Chapter 445: The Gods |
In a world tainted by the weird, the distinction between day and night had vanished. Grotesque, horrifying creatures roamed the streets and alleys ceaselessly, hunting for any life yet to be converted into their kind.
The unarmed civilians were the first to be devoured, followed by the federal forces on the front lines, who had no experience dealing with the weird. The vested interests at the top of the food chain had long since fled with their wealth, leaving the city's worker ants—those who created value but could never enjoy it—to struggle on their own.
Soon, they too were decimated. Instead, it was the motley crews from the city's gray areas who came to the forefront, surviving by the skin of their teeth under the monsters' claws, relying on the unconventional tricks they'd picked up from a life on the fringes.
The weird invasion was like an abyssal beast opening its massive maw at the base of the population pyramid, devouring every social class inch by inch from the bottom up, erasing all distinctions overnight.
Whether it was a homeless vagrant or a well-off member of the middle class, in death they all shared a single identity: a tainted, ever-restless weird.
May 12th, 5:00 AM. Jiang City.
Li Yan, cloaked in the stench of rot, blood, and rose sap, held his breath and crept cautiously past the rose monsters wandering the streets, slipping into a shopping mall at the crossroads.
As a player of the Weird Game, he was one of the first to know disaster was imminent. He'd long since stocked his home with plenty of drinking water, salt, and dry rations. When he saw messages about "mutant roses appearing" in a local group chat and then heard all of Jiang City was under lockdown, he'd holed up in his apartment and refused to go out.
For a week, he had stood at his window, looking down at his residential complex. He watched as rose vines, like a swarm of snakes, enveloped the reinforced concrete buildings, devouring one terrified, despairing life after another. The bodies of men, women, and children were strung up high to dry in the wind. A deep horror gripped him, yet it was mingled with the grim satisfaction of a survivor living on borrowed time.
The situation had improved slightly. The forums all said the Final Instance was over, which meant no new weird would appear. It was only a matter of time before the existing ones were cleared out and purified.
Li Yan knew that in the later stages of an apocalypse, the greatest danger was often not the disaster itself, but other people. Lawless gangs would surely form to plunder resources. He needed to take advantage of the period before the weird receded to scavenge for more food—enough, preferably, to let him stay locked away for another six months.
The closer he got to the mall, the denser the vines covering the ground and buildings became. The thick, coppery smell of blood in the air was almost tangible, and a grating, rustling sound echoed from the unlit depths. A freshly killed body hung suspended from the center of the mall's entrance. He looked familiar—a player Li Yan had chatted with a few times in the Sunset Ruins.
A bad feeling washed over Li Yan. He immediately began to retreat, stepping back into his own footprints, but it was too late. The vines in this area possessed a higher intelligence than the others. They had silently crept up behind him and were now tightening around his neck.
Suffocation suddenly set in. Li Yan's eyes rolled back in his head as his entire life flashed before him—pouring chalk dust into his elementary school teacher's cup, scalding his boss's money tree with boiling water after he started working...
"Bang!" A gunshot shattered the flashback. The vine wrapped around Li Yan's neck had been severed by a single, small bullet.
Li Yan fell to the ground, gasping for air. He looked up to see a blinding golden light emanating from the dim mall. A massive, four-sided spectral die floated high in the air, spinning erratically at high speed, as if it existed at the dawn of the universe before any rules had been formed.
A man in a black suit and rimless glasses emerged, dragging a corpse covered in roses. The body was bloated like a giant, at least twice the man's size, yet he lifted it with ease.
Li Yan had seen the man's face before. In the Sunset Ruins, he had been one of the crowd, shoving his way forward like all the other players fanatically chasing their savior, craning his neck to catch a distant glimpse of the figure encircled by members of the Listening Wind and Kyushu guilds.
But in the last few days, public opinion on the game forums had taken a nosedive. The man before him was no longer a savior, but a stubborn madman. Just before leaving his apartment, Li Yan had even started a forum thread to curse him out.
"Fu... God." After a long moment of panting, Li Yan finally managed to utter the honorific.
Lin Jue had already walked some distance away. Hearing the voice, he stopped and turned his head slightly, his silvery-white gaze falling upon Li Yan, waiting for him to continue.
Li Yan felt as if those eyes could see right through him, and for a second, he suspected the man already knew what he had done. But it didn't matter. Fu Jue had been criticized for so many years; surely he wouldn't care about one person's momentary grumbling?
Li Yan swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and then another, before speaking in a strained voice, "Thank you... for saving me." He thought for a moment, then mumbled, "Jiang City is full of these things now. What are we supposed to do?"
The Fate Dice continued to spin tirelessly overhead, like the sun, moon, and stars, its radiance illuminating the world and draping everything in a hazy mantle of light. Lin Jue lowered his eyes and said, enunciating each word, "I will end all of this."
Li Yan watched as Lin Jue's back disappeared in the distance, the light vanishing along with him. After standing stunned for a long time, he finally snapped out of it and scrambled back home in a hurry.
Before he even sat down, Li Yan pulled out his phone, opened the game forums, and his fingers began to fly across the screen.
Ten minutes later, every player following the game forums knew: Fu Jue was back in Jiang City.
...
7:00 AM. Five levels underground at the Jiang City branch of the Weird Investigation Bureau.
The rose monster captured by Fu Jue was sent to the research lab. Although there were almost no known methods for clearing the contamination from a human body, they had to at least try. Numerous other weird of various forms were locked in containment cells. The investigators had fought hard over the past seven days and had managed to achieve some results.
When the concentration of the weird reached a certain level, it spontaneously generated a frigid aura. The entire fifth sub-level felt as cold as a freezer, and a section of it had been converted into a morgue to store and observe the bodies of fallen investigators.
Mu Dongxu sat beside an iron cot covered with a white sheet. He placed a pack of chewing gum on the bedside table, stared at it for a long while, then pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and set it down as well.
"Old Liao is gone, too," Mu Dongxu said, seemingly out of nowhere, as he heard the door open and steady footsteps behind him. "Back in March, he and Ning Xu were investigating the Sila Guild together. It feels like it was just yesterday."
"He died covering my retreat. Ran out of items, so he set his own clothes on fire to hold back those vines. I was wondering why the old bastard still carried a lighter. Turns out he spent his whole life trying to quit smoking and never did..."
"My condolences," said the man who had entered. It was Lin Jue, speaking a phrase he had rarely, if ever, uttered in the past twenty-two years.
Mu Dongxu looked up, his weary eyes fixed on Lin Jue. He was silent for a long time, lost in thought. Finally, he asked the question, "Can they really all be brought back?"
Lin Jue said, "After the game is over, if I achieve final victory, I will resurrect everyone."
"The Final Instance is already over. Why is the world still like this?" "Because the game is still going."
Another silence followed.
After a while, Mu Dongxu stood up and headed deeper into the morgue. "Director, let me take you to get that bronze sword."
Lin Jue gave a slight nod and followed Mu Dongxu silently, stepping into a pitch-black, freezing darkness and through a long, narrow corridor that seemed to have no end.
In an instant, a light appeared before them. It was a dull, muted bronze glow that radiated an ancient aura, as if from an era before history itself. It was heavy yet gentle, and it inexplicably cleared the mind of all scattered thoughts.
The rust-spotted bronze longsword hovered in the darkness, silently waiting for a sacrifice, waiting to be wielded.
Lin Jue walked straight to it and raised his hand to grip the hilt. In that instant, all information about the sword flooded his mind.
[Name: God-Slaying Sword]
[Type: Item]
[Effect: ① Slay gods. ② Where a god falls, all weird, mystery, and grotesquerie of the past and future will perish alongside it.]
[Note: The "rule" that gods cannot be killed is merely a fallacy left behind by countless lesser beings after failed attempts. Over hundreds of millions of years, there have been countless grand rituals that used the death of a god as a sacrifice. All the living and dead of the world would fall silent, mourning the fall of a colossal life. Afterward, the weird, mystery, and grotesquerie that accompanied the god would be buried along with it, becoming history as the world was reborn.]
"I think," Lin Jue said, "I know the winning strategy for this round of the game."
...
May 12th, 12:00 PM sharp. For everyone sitting in front of a television, regardless of the channel they were watching, the screen switched to the same broadcast at that very moment.
In a stark white room, there was only a single chair. A man in a tailored suit sat upon it, the white glare reflecting off his glasses obscuring any emotion in his eyes—or perhaps those silvery-white eyes had been devoid of ripples from the very beginning.
"I am Fu Jue, and I am also Lin Jue. The former leader of the Ark Guild, the current leader of the Kyushu Guild, and the director of the Weird Investigation Bureau." He introduced himself calmly and continued speaking in the same even tone. "For the past thirty-six years, four million people worldwide have been swept into a cataclysm known as the 'Weird Game,' enduring fear and pressure that others could never know, fighting the weird in the shadows, and losing their lives."
An off-camera projector turned on, casting a dense, rapidly scrolling list of names and forum usernames onto the white wall behind Lin Jue and across his body. He went on, "Unfortunately, we failed. Those horrifying weird have breached the barrier of the Weird Game and invaded reality, inflicting irreversible destruction across the world over the past week. Thousands have lost their lives in this disaster."
"Fortunately, I have found the source of this disaster and I know how to deal with It. I will execute my plan with the utmost speed to restore the collapsing order in the shortest possible time. Before I achieve final victory, the weird will retaliate with even greater ferocity. But I promise you, after I win, all the dead will be resurrected."
At this, Lin Jue paused for a moment, as if waiting for the audience to process the information.
After half a minute, he continued, "You might see me as another madman in a killing competition with a madman who wants to destroy the world. The difference is, when I win this game, the world will be reborn."
"I might lose, but I'm willing to bet on the possibility of victory."
People in front of their televisions saw the man on screen tilt his head. As the light shifted, the eyes behind his glasses seemed to gaze intently at each and every person watching, and the corners of his lips slowly curled into an unpracticed smile. "What do you think?"
At the same time, on the Weird Game forums, the official Kyushu Guild account, which had been silent for days, posted a video.
In the video, Fu Jue's expression was colder than ever, even showing a kind of condescending aggression. He announced, his words clear and concise, "I am Lin Jue. I am also the Puppet Master, holder of the Fallen Savior and Silent Dictator identity cards. Every player who has had direct or indirect contact with me has been infested with my Puppet Threads."
"Over the past twenty-two years, I have handled 39 A-rank incidents, 237 B-rank incidents, and 1,826 C-rank incidents. The total number of other incidents of various ranks involving my puppets exceeds ten thousand. These weird incidents are distributed all over the world, and they will all spiral out of control the moment my heart stops beating."
"The promises made by the Ark Guild and the Kyushu Guild still stand. I will resurrect everyone after I win the game. So," he flashed a smile that had never appeared on the face of 'Fu Jue,' but was often worn by 'Lin Jue,' "you'd better pray that I win."
An uproar followed.
The two videos were quickly translated into various languages and spread across the globe.
After the cognitive distortion effect of the Weird Game was lifted, ordinary people who hadn't been chosen for the game flooded the forums. With explanations from the players, they quickly learned the game's history and mechanics, and came to understand Lin Jue's meaning even more clearly.
Since Si Qi was using the weird as a bargaining chip to blackmail players into attacking Lin Jue, Lin Jue decided to give him a taste of his own medicine, using even more concrete weird incidents as a threat. Now, the players could either stand by and do nothing, or choose the lesser of two evils and go after Si Qi instead.
And for the players, the revelation that Lin Jue, Fu Jue, and the Puppet Master were all the same person was absolutely staggering.
Many players who had once worshipped Lin Jue or Fu Jue felt betrayed and hurled endless abuse at the Kyushu Guild's official account. But what did it matter?
The reason Lin Jue chose this moment to reveal all his identities was to make the players believe he would do exactly as he said.
He used the reputation of "Lin Jue" to tell everyone that his ultimate goal had always been to save humanity. And he used the infamy of the "Puppet Master" to tell the players who preyed on the weak and feared the strong that he, too, could choose to be as mad as Si Qi, tying the fate of all humankind to a ship in a storm, a bargaining chip in his gamble against a god.
In the suburbs of Jiang City, Si Qi sat in an SUV, clutching his phone and laughing until he was out of breath. "Hahahaha! Lin Jue, you've finally taken off that saintly mask and stepped down from your pristine, white throne into the mud! The savior who claimed saving all of humanity as his duty is now using a weird outbreak as a threat. How amusing!"
"No matter how much you coveted fame, you still ended up on this path, resorting to any means necessary to achieve your ideal of salvation. Should I say we've been the same all along? The only difference is what we seek. I want entertainment. You want a beautiful, illusory ending."
"Yes, you're right. We are both egoists who will do anything to achieve our goals," Lin Jue's voice replied from the other end of the line, as calm as ever. "So then, let the two of us egoists continue this madman's game."