Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The setting sun signaled the coming of the night.
Chen Chen held the baby in his arms. He walked like the dead across the desolate wasteland, every step served as a reminder of what he had lost. However, when he looked at the snoring baby in his arms, he felt like there may be a glimmer of hope left.
Years of accumulated experience in the village had taught Chen Chen to scour for resources in his surroundings. He replenished his energy by drinking morning dew and eating wild vegetation. He did not know how long it had been since he embarked on this journey. The days felt like years. So much time had passed that Chen Chen had become numb to every pain in his body.
Just as his body was about to give out, he suddenly arrived at a long, winding highway.
The discovery of the highway brought forth another tiny slither of hope. He walked along the roadside and soon heard distant rumbling coming from behind him.
Chen Chen turned around and saw several vehicles with the Blacklight Biotechnology logo on their hood coursing down the highway. They passed him by as if they did not notice him at all.
Upon seeing this, he continued down the highway. He started to see more people along the highway the further he went. All the people were heading in the same direction.
There were even more dead bodies than there were travelers.
Chen Chen took out a water bottle and gulped it down to the very last drop. After ensuring that the bottle could not produce any more water for him, he carefully tucked it back in his pocket and continued down the highway.
In time, he saw a large crowd gathered in front.
He was filled with dread upon finally arriving at his destination. He saw numerous refugees like himself gathered by the fenced wall that stretched across the entire city. He recognized the sight at first glance. It was the wall he raised to prevent the refugees from storming the city. He even saw hundreds of Black Knights posted atop the wall.
The tables had turned. Once, he sneered at the weak commoners from above and now, he was one of the weak commoners.
Chen Chen slowly shut his eyes and lowered his head and touched the frozen corpse of the baby in his arms. A sense of despair greeted his eyes. In the end, he could not save anybody.
Soon, his world darkened as he collapsed on the ground lifelessly. Nobody around him paid attention to this dying young man as they continued heading toward the imposing wall. As far as they were concerned, Chen Chen was only one of the many fallen they had seen on their way here.
‘Do you feel guilty?’
In the depths of his mind, Chen Chen heard many foreign voices. It felt as if the original owner of this body he resided in was questioning him sternly…
‘All these years ago, could you have made a difference by simply extending an arm to those who need it?
‘Do you feel regret?’
Chen Chen found himself at a loss for words. Could he truly be regretting the decision he had made all those years ago?
“Heh…”
Moments before he could feel his soul draining away from this lifeless shell, he chuckled ironically. From the depths of his feeling, he mocked everything with a sarcastic chuckle. His eyes suddenly shone with lucid clarity.
“To be honest?”
Chen Chen muttered. He looked at the young man called Lerigado who was both himself and not himself. Lerigado glared at him and repeated, “Don’t you feel guilty? You could’ve saved me, saved my parents, my sister, and my best friend’s daughter. You could’ve saved them all!”
“What do you have to say for yourself?”
A silent teardrop fell from the corner of Chen Chen’s eyes but his expression was calm and he declared with fixed determination, “I’m myself. I’m Chen Chen, not you. If you have your sorrows then so do I have my own beliefs. Even if I had to experience your sorrow another hundred thousand times, I still wouldn’t feel any remorse!”
“Hahahahha!”
After expressing this, Chen Chen exploded with laughter. Slowly, the world around him began to change and turned into a mirage, then became drowned in complete darkness!
Chen Chen could feel his strength returning to his body and his conscience sobering up from its previous state. Quickly, he used the psionic concentration in his mind to sweep through his surroundings and immediately detected Zhao Shanhe and Jenny standing right next to him. Just like himself, both of them rooted in place and their bodies trembled from time to time.
“Zhao Shanhe!”
Chen Chen never felt so awake before. He immediately wrapped his hands around Zhao Shanhe’s neck and raised him off the ground!
“You dare plot against me?”
Chen Chen’s eyes remained shut, but his anger could be clearly made out on his expression all the same. Zhao Shanhe, who was suddenly assaulted by Chen Chen, woke up as well. Despite the sudden interference, he made sure to keep his eyes shut while he cried out, “How is this possible? How did you wake up before me?”
The commotion they had caused woke Jenny, who immediately snapped her eyes open and looked at Chen Chen. “Let go… Let go of the boss…”
Moments after her awakening, she sensed a sharp pain!
“Ahh!”
Jenny cried out hysterically. Her body trembled endlessly while she wrapped her hands around her head then screamed.
Like ice melting under the sun, her body started to melt as well. Chen Chen saw everything happening with his psionic eyes. He saw Jenny beginning to melt from her head down!
In this very instant, Chen Chen suddenly felt his grip on Zhao Shanhe weakening. Zhao Shanhe released his palm and summoned the black slate which quivered in the air and emitted a shockwave that blasted Chen Chen away and filled his ears with an indescribable screech!
The sharp screech echoed in Chen Chen’s ears. With his “eyes”, he could see Jenny’s head morphing into a puddle of yellow liquid. Despite that, she was still shrieking!
It was only until her neck had melted away with her throat when the shrieking finally stopped. It only took another ten seconds or so before she turned into a puddle of mud!
Was this the consequence of opening one’s eyes?
Chen Chen, who saw everything unfold, turned to Zhao Shanhe who wrought himself free earlier and asked, “Whats’ going on?”
“D*mn it…”
Zhao Shanhe seemed deeply troubled as well. He bit his lip and said, “She, she must’ve seen something. There must be something around us now! She must’ve seen that thing and…”
Chen Chen became silent and scanned their surroundings with his psionic energy again. However, he did not notice anything peculiar other than the ground underneath them that was filled with pits. He was certain that Zhao Shanhe must have repelled something when he activated the Civilization Monolith.
“I didn’t try to set you up or anything…
“I just never expected to be attacked by some kind of dangerous foreign entity upon just arriving in the subspace. That thing seems to be able to devour the minds of its victim by exploiting the most vulnerable parts of their memory and throwing them into a dreamscape!”
“You think I’d buy any of that?”
Chen Chen rebuked harshly.
“It’s up to you whether you believe it or not, but every word I say is true!”
Zhao Shanhe defended himself. “I have the Civilization Monolith so you cannot kill me but I never intended to harm you either in the first place.”
Chen Chen remembered everything. During the Blacklight virus plague so many years ago, he had the chance of going through the details of many refugees gathered outside the wall. One of them who left a deep impression of him was a young man named Lerigado. He remembered what Lerigado had to endure only to die at the wall…
Everything he had experienced earlier must have been an account of Lerigado’s life.
“The subspace is essentially a projection of the real world.”
Zhao Shanhe was worried that Chen Chen would doubt his innocence so he explained again, “This isn’t a material plane but an abstract world bordering on the edge of the balance of the universe. This means that whatever happens in the material plane is completely meaningless here and that anything can happen here due to the instability of this plane. This is why it’s vital to keep your eyes shut because this world isn’t to be observed with the naked eye. Any such instances that aren’t supposed to occur will cause a great shift in this plane that may endanger our lives!”
Chen Chen suddenly tensed up just as Zhao Shanhe said this. He heard the sound of footsteps coming from a distance.
The footsteps sounded eerily familiar but Chen Chen somehow was sure that it did not belong to the robot in human skin they had encountered last night, but to a human instead…
“I didn’t expect you guys to come in here as well..”
Both of them heard a grave, astute voice of an elderly man. Chen Chen immediately turned to the source of the voice, completely petrified.
Zhao Shanhe trembled at the sudden appearance of this person. His expression turned intensely fierce.
This voice…
This voice!
Chen Chen took a deep breath and stated solemnly, “Professor Wang Xi, you’ve finally made an appearance.”
Chen Chen would never forget this voice, even if it had been more than a decade. This voice played out in his mind daily like a tape recorder. It was Professor Wang Xi’s voice…
A somewhat frail and rickety figure slowly walked into Chen Chen’s psionic range. He saw with his mind’s eye that the professor was wearing a common blue T-shirt and he addressed the two of them directly, “Zhao Shanhe, Chen Chen, I’m sure you didn’t expect our reunion to happen in a place like this.”
“Wang Xi!”
Zhao Shanhe was so overcome with emotion that his body would not stop trembling. “How dare you show yourself! Explain why you’ve done so much harm to me when I’ve never wronged you in any way!”
“Harm you?”
Professor Wang Xi seemed appalled by these accusations. “I’ve been so generous to leave the dimension key behind for you. It’s all thanks to my gracious gesture that you managed to ascend to the peak of the Earth Federation so what makes you say that?”
“But you intentionally left your memetic inventions in the real world and nearly drove the world to extinction several times. Why did you do that?”
Zhao Shanhe continued his accusations while constantly squinting in Chen Chen’s direction, hinting that they should attack Wang Xi together.
“Well, I suppose you only have your own incompetence to blame.”
Professor Wang Xi sighed. “You obtained the Civilization Monolith that I was originally saving for myself, and yet you couldn’t figure out the workings of the antimeme. Doesn’t the problem lie with you in this case?”
Zhao Shanhe scoffed at this insulting remark.
“Professor Wang Xi.”
Chen Chen interrupted the heated exchange between the two. “Was it also a part of your plans for me to acquire the USB drive?”
“No.”
Wang Xi shook his head. “I only left the dimension key in a common spot and left it to fate to decide who would stumble into it and what happened next. I must say I wasn’t expecting you to outperform Zhao Shanhe…”
Chen Chen frowned.
“Only Zhao Shanhe’s obtaining the dimension key was by design.”
Professor Wang Xi scoffed. “He was meant to be the second owner. However, he could barely put up a fight against you even with the help of the Civilization Monolith. How pathetic…”
“What’s your motive?”
Chen Chen brushed aside the irrelevant discussions. “After we acquired the dimension key, you spread the ‘Weeping Angel’ and other memetic entities into real life at the expense of innocent lives. What made you do so?”
“Why would I need to have a specific goal in mind?”
Wang Xi seemed perturbed by this and stated, “I’m everything. I’m both God and the Devil itself. If I must give you a reason to satisfy you, then it would be that the dimension key has to be bound to someone, but I want to limit the power you two can gain with the dimension key, so I did what you accused me of…
“Back then, the most advanced storage form was floppy disks. The dimension key I first acquired at the time came in the form of a floppy disk as well and thought I could change the entire world with it, but unfortunately…”
A touch of regret appeared in Wang Xi’s eyes. He shook his head and continued. “I died once and therefore lost my ownership of the dimension key. From there on, I’d only let the dimension key find its way to its next owner, which is how it came into your hands…”
Chen Chen could not believe what he was hearing. He looked at Wang Xi suspiciously, a part of him still doubted Wang Xi’s confessions.
Could there be some hidden meaning behind what Wang Xi was saying?
Chen Chen pondered on what he just heard. By this point, Zhao Shanhe’s patience had run out.
“In that case, die!”
Zhao Shanhe attacked without any warning. The black slate in his hand multiplied in size and emitted a terrific, invisible power which rippled to Chen Chen as well and sent pulses of pain into his head!
The moment Zhao Shanhe made his move, Chen Chen felt a sharp pain burning through the center of his chest. A lightsaber pierced through the back of his chest and appeared in front!
“Hahaha!”
Wang Xi laughed when he saw this and glared at Zhao Shanhe with a look of mockery. After that, he disappeared, leaving behind only one final remark that echoed in the subspace.
“Chen Chen, I shall wait for the day you bring mankind to an era of subspace travel!”
With that, Wang Xi vanished!
Chen Chen’s expression grew cold and wrathful after this. He flicked the sweat pooling on his brow and turned around slowly, menacingly to face a startled Zhao Shanhe.
“How, how are you not dead yet?”
Zhao Shanhe was caught off guard by this. He clenched his teeth and flicked the lightsaber upward, slicing apart Chen Chen’s chest to reveal large clumps of black substance underneath his skin!
Zhao Shanhe prod inside with his Force and immediately noticed that there was a mass of nothingness inside Chen Chen. To him, it seemed like Chen Chen was made of a web of flesh without any distinguishable structure such as veins or bones…
Chen Chen smiled grimly. “Just as I thought, it was you messing with my head just now!”
Zhao Shanhe turned pale as a sheet of paper. He quickly leaped backward and invoked the black slate in his palm again. Pulses of unknown power seeped into Chen Chen’s conscience and tried to dominate him.
“Impossible!”
Zhao Shanhe was petrified. The black slate in his hand quaked maniacally and yet he could not take hold of Chen Chen. “Impossible, why aren’t you dead yet? You’re not human!”
“I’ve surpassed the boundaries of humans a long time ago!”
Chen Chen’s psionic power erupted like a massive volcano, filling the air with his murderous intent. However, as vicious as his energy was, they were unable to penetrate the barrier formed by the black slate.
Zhao Shanhe, who was hiding behind the barrier, was awed by this sight. He slowly paced backward as he beheld Chen Chen’s otherworldly might. He was inching toward a dimension crack that would lead him back to the real world. He was trying to escape!
“You won’t get away!”
Chen Chen opened his eyes at once. His pupils dilated. He saw countless twisted, misshaped figures everywhere around them. They moaned and growled with inhumane voices and the moment they saw Chen Chen opening his eyes, their arms turned into fine, slender tentacles and reached for Chen Chen!
“You opened your eyes! Hahaha! You opened your eyes!”
Zhao Shanhe shrieked ecstatically. He did not expect that this Chen Chen would be foolish enough to sabotage himself and open his eyes!
However, his joy quickly turned to fright within a second as his smile turned frozen and blank with it. He saw Chen Chen’s hands reaching for his eye!
“Plop!”
With an abrupt pull, the neural muscles were torn off cleanly. Chen produced both eyeballs on his palms. After that, a strange light appeared within those empty sockets where his eyes once belonged and through this tunnel, Chen Chen finally got to see the shape and form of this world!
“So, this is the subspace!”
Chen Chen saw the mystifying black fog swirling around them. Those fog instantly evaporated upon touching his skin. The cursed effect that should kill anyone who opened their eyes in this world was completely nullified. Meanwhile, Chen Chen’s psionic powers had built up to a point where they shattered the limitations of the subspace universe and erupted!
“Boom!”
In an instant, Chen Chen’s psionic powers integrated itself with the idle power of the subspace. His psionic wave drew a ferocious tide of the subspace energy that flowed voraciously into Zhao Shanhe!
At last, the black slate could not bear the tidal swarm of subspace power sent by Chen Chen anymore. With several sharp cracks, it shattered into pieces!
“Ah!”
All Zhao Shanhe could do at that moment was to emit a whimper before his body was broken apart and shattered into pieces by the subspace stream…
