his voice completely fell, the group immediately broke into a wild sprint.
Running past lifeless human-body gambling tables, through cold, distorted corridors, at the end of the path not far ahead was a rust-mottled, old elevator—the surrounding walls were contracting towards the center at a speed visible to the naked eye, swallowing the elevator’s metal doors bit by bit.
Chen Mo gritted his teeth, a ruthless glint in his eyes.
Heavy metal chains flew out, attempting to stop this process—but the next second, the iron chains crashed violently against the barely closed walls, emitting a dull, loud “thud”—he failed.
Just like that, under their helpless watch, the elevator leading to the next floor simply vanished.
The group stopped in their tracks.
Their breathing was somewhat unsteady. They looked at each other, exchanging gloomy glances.
“…” Ji Guan lifted his foot and viciously kicked the seamlessly joined wall in front of him as if venting his anger, cursing furiously: “Fuck!”
“Ah, don’t be so irritable,” only then did Figaro arrive slowly from behind. Wearing a look of having nothing to do with it, he smiled and shrugged. “What’s the big deal about not having an elevator? Can’t you just do it again like you did before?”
Wen Jianyan turned his head, his gaze falling upon the bizarre patterns squeezed out on the wall.
He frowned and tilted his head.
Did this look like…
A smiling face?
Subconsciously, he took a step forward, wanting to look more closely.
Suddenly, the patterns fiercely twisted before his eyes. Malicious thorns dyed pitch-black surged out from within, tearing through the air at a speed untraceable by ordinary people, flying straight toward his face!
“—!” Wen Jianyan’s pupils shrank abruptly.
But before he could retreat half a step, his movement stopped.
Three inches in front of him, the thorn was forcefully grabbed, unable to advance even a fraction further.
Wu Zhu lowered his eyes, golden blood dripping from his pale fingertips.
He let go of his hand, and in that instant, the thorn turned to dust and smoke, vanishing before everyone’s eyes.
“What exactly happened just now?” Chen Mo stared fixedly at the folds on the wall, shoulders tense, on alert for the next wave of attacks—however, after that one strike, no new thorns appeared. Everything returned to calm, as if nothing had ever happened.
“Dan Zhu.”
Wen Jianyan’s expression was dark as he spoke slowly.
“She has now gained control of the cruise ship.”
When the cruise ship vibrated, he had realized… the situation here had changed.
And what just happened proved this point.
Before the instance opened, although the forces within the cruise ship were not equal, they maintained a delicate balance—and now, the constraint vanished, the balance was broken, and the scales of power heavily tilted toward the side most unfavorable to them.
Wen Jianyan took Wu Zhu’s hand, his fingertips rubbing against the palm.
Beneath the golden fresh blood, the wound had already disappeared.
He rubbed it firmly there before letting go.
“As for the attack just now,” Wen Jianyan raised his eyes and said, “…that was nothing more than a demonstration of power.”
Dan Zhu wasn’t truly aiming to kill this time, otherwise she wouldn’t be so slighting, so casual. Most likely, she was conveying a message.
Not far away, the crooked smiling face was imprinted on the wall, the curled-up corners of its mouth full of demonic malice.
As if saying:
You have already fallen into my palm.
No matter how you struggle, you cannot escape my control.
“…”
Wen Jianyan’s brow furrowed involuntarily.
Although Wu Zhu’s wound had healed the instant it was cut, he knew clearly—the fact that Wu Zhu could be hurt by it inherently represented many unsettling messages.
And the cruise ship was an existence that extremely suppressed Wu Zhu. His heart had been imprisoned here for a long time; it could be said that the entire ship was a cage tailor-made for him.
Previously, it was because the position of the cruise ship captain was vacant and the ship itself was on the verge of collapse that Wu Zhu could take the opportunity to counter-control it—but in this process, not only was he unable to move, he had to continuously shed blood to maintain it—with Nightmare regaining control, he had therefore returned to his initial disadvantage.
And now, after gaining Nightmare’s recognition and the authority of the cruise ship, Dan Zhu’s power had probably exceeded their imagination.
“But… why would this kind of thing happen?”
Ji Guan frowned deeply, seemingly extremely puzzled.
“Didn’t you say that Su Cheng is currently a proxy captain along with her?”
“Yes.” Wen Jianyan nodded.
During the process of entering the cruise ship, he had already briefly explained the situation down below to the group, so they wouldn’t be completely in the dark.
“If that’s the case, why would Dan Zhu’s power suddenly swell so fiercely?”
“I’m not sure either.” Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes and said, “Guessing in the worst direction, this might be caused by Nightmare’s intervention.”
“And if it’s the good direction?” Blond pressed.
Wen Jianyan said slowly: “It’s his choice.”
The balance between the two proxy captains had lasted too long. If Dan Zhu had a way to change the current situation, she wouldn’t have let it maintain until now. If it wasn’t Nightmare’s intervention, then there was only one possibility left: Su Cheng voluntarily withdrew from this struggle.
Perhaps there was something more important that forced him to do so, or perhaps he foresaw more possibilities using his talent…
But regardless, this could be considered the rare hope they could hold onto in this suffocating darkness right now.
“No matter which possibility it is, we cannot just sit still and wait for death now.” Wen Jianyan took a deep breath, sweeping his gaze over everyone present. “Let’s go, let’s go see if there are any other places we can use to enter the lower levels.”
Deep within the crooked corridors.
A tall, upright figure walked forward steadily, pulling a long shadow beneath his feet.
Hugo’s eyes were downcast, the weariness on his face seemingly even heavier. Faint, unstable light fell on him, cutting out distinct patches of light and dark.
The bloodstain on his cheekbone was no longer bleeding, turning into a dried red smudge.
He was carrying a person on his shoulder. The heavy weight of an adult man pressed down on his shoulder, yet it seemingly had no effect on his movements. He walked forward freely and steadily, as if carrying a light piece of cloth.
The man’s long limbs hung down limply. His usually arrogant, messy hair was soaked with blood, sticking miserably to his indistinguishable face, motionless, his life or death unknown.
Drip, drop.
Fresh blood dripped down from his body continuously, as if it would never run dry, leaving an intermittent trail of blood behind Hugo, a shocking sight to behold.
Hugo turned a blind eye to this, seemingly having no intention to help him stop the bleeding.
Suddenly, he stopped in his tracks without warning.
As if sensing something, Hugo raised his eyes and looked deep into the corridor.
Not far away, the lights flickered intermittently, making the atmosphere appear even more eerie and terrifying.
“Zzt, zzt-zzt—zzt!”
The lights suddenly went out, plunging everything into pitch-black.
Hugo stood firmly in place, breathing steadily, his expression calm.
“Zzt-pop—”
The lights came on, illuminating a graceful figure below.
Without knowing where or how she appeared, she just stood alive right in front of him.
“…You can move,” Hugo’s gaze focused on Dan Zhu as he spoke slowly, his tone flat and straightforward.
“Yes,” Dan Zhu giggled softly, walking over gracefully, uncaringly displaying her already completely alienated half-face, her tone joking. “Why the serious expression… aren’t you going to congratulate me?”
Hugo didn’t say a word, staring fixedly at her. Only his straight back indicated a certain unspoken vigilance.
Dan Zhu didn’t mind either.
“You know what I came to find you for,” she raised her hand, her fingertips toying with her cloud-like long hair. “You’ve wasted too much time on too many things you shouldn’t have done, and its tolerance for you has reached its limit.”
“If you continue to do whatever you want like this, what happens next will probably be something neither of us wants to see.”
“For example…” Dan Zhu’s gaze fell on Hugo’s shoulder, as if she had suddenly discovered a new continent, the corners of her mouth curving up. “This little guy you’ve picked up now.”
She stepped forward, extending fingers painted with blood-red nail polish, pinching Chen Cheng’s chin and lifting his lifeless, pale face.
“Tsk tsk tsk.”
Dan Zhu’s expression was playful: “You actually left him alive. You’ve really changed now.”
She looked up with a smile, a bloody-colored fragrant mist seemingly floating in her eyes:
“Say, how about handing this little traitor over to me to deal with?”
Her tone was very ambiguous, as if murmuring pillow talk between lovers, or facilitating an amorous trade. But only someone close enough could see that at this moment, there was not a hint of lust deep within Dan Zhu’s eyes, only malice so deep the bottom couldn’t be seen.
“…”
Expressionlessly, Hugo slightly turned his body sideways. Although he didn’t move much, it allowed Chen Cheng’s head to slip out of Dan Zhu’s hand, drooping down lifelessly once again.
Dan Zhu lowered her eyes, rubbing her fingers that still had residual blood on them.
She wiped the fresh blood from her fingertips onto the hem of Hugo’s coat, took a step back, and lazily pulled the distance open again: “Stingy.”
“You already know the person’s location. Please be sure to arrive in time,” Dan Zhu swept a meaningful glance over him. “Otherwise, I’m afraid I’ll have to make a move against you…”
Although she said this verbally, there was not the slightest hint of pity in her tone.
“Don’t forget what is truly important to you.”
After speaking, without waiting for Hugo’s answer, she turned and vanished at the end of the corridor.
“…”
Hugo stayed in place for half a second before stepping forward again.
He walked into the elevator and pressed the button.
After a long operation, the elevator doors opened, and a bottomless corridor appeared before him.
A rich floral fragrance floated in the air, clearly indicating Dan Zhu had stayed here for a long time. The cabin doors were tightly closed, the text on the doors submerged in shadows, each written with a different code name. Some were occupied, some were unoccupied.
Looking straight ahead, Hugo walked past these rooms, going all the way deep into the corridor, and stopped in front of the cabin door belonging to Chen Cheng.
The door remained tightly closed. The occupancy progress on it had reached 100% at some unknown time, yet it still displayed the word “Unoccupied.”
Hugo bent down, and like dropping a heavy, broken sack, tossed Chen Cheng at the doorway of the door that belonged to him.
After doing all this, he turned and prepared to leave.
However, before he could take a step, a faint, breathy voice came from behind him:
“Wait…”
Hugo paused his steps. He lowered his eyes, looking toward where the voice came from.
Chen Cheng had awakened from his coma at some point. He lifted his blood-soaked eyes, staring at Hugo not far away, and asked word by word:
“Why didn’t you kill me?”
In the battle just now, although it was very close, Hugo had still won.
Indeed, Chen Cheng’s talent was extremely terrifying, hurting both enemies and himself, pure violence. Almost no one dared to face him head-on in battle. Unfortunately, he met the battle-hardened, calm, and experienced Hugo. His formidability lay not only in talents and items, but more in profound combat experience and a highly tempered mind and awareness. Even if the other possessed an ability that perfectly countered him, he was calm enough to deal with it and turn defeat into victory.
Hugo paused his steps but didn’t turn around.
“Wait!” Chen Cheng’s voice carried a bit more of a desperate, back-to-the-wall strength than just now.
This time, Hugo finally stopped, and he turned his head.
Since an unknown moment, Chen Cheng had struggled to prop up his body. His clothes were already soaked with blood, his face frighteningly pale from excessive blood loss, yet his eyes were shockingly bright: “Why didn’t you hand me over to Dan Zhu?”
“She said don’t forget what is truly important to you… what did she mean?”
“Or rather,”
Supporting himself against the wall, even though his injuries were so severe, Chen Cheng staggered to his feet with astonishing strength. He gritted his teeth, his breathing intermittent:
“—Why the fuck are you working your life away for Nightmare?!”
“…”
Under the dim light, the man stood firmly not far away. His steel-like gray eyes silently looked down at him, condescending, as silent as before.
After an unknown amount of time, he finally opened his mouth:
“Go in when the ship sails, it can keep you alive.”
No matter how much they tried, the conclusion reached was the same:
This place had been completely sealed off.
The elevator vanished, the cracks smoothed over… the floor, walls, and ceiling together constructed a cage without doors or windows, as if determined to firmly lock them in here to die.
Nowhere to escape, nowhere to go.
Everyone’s expressions were gloomy. The air was like a wet cloth, pressing down until it was hard to breathe.
Figaro even very inappropriately offered a suggestion: “At least that train is still there, right? If all else fails, we can always go back the way we—”
He was only halfway through his sentence when he received a cold, gloomy glare from Chen Mo, so he had to close his mouth again.
Suddenly, Wen Jianyan jerked his head up. He caught a familiar scent in the air.
It was a faintly discernible, strange fragrance.
“—Dan Zhu.”
“Hehe,” a light chuckle came from behind, “To be recognized all at once, I’m so honored.”
The voice was sudden, startling everyone, and they whipped their heads around to look behind.
Not far away, a corpse that had already merged into the corner of the gambling table sluggishly lifted its head. A pale, deformed face was pointed right at them, its eye sockets like two pitch-black holes, the curve of its mouth making one shiver.
The strange fragrance in the air gradually intensified within the enclosed space—bloody, sweet, and rotting, like flowers blooming excessively, recklessly releasing an aggressive aura outwards.
“Watch out for her pollen, absolutely do not—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Wen Jianyan felt his vision suddenly darken. Shadows expanded from behind him, firmly covering him and the people beside him within it.
Figaro looked up, marveling at the shadows all around,
“Truly surprising, I can’t feel the presence of the pollen at all.”
Almost at the exact moment the shadows expanded, the lingering rotting fragrance around their noses vanished without a trace, leaving only an icy, biting, winter-like breath.
“…” The others also realized the same situation. They were startled at first, but quickly guessed the source of this isolation—or rather, protection.
Chen Mo said steadily: “Thank you.”
Ji Guan also seemed to mumble a similar phrase, but his voice was too soft for anyone to hear.
Wen Jianyan looked up, staring fixedly beyond the shadows.
Only a few short seconds had passed, but the corpses on the entire floor began to stir.
After the first one, came the second, the third…
“Of course, it would be hard for me not to recognize it,” Even now, Wen Jianyan’s tone remained gentle and polite.
“However…”
He looked up, quickly sweeping a glance around, and let out a short laugh. “I thought you would at least show up in your true body.”
Dan Zhu did this before because she couldn’t leave the deep levels of the cruise ship and had no other choice. But now, her power was vastly different from before, and her control over the cruise ship had reached an unimaginable level. So why wasn’t she showing up now?
And Dan Zhu didn’t seem prepared to hide this point either:
“Ah, there’s no helping it. I still have some things to do right now, and can’t pull myself away for the moment.”
Not far away, that head giggled out loud: “But don’t worry, I still have the chance to play with you for a bit…”
As her voice fell, more and more corpses revived accordingly.
On the walls in all directions, the wallpaper and plaster peeled down rustlingly, like withered, falling flowers, revealing the blood-red, soft walls underneath—since some unknown time, the walls had been replaced by vines. Fleshy flowers bloomed upon them, squirming and stretching as if alive. The sharp thorns on them glinted under the light, every single one terrifying and fatal.
“Let me guess, how many waves of attacks can you truly withstand?” The corpse revealed a malicious smiling face, its head twisting at a bizarre angle, its gaze ultimately landing on Wu Zhu in the back. “And… under the circumstances of having all avenues of acquiring power sealed off and unable to gain any replenishment, how long will it take for a newly acquired heart to run out of power?”
At the same time, heavy footsteps came from not far away.
“Thud.”
“Thud, thud.”
With every heavy smash, the ground seemed to vibrate with it. It seemed the surrounding air also underwent some terrifying qualitative change along with it, causing people’s hearts to tremble along with it.
Seemingly realizing something, everyone’s pupils contracted, and they looked toward the direction of the sound.
Through the already standing corpse horde moving in bizarre postures, an immensely oppressive, gigantic figure appeared in their line of sight.
An extremely tall figure, an extremely broad body, like a thick, heavy wall. On top of that body was a numb face devoid of any emotional fluctuation, and a pair of hollow, gloomy eyes. Even just looking from afar made one somewhat unable to catch their breath.
Ye Lin.
President of the Dark Fire Guild, Rank Two on Nightmare’s leaderboard—for the first time in an unknown amount of time, entering an instance in his true body.
Ye Lin was expressionless. Without saying a word, he walked forward step by step.
On his broad belly, a massive opening slowly split open. It was a giant, bloody maw, filled with layer upon layer of densely packed teeth. The throat was bottomless, sunken deeply downwards like a black hole, like the incarnation of endless hunger, making one’s scalp tingle and hair stand on end just looking at it.
This is—
Looking at this scene before them, everyone’s pupils shrank, seemingly suddenly realizing something.
The moment he appeared, the other actually directly and undisguisedly unleashed his talent just like this!
Holding nothing back, which also meant… absolutely no backing down.
A twisted corpse in a bizarre posture nestled on his shoulder like a lover, giggling, like a glamorous skeletal corpse:
“Eat, my darling, eat as much as you can.”
