He had a secret he dared not tell anyone. Compared to mature, well-developed older women, he preferred innocent, beautiful little girls. Chris knew very well that he was not a pedophile, nor would he ever like real-life little girls. He simply longed for beauty. Whenever other netizens posted vulgar remarks, he would even pick up his keyboard and furiously tear into them.
He wanted to protect a patch of spiritual purity, to find a place where his soul could rest.
Like the guardians of sacred lands in Shenzhou novels, dedicating their entire lives to the sanctuaries they protected.
"Why am I having so many random thoughts today?" Realizing his mind had been far too active, Chris hurriedly shook his head. He turned on his game console and played a casual game.
Perhaps because he was distracted, he only came in second to last even in that little game.
Then he turned on his computer, went online, and played Magic: The Gathering with people in the arena for a while. Unsurprisingly, he got utterly crushed.
After suffering setback after setback in gaming, Chris felt irritated and started browsing online for newly released comics.
One comic called "The Record of Shenzhou's Broken Sword" caught his eye. It was entirely captioned in Chinese. Chris's Chinese was not very good, but after years of browsing raw content online, he had plenty of instant translation software.
"Qian... how was this character pronounced again? Qian Yu? No, it should be Qian Jue." That was the trouble with instant translation: many uncommon characters simply could not be translated directly. Shenzhou works in particular were even harder to understand.
The comic was very short, only a few pages. It seemed to be newly released. Still, Chris liked the artwork. He liked that wuxia flavor.
Even after trying every form of entertainment he could think of, the burning restlessness in his heart remained unresolved.
Why was that? Had he simply not found the right game?
But he normally found games full of fighting and killing deeply off-putting. Pure violence only made him sick.
Give it a try.
He muttered to himself.
He opened a game called ATG5. When he controlled the protagonist and slaughtered everyone in the game, he finally smiled.
Sister
Comfortable and peaceful, the tightly drawn curtains shut out the outside world. The birds chirping from the treetops in the morning and the honking from the distant highway had all drifted away from him. Chris curled up on his floor bedding like a swaddled infant, sleeping deeply.
The computer screen still glowing before the desk continued displaying the game. The protagonist, who had practically slaughtered the entire city, stood there as if nothing had happened, occasionally moving under the idle animation.
Beep, beep, beep—
The shrill alarm sounded, urging him to get up and prepare for work. But Chris, who had played games until nearly dawn, was at his sleepiest. He merely picked up his phone by instinct, silenced the alarm, and fell deeply asleep again.
An intense sense of exhaustion wrapped around his body, dragging Chris into a deeper dream.
It was an absurd dream. Every creature living there was a mushroom with human expressions. Their caps came in every color, and each one looked distinct. Some mushroom people even styled their mushroom heads into pompadours, looking ridiculous and comical.
But Chris himself did not fit into this world at all. As the master of the dream, he was not an immobile mushroom, but a human who could walk around freely.
The mushroom people had no extra limbs besides their enormous caps and stalks. Curious, he teased the mushrooms by the roadside, watching their varied expressions as they became angry, bashful, or simply cursed him out in strange mushroom language.
Chris found it incredibly amusing.
Until he accidentally stepped on a little mushroom.
It was a tiny, ugly mushroom. With a light step, it turned into a puddle of mush beneath his foot. The sticky sensation disgusted him. Red slime flowed from the foul-smelling mushroom and stuck to his new sneakers.
"Disgusting." Cursing nonstop, Chris scrubbed his new shoes with all his strength. Yet no matter how hard he wiped, the slime stuck to them would not come off.
"Damn it, damn it!" His emotions grew more intense, and his curses became harsher. At the same time, the slime clung even more firmly. Until, in the dream, he created a machete out of thin air. Its sharp edge gleamed white. Chris raised it high, then brought it down. The blade sliced through the skin of his ankle. Pale flesh rolled open, spraying dark, filthy blood. Mixed with indistinct mushroom juice, it stank as it ran down over flesh, bone, and sinew. He chopped his own foot right off.
He felt much better that way.
A knock suddenly sounded at the door. Chris, immersed in his dream, jolted awake. He looked at his slightly numb foot and was relieved to find that it had merely become tangled in the game controller's cable.
"Chris, open the door."
His sister's voice came from outside. Chris let out a breath and answered.
Gaming equipment lay scattered across the floor. Half-eaten snacks covered the bedding, greasy smears staining the blanket and clothes.
Click.
The door opened, and cold air blew in from outside, making Chris shiver. His sister Corona frowned tightly, clearly dissatisfied with how slowly he had answered the door. She first looked around Chris's room, then frowned even harder at the garbage and games filling it.
"Chris, I never heard you say you had the day off today." She stood with one hand on her hip, wearing only a thin nightgown. Her hair was somewhat messy. Like Chris, she had probably gone to bed very late.
"Sorry, sis. Something happened yesterday." Feeling irritated, he did not want to recall what had happened yesterday.
"What happened? Why didn't you tell me?" Unfortunately, Corona was not so easy to fool. She crossed her arms and stared intently at Chris with a scrutinizing gaze.
His sister's relentless pressure made Chris feel increasingly irritated, and his voice gradually rose. "It has nothing to do with you!"
"What do you mean, it has nothing to do with me? Ever since our parents died, I've been the one in charge of this family."
They were like two cups of water heated in a microwave. Though their surfaces appeared calm, once they collided, they boiled violently.
Chris had slept only three or four hours and had not recovered his energy at all. Then the strange dream had left him mentally sensitive. Right now, he had no desire to argue with his sister.
Unfortunately, Corona did not see it that way. Her brother's behavior clearly meant he was hiding something. She knew Chris well, and this was completely unlike him.
With neither of them emotionally stable, Corona's voice kept rising as well.
"Chris, tell me. What exactly happened? I'm the one in charge of this family. I have the right to know!"
"That's my own business. It has nothing to do with you or this family, understand?!"
"Enough, Chris!" Corona rudely cut him off. The disappointment in her eyes revealed her feelings, but her voice gradually calmed. That was the sign of someone furious beyond measure. "Your obsession with these virtual things has made you lose your judgment in life. They harmed you. They ruined you."
Furious and repressed, Corona walked straight to Chris's desk and shoved the monitor, which was still displaying the game, directly onto the floor.
The screen flickered, then went completely dark. The high-end computer he had bought with several months' wages was smashed out of shape. Torn cables crackled with arcs of electricity, as though burning Chris's heart.
A violent emotion kept rising from the depths of his heart, and his gaze slowly shifted to the baseball bat resting in the corner by the wall.
"Act normal, Chris. You're not a child anymore."
After destroying all the messy game consoles in the room, Corona stood before her brother. "Now tell me what happened."
Confusion, agitation, rage—intertwined negative emotions constantly battered Chris's mind. He lowered his head and looked at his sister, who was much shorter than him.
Her thin nightgown barely covered half her body, exposing large swaths of skin at the collar. Her alluring figure was firm and full. For the first time, Chris, who had always been obsessed with two-dimensional girls, realized that his sister had this side to her.
He lowered his voice, thick with malice.
"It feels good when those men play with you, doesn't it? Those people you told me were coworkers were actually just your playmates, weren't they?"
"You call yourself the head of the household, but you're nothing more than a **. I've seen those pills you leave in the kitchen countless times. You never even tried to hide them. Were you getting high with those people right in front of your own brother?"
"I even locked myself in a tiny room and gave you all this space because I didn't want to see your filthy faces."
"But now you destroyed it! You destroyed what I cherished!"
Chris's eyes turned bloodshot, and his right hand reached for the bat by the wall.
Gunfight
Bang—!
The baseball bat struck an aluminum can, crushing the empty container out of shape before sending it flying high into the air. It then landed on the ground and was run over by a passing car, flattened into a sheet of metal.
An hour had passed since Chris argued with his sister. He was now consumed by intense self-reproach, repeatedly rubbing the bat in his hands while the turmoil in his heart refused to settle.
"What the hell is wrong with me? Why did I say something like that to my sister?"
Chris kept questioning himself. Several layers of beer cans had already piled up beside the flower bed. As a shut-in, he almost never drank, but this time, he had downed several cans in a single hour.
Several cigarettes lay scattered on the ground. He had lit every one, taken one drag, then immediately stubbed it out. Chris hated the smell of cigarettes. That pungent, choking odor always made him nauseous when it passed through his lungs. Even the country's widely praised "good cigarettes" held no appeal for him.
But after taking that first puff, even though he quickly stubbed it out, several minutes later he unconsciously lit a second one.
The addictive pull tore at his already crumbling mind, and intense pain ate away at his heart.
His sister's shock, anger, fear, and regret—every detail of her expressions had fallen into Chris's eyes. That was precisely why he felt even worse, because her expression seemed to confirm his suspicions.
Though he often saw strangers' shoes around the house, Chris always avoided thinking in that direction. After their parents died, his sister had quit her old job and endured those difficult times with him. He simply could not believe that his strong sister would willingly sink to such depths.
Just as Chris sat on the flower bed by the roadside, tangled in his thoughts, several police cars rolled through clouds of dust and came to a smooth stop in front of him.
"Chris, you're under arrest."
The police quickly surrounded Chris, seized the baseball bat from his hand, and cuffed his hands behind his back.
"Under arrest? Why? I didn't break the law!" Chris struggled continuously. The police officers' words sounded utterly absurd to him. He had never committed a crime in his life.
"You've been charged with murder. The victim was a young police officer." The officer in charge did not care about any of that. He forcibly grabbed Chris and dragged him toward the police car.
Even Chris, sheltered as he was, knew that police needed to provide a proper arrest warrant before apprehending a suspect. Yet these officers had cuffed him immediately and directly declared him a criminal. Some vague instinct told him that once he got into that police car, he would never be able to clear his name.
"I didn't do it! Let me go! I'll file a complaint against you!" Struggling constantly, Chris, despite his lack of exercise, forcibly broke free of the officers restraining him. But in the next second, a baton smashed directly down onto his head.
A sharp pain hit him. His vision went black, and Chris lost consciousness.
·
Who knew how long had passed? When Chris woke again, he felt his hands tightly cuffed. His cheek was pressed to the floor of the vehicle, and the constant jolting made his head ache.
"Yes, we've caught the scapegoat."
The police car transporting him was pitch-black. Chris could only hear faint voices, as though someone was on the phone.
"I understand. Those Fang He Association people went too far. That guy was one of Oaxaca State's mayor's close confidants. Dying here without any explanation will have a terrible impact."
"That's your problem. The payment is three hundred thousand."
"Three hundred thousand? Are you kidding? That wasn't the price we agreed on last time. That murdered officer was—"
Chris did not dare move at all, afraid the officers around him would discover that he was awake. But his heart pounded wildly. The young officer who had died before his eyes yesterday had actually been important, shot dead for no clear reason by the local gang. Yet the more pressing issue was that Chris appeared to have been made the scapegoat.
"As long as this gets settled, it's fine to raise the price a little."
"How much can you add?"
"＃＃＃＃＃＃"
"Fine, I understand. We already found bloodstains on that kid's car window, and we had someone specifically clean up the cameras from that time. If the higher-ups investigate, we just hand him over."
"If the people above really want to investigate to the bitter end, then let them. The local rats are all monsters that eat people without even spitting out the bones."
Beep—
The call ended. The lead officer had never even considered hiding his conversation, while the accompanying officers remained completely unmoved. Some of them even smiled when they heard there would be more money.
These people had long been colluding with the gangs. Chris's heart sank as he instantly understood his situation. He was not the first scapegoat they had put forward, and he would not be the last.
Uneasy and on the verge of a breakdown, Chris felt an indescribable oppression constantly warning him. But he was only an ordinary person, and now he did not even have the strength to resist.
He was being framed merely because he had witnessed a shooting. He was facing death merely because blood had splashed onto his car window.
This damned world.
This damned country.
All at once, the cases he saw in the news every day came to mind. How many of them involved people pushed out to die by demons hidden in the darkness?
If he appeared in the news over the next few days, what would happen to his sister?
Thinking of that, Chris suddenly regretted saying such excessive things to his sister before running out.
Tap tap.
Just as Chris began to despair, dense gunfire suddenly erupted. The police car transporting prisoners became a direct target, and even the sturdy bulletproof windows could not completely stop the gang's firepower.
"Ahaha, good morning, you Fang He Association lapdogs!" A strange, shrill voice came from outside. Chris pressed himself tightly against the floor, not daring to move in the slightest. Even when the officers inside the car stepped on him as they ran back and forth, he did not dare make a sound.
No reason, no excuse, no warning.
A gunfight between the police and a gang had brazenly erupted in this city.
Bang—!
The police car was suddenly struck. At high speed, the collision could only lead to death.
The vehicle rolled, crashed, and burned.
Fortunately, Chris, who had remained pressed against the floor, was actually the least injured person in the entire vehicle.
The police car burned fiercely, at risk of exploding at any moment. Chris's head was covered in blood as he struggled desperately, shifting his body and trying to crawl out of the vehicle.
Click.
A gun was cocked.
Chris raised his head. A black muzzle pressed against his forehead.