On the second level of the empty Mount Ming Pagoda, the Yao stuck in the hole was already dying.
Luo Musheng was right; even after returning to the age of fifteen, Dong Yao and Long Ran’s reflexes were extremely terrifying.
With muscle memory alone, it allowed them to dodge the tentacle attacks, and with the concerted efforts of the two, the Yao no longer had any means that could be used to attack. Its tentacles were broken off, leaving only its bare torso trembling helplessly.
Zhuo Yu imaginatively borrowed fire from Dong Yao, then burnt the dagger red hot, like a Japanese cuisine chef, and sliced the Yao’s tentacles into segments. The crowd could smell the aroma of roasted meat.
“This thing heals too well; I wanted to try to see if I could block cell regeneration with fire, and it worked.” Zhuo Yu used the tip of his knife to stab up a section of the Yao’s meat. “If we can bring it out for research, modern medicine will surely advance a lot.”
He looked to his leg and sighed softly.
“Stop playing around; hurry up and ki-ll it.” Dong Yao didn’t realise that this seemingly weak one was actually so perv-erted. “Cough, or I’ll get hungry.”
Zhuo Yu smiled at him.
However, before this smile could dissipate, Long Ran seemingly unintentionally stepped in front of Dong Yao and said to Zhuo Yu, “This thing has no weaknesses, and I’ve carefully searched for them; there are no internal organs in its body.”
“It doesn’t have to be ki-lled; just throw it to the first floor; it can’t get up without its tentacles.”
Zhuo Yu pinched his chin, then squeezed out a drop of bloo-d from the wound on his finger, dripped it onto the body of the Yao, and realised that the drop of bloo-d was actually absorbed.
“I don’t know whether it’s better to say it’s advanced or primitive; I suspect it’s using its cells to secrete digestive enzymes to absorb food.” Zhuo Yu shrugged, “Well, I’m no longer interested in it.”
Long Ran took Liu Jingyun’s straight blade and, like a butcher cutting a cow, he joined Dong Yao in splitting the Yao into pieces, which Luo Musheng kicked it down.
Seeing how it twisted and flailed but no longer had the strength to climb up the sacred tree, everyone was relieved.
After solving this time bomb, the only thing left to solve was to think about how to leave this hellish place.
Looking down from the cave entrance, the first floor was densely packed with snakes below; this path wouldn’t work. The second layer of space, on the other hand, was empty; they could only see black bricks wrapping up the layer. Luo Musheng tried to look for puzzles but ended up with nothing; there was nothing here that needed to be deciphered; it was just simply a blank sheet of paper.
Just like a child.
Luo Musheng’s mind suddenly came up with these words for some reason.
Dong Yao’s hot-headed nature reared its head. At the age of fifteen, he was a punk who was known far and wide in the school; he wasn’t a good boy in the first place, and his frustration at the moment made him even more furious. He stomped on the stone tiles under his feet with force and said angrily, “This hellhole, it won’t be that we’re going to be locked up until we die, will it?”
Suddenly, he felt that the bricks under his feet seemed to sink.
It seemed like an organ.
He really couldn’t be this unlucky, right?
A breeze whisked past his face. Dong Yao was bewildered for a split second. The next second, the sound of cars honking and hawkers yelling filled his ears. His shoulder was tapped. Dong Yao fixed his eyes on the person; that person was his close buddy.
“Dongzi, it’s not so bad, right? Man up, go back and apologise to your mother.”
[TN: The character 子 zi literally means offspring or child, but it is also used as a noun suffix. You can often find it in a lot of nouns.]
Familiar voice, familiar words—Dong Yao froze.
“That teacher is really something too, Dongzi; it wasn’t easy for you to study properly for once; he actually slandered you for plagiarising; I wouldn’t be able to tolerate this if it were on me.”
“Yes, yes.”
Dong Yao subconsciously went to touch the cigarettes in his pants pocket.
He remembered that he had made an agreement with his mother to study hard, and she agreed to let him go out in the evening when he was in the top ten in the exam. He did it, but the teacher invited his parent and criticised him for cheating in front of the whole school.
“Son, I am very disappointed in you; no matter what, you can’t…”
Dong Yao could no longer listen; he beat up the teacher, had a big fight with his mom, said a lot of bad, harsh words, and then didn’t come home again for several days.
When he went home again, he saw his mother, whose condition had worsened and who was lying on the bed as if she had withered.
I want to go… home. Yes, I want to go home!
Dong Yao shook off his friends and ran quickly in the direction of home.
On the other side, Zhuo Yu opened his eyes and found himself back in the ward, filled with the smell of disinfectant.
“Look, it’s that little handsome boy; he’s so pitiful…”
“I heard that his parents disappeared when he was born and only left a large trust fund.”
“Haha, don’t you guys think this is the most comfortable life? It’s not like there’s any parental discipline, and he has a large sum of money.”
“It’s just a pity that he’s paralysed… sure enough, people can’t be perfect.”
The English of the nurses talking in low voices reached Zhuo Yu’s ears; it was nap time; they probably didn’t know that he was awake.
Zhuo Yu wasn’t interested in what they were saying; his heart was like a pool of stagnant water with no waves.
He just wondered, why didn’t he fall asleep today? Was it a nightmare?
The phone rang, and Zhuo Yu saw that it was the physician’s number, so he picked it up. What made it strange was that the physician had never been so excited.
“Zhuo Yu, I found a way! Your illness can be cured!”
Zhuo Yu suddenly opened his eyes wide, shocked by the good news to the point where his brain went blank; there was hope for his legs!
This was really… great.
Zhuo Yu had been demanding of himself since he was a child; this pair of legs was simply a thorn in his side; he hated it to the point that he wanted to cut off his legs, but when he remembered that “complete” human beings shouldn’t be like that, he restrained his thoughts; his disability had almost evolved from a physical disease into a long-lasting mental torment. He could only rely on constantly fantasising about other worlds to relieve his mental stress.
That was why he wanted to write stories.
At the age of fifteen, he couldn’t be as light-hearted as he would be later in life, and as long as he didn’t divert his attention, the roar of his inner longing would tell him, “If you can’t be complete as a normal human being, then you’re a failure!”
For a man of Zhuo Yu’s darkly condescending nature, this was simply intolerable.
Every day with these disabled legs was a hellish torture for him.
Were these days finally coming to an end!?
The nurses filed in, dressed and washed Zhuo Yu, pushed his wheelchair out of the hospital room, and brought him to the location agreed upon by the attending doctor.
But strangely enough, it wasn’t an operating room, nor was it a parlor. He was in the suburbs of New York City, in a hidden alleyway, with a blinding, eye-catching sign that read “Psychic Society.”
Zhuo Yu frowned and entered the small compartment with a magic formation painted on it and covered with curtains.
The chubby white woman put down the crystal ball she had been fiddling with, and she excitedly held Zhuo Yu’s hand. “That’s you, isn’t it, kid? You want to know the secret of your legs?”
No matter what, Zhuo Yu thought as he nodded.
“You’ve come to the right person.” The fat woman’s eyes were very clear, as if they were able to penetrate a person’s soul. “Your legs aren’t something that can be cured by modern medicine, as it’s not a genetic disease but a more spiritual aspect. Your attending doctor is at his wits’ end, so he had no choice but to turn to me.”
“What?” Zhuo Yu failed to comprehend.
“Child, your soul is crippled.” The woman tapped the crystal ball with her index finger; it was so foggy that she couldn’t see anything inside. “Funny, I can’t see your life.”
As soon as she finished speaking, the crystal ball clicked and shattered, startling the two.
“That’s a first.” The woman wiped the sweat from her forehead. “Well, even I can’t handle you; this is getting tricky.”
Zhuo Yu looked at her, she seemed to have a special identity, so he asked, “Who are you?”
“Oh, sweet little Zhuo Yu, I haven’t introduced myself.” The fat woman picked up her feather fan and blocked half of her face. “I’m a sorceress that can only be seen by those who are destined to meet me, and only those who are born with a strong thirst in their dreams can meet me.”
Zhuo Yu only felt a stabbing pain in his brain—a dream—wasn’t it reality now? Wasn’t he called by the physician?
“If your thirst didn’t alarm me, your attending physician would have probably already cured your leg, and then you would choose this world’s complete body and sleep forever.” The sorceress shook her fan, “I know you well.”
“I understand what you mean…” Zhuo Yu smiled. “However, I’m not someone who likes to dream.”
“Oops, there’s another little friend coming over as well.” The sorceress felt a long-lost amusement. “Is his strongest wish to see you? That’s why the dream that was made guided him here; good luck.”
“Wait…” She suddenly felt something was wrong—that man wasn’t an NPC or an actor.
–One?
What was he doing on the set?
What bad luck!
The woman waved her hand, “Child, you’re looking in the wrong direction for what you crave. The reason why you can’t move your legs is because you’re missing your soul and can’t dominate your body; no amount of cutting-edge science can save you. But fortunately, you can find the right path here.”
As if she were in a hurry, she waved her hand to disperse the scene in front of her, and in the next second, Zhuo Yu found himself back in his hospital bed in the sanatorium.
The bell rang again, and it was the physician again.
“Zhuo Yu, I’ve found a way! Your illness can be cured!”
Exactly the same words.
“Come with me to the operating room!”
But now Zhuo Yu had come to his senses, and he looked at his hands, those young hands that weren’t his own now.
It was a dream—the most wanted dream of his childhood.
Zhuo Yu, lying on the stone bricks and deeply entangled in the nightmare, opened his eyes at once.
He was free of the dream.
–
In a silver-white space, the woman sitting on the king’s chair looked a bit unnatural, and she looked at the man who barged in, not knowing what to do.
“Where is this…” Long Ran was a little confused; he had just been in the jungle being trained in sword fighting before he heard that a beautiful young man had come from a nearby village and said he was here to see him.
“I know you’ve been waiting a long time, but I’m here, aren’t I?”
Long Ran could almost hear the man’s whisper.
So he followed his intuition all the way out of the jungle, but he didn’t expect to come to such a strange place.
“Number One, you actually left your lair; is the set about to be destroyed?” The woman stiffened and smiled.
Long Ran was just about to speak, but his thoughts stalled, and in an instant, his black eyes were replaced by silver.
“Your bad taste can be put away for a while; don’t always make contact with actors.” Long Ran’s voice was extremely cold, more uncomfortable than a system’s mechanical tone.
“Especially Zhuo Yu, stay away from him. One by one, two by two, they all want to move towards him; are they challenging my patience?” Long Ran looked towards the movie screen beside the woman, and with a click, that screen shattered just like the crystal ball before.
The woman nodded repeatedly. “I didn’t mean to; that child wants to know the secret of his legs; I just felt a strong prayer.”
Long Ran suddenly fell silent; he frowned and asked, “What did you say?”
“I couldn’t feel it either; that’s interesting; I only realised that his soul was crippled.”
“Hmm. No need to say anything superfluous.”
“Still, aren’t you taking us sorcerers too lightly?” The woman knew One’s weakness, and she teased, “I heard that old man in the East say that you fought with him on the set and ki-lled the union under him.”
“He had no right to interfere with the set I built.”
“That’s also true; that guy has always looked at you in a bad light; this film set was built to allow mankind to clear their sins, but you yourself committed the greatest sins, yet you still became a high-ranking officer; of course he’s unbalanced in his heart.”
“…… ” Long Ran was silent again; he didn’t refute the woman’s statement; he just changed the topic: “How have you been doing with the things you were told?”
“As long as this film is over, the set will be unsealed and the first season will begin, “the woman smirked with ill intentions.”The set has already collected ten million suspected targets.”
“Whether it’s the audience or the actors, they will all return to the Allspark to offer their divine bloo-d for His Succour, and the world of horror’s torment of mankind is the best sacrifice of all.”
The woman perked up, and she gazed at Number One: “The actor who can be so taken in by you, it can’t be a “husk,” right?”
“Do what you have to do.”
“Well, well, well, I’m not like you, a masochist who always builds himself up as a bloo-dthirsty maniac. Is k-illing actors your way of atoning for your sins?” The Western Magistrate said deeply, “Always indulging in k-illing will turn you into a monster, or are you one already?”
She threw a bead to Number One: “Be careful; you’ve been deep into the world of horror for too long; you’ve been a boss for too long, and this skin will soon mutate, so be careful of scaring him after you turn into a monster.”
Long Ran assessed the woman in front of him.
Loyal, fanatical, and only occasionally liked to dress up as a sorceress to wander through various movies, it had little impact on his plans; he did not accept the Western Magistrate’s gift; he just casually split the space and returned to the dream world created by the Mount Ming Pagoda.
The silver colour in Long Ran’s eyes faded.
“No, I met Zhuo Yu… at the Mount Ming Pagoda.” He looked around at the green jungle around him. “Is this a dream or an illusion?”
When he realised this, the scenery around him melted like snow, and the empty second floor of the Mount Ming Pagoda came into view in front of him, and he was out of the illusion.
“Zhuo Yu!”
Long Ran saw the person lying on the ground and went over to help him up, but Zhuo Yu had long since come to his senses, and he left that beautiful dream before Long Ran did.
The second layer represented a child, and a child was like a blank sheet of paper; without guidance, it would soon slide down towards false happiness, making it difficult to realise future pursuits.
This empty second layer would lead one into what one craved most in childhood.
And it was hard for fifteen-year-olds to resist.
He looked at Long Ran, thinking that, like himself, Long Ran wasn’t quite the same as the average “kid” at fifteen.
“How old are you?”
Long Ran froze for a moment. “I don’t know, but certainly not fifteen.”
Zhuo Yu gave him a probing look, “Then I’m relieved.”
Luo Musheng was the third to wake up; he got out of that self-absorbed look and patted his chest. “I went and dreamed that I was going to win the gold medal in the Go Competition, but my opponents were so ridiculously weak that it made me feel as ridiculous as if I were dreaming.”
“So you woke up?”
Luo Musheng nodded. “Whether this is a dream or an illusion, I’m afraid that there are limits, and it doesn’t even simulate how extreme the smartest person’s brain is!”
“Sounds like self-promotion to me.” Liu Jingyun’s voice also sounded.
“You’re awake too?”
Liu Jingyun nodded. “It was like sleeping.”
“This dream can make one see what they want most; what did you dream about?” Zhuo Yu asked her.
“Maybe it’s because I have what I want; I just want to simply live, so I only dreamt of a fog, and I woke up as I walked.”
What Liu Jingyun didn’t say was that she always believed that in front of the fog, there would be someone to clear the fog for her, so her confident belief that she could survive belonged to her faith in Zhuo Yu.
“This is good; there is nothing that can tempt you.” Zhuo Yu felt that this sister, Liu Jingyun, was always outside the situation.
“What about the others?” Luo Musheng’s teeth hurt a little as he looked at the fallen archaeological team.
He went up and slapped Old Qin unceremoniously, yet Old Qin showed no signs of waking up, as if he had fallen into a deep coma.
Not only Old Qin, but Dong Yao also fell dead into the dreamland because there was something he wanted most in the dream.
–Mother’s health.
“You child, you ran away after I said a few words to you; do you know how worried I was about you at home?”
The middle-aged woman wiped her tears and said in a trembling voice, “It’s good to be back; it’s good to be back.”
Dong Yao stumbled and stood in the doorway, and when he saw his mother in tears, he didn’t hesitate to rush up and hug the other party tightly, murmuring, “I know I was wrong.”
He forgot that his original intention of entering the set was to cure his mother’s illness, and he also forgot about the woman on the hospital bed who needed to rely on a ventilator to keep her alive, because the person in front of him was too real, and at the age of fifteen, he didn’t realise how much he would have to pay for it down the road, and he also didn’t know that he would gamble his life to enter the set, and he didn’t know how long he would have to grope his way through the process before he could be a team leader.
His long-cherished dream was just around the corner, and it wasn’t something a fifteen-year-old could resist.
It had been too long since he’d seen his mother, both the current one and the future one in his twenties.
He was homesick.
On the other hand, the faces of Zhuo Yu’s few people in the Pagoda changed.
Dong Yao’s body stood up, he staggered to support himself, his left hand was clenched in a false grip, and a huge scythe and its exaggeration suddenly appeared in his palm, as if it were a sharp blade used by the god of death to harvest souls.
He raised his hand and aimed the tip of the blade at the sober people.
He then opened his eyes, but they were not the black of a human but the scarlet, snake-like vertical pupils.
Zhuo Yu was startled; he and a few of the others had solved the puzzle of the second level, but the rest had not; they were still indulging in thirst.
“Why are you still sleepwalking?!!!” Luo Musheng hurriedly pulled away; he looked around and realised that it was only the four of them who had woken up, while Dong Yao was obviously controlled by the mysterious power of the Mount Ming Pagoda, and began to turn his blade towards his teammates.
As an actor-analyst, he was more than familiar with the scythe and Dong Yao’s face, which was the Flying Scythe Warriors’ famous weapon, and also his biggest dependence on surviving three years on set without dying.
“Crap, this guy is an actor; I know him.” Luo Musheng spoke extremely fast as he dissected Dong Yao’s attack with Zhuo Yu: “He’s very fast and powerful; his usual movements are done with his left hand; he won’t stop until he achieves his goal; you shouldn’t take the enemy lightly even if you chop off both of his arms.”
While Dong Yao had yet to launch his attack, Long Ran held his dagger tightly, constantly on the alert for his former teammate, who would move any moment.
However, it wasn’t only Dong Yao who did so; the other sleeping people also stood up, like living corpses that were haunted by nightmares and had lost their minds, wanting nothing more than to attack the still-awake outsiders.
“His attack is a scythe; that scythe hilt is wrapped in chains; the moves are so varied that you won’t be able to remember them even if I tell you, go by feel!”
Luo Musheng knew that he couldn’t hide anymore at this moment; he took out the flinging stick from space, and the flashing electric light on it was extremely intimidating.
Dong Yao moved.
He pulled a knife flower, and with great speed, like a bullet that had been discharged, he lifted his foot and kicked at the hilt of the knife, and the huge scythe shot out, dragging a long chain straight towards the crowd.
Zhuo Yu could only see a flash of sword light, and Luo Musheng’s right arm was cut with a bone visible scar. If Luo Musheng didn’t deflect the direction of the blade, the sickle would have penetrated his chest, and he’d be hooked towards Dong Yao by the inverted hook of the blade tip.
At the end of the chain was still a scythe, only smaller, responsible for slitting the throat of the prey hooked over to it.
“He’s so strong!” Zhuo Yu didn’t redeem his combat skills and couldn’t insert himself into the fight, so he gave orders to Liu Jingyun, “Go and interfere with his movements; don’t let him make a move.”
Liu Jingyun nodded; she drew her straight blade and attacked Dong Yao like a dark shadow; her movements were too light. Dong Yao, who was bent on k-illing Luo Musheng, didn’t come to notice; the back of his neck was met with a heavy blow.
Liu Jingyun used the back of the blade, it was enough to cause a person to be traumatised, but Dong Yao was unaffected; he just moved his feet slightly and spun around to throw the chain; the weapon’s chain encircled Liu Jingyun, and the small scythe was thrown to the ground by his hand and embedded into the stone tiles.
Dong Yao immobilised the woman while engaging Luo Musheng in battle.
However, Luo Musheng was an analyst; fighting wasn’t his forte, and the most he could do was to use his strengthened body to fend off the giant scythe’s attack.
“There’s no way; we can only use props.”
Luo Musheng held three iron balls in his hands and threw them towards Dong Yao with all his might, but Dong Yao shrunk back to grab the chain and swung the giant sickle up; the cold blade became his umbrella, and those three paralysing bullets were directly bounced off by the blade and smashed elsewhere.
Old Qin and Li Chuanning were hit at once, and bright yellow smoke spread out from the iron ball, immediately making them unable to move and they had uncontrollable spasms.
Zhuo Yu remembered that Old Qin also had some abnormality in the system broadcast, and there was a huge probability of him being an actor, but compared to Dong Yao, it was simply heaven and earth. Even if Liu Jingyun had gotten the assassin master’s b-lood-like, she was still no match for this battle team captain.
He had miscalculated and shouldn’t have let Liu Jingyun go ahead.
Dong Yao once again swung the scythe, then kicked at the hilt, shooting the giant scythe out, this time aiming at Long Ran.
Long Ran reacted much faster than Luo Musheng; he used his dagger to fend it off; however, the difference between the two men’s weapons was too great; the giant sickle was feared to weigh dozens of pounds, so the dagger was instantly knocked away. Luckily, Long Ran reacted quickly; otherwise, his entire wrist would have been severed.
Liu Jingyun’s arms and body were bound together; she kept struggling, but she didn’t know what material that chain was made of; the more she struggled, the tighter it contracted. Every time that scythe was thrown out, she was strangled by the chain and almost suffocated; if this continued, her ribs would be broken.
Luo Musheng knew that Liu Jingyun must have been an actor as well; the crisis at hand made it impossible for them to hide at all; they could only pull out their best selling tactics in order to survive Dong Yao.
The strength of the captain was much more terrifying than they had imagined.
Dong Yao’s scarlet snake eyes were scanning for prey.
When he saw Zhuo Yu.
His gaze changed.
–My bride.
TN:
Dun dun dun 😶🌫️
Thanks for the update
Thank you for the update~