Chapter 130: Long Night (1) |
Half an hour earlier, in the Dragonsea District of Cliff City…
The last trace of twilight faded into the darkness of night when a thunderous roar erupted from the elevated bridge. Amid the violent tremors, large amounts of wreckage collapsed and fell, crashing into the sea and stirring up clouds of murky color.
Flames raged and wind scattered. In the chaos, fire split on both sides, revealing a figure walking out from the center of the explosion. His pure white suit was spotless. Only his slightly graying long hair was whipping wildly in the storm.
“Mr. Lei!”
The expressions of the panicked subordinates lit up with relief or cheers. Only a very small number remained grim-faced.
To prevent assassination, the boss’s movements were strictly confidential. Tonight’s decision to visit Lei Wuye in the hospital was made on the spur of the moment, and only a handful of people knew of it. So why did something like this still happen?
Several cold gazes swept through the crowd back and forth. When they met each other’s eyes, their suspicion and indifference were completely exposed until Lei Yaoxing casually threw the figure he had dragged out of the explosion onto the ground.
Burned by flames and the blast, the man was already severely mutilated, on the verge of death, and barely recognizable. Yet even now, the young man showed no gratitude. He merely forced his neck up with difficulty and opened his mouth toward Lei Yaoxing.
Ptooey!
Lei Yaoxing let out a faint sigh. “Xiao Ye, I’ve treated you well. After your father passed away, I raised you, paid for your education, brought you into the business, and even handed the company to you. Here, everyone has the right to be a traitor. Only you don’t.”
“I don’t?” Xiao Ye coughed violently, then let out a hoarse laugh. His voice was sharp, like a night owl’s. “Eleven years ago, how did that ship sink in international waters? Do I need to remind you?! Do you dare tell me how my father died?!”
Lei Yaoxing said nothing. As silence settled around them, he looked down coldly at that mocking face. After a long moment, he shook his head in regret. “Wolf cubs like you really can’t be tamed after all.”
Inside Xiao Ye’s mangled body, spirit matter erupted ferociously. His limbs exploded, yet his body still suddenly sprang up from the ground. His broken left arm lifted, carrying more than a decade of hatred. Jagged bone fragments thrust toward Lei Yaoxing’s throat.
In the end, it was all in vain. Lei Yaoxing simply waved his hand casually. The body froze in midair as if time itself had stopped.
In the next second, it disintegrated into countless strands among the scorching wind as blood sprayed all around. It was as if, in an instant, ten thousand cuts of execution had reduced the traitor to dust.
In the long silence that followed, no one dared speak up. Everyone kept their heads lowered, not even daring to breathe loudly.
“Tell me, why have I ended up like this?”
As the wind stifled, Lei Yaoxing stared at the blazing fire before him and at the city in the distance where neon lights flickered in and out. It looked so unfamiliar.
Clearly, he had already secured absolute dominance in the underground struggles of Cliff City. All opposition forces, even if they called in outside help at any cost, were nothing more than insignificant ants. Victory had clearly been within reach, yet suddenly, he felt a kind of powerlessness seeping slowly from deep within his bones.
Over the past several days, all the twists and turns, the life-and-death struggles before his eyes, the betrayals, alliances, mergers, and purges—everything that had unfolded beyond his original expectations felt like strands of spider silk falling out of the darkness, thread by thread, layer by layer, slowly settling onto him.
By now, he actually felt a sense of powerlessness. None of this should have happened.
Clearly, his adoptive father had already begun transferring power to him over the years. Clearly, everyone should have naturally respected him as the leader. Clearly, he should have stood at the very top of this wilderness without question.
Yet from the moment his adoptive father fell gravely ill and weakened, everything began to spiral out of control. The rules that should have persisted were shattered. The iron laws that should have been obeyed were cast aside by everyone. And now, tracing the cause of all this chaos, the tangled threads of clues from behind the scenes always led back to the same point.
A glove used for money laundering for the decision-maker. A subordinate casually chosen by Lei Wuye. An unforeseen stumbling block. A player long since disqualified. A chess piece everyone had forgotten.
“Chen Xingzhou, is it you?” Lei Yaoxing murmured, his dark eyes staring toward the distant Cliff City. “Where is he now?”
The old man, who had remained calm from the beginning, replied, “Mercy Hospital. Reports say he was successfully resuscitated, but has not regained consciousness yet.”
“He’s still alive…” Lei Yaoxing clapped his hands lightly. “What incredible luck. Take our men and kill him. Don’t leave his younger brother either. Everyone related to him, kill them all. Don’t leave a single one alive.”
The thin, withered elder froze slightly, instinctively trying to dissuade his leader. “But…”
There were too many “buts.”
But Chen Xingzhou was no longer a threat. But he was inside a hospital under the Radiant Church. But this broke the rules. But after killing him, who would ever trust your promises again?
“Fuck your doubts!”
In a surge of rage, Lei Yaoxing turned back. His eyes reflected the blood-red firelight, yet on his face, an uncontrollable smile surfaced, as if he had finally broken free from some shackles. The moment he made the decision, he actually felt an unbelievable sense of relief, as if even the wind rushing toward him had become gentle.
To hell with the rules.
To hell with “not allowed.”
To hell with the threats.
The moment he resolved to break all of this, what he felt was an unprecedented sense of freedom.
“Heh… hahahaha… hahahahaha…” He could no longer hold back and burst into self-mocking laughter, almost doubling over. “So in the end, the one sitting on the fence was me?”
Since he had already chosen struggle and slaughter, why should he still care about the rules? When had wild beasts in the wilderness ever cared about shame? From what point had he become bound by these invisible shackles?
In a dazed vision, he seemed to see blazing flames rising into the sky, a sky burned red, and between the shifting darkness and neon lights, the silhouette of a white deer lowering its gaze toward this place. It was eternally indifferent, eternally calm. That was the form of absolute, unattainable freedom.
But soon, that distant illusion dissolved.
Lei Yaoxing looked away in regret, turned back, and asked one final time, “Do I need to repeat the order I just gave?”
Drenched in sweat, the old man lowered his head, no longer daring to question anything. “I… I’ll go right away.”
And so, the shackles were fully unlocked. Not only here, and not only for Chen Xingzhou. The same applied to North Mount, Dragonsea, South Ridge, and West River.
Due to Lei Yaoxing’s command, the final rules were shattered. Famished beasts rushed out in all directions, devouring greedily, feasting on blood and prey with no more restraint. Blood and fire rose together with the bright moon from the darkness. Within this endless, boundless long night, they engulfed everything.
***
Under the same night sky, at the cliffside villa on the edge of Cliff City, the lights were brightly on.
Unlike the blood and slaughter that had been overflowing through Cliff City these days, the warm, soft lighting inside the villa gave off an almost peaceful, quiet sense of everyday life.
Just as Ji Jue was once again checking the signal tower and server connection, the sound of running water from the bathroom stopped. Soon after, An Ran came out wearing a T-shirt and shorts. His slippers shuffled on the floor as he rubbed his towel through his wet hair.
“Mr. Ji, I’m done showering.”
“Ah, okay.”
Ji Jue yawned and stood up, heading toward the bathroom. But the moment they passed each other, he suddenly paused, turning back in confusion, his nose twitching slightly. The smell was different from the one he remembered.
An Ran looked over in confusion as well. For a brief moment, an absurd thought flashed through Ji Jue’s mind.
Did you change your shower gel? Why do you smell… kind of nice? Your hand looks kind of small for a guy… Bro… bro… bro… Hold your horses.
Without hesitation, Ji Jue slapped himself across the face. Yet again, just like countless times these past few days, he reminded himself, Ji Jue, you have always been straight, why the sudden change? You didn’t have a problem peeing next to him in the rift realm like two bros, so chill... You must get your mind out of the gutter[1].
But that confused face leaned closer, studying An Ran blankly.
“Mr. Ji, what’s wrong? You’re acting kinda weird.”
Ji Jue froze, holding his breath. He slowly backed away, then a little more. Suddenly, he felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. One wrong step and he would fall completely off course.
Outside the window, on the sill, Gloria, like a metallic hummingbird, suddenly flew up and shouted at the top of her voice, “It’s about to rise!”
Ji Jue was shocked, and he waved his hands frantically. “No, it’s not! What the… Don’t say weird stuff like that, kid!”
“But! I saw it! I saw it!!!” Gloria flapped her wings in panic, screaming, “I saw it! Something’s there! Something huge is about to come out! It’s bad, it’s terrible, it’s dange—”
She shouted chaotically, her words tumbling over each other, unable to explain clearly what was happening. Even before that, the moment he sensed her panic, Ji Jue had already instinctively raised his hand.
Deus Ex Machina!
Resonance began, and the synesthetic link was activated. Visual data originating from Gloria flooded Ji Jue’s mind, nearly tearing his consciousness apart.
No one knew what preset module had been triggered, nor how many dangerous modifications the Seer had packed into that small body. What had once been simple light-based vision perception was now escalating at a terrifying speed.
Resolution amplified without limit. Distance, size, length, weight, material properties all came into perception. Then came matter penetration, infrared spectrum, and the trajectories of spirit matter flow. Finally, what appeared in Ji Jue’s vision was an empty, formless net.
That strange force and disturbance had transformed into a dense, intricate grid in his sight, covering the sky, the earth, and even the entire world. In the villa courtyard, that originally calm network was now strangely bulging and writhing continuously, gradually becoming sharp and distorted, as if within the void behind the grid, something was slowly exerting force, tearing at it, about to break through.
Around the point of deformation, all fluctuating values had already turned blood red. At the very center was a familiar Supreme Benevolence emblem.
Ji Jue inhaled sharply, a chilling realization flooding through him. He finally understood what this was.
This was an observation system for the power of Supreme Benevolence. More precisely, it was a monitoring apparatus once constructed by Mercury for its own purposes, designed to convert imperceptible changes into visual perception. And its target was none other than the authority over time and space itself: the Supreme Benevolence Eternal Gate.
After discarding the absurd hypothesis that “after Chen Xingzhou’s death, Chen Yubo would fall into corruption, become a tyrant, plunge the world into chaos, and be stopped by a time-traveling mechanical soldier sent by a resistance using a time machine,” only one possibility remained: someone was about to slam a spatial gateway right into their faces.
Just then, piercing alarms echoed throughout the entire villa, jolting everyone awake from their peaceful illusion. They looked around in confusion, unaware of what had just happened.
“Attack incoming!” Ji Jue announced on the broadcast channel. “All units, prepare! The enemy is about to transm—”
Before he could finish, an unprecedented explosion erupted, shaking the entire cliffside and even the sea itself.
For a brief moment, gravity itself seemed to vanish.
In the elegant courtyard, everything once beautiful was instantly crushed into dust. An invisible maw bit down from the void, carving out a perfect circle in space. Immediately after, a cross-shaped crack split open at the center of the distorted grid, unfolding in four directions. Figures stepped out one after another.
The gaunt elder raised his gaze. From his pure white eyes burst a blazing light. “Kill them all. Leave no one alive.”
The gate slammed fully open. Beyond it, in the darkness, beasts surged forth. They rushed forward in a surging tide, stepping straight onto a landmine.
***
Ding!
At Mercy Hospital, in the inpatient building lobby still busy deep into the night, the elevator doors slowly opened.
“Excuse me, sorry, thank you.” Mr. Lin, carrying a late-night meal, squeezed into the crowded elevator and nodded politely at the patients and family members in hospital gowns.
Under the pale white lights, everything looked decayed and cold. Even the most lively eyes had been soaked by the smell of disinfectant into exhaustion and numbness.
But the moment the elevator doors closed, those eyes inside the packed cabin all turned blood-red. Darkness surged, swallowing everything.
On the sixteenth floor of the inpatient building, the ICU door slowly closed. A nurse still pushing a trolley came to the bedside and looked down at the critically ill patient. His face was pale, and his faint, fragile breath was drawn with difficulty.
A colorless liquid was drawn into a syringe. Under the light, the nurse flicked the barrel, expelled the air inside, then rolled up Chen Xingzhou’s sleeve and found the IV access.
The needle was steadily moved toward the line. And then, it stopped abruptly.
Her wrist was grabbed by none other than the patient’s hand. He had an incredibly strong grip, like a steel clamp.
Under the oxygen mask, Chen Xingzhou’s eyes slowly opened a sliver. He looked at the attacker before him without fear or hesitation, calm beyond measure. He gripped her wrist tightly, as if holding his own life firmly in his own hands. When the “nurse” let out a helpless sigh, he released her.
She slowly shook her head. “Isn’t it better to find release in a dream? I wanted to give you a quick end.”
A dagger slid out from beneath the white coat. Without hesitation, she stabbed him in the abdomen. Blood surged out.
Beep!!!
The instrument in the corner suddenly blared an alarm, alerting the guards outside. But, immediately after, the sound of fighting and slaughter erupted beyond the heavy doors.
Inside the room, everything remained calm. Amid the echoing alarm, only the faint sound of blood dripping onto the floor could be heard.
The nurse, expressionless, pulled out the dagger and stabbed again. She launched one strike, then another. Blood flowed, reflecting the flickering pale light overhead.
Outside the window, the long night stretched on endlessly. A flame suddenly rose into the sky, then another followed.
The world fell into chaos.
1. We know this is kinda weird at the moment but rest assured the story doesn’t develop in that direction. There’s a reason for this, but we cannot say more as it will spoil a future plot point.