Chapter 9: Bleargh…
When time stands still, what do you think about?
If every reader's answer could be extracted and compiled into a book, that book would already exist in the real world. It's called the Criminal Code.
In truth, when time stands still, you think about nothing at all.
Consciousness rests upon existence, and the essence of [Existence] is [Time].
When time freezes, existence vanishes, consciousness goes dark, and a person loses all capacity for thought, reduced to a statue of flesh and bone.
The experience was terrifying, because a person caught in temporal stagnation might well believe they were already dead.
Yet it might not be so terrifying after all, because that person likely wouldn't even realize they were trapped in temporal stagnation.
No one knew how long had passed. For Cheng Shi and the others, it might have been an instant. But for the Fear Demons, perhaps it was a lifetime…
The zone fast-forward effect gradually faded, and Song Yawen's consciousness, sheltered behind Cheng Shi, slowly sharpened.
The moment his capacity for thought returned, he felt the absolute zenith of death's bloom.
Fear Demon corpses rained down from overhead. Bloodless mangled flesh surged into this still-clean space alongside uncountable tentacles.
The death aura hit him like a wall, so thick it was practically gelatin, making Song Yawen's spirit tremble from the depths of his soul.
"What level of Death Domain is this?
Does a Death Domain of this magnitude even exist??
If he fired off an ultimate in here, wouldn't it summon the true god of [Death]???"
Three questions, three shocks, but Song Yawen wasted no time. He vividly remembered Cheng Shi's words: this single strike would be the key to saving them all.
Watching the tentacle monsters, having run out of flesh to devour, frantically undulating toward the six of them, Song Yawen drew a deep breath. Both his eyes instantly turned pure black.
Harvest Mode, engaged!
He extended both hands and clamped them viciously around his own throat.
With a sharp "crack," he snapped his own neck without mercy.
Then, the standing "corpse" of Song Yawen began to slowly dissolve. The dense death aura around him boiled instantly. Spectral winds howled. Green luminescence surged. In the blink of an eye, an enormous black scythe radiating apocalyptic fury materialized above everyone's heads.
Cheng Shi and the others had just regained their senses. Staring up at the death scythe suspended overhead, everyone's breath caught.
Big.
Too big.
They had never seen a death scythe so terrifying. Even the small skull ornament at the tip of the handle looked like a colossus carved from a mountain.
Let alone the blade itself, suffused with an eerie green glow. It looked like the kind of edge that could slice a planet in half.
Even in a 2100 lobby, Cheng Shi had never seen a death scythe this massive!
The only thought in his head right now was a prayer that Song Yawen wouldn't go mad and send all of them along with the enemy.
"Soul's slumber, life's end! Requiem! Harvest!"
As a phantom prayer thundered across heaven and earth, the colossal scythe descended in a single sweep, trailing the whispers of the dead.
Across the entire visible ruin field, save for the small patch where the group stood, a momentary fracture appeared.
Shattering like a mirror, cobweb cracks splintered outward.
Then…
Sighs of death-embracing lamentation rose one after another, echoing to the heavens. Countless grotesque tentacle monsters, bloated from gorging on flesh, closed their eyes in unison, as if drifting off to sleep.
Death was never a thunderous event.
The moment the scythe fell, the fires of their lives were quietly extinguished.
Man dies, scythe fades.
Start to finish, mere seconds.
But the death aura still churned around them. It twisted, rose, and converged once more, reconstituting the "dead" Song Yawen from the ether.
He dropped from mid-air, gasping and drenched in sweat. The moment he hit the ground, he collapsed into the gore, his entire body convulsing.
Nangong, standing closest, reached for him out of healer's instinct. But the moment her fingers touched his wrist, she found his body abnormally healthy, even brimming with vitality, as though at his absolute peak.
His convulsions weren't post-exhaustion from a desperate ultimate. They were the after-tremors of unbridled ecstasy.
"Badass… badass…
I saw my Lord's face. I saw Him seated on His throne of white bone, bestowing upon me a massive scythe.
Badass…
Cheng Shi, you're a total badass!!!"
Heaving for breath, he struggled upright, his limbs still twitching:
"That one strike… my whole life was worth it just for that…"
Cheng Shi smiled at this. Nangong, her disgust palpable, released Song Yawen's wrist.
Chen Chong and Cao Sansui remained trapped in the aftershock of that apocalyptic scythe for a long moment. It wasn't until the Fear Demon flesh and dead tentacles began to engulf them that Chen Chong hauled the half-dead Cao Sansui from the muck and stood up.
"Done… it's done?"
He still couldn't believe it. That many Fear Demons, an army of that scale, all gone, just like that?
What on earth had just happened?
Meeting Chen Chong's inquisitive stare, Cheng Shi grinned:
"Don't think about it. You don't want to know what happened. Also, it's not over. When the Bone Army notices its right flank has gone silent, they'll likely send others to investigate. We need to leave, now."
He grabbed the rolling, struggling Xia Wan and hauled her up, pointing at the swellings on her belly, calves, and lower back, all seriousness:
"Our combat strength has taken heavy losses. Cao Sansui, Nangong, and Xia Wan have all lost their fighting capacity. Those two are manageable, but Xia Wan's condition needs urgent treatment. We retreat first, find a place to regroup."
Song Yawen was still drowning in the exhilaration of his world-ending single strike. Hearing the urgency in Cheng Shi's voice, he blurted:
"Isn't there still you?"
Cheng Shi hoisted Xia Wan onto his back, his face darkening.
"I'm a 1500-point healer. What do you expect me to do?"
"???"
Song Yawen gaped, pointing at the apocalyptic hellscape around them, stammering:
"You… you… all this… wasn't this you?"
As he spoke, his voice warped out of shape. "If you're 1500 points, I'll cut off my own head and let you kick it like a ball."
Chen Chong's expression also darkened. He slung Cao Sansui onto his back, grabbed Nangong, and marched out without a second's hesitation, thinking to himself:
This guy definitely had the skill, but he showed off way too much. It was insufferable.
What was even more insufferable was that every single time, he pulled it off!
A victor's banter wasn't inherently annoying, but the environment absolutely did not allow them to linger. So the group trudged onward, stumbling through the blood-soaked, quagmire ruins, wading eastward with every step an effort.
Standing at the center of the Death Domain, they hadn't felt the full weight of it. Only now, as they picked their way step by step out of this charnel house, did they truly comprehend what Cheng Shi had done.
Chunks of flesh. Mangled corpses. Slime. Black blood.
The group walked as though through a museum, one that exhibited every conceivable object and form related to blood and meat. Not only did it defy imagination, it repeatedly assaulted the delicate stomachs of normal human beings.
The scene could no longer be put into words.
From this single encounter alone, all five of them gained an entirely new understanding of [Birth].
This was supposed to be an orderly, righteous god?
Even Xia Wan, a devoted follower of [Birth], couldn't suppress the urge to…
"Bleargh…"
Nangong was the first to vomit.
She was already weakened to the breaking point from her self-inflicted wounds. As her legs dragged through the quagmire of flesh and blood, the reek of rot and gore flooded her nostrils. It brought her not the guidance of [Decay], but soul-crushing nausea.
Once the first shot was fired, the dam broke again.
"Bleargh… bleargh…"
No one could hold it in anymore.
Chen Chong most of all. Desperate to escape this hell, he sprinted while vomiting, carrying someone on his back who was also vomiting, dragging someone by the hand who was also vomiting. The triple chorus of retching clawed at his eardrums, driving him to the brink of madness.
"Xia Wan, you've got to hold it in. This is my Lord's handiwork, it's His guidance…"
"Bleargh…"
"…"
Cheng Shi felt something warm on his shoulder, and his face immediately spasmed.
"Your mom… your mom must worry about you something fierce…"
Xia Wan, enduring the violent thrashing of the "life" gestating inside her, said weakly:
"My mom's dead… she offered herself to [Defilement]…"
"Oh, uh…"
Cheng Shi's innards squirmed with regret at his big mouth: I'm a terrible person…
"Rather than my mom, you should worry about my daughter. She might be arriving any moment…"
Cheng Shi's face went black. He roared ahead:
"Chen Chong, prepare! Xia Wan's going into labor!"
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