Free Web NovelChapter 454: Chapter 71: My Stepmother is a Bit Much
"It’s like an emotional suppressant," he said. "I’ve heard that humans Inside the Mist would use this stuff as a last resort to save their lives. Once injected, they can become almost immune to negative emotions for a short time."
"But as soon as the effect wears off, the negative emotions will burst forth." The artist said with an admiring gaze:
"Xiaoyu’s move was beautifully played. Humans are like they’ve forgotten some kind of setting, not daring to cry, to rage, to fear."
"They will continue to be in this state until Xiaoyu lifts it... Then they will be like they’ve been injected with an emotional suppressant."
The merchant clapped his hands:
"The whole world will then fall into a great negative emotional crisis... She really never makes a move, but when she does, it’s a killer blow."
"We also have to thank the Light Arrow Knight for that. Xiaoyu’s ability also has certain limitations." The artist took a few steps back and began to scrutinize his creation.
The merchant said: ƒгeewebnovёl.com
"This way, the other party will probably try everything to find Xiaoyu, right?"
"Yes, but it’s not very meaningful, because before they find Xiaoyu, I will bring even greater fear to this world."
"The King of Hearts, that guy, will bring us information. However, during his process of obtaining faith, we can regard him as an enemy for the time being."
...
...
Fuyue New Island.
Bai Wu met with the King of Hearts again and received news about the King of Clubs. The King of Hearts indicated that the King of Clubs had already chosen a certain area, and the rules of this area were very likely related to "the game."
The fear that came with this news was not something a few Q-levels could compare to. He told Bai Wu to be prepared and once again expressed his desire for recognition from the Light Arrow Knight.
Bai Wu, of course, continued to stall.
Xi Yunzi could only sigh:
"My heart has always been devoted to the bright moon. With utmost sincerity, when will I ever gain the old Light Arrow Knight’s acknowledgement? Ha, until we meet again by fate." Xi Yunzi’s gaze was quite meaningful. Bai Wu could see that Xi Yunzi was gradually inferring the identity of the Light Arrow Knight onto himself.
This was not an easy character to fool.
After Xi Yunzi left, Bai Wu didn’t immediately return to Aulora Island but took a stroll around the small town instead.
He had noticed before arriving that the atmosphere in the entire township was strange.
Everyone had a forced smile on their face, living like zombies.
Occasionally, people would see old friends and nod their heads. Some would open their mouths as if to speak but eventually hesitate and remain silent.
It seemed as if everyone was trying to avoid speaking because the mouth is the outlet for emotions, and they were too eager to express their true feelings but dared not for fear of not being able to suppress them.
Bai Wu, who had been investigating the King of Clubs, was also on guard against other Kings’ moves.
It seemed to him that if these figures hidden in the shadows made their move, there should be significant commotion.
But he did not expect the world to change so magically, so silently...
He had not noticed this at all these days.
He began to use the Angel Envoy to gather information and quickly learned about the process of change in this world—
It started with some policies from the world’s upper echelons.
He frowned; these policies were already quite extreme. Anything taken to the extreme is bound to provoke a reaction; the public could not possibly fail to resist.
But Bai Wu found that the implementation of the policies was going exceptionally well.
As things escalated to where manga artists couldn’t kill characters, novelists couldn’t write tragedies, and all films were replaced by pure comedic comedies, without even a hint of a tragic core... such magical actions were theoretically impossible to be accepted by the public.
But the outrageous part was that the masses accepted them.
And imprinted them into their minds, everyone desperately maintained their emotions, preventing the emotional measurement value from reaching the threshold...
The more Bai Wu learned about these people’s lives, the more appalled he became. How long had it been? How could the world have become like this?
It wasn’t that Bai Wu and Zero had been negligent in their guard, but rather the spiritual power of the adversary was so daunting that it was simply indefensible.
All over the world, people lived behind smiling masks, but when a mask is worn for too long, it fuses to the flesh, and removing it becomes excruciatingly painful.
There was no crime in the whole world, which was already some kind of ideal state.
But a world without disputes was nearly impossible.
Tell someone that trolls no longer harassed others but instead complimented them, that internet forums were harmonious, as if the "good person" and "wish you well" comments typically found only on serene sites had spread to all websites.
They would probably say, "Is there such a good thing?"
But obviously, they wouldn’t truly believe it existed.
And once such an outrageous situation did occur, what seemed harmonious was actually terrifying.
The more emotions were suppressed, the more terrifying they became when they erupted.
In the days that followed, Bai Wu quickly returned to Aulora, and in Tang Jing’s school, he saw similar circumstances.
Even school bullying took the form of smiling victimizers and smiling victims, both wearing a creepy, hair-raising grin.
It was as if he had returned to a distorted scene inside the Memory World.
The behavior of humans remained the same... but human emotions seemed to have only one kind.
A joyous world where people were joyful when doing good, joyful when doing evil, joyful when bullying others, and also joyful when being bullied...
The entire world had fallen into a pathological state.
This made Bai Wu realize that the source was not the fantastical manipulations of the leaders of various countries, not the so-called emotion measurers, nor the various policies against negative emotions—
It was an unknown, unprecedentedly enormous force.
...
...
On the fourth day, Bai Wu received two pieces of news.
Inside Xu Ling’s villa, when Tang Jing and Xu Ling were heading to school, Bai Yuan appeared.
"I’m here to remind you that it’s time to expand the recipe of the Inner World."
Seeing Bai Yuan appear, Bai Wu knew this person was probably very happy, after all, Bai Yuan always liked watching jokes.
Although Bai Wu had guessed that the huge change in the world came from some Kind of power, he did not know the weakness of this power.
Prayle’s Eye, when encountering humans affected by some force, would pop up a lot of data, but as for that force, the Eye only mentioned—
[My old buddy, this is a power that twists thinking, but you must find the person for me to be able to analyze specifics.]
Bai Wu indeed had a clue, his thoughts converging on the Square K—Dong Nianyu.
It must be some kind of powerful spiritual power, causing a twist in people’s normal cognition.
But where exactly was Dong Nianyu? How could this power be undone?
Bai Wu still needed more time to understand, but time was precisely the most precious commodity at the moment.
It wasn’t that Bai Wu and Zero were complacent, leading to miscalculations, but that this time the enemy was too powerful.
Past adversaries had only created certain effects within a specific area. But this time, the range of Dong Nianyu’s spiritual power influence —— stretched across the entire world.
Even though Bai Wu placed significant importance on Ks, he still found it hard to believe... a K was able to change the normal cognition of everyone in the world in such a short time...
Even Tang Jing, Zhao, and others were affected, to the extent that these days, while Bai Wu was investigating K intelligence, they did not sense anything abnormal about the world.
It seemed as though Bai Wu was the only one who was awake in the whole world.
"If you’re here to provide information, then be quick about it, if you’re here to enjoy a joke, then get out."
"Don’t be so fierce, I just think the menu should be expanded, but also appreciating the oppressive feeling from your fight with a former K is quite nice."
"Former K? Club K, Dong Nianyu?" Bai Wu caught the keyword.
Bai Yuan nodded and said:
"Those past few Qs, you could easily crush them, and the new K, theoretically, isn’t your match either. Club K is the same, her methods are strong, but you can still beat her, only there is a price to pay."
Bai Wu guessed what the price was:
"The price of a large number of humans becoming Evil Fallen."
Bai Yuan’s hand touched the cup in the living room but couldn’t pick it up because his hand passed straight through it. He was just a persistent thought, a piece of nothingness, Bai Yuan laughed:
"That’s right, you and your mechanical friend are essentially in an invincible position already; Dong Nianyu’s move, in fact, is akin to exposing herself in this world."
"As long as you search, you’ll definitely find her, and ultimately you will win, but the world’s distortion density will increase.
Dong Nianyu is not your match, but she’s also not the kind that can be defeated easily and without cost."
With such terrifying spiritual power, even if the opponent had no intelligence, they were a formidable foe. Bai Wu asked:
"She isn’t the real Xiaoyugan, is she?"
"Of course, as I said, she’s hidden where you cannot reach. Dong Nianyu is a Split Body, the real Club K, not Xiaoyugan. Xiaoyugan is an existence unknown to others," Bai Yuan gently tapped on the cup, but there was no sound.
Bai Wu said:
"I need more intelligence, about this ability."
"That’s the price for updating the menu, isn’t it? Not a bad deal. Dong Nianyu has a weakness."
"What weakness?"
"Me, or rather, you."
Bai Wu frowned, Bai Yuan seemed to recall something amusing:
"I took the real Xiaoyugan away, which means there must be a fake one in the forbidden area, one that could confuse Jing Yi’s Xiaoyugan. Guess, who is this Xiaoyugan?"
Countless possibilities rapidly pieced together in Bai Wu’s mind, and soon he deduced the scene at that time——
The farmer planned to use Xiaoyugan to split out a Legion... But the first to split was also the most powerful one —— Club K, Dong Nianyu.
After that, the farmer wanted to observe Dong Nianyu’s actions.
Then Bai Yuan discovered the secret of the forbidden area, saw a Xiaoyugan identical to Dong Nianyu, which is to say, the real body.
Therefore, Bai Yuan, never shying away from fun, decided to let the real body out.
But Xiaoyugan and Dong Nianyu looked exactly the same, and a farm couldn’t have two "Dong Nianyus", so Bai Yuan arranged for Dong Nianyu to stay in the forbidden area.
"Why would Dong Nianyu cooperate with you..."
"Isn’t the answer obvious?" Bai Yuan smiled.
Bai Wu fell silent, looking at Bai Yuan with a somewhat complex gaze.
The answer was indeed obvious.
Why would Dong Nianyu cooperate with Bai Yuan? Naturally, she was deceived by Bai Yuan, and the most likely possibility... this Split Body of Dong Nianyu, the Xiaoyugan Split Body in the Memory World, the original body of Xiaoyugan—
All of them liked Bai Yuan.
Thus, this method of first making the other person fall in love with oneself, then wantonly manipulating and controlling the other, was something Bai Yuan had tried and tested.
"She likes you..."
"Because I promised her, I would take her away."
"But you only took away the original body of Xiaoyugan, leaving her at the farm..."
Bai Wu realized that Bai Yuan’s callousness was spotless, decisively discarding the other person the moment he found them no longer of any use.
One could imagine the despair of Dong Nianyu, who wholeheartedly believed Bai Yuan would save her, only to find out that she was just a pawn Bai Yuan was willing to sacrifice.
When Bai Yuan escaped, it was with another "self," and that sense of being betrayed and abandoned, that loneliness and anger, was far more tragic than Xiaoyugan, who was left waiting alone in the Memory World.
No wonder in Xi Yunzi’s paintings, Dong Nianyu and Xiaoyugan looked the same everywhere except for their eyes, which carried a hint of indifference.
As if hiding endless hatred.
"Correct answer. So she probably fell from love into hate, didn’t she? But I know her well; if she finds out who you are, she will come looking for you. As for what she’ll do when she finds you, who knows?
But it would be better for her to come to you than for you to find her slowly. Perhaps you will have such an opportunity soon."
After understanding this relationship, Bai Wu realized that the other three contemporaneous Ks had all been terribly deceived. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
Xiaoyugan was the most tragic of them. Bai Yuan’s redemption led her to believe that she would no longer have to endure the pain of splitting, but at least the Ark project indicated that she had gone through splitting twice.
The Ten of Clubs was the same, with extraordinary talent across ages, but always self-limiting.
The First Generation, Lin Rui, was also used by Bai Yuan, who possessed a method to traverse time and space on their body.
It was very likely that in Bai Yuan’s eyes, The First Generation... was just a key to the Otherworld.
After reaching the Otherworld, Bai Yuan didn’t care about The First Generation’s fate.
"It’s unfortunate that the Sequence of The Deceiver isn’t on you," Bai Wu mocked.
Bai Yuan was indifferent:
"These are all insignificant past events, remember our agreement."
They truly were insignificant past events, and from the bottom of his heart, Bai Wu detested such a person.
Even though Bai Yuan’s game, in terms of purpose, had a lot in common with his own, at least they were both opposing the Well, fighting the distortion, although Bai Yuan was merely on the way.
But Bai Wu still detested such a person; however, the goodness or badness of this person was hard to clarify in a few words. Bai Wu shook his head:
"Does the farm have some kind of ability to predict Mutation Entries?"
The question finally touched on a crucial point.
Bai Yuan nodded:
"Consider this message a free extra, yes, I know what Dong Nianyu’s ability is too, a legendary Mutation Entry—Cognitive Seal."
"What kind of ability is that?"
"Aren’t you curious why someone like the King of Clubs would limit himself for life just because of a tattoo?"
Of course, Bai Wu was curious and even found it quite unreasonable.
"It’s an extremely powerful ability. You have to understand that among the four Ks you are currently dealing with, this Dong Nianyu is from the same era as I am."
