C35 – The Secret of Dark Beach
by UntamedS“You came.”
Zhuo Yu smiled at Long Ran; in the end, he still felt a bit guilty, so his gaze was slightly averted.
Originally, he didn’t want to involve Long Ran; he just wanted Long Ran to live as an NPC, while he chose combining with either Zombie Viper or Past Life Viper to meet Number One.
Although he knew that No.1 was probably manipulating Long Ran’s skin, just like he manipulated Asha, Zhuo Yu always felt that NPCs also had personalities, and he couldn’t bear the thought of letting Long Ran die as a sacrifice to summon No.1. When faced with Zombie and Past Life Vipers, he didn’t have so many worries.
Although all the incarnations of the Snake god would disappear after his resurrection and Long Ran would die just the same, the nature was different.
Zhuo Yu, who had a strong empathy ability and could experience the state of mind of a replicant, naturally didn’t want Long Ran to become a surrogate; that would be a bit cruel to an NPC that had developed an individual consciousness.
“Of course I will come.” Long Ran looked deeply into Zhuo Yu’s eyes, capturing the complexity in his emotions. “Did you make a decision for me? You wanted me to live?”
“…… ” Zhuo Yu didn’t answer.
Long Ran let out a thin and low chuckle. He combed the hair on his forehead back with his fingers; following that, he threw his head back and laughed.
“You aren’t such an indecisive person; I’m sort of favored by you; I’m very happy.”
Long Ran walked towards Zhuo Yu; this time, he solemnly took Zhuo Yu’s hand.
“You want to come to a conclusion; I also want to. Do you think that two people dying together will be a tragedy? Only surviving is a happy ending?” Long Ran shook his head; the crimson snake eyes were no longer hostile; instead, they were replaced by tenderness. “No, traveling together to where we should go is happiness; even if it’s a mountain of daggers and a sea of flames, I’m happy as long as I have you with me.”
He paused, then softly said, “This kind of good thing, how can I let it go to others?”
Zhuo Yu’s slender eyelashes slightly trembled. “How did you come to the sixth floor?”
“I’m not stupid; seeing the two of you k-illing yourselves one after the other, coupled with the mural, even a person with the slowest reaction can figure it out.”
“No, I’m asking how you died.”
“Of course, with the knife you used to stab yourself through the heart, your bloo-d and my heart touched; it’s kind of romantic.”
Zhuo Yu lost his smile. “You’re also a per-vert.”
“That’s what matches you.”
“Haven’t you ever thought about living like a human after leaving the tower?” Zhuo Yu understood before he finished speaking, “That’s right, you’ve been pretending to be a human for so many years; there’s no need for me to persuade you; you’ll only lose your memories over a long period of time before returning here in accordance with your genetic instincts, which is indeed never-ending torture.”
Zhuo Yu frankly said, “It’s me who’s being nosy; maybe you’re like the Past Life Viper; dying is what you want the most.”
“What I want is to die with you, but I’m afraid you don’t want to.”
“Then there’s nothing more to say.” Zhuo Yu looked towards the entrance, which was like a collapsing black hole, and said, “Let’s go down together and meet the true end.”
The two looked at each other and smiled.
Zhuo Yu and Long Ran held hands and interlocked their fingers as they fell straight into the passageway to the Dark Beach.
The powerful weightlessness and pulling sensation caused Zhuo Yu’s brain to fall into a blank, while he only remembered that he seemed to have complete certainty about something. What was the thing he was certain about?
Zhuo Yu soon lost consciousness in the fall.
Under a blanket of emptiness and blinding white light, Zhuo Yu’s body was disintegrating, and Long Ran did the same; he was forced by that suction to reveal his serpentine form, and like a molecular reconstruction, the two bodies fused like the Zombie Viper and the replica did.
The bones and bloo-d, body and soul of the deity once again merged, unleashing a shock that could spread thousands of miles. With Mount Ming as the center, fishermen in the distance thought an earthquake was about to occur, and the sky-shattering waves also rose thousands of meters high, crashing against the white mountains like cliffs, as if about to devour everything.
The two energies finally reconfigured successfully, and when the white light dissipated, there was darkness all over again.
The falling sensation stopped.
The salty wind, the wet air, and the solid ground on which he landed made Zhuo Yu reopen his eyes.
The view in front of him made his mouth open slightly.
It was a mudflat; as if it had been covered with a gray filter, everything was a dull color. Countless people were walking around this mudflat, and there was even a long queue at the end of that piece where the sea was.
The people’s faces were more or less snake-like, so these people, he guessed, were all from Ming Kingdom.
“Get out of the way.” A snake man hissed at Zhuo Yu.
It wasn’t Chinese, but Zhuo Yu could actually understand it.
“Queue up properly; this is already the 130,000th year. I don’t know how much longer we’ll have to queue.” The snake man’s complaint drifted, like the eerie tones that only ghosts could make: “You newcomers should go to the end of the line, and one day you’ll be able to be forgiven by god as well.”
Zhuo Yu looked to the very front of the group, and he suddenly got a chill.
The sea seemed to be churning with a huge creature, revealing its dorsal fins now and then on the waves, a huge snake head that was ninety percent similar to Long Ran poked out and opened its bloo-dy mouth.
And these lined-up people of the Ming Kingdom were jumping into its mouth one by one.
The people of the Ming Kingdom were born in the Snake god and died in the Snake god; even their souls were swallowed into the mouth by this freak-like creature, and they could never return but could only be used as supplements for the Snake god’s reversal of life and death.
This was the spiritual world of the snake god.
Zhuo Yu blinked again and found that there was nothing on the beach at all, only two monstrous and horrifying snakes that were lying on the beach dying.
The appearance of the two snakes was similar, but one of them was pale and grotesque, as if it had been born with some weird disease, and its limbs were hunted and stretched a lot, and there were no physical features, and that sense of morbidity was even a bit similar to the replicants.
This was probably what the combination of Zombie Viper and the replicant looked like.
Zhuo Yu thought to himself, yes, he sacrificed the bones and flesh that the snake god had initially separated, that was, his body. His soul was naturally useless, so he separated it.
And since the replicant had no soul, Zhuo Yu had lost a companion to watch the battle.
It seemed that the combination of both parties had failed.
The Zombie Viper was bonded to a creature copied from the Sea god Tree and wasn’t a true descendant of the Bride, while Long Ran…
Zhuo Yu remembered what that dependency of his was.
Dream Viper.
He had wrapped the Dream Viper around his sleeve, and it had never been discovered by these two.
So, in fact, the union with whoever would fail, because Zhuo Yu didn’t want to die, he left this move. The union of the two had an extra third party in hiding, so of course it couldn’t have worked.
Unfortunately, Long Ran and his own true feelings of wanting to die with him also couldn’t be done.
Long Ran finally recovered some spirit from that moribund state; Zombie Viper did exactly the same; the two failures looked at each other, both seeing the frustration and despondency in each other’s eyes.
The bride, really, was a liar.
But it didn’t matter much. The groom had yet to be decided.
The final life-and-death duel between the two began.
Zombie Viper moved first; he branched out and used those six pairs of horribly long forelimbs to tear at Long Ran’s spine, but Long Ran’s body was in better shape; his dense black scales were like sturdy armor, and with a single charge, he toppled the white monstrous serpent over, exposing his soft belly.
The white snake frantically flicked its tail to struggle and used the barbs similar to Long Ran’s to destroy the gap between the scales; dripping bloo-d hit the beach, but it couldn’t shake Long Ran’s determination to ki-ll the other at all.
In fact, this could not be considered a life-and-death duel.
Because Zombie Viper had no chance of winning at all.
In itself, he hadn’t inherited the snake god’s physique, and then his gene pool was polluted by the Sea god Tree’s replica, turning him into an inferior product; his combination was ridiculous and depraved; it was a fight without suspense.
The black giant snake opened its terrifyingly huge mouth that tore into its neck, biting off the white snake’s head in one bite and swallowing it into its stomach. The whole process was amazingly fast, not at all like a battle; perhaps it was Zombie Viper who gave up resisting.
He stabbed the other party more than 260 times, but in the end, he still couldn’t let go of his hatred. It was a genetic deterioration that resulted in him being defeated in the union.
He gave up, but only to the bride.
Long Ran was still standing; the final victor had already appeared.
Zhuo Yu felt his vision blur, and the distorted scene and dense crowd reappeared. The strange snake in the sea used its tail to push away the human souls that were constantly swimming towards its mouth, rushing towards Long Ran at a terrifying speed.
It seemed to be waiting for the moment when the strongest body appeared.
However, it was disappointed.
Long Ran’s black snake body struggled and rolled on the ground, his imperfect body unable to accommodate the spiritual power of the snake god. The sea monster felt excruciating pain all over its body, and its head was about to explode.
Unqualified!
This body wasn’t the perfect product he was expecting!
Zhuo Yu finally spoke.
“Mismatch between body and spirit.” The young man looked to his empty legs; he knew that he was also in a state of spirit at this time, that witch was right, his soul was crippled.
“I thought you knew something, so I wanted you to experience my pain as well.” He nudged his cheek with his index finger and laughed, “That way, you’ll know me better, and it’ll enhance the relationship, right?”
The snake god’s spirit fought fiercely against Long Ran’s, and eventually the crimson eyes darkened to a stunningly pure silver.
“You found me.”
The giant snake spat out human words, a gorgeous husky tone with a slightly trembling tail—the very same voice that Zhuo Yu had dreamt of.
“Speak to me in your own voice, One.” Zhuo Yu’s eyes narrowed slightly, and there was slight dissatisfaction in his tone. “Back in Strange Tales of the Lake, your voice was very similar to Asha’s, and I was thinking that if Asha was an able-bodied human being, then that’s probably what his voice would have sounded like. When it comes to this film, do you still have to use the snake god’s voice to talk to me? Let’s show some sincerity.”
Zhuo Yu pointed to the empty lower half of his body and said, “Or, can you answer this for me?”
The giant snake’s eyes darkened for a few moments, and it coiled itself up like a deflated rubber snake, flopping softly on the beach, as if it were saddened by Zhuo Yu’s ferocity.
“I don’t have a voice of my own.” The giant snake said truthfully, “I forgot; it seems like I have and I don’t; after all, time is the least valuable thing on set. I can turn the flow of time here to an eternity if you want, but outside of the film it’ll only be an instant.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” The snake god reached out his claws and plucked off a bloo-died scale. “I thought that you would think that Long Ran was me, but it doesn’t make any difference; he was my incarnation.”
He threw the bloo-died scale on the ground. “To be honest, I’m a bit jealous.”
“But didn’t I come here anyway?” Zhuo Yu said indifferently, “I cracked your riddle and broke through the Mount Ming Pagoda; where’s my reward?”
Zhuo Yu was still a bit anxious because of what that witch said; he deliberately didn’t think about the problem of his legs while climbing the tower, but after meeting No. 1 face-to-face, he had to ask clearly.
“You’re still really cold; obviously you were so nice to me last film.” The snake god laughed softly, but there was a slight wistfulness in the laugh: “I can’t say too much to you; it would break the laws of the set; the magistrate is not allowed to reveal messages from the set to the actors in the film.”
“But you’re so smart, you can find out the truth for yourself.”
“The magistrate?”
“Yes, after this film is over, you’ll know what the magistrate is; don’t worry, the audience can’t heara our conversation right now; you don’t have to be so tense.”
Zhuo Yu’s tense shoulders relaxed, and his tone finally eased up quite a bit. He teased, “Oops, looks like I wasn’t that successful in pretending to be serious.”
The snake god flicked the tip of his tail and wrapped it around the man.
“Your disability is indeed caused by a crippled soul, but it’s not just the soul; everything about you is crippled.” The snake god slowly crawled with hundreds of dragon claws and circled the gathered Zhuo Yu in his arms.
“Is that why you’ve set your sights on me?”
“Pretty much?” The Snake god was silent for a moment. “You’re sure to remember once you’ve been through enough films.”
“I thought I was just a normal young writer.”
“If you want to be, then you are for the rest of your life, and if you want to be more than that, there will be a wider world unfolding before you; it’s just up to you to choose. And the film set is where the choices are made.”
“I probably get it.” Zhuo Yu sighed, “This is troublesome; I thought exchanging a better physique would solve the problem.”
Zhuo Yu’s original path was clearly visible; as long as he properly formed a union and swiped the highest scores in the film with his teammates, he would be able to save up enough Flame Points to redeem his physique, but the truth was a lot tougher than he thought.
“Don’t be confused, as long as you are determined to go on…”
“I’m not confused.” Zhuo Yu stroked up the scale armor of the Snake god, “On the contrary, I’m very lucky that I can come to the set; if not for this place, I might have to study my whole life and waste countless hours doing useless things; you guys at least gave me a clear answer.”
“I’m not complete.” Zhuo Yu smiled. “What an interesting statement. How do I make myself whole?”
The Snake god’s voice faded: “After this film is over, you’ll get what you’re looking for.”
“Your body is dying.” Zhuo Yu mercilessly pointed out: “Since you’re the magistrate, you must be able to manipulate the film, although it’s fun when the film is difficult, you’re not giving me a sense of challenge at all.”
His shoulders slightly shrugged, and he hugged the giant snake’s head, sticking out his tongue and licking the blo-od-jade-like eyeball between his forehead. His tone filled with suppressed excitement: “Although I am your enemy who ki-lled you, Long Ran really liked me too much. My gaming experience was terrible.”
Zhuo Yu patted the snake’s head, his eyes surprisingly full of reproach. “Don’t love me too much; it’s weird.”
Long Ran was Number One, and naturally, would be affected by Number One.
Zhuo Yu understood that number one must be acquainted with him, but he could also foresee that number one wouldn’t tell him anything, so he was too lazy to play with him.
“…… ” The snake god was silent for a while, then he asked, “What kind do you want?”
“I want you to hate me, to hate me so much that you want to ki-ll me, let’s see how I can conquer you.” Zhuo Yu sold the idea, winking at him, “That way, we can have substantial progress in our relationship, right?”
The Snake god lost his smile; it turned out that Zhuo Yu had already realized his quest; he was hinting that if he made films and roles that the other party was satisfied with, then he would consider taking a closer step to him; it was really an impossible request to refuse.
“If that’s your wish, I won’t let you off so easily.”
“In the next film, you will be ki-lled by me, you’ll die over and over again, and you will be walking on thin ice in every moment.”
“And your character’s life will be completely under my control.”
Zhuo Yu nodded in satisfaction, “Now that’s a bit of a challenge.”
The snake god’s body was slowly stopping breathing; his deteriorated body couldn’t hold the mental power, and the consequences were only so far, but his eyes seemed to hide a silver ocean; a stream of data flowed like starfire, and for the first time, Zhuo Yu realized that someone’s eyes were brighter than his.
“You have beaten me; it is time to end this meeting.”
The snake god spat out his final words.
With a hum, the scenery around him came alive again, and Zhuo Yu found himself lying on cold stone bricks.
He had fallen into the bottom at the top of the Mount Ming Pagoda, and the tip of the pagoda below was so small in size that it only held him and the dead black snake, which didn’t move; its ink was tinted with a layer of gray.
Long Ran was truly dead.
Because the ceremony failed, he reverted to the state where he had not yet bonded, and Zhuo Yu regained his life.
[Side Quest: Location Unlock Progress 100%]
[Main quest update: The groom is all but destroyed, the bride wins; please let the bride choose the ending for this film]
Zhuo Yu didn’t move; he rested on Long Ran’s body and gazed at this darkness. He could feel that after the destruction of the snake god’s spirit world, the mysterious power of the Mount Ming Pagoda would dissipate, and this place would just be an ordinary building, and no one would ever die here again.
He reviewed the film.
There was a big difference between The Mystery of the Dark Beach and The Strange Tales of the Lakeside; on Asha’s side, he was persecuted and chose to be on the same side as the Boss, but this time, he was born into the desire of the snake god. He broke through the encirclement and was born with a stronger desire than the snake god.
It could be said that the bride single-handedly destroyed the ancient civilization of Ming Kingdom.
The bride may have seemed like a victim and a plundered resource, but in reality, as long as he stood out from competitors, he could share the divine kingdom with the god and be on an equal footing.
But the bride wanted to replace the snake god, and it was he who deceived the people of the Ming Kingdom into building the Mount Ming Pagoda. It was also he who developed worship for himself, allowing the people of the Ming Kingdom to build the pools, delaying the outbreak of the Yao Disease that led to their end, and leaving the people helpless.
But during the thousands of years of his rule, the bride actually felt empty.
He went about his business and ultimately felt that what he had done was pointless, so he chose to unite with the incarnation left behind by the snake god and rejoin the snake god’s embrace.
This was also the reason why Zhuo Yu was able to come to the Mount Ming Pagoda.
Whether it was the Snake god who wanted a bride, the bride who wanted to replace the Snake god, or the Ming Kingdom who prayed for prosperity, none of them seemed to get what they wanted in this story, and everything was a waste.
Even the last hope…
Zhuo Yu, with his fingertips across Long Ran’s black scales, the cold touch let him clearly recognize that Long Ran was really dead.
He didn’t choose to satisfy the “bride” with the ending; perhaps with the combination of Long Ran, the film would have been over and the world would usher in the beginning of the new god.
But Zhuo Yu chose the path of nothingness.
He destroyed the hope that had come so close for the first time in 130,000 years.
“It really, really fits the definition of a villain.” He closed his eyes and lay down in the middle of the black snake’s corpse.
Zhuo Yu felt tired, and it seemed that using up a lot of physical energy during the combination had sent his mind spinning.
Speaking of which, the rumbling sound was starting to resonate outside the rock wall again; was the current starting to stir again?
Zhuo Yu……
— Captain! Captain!
— Zhuo Yu!
Different human voices rang out as if the waves were calling out to him; Zhuo Yu ignored them until a light hit his eyelids and he looked overhead.
“Captain! I’m so glad you’re okay!”
It was Liu Jingyun!
Not only Liu Jingyun, the surviving teammates connected to each other with parachute ropes, one after another, and at the very end was the girl holding a torch in her left hand, who threw down another strand of parachute rope and shouted, “Grab the rope!”
“How did you guys get down?” Zhuo Yu said in amazement.
“When I saw you ki-ll yourself and the system didn’t alert me of the actor’s death, I knew how to get to the sixth floor. And with Zombie Viper dead, the aging on us was lifted, so we chased after you.” Luo Musheng blushed, laboriously pulling Liu Jingyun’s hand as he tried his best to stretch downwards.
“The sixth level is clearly the tip of the tower, but it leads to the bottom of the tower all at once; this is the inverted triangular tip of the Mount Ming Pagoda; there is no division of the number of floors; if it wasn’t for Dong Yao sticking a knife into the stone tiles, we would have already fallen to our deaths.”
After Luo Musheng explained to Zhuo Yu in one breath, he anxiously said, “Don’t care so much; where is Long Ran? You guys grab the rope; there’s a tsunami outside!”
“Long Ran… ” Zhuo Yu didn’t answer; he just waved his hand. “No need to save me; you guys go by yourselves. Return to the ground floor while you can and get out of here.”
Liu Jingyun was anxious. “What are you talking about?” We’re on the same team; how can we let go?”
Looking at the little girl’s furrowed brows, Zhuo Yu was finally happy from the bottom of his heart: “Don’t worry, I’m your captain; you guys go first, and I’ll see you at the union base afterwards.”
Hearing this, Liu Jingyun calmed down; she knew that Zhuo Yu must have his own way.
She gritted her teeth, no longer looking towards the captain at the bottom of the tower, and calmly said, “Dong Yao, climb upwards; let’s go!”
While the tsunami outside had not completely smashed the Mount Ming Pagoda to pieces, they still had a chance to leave alive.
Zhuo Yu suddenly breathed a sigh of relief.
He felt that this ending he had chosen wasn’t meaningless.
The newborn god would eventually want to find a mate due to loneliness, and everything would repeat itself; even if they were united with the groom, it would only be a return to the very beginning of the story.
But as long as the grudge was brought to an end here, there would be no more reincarnation of karma in the future.
He chose not the claims of Ming Kingdom or the long-cherished wishes of the bride.
He chose the bright future of humanity.
Watching his teammates climb up to the main level, Zhuo Yu was relieved.
He smiled and said to Long Ran’s corpse, “Even though I haven’t had you in my heart all this time, in the end, I fulfilled your heart’s desire.”
“I chose you and I’ll go to the Yellow Springs (underworld) with you. This is the final chapter I chose for our story, you will surely enjoy it as well.”
The roar of the Mount Ming Pagoda became even more violent; the mountain walls had been completely smashed by the waves, and the chalky rocks were too weak to be delayed for too long. Soon, the black stone bricks were also loosened beyond repair by the impact, and some of the crevices were broken down and began to frantically seep seawater inwards.
The beautiful youth lay in the arms of the crouching snake, and the two of them just slept under the doomsday-like scene.
Not a single person thought of escaping again.
[The ending of the plot has been reached: the end of everything.]
[A young professor of folklore seeks out the culture he has devoted his life to searching for at Mount Ming Pagoda on the northeastern coast, and in the tower he learns of his destiny, which is to be united with the groom and reborn as a god. But instead of choosing that path, he buried everything in the Ming Kingdom completely, becoming a hurried passerby under the wheel of history. Perhaps after many years, there will be a few people who escaped from the Mount Ming Pagoda who miss him, but when the people who lived through it die, this past will be completely unknown. Perhaps this is what Zhuo Yu chose for mankind—eternal peace.]
The next morning, the national troops who rushed to the rescue only discovered that the kilometer-long tsunami near Mount Ming had completely destroyed the mountain, almost leveling it to the ground. And the village not far away miraculously survived under the protection of Mount Ming, with only some people suffering from skin injuries and being taken care of for two days.
The roaring waves were all intercepted by the high mountains, which was a stroke of luck amidst misfortune.
However, those scholars who were searching for the ruins of Mount Ming didn’t return; they probably died in the tsunami, and those magnificent ruins of the ancient civilization were also destroyed and could not be excavated.
Only three of the team survived, but they were reluctant to disclose the information, saying only that they had lost their memory.
The story of Mount Ming was covered up by other news, and no one cared about it anymore.
Only the occasional fishermen who went to the beach of Mount Ming were able to discover that in the shimmering waves, there seemed to be two sea snakes, one black and one red, with their backs exposed to the moonlight.
TN:
I got super busy in life, but I revamped the site for easier navigation and it looks prettier too, I think.
Onto the next arc 😁
See ya tomorrow ✌️
Awww the ending 🥺🥺, this arc was really cute