Chapter 425: Snow Mountain |
Lin Chen couldn't remember when he had found himself in the frozen wasteland, nor how he had arrived.
His last memory was of entering an instance called "No. 33 Middle School." He'd been summoned to a female teacher's office, only to see another version of himself staring back from a compact mirror on her desk.
The figure, dressed all in black, called himself "Lin Crow." He spoke of many things to come before pressing a pristine white card into Lin Chen's hand.
[Identity Card: Undead Shepherd]
[Effect: You can control any undead or ghost within the instance.]
[Note: They are the flock, and you are the one who shepherds them. Where will you lead them? Will you protect them? Redeem them? Or... slaughter them?]
The card depicted a figure in a pure white cloak, staff in hand, standing amidst a flock of sheep. Enormous white wings unfurled from its back, shedding feathers that drifted down from the sky in a display both holy and sorrowful.
Lin Chen stared blankly at one of the feathers, watching a single golden bead of blood well up on its quill and slowly drip down. For some reason, the sight brought a single word to his mind: "The End."
It was a strange sensation. We spend our lives in a flurry of mundane activity, mostly following the rules and forgoing deep thought. Yet, there are always a few fleeting moments—like a leaf caught in a current and swept into a still pool—when we pause, captivated by a particular sight or scene. We feel as if we've seen it in a dream, or a quiet voice whispers, "This is how I will die." And in that instant, another person in the world comes to understand their fate.
This was Shangri-La, the land of eternal life. He was on the Snow Mountain, the setting for the Final Instance. Here, under the guidance of a lama, Qi Si and Fu Jue had decided to join forces. Their plan was to fill a sacrificial pit with human lives in exchange for a chance to escape the mountain and contend for godhood.
Other things seemed to have happened after that, but his memory of that period was a vast, empty void. Any attempt to probe it only caused it to shatter into dark, meaningless fragments.
He knew only that it was night, and the dream of the Ancestral God enveloped them all, pulling everyone into the same vibrant, kaleidoscopic dream of a deity.
Where was he to go from here? And what was he supposed to do? Lin Chen could find no clear answers.
He couldn't even think straight. How had the formidable player who saved him in "Rose Manor" suddenly transformed overnight into a ruthless villain with countless lives on his hands?
Lin Crow couldn't find an answer either. That was why he had presented him with both the objective facts and a way to break the deadlock, leaving the final choice in his hands.
...
After stepping through the mirror and swapping places with Lin Chen, Lin Crow found himself in a darkness so absolute he couldn't see his own hand before his face. He stood there for an unknown stretch of time until a faint glimmer of light finally appeared, illuminating the murky space.
He could see clearly now. It was a playroom, cluttered with stuffed rabbits, balloons, and all sorts of small toys. This was his personal game space.
The rabbit hole in the center of the room, the entrance to the instances, was now rapidly shrinking, vanishing completely in the span of a single second.
The room's furnishings began to decay at a visible rate. Toys rusted and grew moldy, cotton spilled from the seams of the stuffed rabbits, balloons shriveled, and the walls crumbled into ruin.
"It's over." A smile touched Lin Crow's lips.
The instance's age-reversing effect had faded, and only now did he realize how much he had changed in just a few short months—how starkly different he had become from the person he once was, the one known as "Lin Chen."
He had been a child raised on love and kindness. Though his family's poverty had instilled in him a certain timidity, he had remained naive and innocent for a long time, clinging to an impractical idealism that was utterly out of step with the world.
Simply growing older doesn't make one an adult. True growth, the kind that shapes the soul, is almost always born from painful transformation. It happens the day you suddenly realize the world doesn't offer perfect solutions or grant wishes, that there is no such thing as perfect compatibility or unconditional kindness. Humanity has always been profoundly alone.
And now, his childhood was over. He had said his final goodbye to the Lin Chen of the past.
When he realized Qi Si intended to kill thousands, to use their lives as a ladder to godhood, his initial shock gave way not to a desire to stop him, but to a cold, calm understanding: it was the best way to break the stalemate.
He recalled the instance's mechanics: those who were killed would return at night as vengeful ghosts. Qi Si, by himself, stood no chance against an army of ten thousand spirits.
So he began to think. How could he save Qi Si from the coming siege of ghosts? There was no complex reason, no grand justification. It was simply because Qi Si had saved him three times. He owed the man three lives, and he wanted him to live.
The [Plague Doctor] card could only resurrect Qi Si once, and even that wasn't a guarantee. He had to solve the problem at its root. The [Undead Shepherd] card was the only way.
A player could only be bound to one identity card at a time. He already had the [Plague Doctor] and couldn't unbind it quickly. Fortunately, behind a wall of ice, he saw him: a version of Lin Chen who had yet to bind a card.
Lin Chen was good-hearted, naturally drawn to kindness and repulsed by evil.
Only Lin Crow would be willing to condone Qi Si's atrocities and save the villain who committed them.
What choice would Lin Chen make once he knew everything? Lin Crow had no idea.
But it was the only way.
He would entrust the power to decide the outcome to his purer, past self. He would consider it a final accounting for the first twenty years of his life.
The outline of a full-length mirror materialized before him, its surface displaying a frozen scene from the "No. 33 Middle School" instance.
It was time. And there was no more time.
Lin Crow stepped into the mirror. His black cloak dissolved into a scattering of crow feathers, and the identity card in the upper right of his vision crumbled to dust.
He would lose his memories as "Lin Crow." He would lose the [Plague Doctor] card. He would return to the past timeline and walk the same path, all over again, toward the inevitable end.
In the Sunset Ruins, beneath the World Tree, the name "Lin Crow" on the fractured stone of revelation faded into permanent darkness, leaving behind a stark, empty space.
...
Lin Chen stood amidst the snow-covered peaks. He looked back, but the temple was gone. He glanced to the side, but saw no trace of human life. In the bewildering expanse of white, there were no signposts, no monuments, not a single structure to use as a point of reference.
The frigid wind whipped at his cloak. He felt as if he were adrift in a boundless dimension, a place with no past and no future. Between the sky and the earth, he was utterly alone.
His very existence seemed to have become superfluous. When a name and a past are known and remembered by only a single person, they become an unprovable void, a shimmering, ephemeral illusion. In the narratives of other species, humanity has never been the protagonist.
Lin Chen clenched his jaw and trudged forward, pushing into the driving snow. The mountain ridge never seemed to get any closer, and the night never seemed to lose its depth.
Could he reach the foot of the mountain? Could he last until dawn? A tide of baseless, anxious thoughts churned in his mind. He took a deep breath, and then another, trying to quell the tremors that wracked him both physically and mentally.
He didn't know how long he walked before a golden light appeared in the distance. A pristine white altar rose from the snow, its color so close to the landscape that it nearly vanished into the white expanse. Only a single scarlet figure stood out, a slash of fresh blood against the monochrome world, piercing and vivid.
It was Qi Si. Lin Chen recognized him instantly. The Qi Si who had killed tens of thousands.
Lin Chen had never expected to encounter Qi Si so soon, nor had he prepared anything to say. But the moment he saw that figure, he found himself walking toward it, step by step, moving on pure instinct.
Then he watched as the young man in red leaped down from the altar. Silhouetted against the light, he walked over and extended a hand. "Lin Chen. You've come.
"The nights in Shangri-La belong to the Ancestral God's dream," Qi Si said. "What we need to consider now is how to wake up."
...
Qi Si no longer intended to become the Ancestral God. The idea suddenly struck him as utterly pointless.
To sacrifice all his humanity and his followers, to become a tool like Huo—devoid of will and emotion, meticulously executing the dictates of some cosmic rule—all for the privilege of surviving into the next era... It was dull. It was laughable. It was pathetic.
Survival itself held no inherent value; it wasn't something one was obligated to pursue. And death, it seemed, wasn't such a terrible thing after all. Qi Si recalled that he'd never really resisted the idea of dying. He hadn't entered the Weird Game to cure some terminal illness, but simply to choose a more interesting way to go.
As for why he'd played every game so seriously, accumulating such an impressive advantage, it was simply because he hated losing—and couldn't stand to watch anyone else win.
So when had he developed such a fierce will to live? When had he started wanting to survive?
Oh, right. He remembered now. It was when he encountered the Ancestral God on that bus.
The moment his eyes met the woman's, a long-forgotten fear had surfaced within him. Submerged in an environment teeming with the dead, he had mistaken that fear for a fear of death itself.
Later, upon entering Shangri-La, he found everyone pursuing eternal life and fighting against death. He assumed he was no different, and so he began to consider what it meant to live.
But he was supposed to be just as Zhou Ke had said: unafraid of death, unconcerned with life...
That was it. The Ancestral God had manipulated him. The Ancestral God wanted him to live, wanted him to become the new Ancestral God.
Following that logic, at the end of the "Holy City" instance, when the Ancestral God tried to possess his body, her goal probably wasn't resurrection at all. After all, her revival was already a certainty.
What the Ancestral God wanted was escape. She wanted to trade fates with him...
Now that things had come to this, Qi Si would sacrifice nothing more. His only goal was to find a way off this mountain and deny the Ancestral God her prize.
The blizzard intensified, obscuring the path ahead. With Qi Si in the lead and Lin Chen following behind, they trudged onward.
A vast wall of ice rose up before them, its surface reflecting phantoms of the dead. Once again, Qi Si saw his parents, long since passed.
The young couple's faces were blurred and distorted by the swirling snow, but he could still tell they were smiling. "Qi Si, you brought someone with you? Is he your friend?"
Qi Si smiled faintly and answered casually, "Yes. We've known each other for a while. We just happened to meet on the path, so we came together."
The couple exchanged a glance, their smiles widening. "That's wonderful! Qi Si finally has a friend."
Qi Si continued on his way, and together he and Lin Chen passed through the section with the ice wall, stepping out onto a vast, endless ice plain.
On the distant horizon, rows of dark figures materialized. The ghosts of those he had killed were returning, their numbers and presence even more formidable than the night before.
A familiar voice whispered at his ear: [Qi, will you sacrifice your followers and your humanity to become the Ancestral God...?]
Qi Si understood. This was the choice the rules had presented him with.
He could either lose his identity as "Qi Si" and become the Ancestral God, or he could lose his life as "Qi Si" and be torn to shreds by the ghosts.
Between the two, he thought dying was the better option.
"Lin Chen," Qi Si said with a dry sense of humor, "those ghosts seem to be here for me. If you don't want to die by my side, I suggest you go back the way you came." He then began to stroll leisurely toward the ever-closing horde of spirits.
But Lin Chen didn't leave. Instead, he followed even closer, silently and resolutely matching Qi Si's quickening pace, like a phantom bound to his shadow.
Qi Si was forced to stop. He glanced back over his shoulder and sighed in resignation. "I really think you should go. If you die, the Unnamed Guild will cease to exist. And I invested points in that, you know."
Lin Chen's face was unnaturally pale—whether from fear or the biting cold, it was hard to say—but his gaze was firm and unwavering.
"Qi... Brother Qi, I don't care if the Unnamed Guild exists or not." His lips trembled as he abruptly reached up and removed the human-skin mask from his face, revealing a delicate, boyish countenance. "I'm not Lin Crow. I'm... Lin Chen. The Lin Chen who owes you three lives. I want... to stay."
He assumed the instance's "age-reversal" mechanic had blurred the lines, and that Qi Si simply hadn't noticed the person beneath the mask had changed. That was why he chose this moment to reveal himself.
But Qi Si possessed the memories of Qi, spanning billions of years, and the very essence of a god. How could he possibly not have noticed?
Qi Si replied calmly, "You saved me once in the Colosseum instance. The debt is paid."
Lin Chen shook his head. "Not in full. There are still two to go."
Since Lin Chen refused to leave, Qi Si let him follow. A malicious thought even crossed his mind: as the world's greatest evil, a demon bent on turning the world to hell, it wouldn't be so bad to have someone die alongside him. At least he'd have some company, some warmth in death.
The ghosts swarmed them, bypassing Lin Chen to tear at Qi Si's flesh. They bit at his limbs, his torso. Blood gushed from the wounds; though it didn't show against his red suit, it stained the pure white snow crimson.
A lattice of bite marks covered his skin. Pain enveloped him like a web, and with every drop of blood, his strength and warmth ebbed away, as if the ghosts were devouring his very soul.
Watching from the side, his face ashen, Lin Chen activated the power of his [Undead Shepherd] identity card.
Several of the ghosts clinging to Qi Si fell under his control, and their memories flooded his mind—memories of sorrow, of pain, of resentment, of despair...
He could have obliterated them completely, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. They were all innocent, and they were all in so much pain.
The ghosts kept coming. No sooner had he forced one wave back than another surged forward. He had no choice but to bring them all under his command.
The memories of countless souls filled the halls of his mind. He didn't know when the tears had started to fall, but they froze into heavy, painful icicles on his cheeks.
He fought to stay conscious, to control more and more of the spirits. His mind felt as if it were being torn into a thousand pieces, and his consciousness began to fade. In the haze, he saw words appear, written in silver light:
[Hidden Identity Card Effect Unlocked: Bellwether]
[Note: You will become one of the undead, severing all ties with reality. You will become the Pied Piper of Hamelin, leading them to the Promised Land. You are the sole beacon in the world of the dead; upon seeing you, all undead will join your procession and follow you for eternity.]
[Activate this hidden effect?]
Lin Chen knew. This was the key to breaking the deadlock. This was his purpose.
Without a moment's hesitation, he answered, "Yes."
In that instant, a colossal figure in white materialized in the sky. Its immense, pristine wings blanketed the entire mountain, and feathers rained down like a blizzard, turning a sullied, grayish-black the moment they touched the ground.
Lin Chen was good-hearted. Only Lin Crow would be willing to condone Qi Si's atrocities and save the villain who committed them.
But no version of Lin Chen would ever let Qi Si die. And so, Lin Chen was always destined to become Lin Crow.
Inch by inch, Lin Chen's form grew transparent. Every ghost that saw him began to shamble toward him in a daze, forming a long queue behind him, their own figures fading in unison.
Soon, the space around Qi Si was empty. Lin Chen stood rooted to the spot, his thoughts and memories slipping away as he transformed into one of the undead—part of the price for severing his ties to reality.
He lowered his gaze to the young man in red lying in a pool of his own blood. An inexplicable sorrow welled up inside him, his chest tightening as if squeezed by a fist. But no matter how hard he tried to remember, he couldn't grasp the reason for this feeling.
He couldn't remember who this person was, either. He only knew that he had to leave—that he had to lead this world of ghosts away from the young man, as far away as he could possibly go.
And so, he turned his back. Step by step, he walked into the darkness at the heart of the mountain, a vast and silent procession trailing behind him.