Chapter 36

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How dare you? How dare you!

Provoked by the other him, Lin Jue strode towards the ‘boundary’ which halted the pool of blood.

He walked past the invisible barrier. Stepping out of that sea of blood, Lin Jue left behind the first red footprint on the pure white floor.

With that one step, the world around him fell into strange madness.

The blood lake, the fountain gurgling out blood, the players’ corpses, the monsters’ carcasses… they all disappeared. The ground under them rose up and broke, revealing lava flowing by like a stream. Huge fish-shaped creatures swam across the sky as scarlet rain fell in a drizzle. The entire illusion was quickly falling to hell.

The world was in ruins.

The ‘Lin Jue’ next to Song Hanzhang stood up gracefully, holding a spear like him. They were less than several meters apart, but the distance was quickly growing – cracks had already appeared on the ground between them. Golden lava flowed through the ever-growing rifts.

Get over there, then kill him?

Lin Jue licked his cracked lips, gripped his spear, and sprinted towards the two-meter wide gap. With his last step, he leaped up over the burning lava and landed, crouched, down on the other side of the crack.

So close. There were less than five meters between them.

As if sensing that silent signal, the two men staring at each other launched themselves into action!

Spear clashed onto spear. Lin Jue swung one leg out, only to be quickly dodged as the other returned with a spear thrust. The spearhead brushed past his cheek and through his left ear, its corrosive quality quickly festering the wound. But this pain was firmly held back by the painkiller, what sensation that made it through only feeding his ferocity.

Lin Jue roared and kicked down the man opposite him, who, not to be outdone, dragged him down by his pants. The two ended up completely giving up using their weapons and snarled, fighting to their deaths like two males defending their territories. These raw and brutal forces clashed against each other, sending insane, crimson bloodthirst spiraling up for them both.

By then, Lin Jue had already forgotten that he was human. He bit down on the other him’s ear like a madman while ‘Lin Jue’ strangled him by the throat, flipping him onto the uneven ground, hoping to choke him to death.

Lin Jue grabbed his wrist and struggled, but his oppressed body was unable to escape this situation. His bloodshot right eye stared dead at the other him – their face was twisted, one ear bitten off, the blood flowing from the wound dirtying his face. The originally clean him was exactly like him now, more ghoulish than a ghoul.

Lin Jue stared at his eyes, those intact eyes welling up with hate. They were silently demanding him: you couldn’t even protect him, why aren’t you dead yet?

This monster born of his intense self-hatred was going to kill him here.

This was his punishment unto himself.

Lin Jue turned his head with difficulty, forcing himself to look at Song Hanzhang’s body not far away, only to realize in horror that the ground beneath him was cracking. A wave of lava flashed through the crack that was less than a palm’s width. It would keep growing, keep spreading, then devour him.

No, you couldn’t! Stop! Please!

Lin Jue’s soul screamed and begged soundlessly, but the world was deaf to his cries. It cruelly followed fate, and robbed him of him.

Tears seeped out from Lin Jue’s right eye. He shouted and punched back his opposition, before sending him to the ground with a kick.

His breath hadn’t yet returned. Still without air in his lungs, the world spinning around him, Lin Jue forced himself up from the ground and ran, stumbling towards Song Hanzhang.

Faster, just a little faster, bring him back before the lava takes him!

Song Hanzhang, Song Hanzhang, Song Hanzhang, Song Hanzhang, Song Hanzhang… Please, wait for me, wait for me!

His oxygen-deprived body couldn’t sustain his final moment of madness. Lin Jue’s eyes blacked out and he fell. He gasped violently, struggling to take in more oxygen, leaving his lungs twisted and aching.

Almost there, just a little more, get him back, get him back!

Lin Jue crawled forwards on all fours, the gravel on the ground rendering his hands and knees into a bloody mess, but he was bent forwards, senseless and unaware.

Another three meters, two meters, one meter… He could reach him!

Lin Jue reached out his arm, joyfully trying to grab onto Song Hanzhang’s body.

Something dragged him backwards. Lin Jue turned around. An evil smile appeared on the bloody face of his doppleganger, spewing out the hateful curse with Dan Liang’s voice. “Then I wish you well, I wish that you’ll lose him forever! Hahahahahaha, Lin Jue, you’ll be like me, you’ll be like me!”

Lin Jue kicked him like mad, but they held tightly onto his leg, stopping him from moving forwards.

It was too late. As the two struggled, the crack beneath Song Hanzhang opened its maw.

Everything seemed to have happened in slow motion. Song Hanzhang slowly fell into the red lava as he slept, that bright light and burning heat like the holy light from heaven. As that sliver of light shone upon the dusty world, all wandering souls were rendered ashes.

The world broke apart in silence.

He stared, dumbfounded, allowing the other him to laugh hysterically, mocking his loss once again.

His mind was blank, his body unfeeling. Only one breath stuck in his chest rose up. Lin Jue coughed furiously and spat out a mouthful of raw blood, as if he wanted to vomit out his strangled heart, liver, spleen, and stomach along with it.

He thought he would cry, like that moment when he saw Song Hanzhang’s body; he thought he would fall into complete hysteria. But at that moment, not a single tear could be wrenched out of his dry soul. That resentment and killing intent which raged within him sunk into the lava along with Song Hanzhang’s destroyed body. He quietly wiped away the blood from his mouth and slowly crawled up.

He felt nothing. There was no pain, no sorrow, no despair, just an empty numbness that ate away at the remaining half of his soul.

He picked up the spear from the ground. As he held the cold weapon in his hand, he finally found a reason to exist.

So, he pulled up the corners of his lips to smile a smile that looked worse than a sob, and stepped towards the other him laughing madly.

To defeat a madman, one must make himself madder.

……

……

……

Blood splashed on Lin Jue’s face. He pulled out the spearhead, not bothered to wipe his face clean. It didn’t matter, he was already dirty, there was not a single part of him that was clean. From his hair to his socks, he was all but a devil.

A tingling sensation came from his ear. Under the protection of the painkiller, the pain was almost negligible, but his ear kept festering from the corrosive quality of the spear. If he just left it be, it would soon rot and the corrosion would climb up his face along his ear, until his entire brain was rotten.

Lin Jue recalled the dagger he found from Dan Liang’s body with his muddled brain. He pulled it out, one hand pulling out the remaining half of his ear, the other holding the dagger, and slashed down, pulling his entire left ear off.

Blood sprayed out immediately. Lin Jue didn’t seem to feel anything; his hands didn’t even shake as he took out the haemostatic agent from his medical bag and sprayed it on the wound.

Very good. The festering had stopped, his head wouldn’t get infected, he could continue.

He finally noticed the faint burning sensation on the back of his hand. After killing that doppelganger monster, he had received his twentieth marking.

He didn’t have much time left. He still had lots to do.

The only resurrection materials left for him were the three from team 2022. They only had three left: Zhang Sijia, Zuo Linyuan, and that cloaked man…

Lin Jue’s frazzled brain froze for a few seconds on the cloaked figure that had leisurely left the corpse ball. He vaguely grasped at something, but the noise from all sides continued to disturb him. He became irritated again.

He paced on the spot like a lost and wounded beast, furious at the malicious eyes from the dark forests. The rustling noises from within the woods spooked him, a hostility rising at every twitch of sound he heard.

Before leaving the illusion, Lin Jue turned back for one final look. That crack which had devoured Song Hanzhang was more than ten meters wide, lava slowly gushing out from within and pushing forwards, taking his other body with it. That piercing red light and burning heat seemed to want to destroy the entire world.

He saw a giant fish, swimming through the endless skies. He saw countless soaring mountains, standing at the corners of the earth. He even saw a giant tree, shouldering the sky as it stood. The world was as strange as a dream.

He could no longer differentiate reality and illusion.

The world fell into the earth’s silent anger, and was doomed to be destroyed.

Lin Jue left the illusion and returned to the barren greenhouse.

Song Hanzhang wasn’t there anymore.

Lin Jue stared dazedly for a long, long time. In that sunken in patch of grass, Song Hanzhang’s corpse was gone.

His final wishful thought was devoured by the lava – Song Hanzhang’s body really did follow him into the illusion, and really was destroyed by the lava.

Bitter heat came from his wounded left eye as transparent liquid seeped out of dry tear ducts. They melted through the almost healed wound and so blood poured out alongside them, making him a bloody mess.

Under the moonlight, the tamed beast chewed on those soft yet gentle memories and silently wept.

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