novellk Chapter 544 - 541:
Chapter 544 - 541:
Chapter 544: Chapter 541: "You really are God, aren’t you?"Ding ding ding..."
In the kitchen, Su Ming’an was staring at the bubbling soup pot in front of him.
He had been
Blood spread out broadly, mixing with the strange scent of flesh soup. The sight of innards and vivid red was enough to make anyone with a weak constitution vomit just by staring at the screen.
The gruesome death of the Black Beast frightened many in the live broadcast.
[Holy shit, what is this?]
[A skill that induces madness? I thought it was terrifying before...]
[Isn’t that a bit exaggerated? I think it’s just a control-type illusion skill, otherwise it would be too much of a bug.]
[Are you guys still comforting yourselves? The trend of this skill’s appearance has already become irreversible. Sound the alarm, everyone.]
[——Do we still have a future?]
[Will the World Game develop into a haven for a bunch of psychopaths, abnormal people, madmen?]
[Heh, it already has. Maybe we’re the ones who are already insane, and the real sane people are the ones locked up in the United Group’s mental hospital.]
[Damn, that’s terrifying when you think about it.]
[...]
Su Ming’an watched this scene with a grave expression.
He didn’t test the skill any further, but stepped over the Black Beast’s corpse, walking through the blood that covered the ground.
Looking at the Occupation interface, he regarded the blood-red scale icon labeled "Judgment" as if it were Pandora’s Box.
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Ann, you’re so strong. You even kill those kinds of monsters, you are the strongest person I’ve ever seen...]
[Su Ming’an: ...]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: But why do you look so unhappy?]
[Su Ming’an: Strength doesn’t mean perfection.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Hmm... I think so too. Just like a virus can’t bring peace.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: But, you’ve brought me so much food, I don’t want to see you sad.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Can I sing for you? Would that be okay?]
...
For the first time, Su Ming’an truly heard Yuan Shuangshuang’s voice.
Before, it had always been through an intercom, communicating in the form of black text boxes; now, he was hearing her actual voice for the first time.
Even though she was still in the basement, her singing felt as though it was resonating right beside his ear.
Gentle, soft, and youthful.
"How beautiful is freedom and light..." she hummed softly, "I am so, so eager to meet you..."
Ming’an headed towards the storage room; he still needed to find the key to the laboratory to rescue Yuan Shuangshuang.
While descending the stairs, he asked, "You’re obviously in the lab, where is your voice coming from?"
[Yuan Shuangshuang: ...]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: I also... don’t know what’s happening. Everything is so mysterious, right? There are too many things in the world that can’t be understood; there’s no need to figure them all out one by one.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Just like you’re able to stuff food into the intercom and feed me, something impossible happening isn’t so bad, is it?]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: We need to be a bit dumber, that way we can live happier lives. That’s what my teacher taught me.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Look, the storage room is right ahead... There’s a key in there...]
Su Ming’an raised his head.
In front of him was a room shrouded in greyness, rows of paper documents lay on dusty shelves.
He stepped into the room and found a secret door in the corner, secured with a password lock.
The system notified that forced entry was not possible, and he must enter the password.
Fortunately, the first four digits of the password had been locked in place, leaving only one unknown digit. The password wheel was stuck between four and five.
[Yuan Shuangshuang: The key is inside! It’s just that I don’t know whether the last digit is four or five...]
[Su Ming’an: What happens if it’s wrong?]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Seems like... it might explode?]
Su Ming’an pondered for a moment.
Clearly, this was a pure test of luck; a wrong input would mean the player dies.
Unfortunately, there were no other players with high luck around him anymore, Sherry was dead.
He switched to Bright State but still didn’t know if he could withstand an explosion.
After thinking it over, he pulled out the Otherworldly Notes of the Knight of Light, which had two uses left. By writing his name in it, he would be invincible for ten seconds.
But as he was about to write, he hesitated.
...Was it too wasteful to use one chance at ten seconds of invincibility just to withstand an explosion?
Dying in an explosion wasn’t something new to him.
A chance at ten seconds of invincibility was more important than his life.
As he raised his hand, intending to try the password "four," Yuan Shuangshuang spoke up.
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Or, maybe we should just give up.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: I’m locked up in the lab, and it’s not too bad. I shouldn’t... let you risk getting blown up to get the key and save me.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: You’ve been talking to me all this time, you’re a good person... no, are you a deity?]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Deities should be blessing all corners, governing the world... not risking themselves for one person.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Everyone says I’m a monster, and I think so too. If you really come to the lab and see what I look like, you’d probably hate me too.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: So, better... not rescue me.]
[Su Ming’an: No, I have to.]
...
A crisp "click" sound.
The password digit stopped at "four".
Su Ming’an immediately leaped back, bracing for a potential explosion.
After a moment, staring at the automatically opening secret door, he breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed he had guessed the password correctly.
This was his rare victory of luck.
He took out the key and returned first to the conference room with the recorded message, intent on finishing the recording before going to find Yuan Shuangshuang.
This recording from five years ago must be important.
With a crisp "click," the battery engaged, power was restored, and the LCD screen resumed playing the recording.
"...Up to now, our team, at exactly six o’clock yesterday evening, through experimenting on the bodies of Qiongdi people, found a solution for extracting the virus..."
It was still that same middle-aged man giving a speech, the content the same as before.
Moments later, a girl with purple hair walked into the frame.
"...Subject Number One? Wasn’t she locked up? How did she get in here? The guards... where are the guards?" the middle-aged man screamed.
Blood suddenly began to spurt from the researchers around him, and one after another, they dropped dead.
The purple-haired girl had killed almost everyone.
"Disgusting," the purple-haired girl said, "The people of Qiongdi built the Black Wall to contain the curse, yet you extract a virus from them, seeking to unleash it beyond—merely for your own ambitions of conquering other nations."
"—That’s not true!" The dying middle-aged man listened, his eyes widening with rage: "Our team is working for world peace—for the complete suppression of those rebels—"
"I’ve seen outsiders who want to save the people of Qiongdi, and then there are selfish outsiders like you," the purple-haired girl said. "Turning a curse into a virus and spreading it to the outside world, can’t you realize how terrifying that is? Sooner or later you’ll reap the consequences of your evil, perhaps even today. Humanity always loves to make the same mistakes."
The middle-aged man: "...How did you get in here. Yuan Shuangshuang, with your meager cursed power..."
The purple-haired girl: "I am not Yuan Shuangshuang; I have taken over her body—I am Xiao Ai, and I wield her cursed power far more powerfully."
The purple-haired girl: "No one—can tame the wild souls of the people of Qiongdi. You will pay for using them."
The purple-haired girl: "You can die now."
"Snap!"
...
The screen went black, and Su Ming’an’s eyes flickered slightly.
The recording showed that five years ago, Xiao Ai took over Yuan Shuangshuang’s body and killed all the researchers here.
So, the Yuan Shuangshuang who had been talking to him all this time was...
In his inventory, the walkie-talkie vibrated slightly.
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Is this what happened here five years ago? Right, I suddenly remembered... it seems I have already...]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: ...]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Since you’ve found the key already, come to the basement, come find me.]
Her words seemed very sad.
...
Following Yuan Shuangshuang’s instructions, Su Ming’an made his way down and found the laboratory.
After unlocking the door with the key, he saw several large, blue water tanks and rows of nitrogen cylinders. Twisted, gray-white pipes covered the walls, and the air was thick with the smell of dust, indicating that no one had been in here for a long time.
In the center of his view lay the most conspicuous, a white bed.
Old tubes like octopus tentacles were connected to that bed, while the nearby, long-unused electrocardiogram machine was out of power, its screen pitch black.
[Yuan Shuangshuang: What are you doing standing at the door?]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: It’s in the direction you’re looking, I am lying on that bed, come over, come find me.]
Su Ming’an stepped forward.
As he walked, his footsteps creaked on the floor, which bore many drag marks of dried blood.
He stepped closer to the bed one step at a time, the candle in his hand casting a warm, faint light.
The gentle flame outlined the bedspread.
It wasn’t the cute, purple-haired girl he had envisioned.
...Rather, it was a rotten, shriveled corpse.
Perhaps because the preservation conditions were decent, her human shape was still discernible, her body pierced all over with tubes, her limbs thin and long like spider legs, purple-black spots covering her entirety.
Her face, now showing bones through tears, had an expression of immense pain as if she had suffered greatly from experiments before death.
A pot of soup and sides like chicken wings and fries had fallen to the floor, gathering dust.
...
From Su Ming’an’s hand, the walkie-talkie came to life.
[Yuan Shuangshuang: Ah.]
[Yuan Shuangshuang: You’ve found me.]