Chapter 134: What Is Truth? What Is Story?
Everyone smoothly obtained the Fluorescent Phantom Nest and escaped the curse radiation from those gold, silver, and jewels in the stone chamber.
Provoking an abnormal god and snatching something from its hands—even if the opponent was in a state of forced sealing—the danger of the abnormal god was self-evident, but miraculously, no one died or even got hurt throughout the entire process.
Yu Lianyun had no choice but to fully believe in Li Nuowei’s so-called “death reincarnation” ability that he explained on the road; only after countless rehearsals and accumulating rich experience could he accomplish these almost impossible things so easily.
After all, no matter how difficult the test paper is, if you write it ten thousand times repeatedly, even if you still don’t understand the meaning of the questions, you already know how to do it and what the correct answers are.
What made Yu Lianyun admire, however, was that Li Nuowei used his life and his own rationality to trial and error, and after countless trials and errors, he found the correct answers.
“Next is the time for weapons to come into play; those merpeople are right above us, and we’ll run right into them when we go out.” Li Nuowei skillfully loaded the pistol and didn’t forget to remind them, “The weak points of merpeople are no different from humans, but they have tough scales on their bodies. It’s recommended to destroy their eyes if possible; their eyes are just as vulnerable as humans’.”
Li Nuowei had just taken a step when Yu Lianyun asked, “Didn’t you say there was another survivor before? Where is he?”
Hearing this, Li Nuowei was stunned; he also remembered that innocent boy and couldn’t help looking at Yu Lianyun, because he recalled that it was Yu Lianyun who first found the innocent boy, and as for where the boy had been hidden before, he had no idea at all. But what he could guess was that the missing innocent boy should be somewhere on this spiral staircase, and perhaps that somewhere was just like the hidden tunnel and this stone chamber piled full of treasure—they were all hidden places.
“Unfortunately, I don’t know either, but I think it’s on the way we came. We’ll walk back while searching.” Li Nuowei shook his head and voiced his suggestion.
Everyone nodded and followed behind Li Nuowei.
Drake walked side by side with Li Nuowei; he glanced at Li Nuowei, and after a brief hesitation, Drake still asked, “How many times have you restarted already?”
“I don’t remember; I stopped counting.” Li Nuowei glanced at Drake and said casually; he truly no longer cared how many more times he had to die, because he saw the hope of “clearing” it.
Hope is a wonderful thing; it gives people power. It can turn a timid and fearful guy into someone reckless and bold, giving him the courage to charge even in a nine-deaths-and-one-life desperate situation.
Li Nuowei now felt like he was just a reckless fool, but he was happy to be one.
Drake was silent for a moment, then casually asked, “Did I die miserably on the other reincarnation lines?”
“At least the ones I witnessed firsthand, yes.” Li Nuowei said calmly, “Do you want to hear about your thousands of ways to die?”
Drake let out a chuckle, “More than that, I want to know if I’ve ever survived? Even if it was in the most pathetic posture.”
“Yes, on one death line, you turned into a merman and successfully survived.” Li Nuowei looked at Drake, “You even seemed to become a small leader among the merman group.”
“Sounds pretty impressive.” Drake grinned and said with a smile, “But I have no interest in leading a team or being a leader; as expected, forget about being the ‘son of god’ or anything like that.”
Li Nuowei couldn’t help but smile; he wouldn’t tell the other that on that death line, he had personally ended his life.
Hai Da Hui Ke!
The unique roar unique to merpeople suddenly rang out, coming from the stairs, accompanied by a rush of footsteps.
Everyone immediately became alert, holding firearms and taking positions against the wall; Li Nuowei and Drake led at the front, their gazes fixed dead on the front.
Soon, a frenzied merman was the first to appear, but after it entered the green light radiation influence range of the Fluorescent Phantom Nest in Li Nuowei’s hand, the group of merpeople following closely behind the lead merman all slowly came to a halt.
Upon seeing a group of fully armed humans lying in wait, those clever merpeople realized they had flipped the car this time.
After a barrage of gunfire, the aggressively charging merpeople were successively shot down, with almost no survivors—all dead.
Li Nuowei only felt immense exhilaration; wiping out this group of merpeople who looked dumb as logs but were actually insidious and cunning was truly satisfying. Thinking of how he and Drake and the others had died countless times at the hands of these merpeople, it was rare to have such an exhilarating counterattack opportunity; now that he finally had the chance, how could he not unleash a wild barrage?
As everyone passed through the stair section littered with merman corpses, a sharp-eyed mystic investigator noticed a pitch-black cave entrance and pointed there, shouting, “Look there, isn’t that a cave?”
Everyone looked up and saw that there was indeed a cave entrance; only then did they finally discover another passage concealed by those Fluorescent Phantoms.
Everyone walked through a dark stretch of road and soon arrived at another stone chamber, which was also the merpeople’s granary. Looking at the “leftovers” left by those merpeople, the Mysterious Group members all felt unwilling to look straight at it and cursed lowly, “Beasts.”
Following the unconscious plea for help low groan emitted by the innocent boy bursting with will to survive, everyone found him hung high in midair by hooks and immediately rescued him.
“Stay strong and live on, child.” A mystic investigator looked at the innocent boy whose consciousness was chaotic and body was limp all over, and softly encouraged him.
It was unknown whether the boy’s consciousness was still clear, or if he instinctively felt safe; the boy no longer emitted painful pleas for help low groans but quietly lay in a mystic investigator’s arms and fell asleep.
A sturdier mystic investigator took responsibility for carrying the boy on his back while protecting his safety.
Drake looked at the rescued boy and felt somewhat emotional in his heart; although it wasn’t his achievement, they had found the missing boy, preventing a tragedy for a family.
Leaving the tunnel and returning to the air-raid shelter, everyone no longer saw any traces of merpeople; they had disappeared without a trace, perhaps gone, or perhaps all dead under their guns.
But everyone still didn’t dare relax their vigilance; until they returned to the ground and Liuhua Port’s mysterious disappearance case was completely settled, they couldn’t let their guard down.
And everything seemed to have ended, calm and peaceful; everyone safely returned to the ground without any attacks, and the merman population that had plagued Liuhua Port for countless centuries seemed to have evaporated from the human world.
When walking out of that eerie tunnel, Drake and Li Nuowei heard the sound of airplane engines streaking across the sky; the two looked up—it was fighter jets, like black petrels shuttling through the rainy night sky, speeding through the dark clouds, cutting a trail through the haze, resolutely plunging into the thick fog.
Everyone dazedly followed the fighter jets to the beach, and in the heavy rain, they heard several thunderous booms from the direction of the thick fog in the distance; immediately after, the waves at the beach seemed to grow larger, crashing against the coastline and splashing black foam.
They didn’t see those fighter jets return from the thick fog, but Li Nuowei also didn’t see a crouching giant beast emerge from the sea surface on what he considered the most hellish day of his life; that earth-shattering tsunami didn’t swallow the city.
Li Nuowei didn’t know what those fighter jets had done, but he knew those guys who never returned were very cool.
Drake thought so too.
On the night of the Aquila meteor shower, Liuhua Port was, as usual, a port city shrouded in haze; though gloomy, the people in the city lived lives of various flavors, actively staying alive.
Just in case, that day Drake was transferred by the Mysterious Group people to an inland city far from Liuhua Port; only Li Nuowei remained in that city.
That night, Li Nuowei slept very early; he felt that even if doomsday couldn’t be stopped, dying in sleep was the sweetest death, and this time he chose this painless way to die.
Of course, if today passed and everything remained the same, and he could see the sunrise the next day with the haze dispersed, he vowed to live until old age this time.
At the moment of falling asleep, Li Nuowei found himself wearing his sleep pajamas and standing once again at the door of that forest cabin.
This time, his mood upon entering the door was completely different from last time; he pushed the door open, smiled, and came before Lin Ling who was stationed at the counter: “Boss, I succeeded.”
Lin Ling smiled without speaking, nodded; the black cat in the shrine opened its calm golden cat eyes, quietly watching it like a statue of deity.
Li Nuowei sensed the eerie atmosphere, feeling cold branches drilling into his veins, extracting the blood from his body, squeezing out his warmth bit by bit; his joyful expression slowly stiffened.
Suddenly, Lin Ling smiled and asked a question that made Li Nuowei feel extremely familiar, like a tree stump striking a bell slamming heavily into his head.
“So, what story happened to you?” Lin Ling clasped his hands on the table, lazily leaning on the table with his chin resting on it, hiding most of his face behind his arms, revealing only one indifferent black eye.
Wait… this sentence, where have I heard it before?
Li Nuowei blankly looked at Lin Ling, inexplicably feeling a daze in his spirit, followed by buzzing tinnitus, dizziness, and blurred consciousness; he kept repeatedly asking himself where he had heard this sentence.
The more he repeatedly asked himself, the faster his heartbeat raced out of control, and the closer he got to the terrifying truth.
Can’t think anymore! Stop thinking!
No! Quickly recall it!
Stop!
Continue!
Think!
Give up!
Think! Think!
Drake, merman, sea monster, Sea God of Anhai… stars aligning, doomsday descent, seal, primordial era’s dominator, fear, true name, despair, blindness, madness, return…
Just a little more! Just a little more!
The answer is hidden there!
The obscure truth!
The suspicious world!
Other people’s voices kept popping up in Li Nuowei’s mind, roaring and bellowing at his brain, making his mind increasingly chaotic.
Just one more, just one more, answer, answer, obscure, obscure, suspicious, suspicious…
Hai… just missing the answer, obscure, suspicious truth…
Hai Da… obscure… suspicious…
Hai Da… Hui Ke…
Li Nuowei’s face flushed tide-red, his eyes glaring with bloodshot veins, his hands squeezing his head forcefully, as if trying to escape his soul from this frail flesh-and-blood body, fleeing from the merman whispers drilling into his brain.
In a daze, the world before Li Nuowei’s eyes lost its color; a tremendous force tugged at his collar, dragging him away from that twisted world surrounded by pigment filth.
Suddenly, Li Nuowei felt a chill, then roaring departed souls surged up around him; they reached out ferocious hands toward him, wanting to grab him and drag him into the inescapable abyss; Li Nuowei instinctively screamed to escape—he had to leave this eerie world.
Until he heavily crashed into a white door leaf and stopped, but those deformed figures emerging from different colored pigments still wouldn’t let him go easily, fiercely chasing him.
With no other choice, Li Nuowei staggered to his feet and opened that door leading to who-knows-where.
A blinding white light flooded into Li Nuowei’s eyes, and with another blink, he was back in the forest cabin.
He looked at the furnishings in the shop, the environment inside the house, that sleepy black cat, the ever-busy red-clothed big brother, and the always fake-smiling Boss Lin… all coming into view…
But with another blink, he found himself soaked and lying on the ground, with a vast sea before his eyes; a fierce storm was gathering on the sea, and a dazed merman was lying on top of him, its mouth full of bloody fangs, part of his body caught in the other’s teeth.
“Great son of god, what are you waiting for? Let’s continue the ritual; the meteor shower is coming!” Ma Hong, whose half-human face was torn open revealing a ferocious merman visage, shouted at the merman who had suddenly stopped its tearing and biting.
The merman gnawing on Li Nuowei’s body listened to Ma Hong’s words; facing Li Nuowei’s complex gaze, the merman only felt its head splitting with pain; it clutched its head in painful roar, its ferocious merman face continuously morphing in distortion—one moment Drake’s human face, the next an indifferent merciless merman appearance.
Li Nuowei, lying on the temporary altar built at the sea corner, looked at the painfully collapsed Drake and the panicked Anhai Divine Society believers; as his life neared its end, Li Nuowei laughed.
So everything was fake…
He was Li Nuowei, a student at Liuhua Port Comprehensive University; recently, the Mysterious Group’s Tiger Group leader and Liuhua Port branch’s A-level mystic investigator had come to the university to give lectures and investigate the recent anomalous personnel disappearance case.
He once had a twin brother who died in a car accident; the first time he met Drake was at the tunnel entrance four days ago; he believed the urban legend of sending items to the dead and sent his childhood collection to the tunnel entrance, where he coincidentally met Drake who had just returned from the beach.
He didn’t expect that he had long been targeted as a sacrifice by the merpeople; after following the urban legend’s steps to send the items, he was actually grabbed by the merpeople hidden in the darkness.
On that night of the meteor shower, the prophecy seemed to come true; that great detective Drake turned into a merman right before him; to complete the ritual of wishing and send a signal to the meteor shower, Drake—called the “son of god” by those frenzied merpeople—began to follow instinct and gnaw on him.
However, the beasts present didn’t expect that earlier in his dreams, he had come to a mysterious forest cabin shop and bought a story—a story that could loop forever endlessly…
He “told” the story to the merman Drake who was tasting his flesh; the other fell into hypnosis; to ensure the story listener could keep “listening” and regain his will in the process, he made the roles in the story die and restart over and over.
Now, Drake was awake, and the story should stop.
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