Under the Rules, All Beings Are Equal

Inside the docking pod, "terrible" could no longer describe Gu Chengfeng's expression. He looked as if he had swallowed three jin of dead flies whole.

On the holographic screen, that glaring flash of crimson flitted through the Berserker Legion like a ghost.

Every flash was accompanied by the teeth-grating crack of breaking bones.

Crack!

Crack!

The sound was amplified endlessly in the deathly silent wasteland, carrying clearly throughout the Divine Battle Hall through the docking pod's speakers.

The spectators in the stands were all dumbfounded.

The previously noisy venue had fallen so silent that a pin dropping could have been heard.

Everyone rubbed their eyes, wondering if they were hallucinating.

"I... what did I just see? That berserker squad leader got one-shotted?"

"Not just one, a whole fucking row! Look at the bottom left of the screen!"

"Holy shit! How come those tier-two berserkers didn't even resist? They just snapped their own necks?!"

Lin Que sat in the front row of the stands, still clutching a handful of half-eaten sunflower seeds, his mouth open wide enough to fit an ostrich egg.

"Brother Bai... what kind of monster did Brother Bai raise in his divine kingdom?"

Qin Wan stood in the teachers' section, the hand she had been about to use to press the forced disconnect button frozen in midair.

Behind her gold-rimmed glasses, her beautiful eyes were filled with shock and bewilderment.

"No spiritual power fluctuations, no physical collision..."

"This way of killing is practically like... directly rewriting the law of causality!"

Qin Wan took a deep breath, feeling as though her worldview had been shaken to its core.

How could ten square kilometers of wasteland with ninety-nine percent contamination possibly give birth to something so terrifying?

Meanwhile, in the docking pod on the right.

Su Bai was leaning back comfortably in his seat, even crossing one leg over the other.

He watched the kill notifications keep popping up on the screen, the corners of his mouth rising uncontrollably.

"Buddy, this is like throwing meat buns at a dog: once they're gone, they're never coming back."

Su Bai silently gave Hongdou a thumbs-up in his heart.

As expected of a rules-type horror tale. This killing efficiency was smoother than harvesting leeks.

However, Su Bai also knew very well that although Hongdou's "Death Gaze" had no solution, it required the action of "turning around" to be triggered.

Once the enemy noticed the pattern and stopped turning around, the move would no longer work.

Sure enough.

After a brief period of bewilderment and fury, Gu Chengfeng finally caught on inside the docking pod on the left.

"Everyone, stop! Don't turn around!"

Through the divine kingdom core, Gu Chengfeng shouted an order to his followers at the top of his lungs.

"That's an illusion! A contamination-induced illusion created by dark matter!"

"No one is allowed to turn around! Close your eyes and charge forward! Tear that wretched building down!"

The berserkers might not have been very intelligent, but they obeyed their god's orders absolutely.

Hearing Gu Chengfeng's roar, the more than nine thousand remaining berserkers immediately forced themselves to steady their formation.

They stared fixedly at the abandoned teaching building straight ahead, gritting their teeth. Some even blindfolded themselves with strips of cloth.

"Charge! For Young Master Gu's glory!"

A berserker commander raised his great axe and let out an earth-shaking roar.

Rumble-

The black torrent of steel surged forward again.

This time, they had gotten smart. No matter what sounds came from behind them, even if someone blew into their ears, they refused to turn around.

"The sky grows dark... the rain will fall..."

Hongdou's singing still echoed over the wasteland.

But this time, noticeably fewer berserkers fell.

Seeing this, the Gu family's lackeys in the stands immediately perked up again.

"Haha! I knew it. That trash Su Bai must have used some dirty sleight of hand!"

"Young Master Gu is mighty! As long as they don't look at that red figure, the thing's just a decoration!"

"Ten thousand berserkers could flatten that ten-square-kilometer garbage dump even with their eyes closed!"

Watching the legion launch another charge, Gu Chengfeng finally relaxed his taut nerves a little.

He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, a cruel glint flashing in his eyes.

"Su Bai, your tricks end here."

"Once my berserkers flatten your teaching building, let's see what you have left to show off with!"

In the docking pod on the right, Su Bai watched the berserkers charging blindly across the screen and couldn't help bursting out laughing.

"Seriously, buddy, have you misunderstood something about my horror tale?"

Su Bai rubbed his chin, a teasing light flickering in his eyes.

"You think you can survive just by closing your eyes and not turning around?"

"Do you take my Hongdou for a voice-activated switch?"

With a thought, Su Bai sent Hongdou a new order directly through the divine kingdom core.

"Hongdou, stop singing. It's hard on your throat."

"Give them something more exciting."

In the divine kingdom's wasteland.

The melodious, mournful singing came to an abrupt halt.

In its place came a deathly silence that made one's hair stand on end.

The berserker commander at the very front paused for a moment, but he didn't dare open his eyes and could only keep charging in the direction he remembered.

"Everyone, put your backs into it! That ghostly thing's gone quiet!"

"We're almost there! Get ready to swing your axes!"

What he didn't notice, however, was that an invisible fear was spreading wildly through the berserkers behind him.

The berserkers might have been hot-tempered, but they had emotions too.

Just moments ago, over a thousand of their comrades had died bizarre, gruesome deaths before their eyes. That fear of the unknown had long since taken deep root in their hearts.

And Hongdou's second core rule was precisely [Resentment Possession].

As long as an enemy's fear level exceeded fifty percent, she could ignore any physical defenses and possess them directly!

Whoosh-

A flash of blinding red light streaked through the black fog.

The next second.

A tier-two berserker charging with his eyes closed suddenly went rigid.

He stopped and slowly opened his eyes.

His formerly bloodshot eyes had turned completely black, without a trace of white!

The corners of his mouth stretched upward into an utterly bizarre, terrifying smile that did not belong to a human.

"It hurts so much..."

A shrill female voice came from the berserker.

Immediately afterward, he spun around, raised the broad-bladed great axe in his hand, which weighed two hundred jin, and brought it down viciously on the comrade beside him, who was still charging with his eyes closed!

Splurt!

Blood sprayed wildly.

The comrade he struck didn't even manage a scream before being cleaved in two with a single blow!

Warm blood splashed across the faces of the surrounding berserkers.

"What's going on?!"

"Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"

The surrounding berserkers hurriedly opened their eyes in fright.

When they saw that the one who had hacked their comrade to death was one of their own, they were all stunned.

"Abbas! Have you gone mad?! Why are you attacking your own people?!"

A squad leader charged over angrily, trying to stop him.

But the possessed "Abbas" ignored him completely and swung his axe backhand, sending the squad leader flying, armor and all.

"Kill... kill you all..."

A strange, cackling laugh came from "Abbas" as he hacked and slaughtered wildly through the crowd like a tireless killing machine.

This scene unleashed panic throughout the Berserker Legion.

"He's bewitched! That red monster has possessed him!"

"Get back! Get back, quickly!"

Once fear spread, it could no longer be contained.

As more and more berserkers grew afraid, their fear levels crossed the critical threshold of fifty percent one after another.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

Hongdou's figure flashed frantically across the battlefield.

With every flash, another berserker's eyes turned pitch-black. Then he raised his weapon and mercilessly hacked at his former comrades.

One, ten, a hundred, five hundred...

In just a few short minutes.

The once-uniform Berserker Legion, whose momentum had been like a rainbow, had become a complete stew of chaos!

They suspected and guarded against one another. As soon as someone saw that the person beside him had a strange look in his eyes, he immediately struck first to gain the upper hand.

"Don't come any closer! Have you been possessed?!"

"You're the one who's fucking possessed! Die!"

Clang! Bang! Splurt!

The sounds of clashing weapons, screams, and curses intertwined, ringing to the heavens.

Gu Chengfeng's ten thousand elite troops, his pride and joy, had begun a brutal slaughter among themselves before they had even touched a brick of Su Bai's wretched teaching building.

Inside the docking pod, Gu Chengfeng watched the scene, his eyes bulging so hard they looked ready to bleed.

"Stop! All of you, stop!"

"I am your god! I order you to stop attacking!"

Gu Chengfeng pounded frantically on the console, trying to use divine power to forcibly suppress the chaos among his followers.

But it was no use.

Hongdou's possession rule took far higher priority than the orders of a half-baked false god like him.

As long as the fear remained, the slaughter would not stop.

The spectators in the stands had all turned to stone.

If the earlier "turn-around kill" had been bizarre, then this "free-for-all" was pure torment.

"Th-this is a fucking divine battle?"

A senior-year student swallowed, his voice trembling.

"Why do I feel like I'm watching a horror movie?"

"What on earth did Su Bai create? It can one-shot people and control their minds? How is anyone supposed to play against that?!"

Lin Que leaped straight out of his seat in excitement, waving his chubby fist and shouting, "Brother Bai is badass!! Brother Bai is forever a god!!"

"That's what you get for looking down on a wasteland divine kingdom! Today you'll learn what it means: once the wasteland appears, who can contend with it!"

Qin Wan took a deep breath, removed her glasses, and rubbed the space between her brows.

She was no longer worried that Su Bai would be beaten to death.

What she worried about now was whether Su Bai would leave Gu Chengfeng psychologically scarred.

"This divine battle was never on the same plane to begin with."

Qin Wan looked at the carefree youth in the docking pod on the right and murmured to herself.

"Gu Chengfeng is playing real-time strategy, while Su Bai... is playing a rules-based horror tale."