Sad Happy Water

There was even a snake...

Beneath the mask, Huai Shi could not help but sigh helplessly.

Under Red Glove's control, the giant python slowly tightened, as though it intended to crush his bones bit by bit. It even deliberately bound his left hand, leaving him no chance to move.

The pistol fell to the ground.

"I admit it, I almost... almost lost to you..."

Red Glove dragged his shot leg forward with a limp, his savage face filled with chilling gloom and viciousness. "But your strange little tricks end here."

As he spoke, he slowly raised the fish tank in his hand, showing him the last remaining fry inside.

"Don't be afraid. I won't kill you. After all, even I don't often get the chance to turn an Ascender into fish bait..."

As he spoke, Source Matter continuously surged from the fish tank in his hand.

Red Glove kept splitting off pieces of his own soul, turning them into bait to nourish the fry inside. In an instant, the pink goldfish rapidly swelled, eventually turning bluish-purple. Its bulging, enormous eyes were filled with bloodshot veins as it stared straight at Huai Shi.

Forcing the fry to mature to the point where it could parasitize an Ascender had clearly drained much of Red Glove's strength. His face was bloodless, his steps unsteady, and he could feel both his consciousness and body nearing their limits.

Thinking that a newly promoted Ascender had pushed him into such a state, he could not help feeling sorrow from the bottom of his heart.

But this was no time for weakness.

He raised his hand and suddenly punched Huai Shi in the face. Then came another punch, smashing the ridiculous mask and revealing Huai Shi's youthful face.

"It's you?"

He froze, recognizing the boy before him. Then his gaze grew even more vicious. "Not killing you back then was a colossal mistake! Luckily, it's not too late to fix it..."

"Bro, you talk too much. If you're going to kill me, hurry the hell up."

As though he could no longer endure the python's constriction, Huai Shi's face was covered in snot and tears, as if the pain from his wounds had squeezed him into crying.

"Come on, then. At worst, eighteen years—no, seventeen years from now, I'll be a hero again!"

Red Glove sneered.

Seventeen years? He did not have seventeen years left. Once the goldfish devoured Huai Shi's soul, Huai Shi would become nothing more than an empty, living corpse.

He raised his left hand and slammed it against Huai Shi's forehead. The goldfish in the tank vanished in an instant.

Huai Shi let out a scream.

"Go on, scream... Soon, all five of your senses will be devoured. You won't feel pain ever again."

Red Glove laughed, but as he looked at the wreckage around them, sorrow welled up inside him again amid the torrential rain. A feeling of being far from home rose in his heart.

This was not his homeland, after all. Ah, how he missed the damp forests, and those little mice...

Thinking of that, tears began to fall from his eyes.

But then he shuddered, suddenly realizing where that sorrow was coming from... The python. The python was convulsing, trembling as though it were sobbing its heart out, unable to keep hold of its prey.

But he had no time to care about the snake, because at that moment, he suddenly remembered his wandering life after betraying Rome, and the terrible price he had paid to infiltrate the Present Realm.

Overwhelming sorrow swallowed him whole, making two streams of Tears of Blood flow uncontrollably from his eyes.

"What is this?"

He stared blankly at the Tears of Blood falling onto his hand, struggling to suppress the increasingly profound sorrow and pain in his heart.

"Ah, it's just... a humidifier. Don't worry about it."

Wrapped in the sorrowful python, the tearful Huai Shi grinned. His finally freed left hand pulled open his waterproof jacket, revealing a cola bottle.

It had been taped to his bulletproof vest, with a humidifier inserted into it that continuously sprayed gray mist.

At that moment, Huai Shi had never been more grateful to that flamboyant bastard Liu Dongli—who had complained that the weather was too dry and insisted on buying a portable humidifier.

All the Tribulation Ash Huai Shi had produced over the past few days, along with four hundred milliliters of purified water, had been poured into that bottle. Mixed together, they became a brand-new Happy Water.

It had been quietly running from the start, but the rain had been too dense for its effects to appear. Yet after Huai Shi had stalled for so long, the buildup from all that time finally erupted completely.

Now there was one snake, and one you, suffering two different kinds of sorrow.

That was double the happiness!

Amid the searing pain in his forehead, Huai Shi wept as he clenched his fist, summoned his axe, turned it around, and viciously smashed his forehead with the flat of the blade.

Bang!

His vision swam.

Even stronger than that was an indescribable fury and madness, burning up from the depths of his soul as though his entire body had been turned into a copper cauldron of torment.

The sharp impact traveled without reservation through the fish tank and into Red Glove's consciousness. Like a broken bell struck by an iron hammer, his mind hummed and shook as black blood seeped from his ears and nose once more.

Then, the goldfish that had burrowed into Huai Shi's brain began to convulse wildly, repeatedly trying to smash through his body and escape.

"Since you're already here, why rush to leave?"

Huai Shi gritted his teeth, raised the axe, and struck his forehead again. With a puff, he spat out blood. The goldfish convulsed madly, then soon stopped moving.

Once again overwhelmed by indescribable nausea, Huai Shi opened his mouth and spat out the purplish-black goldfish. Then he raised the axe in his hand—chop!

Red Glove's body jolted violently, twitching as though electrocuted. Another crack split across the fish tank.

It was not over yet.

Huai Shi turned around, looked at the writhing python on the ground, aimed at its head, slowly raised the axe, and brought it down!

Bang!

A sound like a bursting balloon came from Red Glove's hand. There were no goldfish left in his tank, which was now covered in cracks.

Once the last trace of the incense's effect faded, the pain of his soul nearing collapse erupted from within his consciousness.

He roared in agony, bent down, picked up the pistol he had dropped, and repeatedly pulled the trigger at Huai Shi until he emptied the entire magazine.

But through the thick curtain of rain, tormented by pain, he could not aim at all. Instead, he hit the sports car behind Huai Shi, which had rammed headfirst into a shipping container.

Amid a tremendous crash powerful enough to give Liu Dongli another cerebral hemorrhage and send him back to intensive care, the luxurious dashboard shattered completely into garbage.

Rainwater poured into the car through the broken windshield. Electrical sparks from short circuits kept bursting out, and something was triggered. The radio emitted a burst of chaotic static before somehow starting to play a CD on its own.

The car's sound system, once bought at great expense, was completely out of tune. The treble and bass blended into an indistinguishable mess, and even the electric guitar became blurred.

"We stood on either side of the stairway to heaven, talking about the years gone by and things of the past..."

Through layer after layer of rain, the singer's voice drifted like a ghost between dust and tombstones. "I thought you were dead, dead alone, a long, long time ago..."

In his intense daze, Red Glove staggered backward, leaning against the shipping container as he struggled to breathe.

He no longer had the strength to run.

In the end, he had still fallen into the hands of the Astronomical Society.

"You win."

He threw away the pistol and looked coldly at Huai Shi. "The lunar prison, the abyssal cage, wherever you want to lock me up, I don't care. But don't think you'll get anything out of me."

In the silence, only the rain could be heard.

Huai Shi seemed not to have heard him. He merely stared distractedly at the broken speaker in the sports car.

"David Bowie?"

He could not help wanting to praise Old Liu's taste. He looked like a tacky gigolo with no taste beyond country disco, but if you loved David Bowie, then you were his friend!

Unfortunately, that friend of his was now lying in intensive care.

So...

"Can you stop saying such boring things?"

Amid spasms and convulsions of pain, he turned back and sighed wearily. "I didn't come here to take you somewhere."

"I just wanted to beat you to death, or be beaten to death by you—"

Either you died.

Or I did.

It was that simple.

As they faced each other in silence, calm gradually returned to Red Glove's twisted face. All that remained on his shattered features was grim coldness and unspeakable ferocity.

"Another madman? Good..."

He gritted his teeth and tore the ruined outer garment from his body, revealing his upper torso wrapped in bandages. Beneath them, his scar-riddled muscles slowly bulged.

He crooked a finger at Huai Shi.

"Come!"

In that instant, the axe blade cleaved through the torrential rain!

In a blur, Huai Shi only felt the axe strike something hard. Then, instinctively, he... let go and stepped back.

In that instant, he saw only a flash of steel sweep upward along the angle where he had been holding the handle, shrieking through the air before him and slicing through his hair blowing in the wind.

Had he been even a fraction slower, his remaining left hand and eye would have been completely ruined by that strike.

Only then did Huai Shi see the dagger in Red Glove's hand.

The dagger, which had been hidden against the inner side of his arm, was flicked out with a simple motion and landed in his palm. It spun nimbly once, then appeared in his other hand.

Like a magic trick.

He pressed the attack step by step.

Blood seeped from Red Glove's muscles again. The effects of the Silver Blood Potion had clearly been completely destroyed, yet he showed no sign of slowing down.

The direction he targeted first was not Huai Shi's exposed vital points outside the bulletproof vest, but Huai Shi's left hand!

At that moment, aside from irrepressible killing intent, Red Glove felt only deep wariness.

No matter what, he absolutely could not let Huai Shi's weapon hit him... That axe-like thing possessed not only physical destructive force, but power directed at Source Matter as well. It could even produce an effect similar to a soul shock.

A terrifying attack that targeted both spirit and flesh.

If it did not so obviously look unlike a rapier, he would practically suspect that Huai Shi held the renowned Border Relic, Ember Nail.

In his current state, his Stigmata could no longer use its Dissolution ability. If Huai Shi caught him off guard with a few more strikes, his soul would definitely collapse completely.

Yet the more fiercely he attacked, the more he could not help doubting the skills he had honed for so many years.

Though Huai Shi was clumsy and utterly bedraggled, every sure-kill strike of his was awkwardly dodged. Several times, he had even nearly been struck by that axe again.

With skills like these, he was obviously a complete novice... Had his instincts become as sharp as a beast's, or was he simply lucky?

Once again, a thrust aimed at Huai Shi's left eye came to nothing.

Why had he dodged again?

If Huai Shi knew what he was thinking, he would definitely have answered: Probably because I've died so many times?