Chapter 710: Die
“…”
Wen Jianyan stood blankly in the wind, gazing in the direction not far away that had long since emptied. His hair was blown into a mess by the gale, looking like a torn piece of dark cloud.
Rumble—
Through the torn red light, the intense roar of the moving train mixed with the rushing wind. From deep underground came a crying wail, and the walls belonging to the Fukang Comprehensive Hospital began to collapse and disintegrate.
Behind him, the others finally broke free from the madness and hurried to his side, panting.
“So, that was just…”
Blond turned his head, raised his bloodshot eyes, and looked in the direction Wen Jianyan was staring, asking blankly.
“…A hero who fell on the road to finding the truth.” Wen Jianyan withdrew his gaze and said softly, “A good doctor.”
And now, she was finally free from her shackles.
Reborn.
“What about you guys?” Wen Jianyan took a deep breath, his gaze falling on the group, and asked, “How are you? Are you hurt?”
“No.” Blond shook his head honestly.
Ji Guan pressed one hand to his shoulder, rolled his neck, his face still devoid of color: “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
Ever since the ghost infants regained their freedom, the vicious ghost wandering under his skin was no longer active. It seemed to know that this crisis was no longer effective, so it lay dormant once again, quietly waiting for the next opportunity to take advantage.
Figaro: “Actually, I…”
Ji Guan interrupted him expressionlessly: “I was right next to him. He isn’t hurt at all. It won’t affect his ability to continue contributing labor to the team.”
Figaro: “…”
Wen Jianyan looked at Bai Xue: “What about you?”
The youth opened his silent, pitch-black eyes and shook his head.
Wen Jianyan sighed, stepped forward, and used his thumb to wipe away a bit of blood from the side of his cheek. The blood left on his pale, almost transparent skin showed a pale pink lacking pigment. Under the dim, broken light, it was almost hard to notice without looking carefully.
“From now on, do not use any talents anymore.”
He looked down at Bai Xue, his eyes more serious than ever.
“Did you hear me?”
Bai Xue nodded.
“You can’t just agree.”
Wen Jianyan frowned, seeming to see through the perfunctoriness beneath his calm exterior.
He thought for a moment and held out his pinky finger: “If you don’t use your talent, once we get out of here, I’ll tell you how I won our bet. How about that?”
Bai Xue looked at him, then at his outstretched finger, his expression seeming to struggle to some extent.
Finally, he succumbed to his thirst for knowledge, reluctantly raised his hand, and hooked his pinky around Wen Jianyan’s, shaking it slightly:
“…Mm.”
Wen Jianyan reached out and ruffled his hair: “Good boy.”
Just then, he caught sight of the ghost infants’ actions out of the corner of his eye. His heart jumped, and he quickly took two steps forward, anxiously stopping their attempts to stuff the eyeballs they had gouged out of the embryos into their mouths: “Hey, don’t just put anything in your mouths!”
Figaro: “…”
He leaned in slightly and lowered his voice to ask Ji Guan: “So, is your guild—”
Before he could finish, his face suddenly twisted: “…I haven’t even said anything yet!”
Ji Guan expressionlessly withdrew his foot: “I know.”
But he knew even better that a dog’s mouth spits no ivory.
At the same time, Wu Zhu also returned carrying a thrashing ghost infant. His arm was stretched straight out, two fingers pinching the back of its neck, his brow slightly furrowed. Although he had no extra expression on his face, his body language screamed “disgust”.
And the ghost infant clearly didn’t get along with him either. It viciously bared its fangs, scratching at the air like a crazed wild animal, trying to attack this uninvited guest whose aura it found particularly repulsive, and who actually dared to steal their mommy.
Wu Zhu thrust the ghost infant forward: “Speak.”
As soon as it saw Wen Jianyan, the ghost infant immediately became docile, opening its short limbs: “Mommy, hug—”
Wu Zhu expressionlessly shook it up and down vigorously a couple of times: “Not that.”
The ghost infant was shaken dizzy: “Wa—”
Wen Jianyan’s eyebrow twitched.
He looked at Wu Zhu and reached out his hands: “Give it to me.”
Wu Zhu: “…”
His expression was gloomy enough to drip water, and he reluctantly handed the ghost infant over.
As soon as it was picked up, the ghost infant stopped crying immediately. It nestled comfortably in Wen Jianyan’s arms, then cast a very smug look at Wu Zhu, quite provocatively. But the next second, under the other’s freezing glare, it shivered and hid deeper into Wen Jianyan’s embrace.
Wen Jianyan: “Alright, what did you want to tell mommy?”
The ghost infant clearly knew what was important and urgent, so it didn’t delay, directly revealing the information it absolutely refused to tell in front of Wu Zhu: “That bad guy who bullied mommy is surrounded by my brothers and sisters. Does mommy want to go see?”
Wen Jianyan’s heart tightened.
Although the ghost infant didn’t name names, he immediately knew who it was talking about—Zhang Yunsheng.
He took a deep breath and nodded: “Okay, lead the way.”
Under the ghost infant’s guidance, Wen Jianyan arrived at the center of the laboratory, which had almost merged with the train. Surrounded by a group of ghost infants treating him like a formidable enemy, a mangled body sat on the floor.
He sat with his head bowed, his body incomplete.
Shadows fell, obscuring his face so it couldn’t be seen clearly. Only a shocking, pitch-black hole was torn open in his throat. But strangely, no massive amount of blood poured out from that terrifying wound. Instead, a little bit of black, tar-like liquid oozed out and stuck to the skin.
Wen Jianyan stopped involuntarily.
“He… is dead?”
“Dead!” The ghost infant at his feet answered.
“Yes, mommy,” the other ghost infants chimed in over each other. “He’s completely and thoroughly dead!”
The ghost infant closest to the corpse went up and sniffed, then bared its teeth, its small, livid face showing an expression of disgust: “Smells so bad, not tasty, the meat is already spoiled!”
“Wait.”
Wen Jianyan frowned.
“Are you saying he died a long time ago?”
“Yeah, yeah!” The ghost infants agreed over each other.
Wen Jianyan’s heart skipped a beat, seeming to realize something. He jerked his head around: “No, that’s not right! Destroy him quickly—”
The red light was like a thick, soft worm, silently drilling through the gap between the hospital and the train, unknowingly penetrating deep into this place.
It spilled down from above like an unbreakable dam, firmly blocking the surging black tide behind it.
And in the center of the red light, the corpse that had just been hanging its head suddenly moved. It slowly, bit by bit, raised its head. Then, with a posture and angle beyond human capability, it stood up in a twisted manner—and with this movement, the wounds torn by bites healed rapidly at a visible rate.
Crack, crack.
Bathed in the red light, he cracked his stiff neck left and right, making crisp popping sounds of bone rubbing against bone.
Just like that, the “Gentleman’s” body slowly raised its head. And in those pitch-black, abyssal empty eye sockets, Nightmare’s proxy was peering out.
Instantly, goosebumps crawled up their spines.
“Hiss,” he raised his hand and touched the black hole in his neck. “That hurts a lot.”
In all directions, the instance was still disintegrating.
The flesh and blood walls peeled off piece by piece, exposing the train carriage outside.
Boom!
Suddenly, a massive tremor came from beneath their feet.
Accompanied by a deafening “creak” that threatened to split one’s mind, the entire train began to shake from the inside out. The wheels and body rubbed against each other, emitting a sharp hum that pierced deep into the eardrums like steel needles, bringing a real, stinging pain.
“Ah, haven’t you figured it out yet?”
Amidst the violent shaking, Zhang Yunsheng slowly stood up straight in the red light and smiled:
“I cannot be killed.”
*
“Tsk.”
Dan Zhu clicked her tongue lightly.
“That rescue was certainly timely.”
With Orange Candy’s appearance, there was no longer any room for her to interfere on Hugo’s side.
Although Hugo was still heavily injured and Orange Candy’s talent was overdrawn, they were more than enough to deal with a portion of her power and those resurrected dead—their strength was formidable, but against two of Nightmare’s top ten, there wasn’t much suspense about the outcome.
She suddenly remembered the few sentences Orange Candy had just said, her expression turning somewhat cold.
—Desiring to die with dignity at the hands of a friend?
What childish nonsense.
As someone who had also crawled back from hell, Dan Zhu didn’t feel the slightest bit moved by those words; she only found them utterly ridiculous.
She didn’t think her present self and her past self were two different people. She had full, clear, and complete memories. She remembered everything that happened before her death, the people she met, the things that happened, every single detail was crystal clear—but that didn’t affect her current desires, her current self, her current choices.
So what if she was mutated? So what if she was twisted?
As long as the goal could be achieved, everything could be sacrificed.
It was as if a fire was burning in her throat.
Death?
No, never again.
She wanted so many things: an irreplaceable position, uncontrolled power, overwhelming strength—becoming the captain of the cruise ship was only the first step. She would continue to climb higher and higher—until she had plundered everything that could be plundered, seized everything that could be seized.
That feeling of powerlessness in the face of death, she would never experience it again.
She would live on forever and ever.
Even if she had to stand on a mountain of corpses with blood flowing like rivers, it didn’t matter.
The woman narrowed her bizarre, single eye steeped in bloody smoke, withdrawing her gaze from the distance.
There was nothing left to interfere with on Hugo’s side.
Since that was the case, it was time to handle her most pressing task.
“Although the situation over there somewhat exceeded expectations, after all, what is lost on the swings is made up on the roundabouts.”
Dan Zhu chuckled lightly, her fingertips painted with blood-red polish gently tapping her cheek. She turned her head and looked at the man standing a few steps away.
The black-haired Prophet stood not far away, his pale face expressionless. He stood there alone, his eyes like a pool of deep, stagnant water, neither hiding nor dodging, neither advancing nor retreating.
“I’ve finally caught you.”
Faced with Dan Zhu’s pursuit and encirclement, the Tarot Master had always been evading and fleeing.
And this time, he finally stopped.
Thus, the two captain candidates stood face to face for the first time.
That’s right, finding the other candidate and killing him to become the sole captain of the cruise ship—from the very beginning, this was Dan Zhu’s most pressing task. It was just that midway, Pinocchio’s appearance made Nightmare change the priority of events, and she had to deal with Pinocchio instead.
Fighting Hugo was never her goal from the start; he was merely a stumbling block in her way that had to be kicked aside.
And after Pinocchio left the range where she could interfere, “killing the other captain candidate” once again rose to the top of her task list.
Precisely because of this, Dan Zhu avoided fighting Hugo directly, instead using a clone to draw him away. This wasn’t because she was afraid of him, but because it was all too troublesome. It was much better to trap that most difficult combatant in another fight; it was more efficient and convenient.
“If I’m not mistaken, Orange Candy should have been acting with you initially, right?”
Hugo cut straight through the middle, heading straight for her. Wen Ya and that little traitor ran off somewhere together, while Orange Candy, in poor condition, and that combat-incapable dealer stayed by the Prophet’s side.
Now, Orange Candy had gone to support Hugo, the dealer was missing, and only the Prophet was left alone.
“In a battle like this, for Orange Candy to arrive so precisely and opportunely, it must have had something to do with you.”
Dan Zhu looked with interest at this person who, despite being a captain candidate like herself, she hadn’t truly met many times.
The black-haired, black-eyed Prophet stood not far away, not saying a word.
“As a Prophet, since you could foresee Hugo being surrounded and send Orange Candy to support him, you shouldn’t be unable to see your own current situation, right?” Dan Zhu didn’t mind. She raised an eyebrow. “As far as I know, your relationship with Hugo isn’t that good, is it—you’re actually willing to trade your life for his?”
“No.”
Suddenly, Su Cheng broke the silence and spoke without warning.
“I am indeed not willing.”
“Then what is it for?” Dan Zhu asked, quite curious.
“If I have to say.”
He raised his head and stared straight at Dan Zhu not far away, his dark eyes silent like an empty abyss.
“Perhaps it’s atonement.”
“—He won’t have a second friend die because of me.”
Dan Zhu stared at him intently. After a few seconds, she suddenly giggled: “They all say Hugo’s self-destructive tendencies are severe, but looking at it now, you’re not far behind.”
“Alright,” Dan Zhu reached out her hand, and winding blood-red vines extended from her fingertips. Under the cold light, they looked like blades coated in lethal poison. “Prophet, any last words?”
Su Cheng: “No.”
His expression was calm, as if he had long accepted his fate.
“There’s no need.”
The chance of success is slim, and the price will be high.
This was the prophecy he told Orange Candy.
But what he didn’t tell Orange Candy was that he had already foreseen his inevitable death—a black shadow peering behind the curtain of the future, casting a mocking glance at the present. He gazed into the abyss of fate, death’s fingers wrapping around his neck in wait. Everything was so familiar, almost carrying a hint of mockery—this prophecy was exactly the same as the one he saw before he personally sent Yun Bilan into the vortex of death back before university, without the slightest deviation.
Since such was fate, then…
This time, let him be the price.
