[Reward settlement successful] [Clearance requirements met] [Stage complete] [Cleared with an exceptionally high rating, bloodline experience +600] [Killed 16 elite enemy units and 23 regular enemy units, bloodline experience +268] [Total bloodline experience: 868] [Rank: S-Rank Mixed-Blood (8658/10000)""S-Rank Mixed-Blood (9526/10000)] [Luck: E+""Luck: D-] [Valuable item drops] [Ancient Dragon Fetal Blood Serum (potent failed product/special item) x1] [Lust (genuine Seven Sins item) x1] [Common item drops] [Molotov Cocktail (fourth-generation Evolution Potion) x22] [Thompson Submachine Gun x10] [Mercury-Heart Alchemical Bullet (Old) x225] ... [AR-4 Cluster Bomb x2] [Fifth-Generation Species Scale Fragment x19] [Lost Rubber Duck (affection item) x1]
It was the first time he had gained so much bloodline experience, and the first time so many items had dropped. Quite a few were useful, while some were obviously useless.
The sheer abundance of rewards for clearing this stage left Lu Mingfei stunned.
He already had one of the Seven Sins in his possession. He knew it was a rare dropped item, and an extremely useful one.
He had no idea what Ancient Dragon Fetal Blood Serum was. Judging by the shape of its container, it seemed to be something like a high-tier Evolution Potion. The glass tube contained black, viscous blood that constantly writhed—a tube of living blood.
Now that he was rich, Lu Mingfei realized his inventory was nearly full. He had a habit of periodically clearing out his game inventory.
This game often dropped heaps of bizarre and useless things, such as "Su Enxi's Crab Roe Potato Chips," "Three-No Girl's Seal Diary, Page Seven," and "Sakurai Maki's Sheer Black Stockings."
After the Genji Heavy Industries dungeon ended, Lu Mingfei naturally "logged out" of it. He was now standing in a dim commercial street.
Looking up, he could see the silent outlines of buildings. Abandoned buses and sedans sat crookedly wedged in the middle of the street, their steel roofs caved in.
Beneath the boundless night, black high-rises stood in rows, but every window was tightly shut.
The clock tower pointed at twelve. Its two dust-covered hands did not move, and the whole structure stood silent like a towering gray-white tombstone.
Several shadows rustled in the darkness not far away.
A kingdom of death, a cold and silent world. There were no pedestrians. Even the concrete and steel seemed like corpses—corpses of still objects. Everything was dead, and dead corpses had piled together into a dead city.
Don't misunderstand. This obviously could not be the real world after waking from a dream. It was more like the game's... standby screen. Lu Mingfei had come here many times, usually resting here for a while after a dungeon ended.
If he had to explain it further, this place was like a mirrored reflection of the real world, or perhaps some indescribably enormous nest.
Based on experience, Lu Mingfei could space out here for half an hour.
He had once tried exploring the surrounding cities, but eventually gave up. This place was at least as vast as several cities, perhaps even an entire country, an entire continent... the entire planet.
Once he passed through the pitch-black shadows of the buildings and stepped beyond the domain of steel, waterfall-like starlight from the distant sky would rush toward him, dim as clusters of fluffy jasmine in a dark forest.
Lu Mingfei took out "Su Enxi's Crab Roe Potato Chips" and wandered over to find somewhere to squat. Leisurely opening the package, he chose a spot beside an old-fashioned red-roofed phone booth, so he could lean against it when his legs got tired.
Only after opening it did he remember to check the production date.
The expiration date read May 2011.
It had been manufactured in August 2010.
Mm... potato chips that would not be produced for another year.
They probably did not count as expired, right?
Squatting alone beside the phone booth, Lu Mingfei did not know exactly what he was feeling.
There was joy.
There was relief.
And there was pain too.
You had fought beside them. You had worried about them. Yet in reality, they would never know any of it.
Loneliness was really hard to endure.
Who knew when his future friends would cross paths with him?
When he entered a new dungeon, the old one would close. The next time he dreamed, he would be heading to that so-called "Beijing Subway Station."
Lu Mingfei took an old box of German matches from his inventory and quietly struck two to warm himself. It was not that he feared the cold. Light and heat simply made it easier to space out. He could imagine himself rubbing his hands by a burning red fireplace, with his cheap old dad and mom beside him preparing archaeological tools.
Under the pale yellow glow of the matches, a pungent smell spread through the air. It came from the yellow phosphorus burning in the matches.
This box was a factory-made match product from before Schrötter invented the prototype of the red-phosphorus safety match. Prolonged use carried a chance of causing the notorious nineteenth-century disease, Phosphorus Poisoning Anthrax.
Crunching on potato chips, Lu Mingfei felt like a squirrel that could make fire for illumination—provided it used a simple method. He had an antique lighter dropped from a dungeon in his inventory, but he did not really know how to use it.
It was a silver-gilt sulfur tinderbox, one of the prototypes of the lighter. It did not look very different from a modern lighter. In theory, turning its steel wheel against flint would create sparks and ignite tinder soaked with a little resin. Unfortunately, it was too old, and sometimes it would not spark at all.
With nothing better to do, Lu Mingfei held the tinderbox and rubbed it between his fingers. Old antiques always stirred something in people without warning, especially little square boxes like this. As he rolled it in his fingers, it felt as though vast stretches of time were slipping away through his fingertips.
The bottom of the tinderbox was engraved with dense Chinese characters and another language he did not recognize. They were somewhat blurred, but fortunately the Chinese portion was still legible.
To see it more clearly, he moved the tinderbox closer to the burning match.
The handwriting was somewhat crooked. The person who had left it was probably a beginner at regular script, and their etching technique had been poor as well. They had clearly put effort into it, but their skill was truly nothing to boast about.
"Menech to Yumeng Yanhiko, Augsburg, winter of '97." Lu Mingfei softly read it aloud. Something in his heart stirred, and he felt that it truly came from a very long time ago.
It was a gift from a foreigner to his Chinese friend.
The person who left those words had probably been very proud. The inscription seemed meant for his friend, yet also as proof for those who came later. His handwriting was not fit to be shown, but there had been no need to show it. This friendship had nothing to hide... A sudden thought struck Lu Mingfei, and in the silence, he felt envy.
The wind wailed, drawing nearer from afar.
Lu Mingfei patted his ears, thinking he had heard something wrong.
Just now, he had heard a vague word. A solemn voice seemed to come from behind him, yet also seemed to pry open his skull and crawl out from inside his mind. It was ancient and obscure, absolutely unlike any language he had ever heard.
Yet he understood its meaning.
That word was an almost instinctive call, a summons like bronze chime bells ringing as one, like a golden harp tearing silk, like seawater rolling and wailing across thousands of years.
"Father..."
Who was calling out?
Before he could think further, another completely different sound arose.
Someone was chanting. A crowd was chanting, their voices rising and falling.
"The thousand years have ended..."
Suddenly alert, Lu Mingfei's ears twitched. He heard rustling whimpers, and something in the distance was whispering.
At the end of the commercial street, near the entrance to the overpass.
Deadpools.
There were Deadpools in this city, but Lu Mingfei had never known they could speak and recite scripture. Normally, they kept to themselves and never crossed into each other's territory.
"The thousand years have ended. Satan shall be released."
"To deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth... to beguile the dragons of the world as they pass through the cities of the mortal realm, making them wage war without end."
As he listened, a helpless shudder suddenly ran through him, as though a demon's hand had closed around his throat.
Who had taught these Deadpools to chant?
Having met him only once, Lu Mingfei inexplicably thought of the boy in ceremonial dress inside the Genji Heavy Industries elevator shaft.
The boy had a pair of pale eyes that were both familiar and unfamiliar.
Mysterious and melancholy like a fawn.
Wordlessly familiar like an old friend.
Only now did Lu Mingfei recall the way that boy had looked at him.
Do we know each other?
Once upon a time, once upon a time...
The wind surged violently, sweeping the dust from the ground into a chaotic swirl.
Lu Mingfei, gray with dust, touched his hair. He squatted alone at the street corner, his heart aching for some reason, aching so badly that he could not stand up.
But he truly did not know a boy like that.
Fortunately, no one here could see how pathetic he looked.
Deadpools belonged to the dead. He had spent quite some time here, and he knew that apart from himself, there was probably only one other "living thing" in this place.
Dust from the mortal world coiled into yellow columns, rising around the buildings in wild abandon. Brilliant clusters of stars danced around a single point, flowing like a sea of blue rainbow tides.
The boy raised his head.
A black dragon soared above the city, riding the biting winds of heaven.
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