____
I have always hated getting bound by anyone, an equivalent to touching the inverse scale.
____
As Bi Chun Sheng"s voice dropped, chains of sacrificial writings sprouted from the bottom of the roof, wrapping around Sheng Lingyuan like shackles.
Flashes of lightning constantly crossed over the sky, painful for the eyes to look at. Everyone was shocked still in fear, frozen in the blinding white light.
Bi Chun Sheng"s face was melting like a wax figure, turning into blood flowing out. In a flash, she was dried up to a layer of skin, loosely covering her craggy skull.
She was kneeling on the ground, looking like a dejected corpse that died of starvation.
Sheng Lingyuan held back his smile and bent down to stroke her head: "Who do you want me to kill? Those people who used the human-faced b.u.t.terfly to subst.i.tute for real citizens? If I kill all of them, can your need for revenge be cleared?"
Bi Chun Sheng"s teeth showed through her dried up lips, t.i.ttering as they trembled.
Sheng Lingyuan continued to ask: "Those people who knew everything yet hid it all, if I also I kill them, will your revenge be cleared?"
Bi Chun Sheng couldn"t say a word, merely holding on his sleeves tightly.
"That"s still not enough, is it?" Sheng Lingyuan looked at her with a hint of sadness, "What will be enough for you?"
"I want… for the truth to be revealed…" Bi Chun Sheng said, "I want them to give me an explanation… to taste what I have been through, even hundred thousands time worse, I also want… Chiyuan…"
With every word she said, a line of sacrificial writing increased around Sheng Lingyuan"s body. Sheng Lingyuan listened carefully, to when she blurted out the final word during her delirious state, his expression changed, slowly raising his eyes: "Yes?"
Xuan Ji suddenly felt terrified, the heavy sword in his hand suddenly sliced through the ground. He used the force to jump up three floors, then used his feet to push at the wall and jumped to the roof.
The bottom of the roof was infested with sacrificial writings, Xuan Ji sliced through the ground, the fire on the heavy sword pushed the sacrificial writings back in an instant, freeing the field workers who were trapped on the roof.
Xuan Ji was so angry he could spit out blood: "Are you just going to sit there!"
It was as if the field workers on the roof were awakened from a dream and jumped down from the roof one by one.
"I want…the fire of Chiyuan to ignite one more time…" Bi Chun Sheng spoke in an almost inaudible tone, the sacrificial writing on the ground suddenly turned red as blood, pinning at Sheng Lingyuan"s spine, "I…"
When she said this, her body suddenly shook greatly. As soon as the field workers landed on the ground, a fury of whirlwind from Sheng Lingyuan"s feet rose, roaring as it swept through all directions.
Xuan Ji jumped but was only able to grab at Sheng Lingyuan"s sleeve… Even he himself couldn"t understand why he was doing this.
The sleeve was soon torn off, and Xuan Ji was blown away by the strong wind. In a flash, he wedged the heavy sword into the cement roof, holding the handle of the heavy sword with both hands to avoid being blown off, feeling like he became a flag blowing under the wind.
Sheng Lingyuan gently caressed Bi Chun Sheng"s head with all five fingers, then suddenly dug them into her skull.
He stood straight, looking down at the woman lying on the ground. The chains and shackles of sacrificial writing appeared on his body, cutting at his skin. Blood dripped down on the corner of his mouth, but the warm smile was still ever present on his lips.
He said: "No."
"Wait!" Xuan Ji unconsciously opened his mouth to stop him, "No…"
His voice was cut off by the loud wind, the fog was thick of the nauseous smell of blood. Xuan Ji heard the gritting sound of five fingers digging deeper into human skull, making him feel terrified.
"I have always hated getting bound by anyone…"
The wind blew away Sheng Lingyuan"s long hair, the writings on his body seeming like a punishment of a thousand cuts. His graceful and elegant skin quickly turned red in a mangled mix of blood and muscles, every layer of skin and muscle were sliced down, showing the veins and bones underneath…
The hand that had only bones left was still steadily situated at the top of Bi Chun Sheng"s head, going down inch by inch into the skull.
Blood sprayed on Xuan Ji and his heavy sword, but neither could avoid it.
Sheng Lingyuan tilted his head a little, the handsome features on his face had shown spots of bones underneath, yet he was still smiling and maintaining his gracious posture!
This scenario was so inhuman, Xuan Ji felt like he would never watch another horror movie for the rest of his life.
"An equivalent to touching the inverse scale*."
*touching an inverse scale means to touch on an issue sensitive to a certain person, inciting their displeasure or anger
Bi Chun Sheng said a few words from her throat: "You"re not afraid of… being crushed… into dust?"
"Ah."
"You"re not afraid of losing.. your soul…"
Sheng Lingyuan broke out into a smile, and Xuan Ji for the first time in his life knew what was called "feeling chills running down the spine", the fire symbol in between his eyebrows appeared involuntarily.
The other man said: "Have always wished for it."
As soon as he finished, the roof exploded with a "boom!". Half of the building was blown off, throwing out Xuan Ji and the heavy sword. The skeleton laughed loudly before collapsing. In that moment, Xuan Ji seemed to hear a thousand people at the same time screaming in agony by his ear. His hearing suddenly went mute, and all his hair stood up from their roots.
Xuan Ji didn"t think much. He rolled down from the roof based on instinct, fell down on the ground and picked up a field worker from the Deviant Control Office, running far away with all his might.
Right after that, a blast of lightning came down, seeming like a furious wrath of Heaven wanting to cleanse all that was filthy, causing the three cities and seventeen counties surrounding the entire area of Chiyuan to lose electricity at the same time.
Eighty one blasts of lightning fell in one place altogether, all of the surrounding plants caught on fire, heaven and earth seemed to have gone through several cycles of chaos.
After who knew how long, the fury of lightning stopped, the sky leaked, then heavy rain poured down.
The fire was extinguished.
On the roof, the crazy woman along with the even crazier devil that she summoned had both dissipated into dust, not even leaving a single trace.
The settlement collapsed and looked like a death mount. All living creatures, except Xuan Ji, fell into silence with no signs of being dead or alive.
A large pair of wings emerged from behind Xuan Ji, containing him to protect him inside of them. He knelt down on the ground, feeling like someone had stuffed an electric drill down his ear.
After that, the wings disappeared, and the heavy sword soaked in blood dropped down beside him.
The world suddenly turned into black.
When Xuan Ji woke up, he was already in the hospital.
He tried to turn, but his entire body felt like all of his bones were taken apart and then rea.s.sembled...his neck even felt that it was wrongly fixed!
Xuan Ji pulled out the IV needle on his hand. On one hand he tried to fix his neck pain, on the other, he tried to remember what had happened while wondering at the same time what he was missing.
What was he missing?
His wallet?
No, his wallet was almost like a decoration, it shouldn"t have that big of an existence.
Then what? His phone?
Like someone said, they would reimburse him a new phone...
At that moment, Xiao Zheng brought in a big bag and pushed in the door.
The reimburs.e.m.e.nt phone was here.
Xuan Ji cracked his neck, his messy memory came back, he whined loudly on the patient bed: "My son, dad finally gets to see you one last … Ah!"
Xiao Zheng threw the bag on him and the single bed squeaked. Xuan Ji was pressed down by the bag and quickly retreated: "You disrespectful son — what is this?"
"It"s yours, why are you asking me?"
Xuan Ji opened the bag and found that it was his heavy sword. The whole sword body was spotted with blood, yet old Xiao didn"t even wipe it down for him.
Xuan Ji dazed out for a moment, feeling unwell and shook his neck, suddenly realizing where this strange feeling came from — why didn"t his heavy sword automatically return to his spine?
Director Xiao carried a chair over and leaned on it with an exhausted look, wiping his face furiously: "The sacrificial writings disappeared, and we couldn"t find Bi Chun Sheng"s body."
Xuan Ji put the sword aside temporarily: "Were there any casualties?"
"Six field workers were injured, except that everyone else was fine, maybe a couple of minor injuries, no death — at the moment when the building collapsed, there were two people that were too close who were brought out by you, see…" Xiao Zheng stopped for a moment, "There"s some luck in this tragedy."
"Skip through that lucky part for a moment." Xuan Ji waved his hand, "Let"s talk about the bad news first. What"s the situation now?"
"We… just confirmed the ident.i.ties of the sacrifices." Xiao Zheng threw a small tin box to Xuan Ji, "Bi Chun Sheng worked as a field personnel at the Ministry of Security, specifically liked to interact with the people whom she had rescued. Don"t we at the Reparations Department usually erase the memories of witnesses? We all use some tools, maybe some drugs, and regardless of the amount, it can still create damage. Compared to Bi Chun Sheng"s method, hers was especially more gentle — first she establishes an emotional connection with the person, then using her words to brush through their memory, little by little… but she never minded the trouble."
Xiao Zheng stopped for a moment: "I feel like it was not just because of her work obligations, but instead this is what she liked to do the most."
This used to be her belief, the meaning to everything she held on to.
"The people whom she had rescued, after getting their memories repaired, they still maintained contact with her even afterwards." Xiao Zheng said, "Bi Chun Sheng has an address book…"
Xuan Ji finished his sentence: "The people on that book were either dead or missing."
Xiao Zheng smiled sadly: "Seemed like you have guessed it."
Xuan Ji asked: "How did she do it? Definitely not using that demonic b.u.t.terflies?"
"No, using her voice." Xiao Zheng said, "No need to meet face-to-face, no need to even talk through the phone, just a simple p.r.o.nunciation is enough. Have you realized, her special ability doesn"t affect everyone the same way. Those who keep their guards up around her, if they want to attack and she calls out something, they will only be stopped for a few seconds. When she fixed strangers" memories, first she made small talks to create emotional connections and garner trust later, repeatedly doing so to build the effect… but those are the people whom had had a relationship with her for a long time. The feelings were especially strong and trusting, one sentence from her is enough for them to jump to their death."
At the moment of their death, all the illusions disappeared, and the victim would realize that they were harmed by the person they trusted the most for no reason at all.
Because of that, resentment and agony were born, conveniently becoming a nourishment for the gloomy sacrifice.
"When we found the bodies at her house, all the bodies were lying neatly on the bed," Xiao Zheng said, "The bodies have decomposed. There were sacrificial writings written by blood all over the ground and the wall, the writings hid the smell, so not even the neighbor had caught onto this. Her husband was infested by the parasite, so his body didn"t decompose… Maybe because when his head was cracked open, the murderer was too emotional that a corner of his sweater was torn."
Xuan Ji blurted an ambiguous sentence: "Seaweed-colored."
"What?"
Xuan Ji shook his head in exhaustion.
"Her son and mother had a blanket draped over them, and next to her husband, there were traces of someone lying down." Xiao Zheng angrily dragged two puffs of smoke then continued, "Since then… maybe since eight years ago, she had become crazy. If not, she wouldn"t have harmed so many innocents like that."
When she realized her mother and son didn"t have the parasite, she must have had no way to distinguish between reality and illusion anymore.
Humans couldn"t face that kind of reality.
She could only tell herself, that all of that wasn"t real.
In the next eight years, she couldn"t distinguish between nightmares and reality. Every moment and every second, she doubted whether the person next to her was real or just a body without a mind. Her comrades with whom she stood together through thick and thin were the murderers behind the scene, so the values and beliefs she had always held tight and everything she fought hard to protect were all but a ridiculous conspiracy?
"In her eyes, they"re not innocent," Xuan Ji suddenly said, "At that point, she must have thought they were all possessed by the b.u.t.terflies."
Everyone lived in their own stories — stories of struggle, stories of love, stories of comfort and ordinary lives... even stories of revenge have a long history behind it.
This allowed people to have thoughts, have worries, have meaning in their everyday life.
For Bi Chun Sheng, everything was destroyed and torn, and she fell down to the deepest point of the abyss.
Only there could her voice be heard by the demon in slumber at the bottom of Chiyuan.
This was probably what it meant — the human candle who had given up on the meaning of "everything".
They went silent for a while. Xuan Ji then thought of something and asked: "Where is the student who was possessed by the b.u.t.terfly?"
"Still alive, the surgery was successful." Xiao Zheng said, "Currently the b.u.t.terfly situation can"t be hidden anymore, which is her goal. Where the b.u.t.terfly came from, why was it him, how did Bi Chun Sheng knew about the gloomy sacrifice... all of these we do not know. Director Huang had already been summoned, and he hasn"t come back yet… I…"
Xuan Ji understood it, and he patted Director Xiao"s shoulder.
Xiao Zheng pressed his cigarette down on the ashtray, and before they could say anything, his phone rang. He picked it up, only had the time to speak with Xuan Ji a few more words before having to leave again.
In the silence of the single ward, Xuan Ji sat alone on the bed, contemplating for a moment, then his eyes fell on his heavy sword —