Chapter 420: The Second Night |
Meanwhile, men and women were gathered in the temple's front hall. Some stood, others sat, but every face was etched with a palpable sense of despair.
From the sacrificial pit nearby, a torrent of screams and sobs boiled up, punctuated by the grating scrape of bone on bone. Though death had not yet claimed them, its looming shadow fell over everyone.
They all knew, with chilling certainty, that the pit was being filled with the deaths of the innocent. Only by offering enough sacrifices could this instance ever hope to end.
Yu Su couldn't stop weeping, muttering to herself between sobs, "Why is this happening? I want to leave the mountain. I want to go home..."
After a full day and night, the "revert to a child" mechanic had taken its toll, regressing her mind to that of a twelve-year-old. Compared to the other players, she was now a complete child.
Li Yunyang held her by the shoulders, preventing her from making a desperate dash out the temple doors and adding to the body count. She remained silent, unable to find any words of comfort.
Until today, she, like many members of the Kyushu Guild, had revered Fu Jue as the "Savior." His decision to "sacrifice the few to save the many" was something they could never have imagined.
But she had to admit, it was the only way. This instance was split across more than one spacetime, and no one knew what decisions the players in other timelines would make. Only by completing the sacrifice quickly and seizing the initiative could they prevent the world's future from falling into the hands of madmen like the Balance Church, who embraced the slaughter-stream playstyle.
Yet how was what Fu Jue had done any different from a slaughter-stream player? How could an idealist be so completely swept away by pragmatism? Or had his previous words and actions all been part of an elaborate charade?
Say Dream stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it. He took two drags, exhaling a cloud of acrid smoke, then pulled out a small perfume bottle and spritzed the air twice, a meager attempt to freshen it.
He opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words came out. Instead, he pulled out another cigarette and handed it to Jiang Junjue beside him.
Jiang Junjue took the cigarette and sized him up. "Say Dream," he said sagely, "I seem to recall your mental age has regressed to sixteen. Minors aren't supposed to smoke, you know?"
Say Dream didn't reply. The attempted diversion, far from easing the tension, only seemed to amplify the oppressive atmosphere.
Xu Yao was perhaps the only one completely unconcerned with human life and death. After wandering around the Kyushu and Listening Wind encampments for a while, she grew bored and sidled up to Lin Chen. "President Lin, you look terrible. Describe what you're feeling right now. I'm quite curious."
Lin Chen turned his back, ignoring the ghost. Lu Li, however, sat down beside him and began to speak slowly. "Actually, I've known Qi Si for much longer than you think."
He spoke as if telling a story, and Lin Chen found himself listening intently. Lu Li continued, "My past is a lot like yours. Until I was fourteen, I was always the class president—a model student in the eyes of my teachers, a good kid in the eyes of the adults.
"My parents are very upright people. They meticulously taught me how to be a good person, telling me the correct way to handle any situation. Much of the time, I didn't know *why* I was doing something; I just did it because I knew it was the right thing to do.
"So at school, when I saw Qi Si being ostracized by our classmates, I immediately went to comfort him and keep him company. It wasn't because I was particularly compassionate or empathetic, but because I knew that doing so was the only way to not betray the 'correctness' I had always followed.
"Qi Si and I became friends. Then, Fu Jue found me. Common sense told me that following the Federation's official requests was correct, so I obeyed Fu Jue's orders and did many things you might find... unacceptable.
"After the *Hopeless Sea* instance, I lost my human body for a time. I was confined to a containment cell in a non-human form. It was a very quiet, lonely period. My only companions were the books Fu Jue periodically sent me.
"The books were finished quickly. I no longer had to spend so much energy absorbing knowledge and memories as I used to. For the first time, I had the time to stop and truly think about things. I began to have doubts: What is truly right? And what is wrong?
"Good and evil are subjective standards instilled in us by society. We're too close to see clearly—like a fish that can't perceive the shape of water. How are we to judge our own merits and faults?"
Lu Li's voice grew fainter and more distant, until it was completely lost to the wind, impossible to grasp.
Lin Chen started. He looked around wildly—there wasn't another soul in sight. The temple was gone. He was standing on an ice field hemmed in by glaciers, facing a wall of ice that shone like a mirror.
The translucent ice reflected his own image: dark hair, dark eyes, a pale face. Strangely, though he was wearing a black suit, the figure in the ice wore a wrinkled hospital gown—exactly as he had looked when he first entered the instance.
"Are you... Lin Wuya?" the person in the ice asked, reaching out a hand. "Why do you look so sad? Did something happen?"
Lin Chen was taken aback, but then he remembered that his current identity was indeed Lin Wuya, president of the Unnamed Guild. The name corresponding to his Plague Doctor card was also "Lin Wuya."
He nodded. "Yes, I'm Lin Wuya. Who are you?"
The figure's expression was timid, though his voice feigned composure. "My name is Lin Chen. I'm... another you."
...
Qi Si sat by the edge of the sacrificial pit, his chin resting on his hand, calmly watching the skeletons pile up layer by layer, inching closer to the surface.
The corpses shrieked, their arms stretching toward the sky. Sharp fingers left long scratches on the icy walls, but they could find no purchase to escape the pit's grasp, instead sinking deeper and deeper.
The first sacrifices were soon buried by those who came after. Every single one was identical in its bitter resentment, their curses torn to shreds by the wind and snow, sounding like the shrieks of night owls.
As time wore on, the rate of new sacrifices slowed, finally stalling about half a meter from the top. The noise, however, was incessant, growing even more clamorous.
Fu Jue approached him. "I've exhausted every pawn I could sacrifice," he said flatly. "And played every card in my hand. What about you?"
"About the same," Qi Si replied. "The anomalies I spread earlier have all been detonated. All that's left is to see if there's any follow-on impact."
Qi Si's gaze fell on a corpse nearest the edge. It was a young man in his early twenties with Western features, apparently a victim of the Insomnia Bacteria.
The moment he'd appeared in the pit, he had screamed in terror. Once he understood what was happening, his face twisted in a snarl and he began to curse violently. He looked terrified and furious, and the profanity was likely quite foul, but unfortunately, Qi Si's English was so poor he couldn't understand a single word.
Qi Si grabbed the Poseidon's Scepter, thrust it into the pit, and gave it a casual stir, crushing a few of the noisiest skeletons.
When things quieted down a bit, he glanced over in Fu Jue's direction, but there was no one there.
Night had fallen. The temple was shrouded in silence, like a long-abandoned tomb. The other players were nowhere to be found. A lama sat motionless as a mountain by the sacrificial pit, gently tapping a wooden fish.
The steady *tok-tok* of the woodblock kept a rhythm against the wind and snow, like a summons calling lost travelers home. Qi Si knew he was dreaming again. He walked up to the lama and asked, "Have you seen the Ancestral God?"
The lama kept his head bowed, ignoring him completely. Qi Si tried again. "Then do you know where this is?" Still, the lama said nothing.
Getting nowhere, Qi Si wasn't bothered and simply strode out of the temple. Perhaps because it was still early in the night and the ghosts had not yet begun their hunt, he walked a long way without encountering any vengeful acquaintances.
He wandered aimlessly until he entered an ice plain walled with cliffs of ice, stopping before a mirror-like ice wall at the very end.
Zhou Ke was sitting cross-legged inside the ice wall. Seeing Qi Si, he grinned. "We meet again, Qi Si. I told you you'd be back."
Qi Si looked down at him, his expression mirroring Zhou Ke's own mocking look. "You're not me. I don't know what you are—a servant of the rules or the Ancestral God—but don't play the part for so long that you start to believe it yourself."
"Oh? Are you afraid of your uniqueness being erased? Is that why you refuse to acknowledge my existence?" Zhou Ke's eyes narrowed mockingly. "I have your memories. I know your fears and desires. Besides you, who else could do that?"
Qi Si didn't answer, continuing his previous line of thought. "As I understand it, in the worldline Zhou Ke belongs to, Lin Jue used the effect of the Dark Judge on himself, and through that, he obtained the foolproof strategy for this instance."
"Since you call yourself Zhou Ke, I'd like to ask: as the same person, given that I am more complete than you and have a better chance of opening the temple in the Sunset Ruins, would you be willing to trade fates with me?"
"Ha." Zhou Ke gave a dry laugh, watching Qi Si with great interest. "And what makes you think you're more complete than I am?"
Qi Si smiled as well. "You said it yourself last night. I have desires. I want to live.
"It is desire that elevates humans from the ranks of beasts. And what could better demonstrate a god's completeness than for a passionless, desireless deity to possess desire?"
A sound cut through the air behind him. Qi Si dodged the flash of a blade and sent the Cursed Pendulum striking out behind him. The clear, deadly ring of metal on metal was the prelude to the night's hunt.
Tonight's dream was a continuation of the last. Dressed all in black, Chang Xu stood behind Qi Si, his expression blank. He mechanically raised his scythe and brought it crashing down.
Qi Si dodged the attack and summoned the Straw Tiger. He vaulted onto its back and spurred the beast into a gallop across the ice plain.
The ice underfoot cracked open periodically, and pairs of pale hands reached out from the fissures, grabbing the edges to haul their heavy bodies out from the solid ice.
A dark mass of ghosts stood assembled across the endless snowscape, all converging on Qi Si's position. This time, most of them had Western features, their faces mottled with the yellow lesions characteristic of death by the Insomnia Bacteria.
Qi Si gripped the Poseidon's Scepter and summoned a sudden downpour that smelled of salt and brine. Before the drops could hit the ground, the frigid air froze them into pea-sized crystals of ice.
The ghosts were battered to the ground. The Straw Tiger charged through the lurching horde of corpses, plowing a bloody path toward the distant, rolling ridgeline.
The dark figures on either side began to thin out, and Qi Si saw the dead from an even earlier time.
A tribe clad in animal skins sang and danced around an altar, only to be baked into dried husks by a scorching sun the god had casually sent down. An army in full armor, shouting slogans of holy war, became lost in the vast desert. Alchemists seeking the elixir of immortality set sail, only to have their oars shattered by giant waves on a stormy night.
As a god, He had long known the greed and foolishness of the human race. He treated them with crude simplicity, as livestock to be slaughtered at will, just as humans treated animals weaker than themselves.
But when He realized that simple slaughter could not generate more sin, He learned to entice and deceive. He made humans scramble after their desires, only to crush all their hopes at the last moment before dawn, ensuring all their efforts came to nothing.
An emperor in black dragon robes stretched out a wrinkled hand, muttering, "My great work is unfinished... I cannot accept dying midway..."
A middle-aged man holding a chemical reagent trembled, his voice hoarse with desperation. "I was so close to success! God, tell me what to do..."
A grievously wounded soldier lay in a trench, his breath as faint as a thread. "I want to live... I still have to see my mother one more time..."
In an instant, all their faces twisted into hideous masks of rage, their voices turning into furious roars. The cruel god had sat on high, treating human joys and sorrows as a play. But now He no longer possessed great power. He was just a fragile mortal, and so—
It was time for revenge.
The Straw Tiger beneath him disintegrated into fragments. Qi Si had no choice but to use the Poseidon's Scepter as a staff, supporting himself as he trudged through the slick ice and snow.
Ghostly claws reached for him. The Cursed Pendulum intercepted the few closest to him, and he dodged left and right, but a sharp nail still managed to slash his arm.
A drop of blood fell onto the ice, spreading into a pale pink stain. Tonight seemed even longer than the last. He had been walking for so long, yet the sky showed no signs of lightening. The dream was black; white meant waking. Clearly, there were too many ghosts seeking vengeance. The culprit was still far from waking.
The shrieks of the ghosts grew louder and louder, faintly mixed with pathetic cries of "Save me." How ridiculous. They hated the god for his heartlessness and cruelty, yet they begged for his salvation. They didn't hate God; they only hated that God hadn't fulfilled their desires.
Qi Si's suit was torn to shreds, his body crisscrossed with wounds that oozed thick, metallic-smelling blood. He saw the ridgeline just ahead, resembling the corpse of a woman lying on her side.
A colossal, bleached-white skeleton lay between heaven and earth. Its sharp ribs had grown into a dense forest of stone, and its seven-colored blood gushed out from beneath it, forming rushing rivers and great streams.
The Ancestral God.
The bones of the Ancestral God, once devoured by the other gods. Her final remains had become the highest snow mountain in this world.
A shuddering terror rose from the depths of Qi Si's heart, like an ant crawling across a gloomy wasteland, thinking the sky was merely overcast, only to look up and realize it was living in the shadow of something titanic.
It seemed that ever since entering this instance, he had felt fear constantly—not fear of any specific thing, but the irrepressible, instinctual terror a living being feels in the face of death. A god, after all, is still a living being.
"Save me..." someone was groaning. For some reason, the voice sounded familiar to Qi Si.
Who was it? How could that person be here? Why were they asking for help?
The fear mounted, layer by layer, growing heavier and heavier, but Qi Si refused to back down. He gritted his teeth and pushed forward, toward the Ancestral God's remains.
In an instant, as if he had crossed some invisible threshold, the ghosts and all the strange phenomena vanished. Before him stood a pristine white altar.
A young man in a red Tang suit with his hair in a small braid was pinned to the altar by his limbs with pure white feathers. He lay on his back, a river of blood flowing out from beneath him.
It was Jin Yusheng!
Qi Si's eyes narrowed.