Free Web NovelChapter 328: Chapter 132: Thunder of Justice
Watching Lin Rui disappear, Wu Jiu was actually able to track the path of Lin Rui’s movement after he changed the time dimension. He didn’t have any strong visual talent; it was just that his dynamic vision was too powerful.
In the Food Domain, as powerful characters made their appearances one after another, Wu Jiu was busy being amazed by Bai Wu’s strong social skills outside the tower and the shock of three generations of the Investigation Corps sharing the stage, without carefully considering the strength of each individual.
Especially Lin Rui’s strength, which showed only a hint of its potential. From Bai Wu and Lin Rui’s conversation, the mask seemed to be a legacy.
He was curious whether Bai Wu had found the mask in the Legion’s treasury, or had the mask already chosen Bai Wu?
Wu Jiu didn’t ponder this question too much, as finding Lin Rui wasn’t his only goal; he also had to find Nie Chongshan.
Nie Chongshan, who couldn’t provide immediate support like Lin Rui, had a task in Bai Wu’s plan that was no less important than Lin Rui’s.
Baichuan Middle School was now gathering strong figures, but compared to major forces like Mechanical City and Black Gold Island, it was still too weak.
This place needed many more powerful figures.
And this trip to Shudu Prison, though seen by others as a torment, was in Bai Wu’s eyes—a gift from Destiny.
...
...
Outside Baichuan City, countless regions seemed to have turned into a draft of a painting, a golden light shadow like a painter’s rough, neither straight nor continuous line.
It swept rapidly across various regions, sometimes disappearing suddenly, like a breeze passing through a hall, but when one tried to reminisce, it was already on the distant horizon!
Lin Rui’s speed was very fast, partly due to the change in the time dimension, which slowed down the whole world.
The other part was the jumps in space.
He ran madly, crossing from Baichuan campus to the outskirts in just a few breaths. Those powerful Evil Fallen could hardly detect his passage, and even if they did catch a glimpse, they dismissed it as an illusion because of its swift disappearance.
The extreme rush wasn’t just because this was Bai Wu’s mission, but also because the mission mentioned the doctor.
Lin Rui’s encounters with the two Masked Strange People were actually very brief. Both of them appeared at the most critical moments of his life.
Meeting Bai Wu allowed him to take over the mask, and from there began the causality of the strongest heroes in seven hundred years.
Bai Wu gave Lin Rui faith and an opportunity, but reality was not like a fairy tale. People met a hero, but heroes could only save for a moment, not for a lifetime.
Lin Rui longed to protect his companions, and he began to overcome his fear of Evil Fallen and of this world.
But it was to no avail; his companions didn’t truly respect him. To everyone, he was just a clown turned into a lucky clown.
In the end, the children saved by Bai Wu in that event died one by one, and some even became Evil Fallen.
Past friends, the girl he once liked, were all consumed by the apocalypse. He attempted to save them, but facing the vast apocalypse, this boy was far too insignificant.
He also heard about the legend of High Tower, but it wasn’t a place for someone like him to enter; everything was too late,
Walking alone on the streets, where danger could arise at any moment, Lin Rui was full of wounds in his heart. This feeling of possibly dying in the next second, forever unable to find a place to survive, as if facing the endless apocalypse alone...
This made him feel an unprecedented loneliness and despair.
Maybe I too will become a monster... even though I have already met a real hero... even though I seriously promised my senior to take over this mask and try to live on...
He cried loudly, without caring if his cries and sorrow, fear and self-reproach, might attract monsters. frёeωebɳovel.com
After all, he was just a teenager. He wanted to live in this world, but the cruelty of this world was beyond his imagination.
As if his life had reached its end, Lin Rui, cold and hungry, leaned against a stone slab in the ruins, waiting for death to come.
It was while he thought this that he met the Masked Strange Person.
Like seeing an oasis suddenly in the desert, Lin Rui was teary-eyed, shouting out to his senior with all his strength, while taking out that mask.
The Masked Strange Person looked at the mask, utterly astonished.
"Ah, how strange and curious, I remember losing this mask in Baichuan City, but how did it appear in Food City?"
"Eh, there’s a scent of causality here. Hahaha... After so many years through space and time, I’ve finally met it, fate, fate indeed!"
Finally meeting with The First Generation Masked Strange Person, Lin Rui soon realized that this Masked Strange Person was very powerful, but from his words and deeds, he was not his senior.
What followed was the encounter and inheritance between this master and disciple, which was so brief that Lin Rui was not clear on many things about this real Masked Strange Person.
He was always mysterious, even in death.
Some conversations that persisted throughout, Lin Rui had already mentioned to Bai Wu in the Food Domain.
But there were some conversations that he hadn’t had the chance to discuss in detail with Bai Wu.
"From now on, you’ll gradually become stronger, but you have to get used to solitude."
"I should go, feeling some fatigue. A very long time ago, I wanted to sleep."
"Don’t ask where I’m going, where the heart desires, I am everywhere."
After saying these words, the Masked Strange Person didn’t actually leave. Before this, through many conversations with Lin Rui, he had gauged the temperament of this timid young man.
In a nutshell... it was very much to his taste.
He had even said:
"Time can change everything, but we are the people who can change time. I hope you will always keep this temperament, hahaha... Isn’t it interesting? Being an eternally youthful, old rascal isn’t bad either!"
Lin Rui didn’t understand those words at the time, and by the time he did, the Masked Strange Person had long passed away.
He would often reflect upon his own life.
Being born in such a world, he felt sorrow. But the sorrow wasn’t his alone; so many others were also struggling hard.
They didn’t have the opportunities he had, to encounter two great beings consecutively.
Therefore, Lin Rui always dared not forget the words of these two Masked Strange People. Having faced many trials and tribulations over seven hundred years, no matter how desperate the situation, it was those two anchors that allowed him to find that "youthful spirit."
"Ah... I’ve fallen asleep, how embarrassing, to have dozed off like that, hahaha, to think I said such a cool farewell line, and then collapsed from exhaustion!"
Moving through various regions like a ray of light, Lin Rui remembered their final parting. After uttering those cool lines about being everywhere the heart desires, the old Masked Strange Person didn’t actually disappear.
The transfer of power had left him uncommonly weak. This weakness wasn’t a new experience for him, as he had felt it once before.
"Senior..."
"I really should go now, had a bit of sleep, and feel a bit stronger."
"I will go with you!"
"The path I take is to death. The world is vast, and I’ve been everywhere I needed to go. I once thought about preventing this world from growing any larger, but I didn’t succeed. Cough cough cough... Damn, this old age is not a good look. You didn’t take off my mask while I was sleeping, did you?"
Remembering this moment, Lin Rui really wanted to laugh; what an interesting senior he had.
But his heart was filled with a kind of sadness; every time he recalled this moment, Lin Rui felt unspeakable heartache.
Back then, Lin Rui had shaken his head; he really did want to lift that mask.
"Senior... You seem to have suffered severe injuries."
"Hahahaha, indeed, these aren’t ordinary injuries, even being struck by the Destructive God of Sequence isn’t this exaggerated."
"Who did you battle to acquire these wounds?"
"A lunatic. I was supposed to give him something back, I had borrowed his knife... but that guy’s sober moments are getting fewer and farther between. I got quite a beating, ouch, nearly got beat to death... fortunately, he came to his senses in the end."
"Will you go looking for him again?"
At that time, Lin Rui hadn’t realized the strength of this lunatic, not until he truly mastered the power of the Masked Strange Person did he understand that the world outside the tower really did have monsters beyond human reach.
"Of course, I won’t go looking for him, and I hope no one else does either. But it’s hard to say. Bloody hell, those guys are completely unpredictable."
The Masked Strange Person didn’t start on his journey immediately after waking up; looking back now, Lin Rui realized that the senior was truly imparting his last words.
"Even though I’ve passed the power to you, it’s only because I took a liking to you. Whether you choose to play the villain or the hero, it’s none of my concern now. But kid... you have to promise me one thing."
"Senior, I don’t understand your meaning."
The Masked Strange Person’s finger touched Lin Rui’s forehead:
"This guy has a key command hidden in his hand, it’s one of the keys to unlocking a certain lock. If you ever come across it, kill it. Let the lock remain a lock. This world already has plenty of monsters; it doesn’t need another one."
The image of the doctor emerged in his memory, and thus, when Lin Rui heard Wu Jiu describe the doctor’s characteristics, he immediately thought of this monster.
This might have been one of the senior’s regrets, and Lin Rui, who had received a great gift, had long sworn to fulfill the senior’s last wishes.
It was after imparting this that the Masked Strange Person truly left.
"The new era is in your hands; my kind should die off in a corner before it arrives, letting death nourish the soil for the next era! Hahahahaha, write this down, remember the cool quote I said before I died!"
In his ears, it seemed as though the heroic laughter of the Masked Strange Person from seven hundred years ago was sounding again.
...
...
Outside the High Tower, Shudu Prison.
Several hours after the prison break, the inmates on the lower levels were being severely tortured by the prison guards, while the four leaders were transferred to the second level.
Although all the prisoners claimed that they only served to buy time, the prison authorities clearly wouldn’t evacuate the prison just because of a mask symbol.
They could only try their best to get some information out of the four leaders.
Under the torment of the "Spiritual Bed Experiment," Colt, Qian Yixin, Yuan Ye, and Lu Yan were all nearly driven to collapse by immense pain.
But the situation this time was too severe, and what they faced was not just doctors but also reinforcements that had recently arrived at the prison—the judges.
In the melodious sound of flutes, the memories of each of the four leaders on the second level began to surface in their eyes.
Perfect Mutation Entry: Death Worship. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
When one has nothing left to care for in their heart, death ceases to be painful. Unlike the annihilation of humanity by the Nightmare Roulette, whose ultimate direction is evil, the final direction of Death Worship is absolute negativity.
Once all thoughts of life were abandoned, another ability of the judge would turn them into puppets that would obediently follow any command, even if it meant smilingly embracing death.
The doctors and judges weren’t endowed with Bai Yuan’s power to see into the human heart, but they could tell that the four people held hope for the escapees.
The flute music combined with the immense pain of the Spiritual Bed Experiment would suffice to erase such illusions.
The wills of the four leaders were indeed strong, but facing such circumstances, the consciousness of each was already shattered, their eyes vacant, their bodies occasionally twitching instinctively from extreme agony.
Yuan Ye whispered her child’s name softly.
She seemed to have returned to seven hundred years ago.
Before the apocalypse descended, she had fought a lawsuit over custody of her child with her ex-husband. Her fiery temper, paired with slightly weaker financial capacity, led the court to ultimately grant custody to her ex-husband.
When the apocalypse came, everyone fled. Yuan Ye, worried about her child, arrived at her ex-husband’s home only to dramatically find him lying in a pool of blood.
He was not killed by the Evil Fallen but died from a robbery.
Survival demanded resources, and her ex-husband’s kind and cowardly nature made him suitable for times of peace, so the child was initially given to him. Although Yuan Ye was unwilling to accept it, she knew in her heart that it was a reasonable arrangement.
But the apocalypse was different; survival in such times required toughness and dominance. Yuan Ye watched her ex-husband’s dying breaths and let go of all past grievances in that moment.
It was also here that her soul found its own anchor.
Her child had not died; he was just too scared to stay without protection from his mother, so he left.
This final utterance, one could not be sure if it was the last act of kindness from a husband to a wife, from a couple that had long since lost love.
The child had vanished, and Yuan Ye never found him. But driven by the obsession to find her child, she endured every pain throughout the apocalypse.
But this time... she was really on the brink of giving up.
Having unsuccessfully searched for seven hundred years, Yuan Ye had finally become tormented. Right at the edge of Huangquan, she saw that haunting face waving at her.
The persistence she held for seven hundred years seemed to be crumbling in that moment. Yuan Ye suddenly felt weary; her child was already dead... She had considered this possibility over the years and had always been prepared for the worst.
But seeing the other side standing by Huangquan, she still felt as if all her stubbornness was being drained away bit by bit.
...
It was not just Yuan Ye; the other three were also on the verge of collapse.
Colt once again found himself in the memories he least wished to confront.
One after another, people around him died. He wanted to protect them, but all he could do was follow his parents’ advice and cover his mouth tightly.
Later, as he turned into the Evil Fallen, it was as if he were repenting for his silent evasion... Despite being an intelligent species, he lost the ability to speak. This was his silent persistence and self-reproach.
Now, in those memories, the ones he once sought to protect all reappeared, telling Colt not to feel guilty, not to be sad, to forget and let go of the past, to surrender everything to the flute music.
Colt’s gaze grew even more scattered... He really wanted to just fall into a deep sleep and not resist anything anymore... nor carry any burdens. Having moved forward carrying pain for seven hundred years, he was truly exhausted.
Lu Yan and Qian Yixin also returned to their own most painful memories, the pain that kept their souls clear during the many times they became lost.
But now, they were going to forever forget those memories in the sound of the flute, as if a gentle voice was telling them to stop bearing the weight of life.
Yan Zizai, Qian Yixin, Yuan Ye, Lu Yan, Colt... These people waiting for redemption were like drowning victims struggling for survival, trying to grasp at something but only feeling something extremely important drifting further and further away.
The doctors and judges were very pleased with this scene, already waiting for the moment when they would turn into puppets.
But just then, these people who had struggled for seven hundred years, surged with a final struggle in their hearts!
Yuan Ye looked at the silhouette of her child on the other side of Huangquan, clenching her teeth, tears streaming down, as if something inside her was fiercely resisting that sense of negativity:
"You’re not my child! You’re not my child! I don’t want him to die, I won’t accept his death!! I’ve been searching for him for seven hundred years! If he’s alive, I want to see him; if he’s dead, I want to see his body! Even if I have to search the entire world, even if the world falls to ruin! I will keep searching!!"
The angry mother was howling. She didn’t know whether, when the flute sounded next time, she would still be able to feel such rage or maintain the persistence to find her child.
All she knew was that if she compromised even on this, then these seven hundred years would have been a joke!
Colt, who hadn’t spoken in seven hundred years, finally said something in the illusion.
"Get away! I know no matter what I do, you all can’t come back. But if I die here... how can I face you in the underworld? Carrying the pain of revenge or bearing the torment of guilt, those are my own choices! You who are already dead, go back to your world! I want to live with my guilt towards you! I never want to forgive such a version of myself!"
Angry negative emotions instantly filled the entire prison.
The persistence of seven hundred years was like a final resistance, fighting against the double erosion of the flute’s sound and pain.
Yan Zizai opened his eyes, and within his blood-red field of vision, the aged face of his sister and Yan Jiu’s helpless plea emerged.
Though he was clearly out of strength, his hands were humiliatingly clenched into fists.
This painful captivity finally made him understand the role he had played in the Yan Family over the years.
Not just himself, how many such tragedies had the Yan Family experienced over seven hundred years?
Prisons are places that imprison the good. The fact that Yan Zhao was able to get out of this prison... made everything clear.
It was all fake... the so-called great future of humanity, the grand experiment of investigating Evil Fallen, all of it was fake!
Yan Zizai didn’t want to die, and even less did he want his death to further empower those with vile characters to do more evil!
As if by some tacit understanding among them, the five people—Qian Yixin, Yuan Ye, Colt, Yan Zizai, and Lu Yan—all let out an angry roar at this moment.
The sound was like a thunderous roar descending from the living into the underworld!
"What’s going on? What’s happening to them?" the doctor asked.
The judge said,
"All I can say is that you’ve found a few tough nuts to crack. The power of the Mutation Entry will slowly erode their inner persistence, and their will is resisting the Mutation Entry. But as time goes by, they will eventually succumb."
"Such resistance will have a sort of outburst, which you can think of as—death throes. The intense will to live will struggle a few times before being completely submerged."
The judge wasn’t unfamiliar with this phenomenon; in fact, he was surprised that these people had managed to persevere through the combined torment of himself and the doctor for so long.
But the more surprising events were about to unfold.
As the judge prepared to play the flute again, to play the melody that sends one towards death, it suddenly found... its movements slowing down.
Not only its own movements but even the changes in the doctor’s expression seemed to slow down to frame-by-frame playback at this moment.
Outside the prison, sirens wailed loudly!
But the sound, like the voices of the prisoners and patients, became drawn out due to the slowness.
This moment lasted for a very short time; when everything returned to normal, terror filled the doctor’s eyes, and the judge looked at the scene before him in disbelief.
"For seven hundred years, pressing forward constantly, maintaining your original aspirations and striving to survive, every time I see such behavior, it seems so endearing. This anger when resisting death, is truly touching, hahaha... it’s wonderful!"
"Likewise."
"Senior, thank you for letting me come here. It’s not just about fulfilling my master’s last wish. Being able to meet so many interesting people is truly worthwhile! Even if it costs me my life, I will take them out of here!"
"What you should be happy about is that you didn’t arrive late. With such speed, yet a directional idiot, you almost missed a big event."
"Hahahahaha... Such a handsome entrance, saying that doesn’t seem right, senior."
The golden light swirled around the two figures like the airflow when a tornado appears.
The terrifying golden energy, starting from the laboratory, spread out like a storm, filling the entire prison instantly!
In that moment, the arms of the prison guards with their batons seemed frozen in place! Even the doctor and the judge felt that strong force putting them in another dimension of time!
Two men wearing the same masks appeared at the eye of the storm.
As if responding to that determination to survive at all costs and the pure rage against the encroachment of death,
The group of people struggling in despair, as if to retain the anchor within their souls, let out a thunderous roar.
And the justice that descended like thunder, the reinforcements from the refuge—
Lin Rui and Bai Wu, finally arrived at the prison!
(Not finished yet. Well, the following parts are difficult to write; my brain is a mess, so I’ll publish this for now, and continue tomorrow. This Chapter is a bit long, but it hasn’t reached my personal standard for a longer Chapter. Everyone, please bear with it for now. Writing is hard; please subscribe.)
