Every last remnant of the Heaven-Mandated Ones who had slipped the net received that audio recording of the two words "Huang Tian." The audio played by force—
Through it, Huang Tian sensed the sound and answered. Following the voice lines, he crossed the void and killed every one of them.
"The evil has been purged, and the gains are considerable."
This trip out, he had not only obtained several oddities, but had also found quite a few spiritual medicines in the nest of the Heaven-Mandated Ones.
"If I take these spiritual medicines and refine them, breaking through another realm or two will not be hard."
He smiled. With a wave of his hand, every charred black corpse in the ravaged manor turned to ash and scattered on the wind. At the same time the earth split, and the collapsed buildings and heaps of rubble were all packed into the cracks.
In mere moments the manor that had stood there vanished completely. Only a stretch of level ground remained, and some scorched, withered grass and trees.
He raised his hand again and sent out a streak of green light. The green light sank into the earth. Those scorched, yellowed plants seemed to draw in ample nourishment and quickly grew lush. Not only that—clump after clump of flowers sprang from the ground. The blossoms swayed in the breeze and gave off a rich fragrance, intoxicating to smell.
"Whoosh—"
After this simple cleanup, Huang Tian lingered no longer. Like a streak of flowing light he shot into the sky and flew straight back toward Changnan City. About an hour later, he arrived once more at Changnan University.
The campus was still bright with sunshine. Young men and women sat on roadside benches in the sun and the breeze, or strolled slowly along the paths listening to music, or went to the athletic field to jog and walk.
As far as the eye could see, there was youth, quiet, and ease—
A case in his right hand, Huang Tian walked unhurriedly into the dormitory building, went up to the second floor, and pushed open the door of Dorm 208. No one was inside. He set the case beside the wardrobe, then took from it more than a dozen boxes, all of them filled with various spiritual medicines.
"For the next stretch of time, the main task is to take the spiritual medicines and cultivate, and raise my strength. Of course, the matter of oddities cannot be neglected either."
Huang Tian gave his order. "Little Light, keep monitoring the world and searching for traces of oddities. The moment there is news, report to me at once."
"Understood, Master!" the Brain of Light answered at once.
Huang Tian nodded slightly, then opened a box. Looking at the flower inside, fierce and blazing as fire, he was quite satisfied. "Spiritual qi in abundance. Time to cultivate!"
Yucai Middle School. Night.
Rain flew down from the sky, fine and dense as ox hair. The dim yellow streetlamps looked somewhat lonely in the night rain.
"Quick! Run! It's right ahead! Get out the school gate and you'll live!!"
Zhou Heng roared as he fled for his life. Behind him were a man and a woman. The man was named Wang Yue, and the woman Zhang Xue.
All three had been chosen as "players" by "Joy Paradise," and were going through a dangerous-rank instance.
"Splash—thud—"
Every step sent up chilly sprays of water. Mud plastered their pant legs, but Wang Yue had no mind to care about that. At this moment his eyes held only the open campus gate ahead.
So long as he burst out of the school, he could live!
—
"Ahh!" As they sprinted, Zhang Xue's terrified cry rose behind him.
His body went tight. He knew that killer had caught up. Turning his head a little, he could see from the corner of his eye, behind Zhang Xue's slender figure, a humanoid monster more than two meters tall, an enormous iron hammer in its hands, charging after them at speed.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The heavy footsteps were like drums being beaten, striking hard upon every heart and breeding oppression and fear.
Hoo—
A cold wind blew across the back of her neck, and the fear in Zhang Xue's pupils deepened.
Close!
The monster was getting closer and closer to her!
But she did not dare look back at all. She only ran in panic.
"Whoosh!"
Suddenly a wailing rush of wind sounded, as if some huge thing had torn through the air and was smashing toward her!
"Dodge!!" Wang Yue roared.
But Zhang Xue was completely stunned. The world seemed to lose its reality all at once. As if her soul had left her body, she went rigid and could do nothing.
The next moment.
"Splat—"
Like a watermelon struck by an iron hammer, her body burst apart in an instant. Innards and flesh splattered across the ground.
A thick blood mist sprayed outward, startlingly vivid in the pattering rain, like a red night-blooming cereus that burst into bloom and withered at once. Carrying a trace of warmth, it sent up faint wisps of pale pink vapor in midair—
After killing Zhang Xue, the humanoid monster did not pause in the slightest, and ran even faster.
The iron hammer in its hand swung with its strides, dripping blood.
Thud! Thud! Thud!
The heavy footsteps echoed in his ears. Wang Yue's scalp went numb as if a current had run through it, and the hairs all over his body stood on end.
"Whoosh—"
In an instant a piercing shriek rose behind him. His heart pounded wildly. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed that huge hammer, dripping bloody water, sweeping cold wind and cold rain with it as it crashed down toward him!
I'm going to die!!
The instant the thought exploded in his mind, his body reacted ahead of his awareness.
He lunged forward and rolled across the ground. Muddy water soaked his back in an instant. The huge hammer slammed down, brushing the back of his head by the narrowest of margins.
"Bang!"
The iron hammer struck the ground, sending the standing water flying and throwing up turbid sprays.
"One or two meters left!"
Looking at the school gate so extremely close, he cared about nothing else, and scrambled forward on hands and feet.
At the school gate, Zhou Heng had already collapsed outside and was reaching a hand toward him, mouth open, roaring something—but the sound was completely drowned by the rain and the pounding of his heart.
"Ahhhhh!!"
Wang Yue suddenly let out a furious roar. With the last shred of strength in his whole body, he strained on hands and feet, leapt into the air, and crashed and rolled heavily onto the ground outside the school.
Almost at the same moment, he felt that terrifying pressure behind him vanish all at once.
He looked back. The enormous iron hammer had stopped a bare line short of the school gate. The humanoid monster gripping it stood silent in the vast curtain of rain, its body of more than two meters like a ferocious god cast from steel!
Rain streamed down its clothes and the hammer's handle. Its face could not be made out—only an indifferent gaze, as if it were looking at ants.
Zhou Heng and Wang Yue lay collapsed on the ground, hearts pounding madly, chests heaving.
"We... we lived—" Zhou Heng gasped for breath, fear and relief showing on his face.
Wang Yue did not answer. He turned his head and saw, inside the school, Zhang Xue's head lying in a puddle. Spots of mud had fouled most of her face, and the fear of the moment she died still remained in her eyes.
"Dead—" Wang Yue murmured. The relief of having lived slowly turned into a bitter refusal to accept it, and a deep anger!
Zhou Heng moved a little closer and asked, "What did you say? The rain's too loud. I can't hear!"
"I said, she's dead." Wang Yue turned to look at him. "Nine people! Nine people entered the instance, and only the two of us lived. They're all dead! Dead! Living people, every one of them died in this damned Joy Paradise, this damned instance!"
Zhou Heng fell silent at once.
Wang Yue slowly got to his feet, tilted his head back toward the sky where the rain flew and scattered, and stood stunned for several seconds. Then he suddenly roared at the heavens. "Fuck Joy Paradise! You hear me? I said, fuck Joy Paradise!!"
"Don't—" Zhou Heng urged weakly. "Don't anger—"
"Anger who?" Wang Yue grew even angrier. "The Master of Joy Paradise, who sits high above and treats humans as toys?"
Zhou Heng sat slumped in dejection in a puddle, his expression dispirited. "Stop cursing. It's meaningless. It will pay no heed to the anger of mortals like us. We're like clowns on a stage. Our only value is to spend our lives putting on one ridiculous performance after another for It."
Hearing this, Wang Yue let out a heavy breath.
Just then a mechanical voice sounded in both their ears at once. "Yucai Middle School (dangerous rank) instance cleared. Players will soon return to the real world. Please prepare. Ten, nine, eight—"
In the instant before the countdown ended, Wang Yue looked toward Zhou Heng, his eyes full of firm, unyielding resolve. Zhou Heng first went blank. Then his expression changed sharply, and he cried out in urgency, "Don't—"
Flash—
The scene before his eyes changed all at once. When he opened his eyes again, Wang Yue found that he had already returned to his bedroom in reality.
He stood dazed in the bedroom for more than ten seconds. His rain-soaked clothes clung to him, extremely uncomfortable, but he paid it no mind and went straight to the desk and sat down.
He turned on the computer on the desk and, without hesitation, entered the country's largest forum and began to write: "[Joy Paradise] was created by an unknown evil existence. It randomly seizes people all over the world to serve as players and forces them to run instances. Instances are divided into three ranks: ordinary rank, dangerous rank, and desperate rank. The number of players in each instance is not fixed, but usually, the more people there are, the higher the difficulty—"
Bzz—
Suddenly his phone vibrated. It was a call from Zhou Heng. The two were friends in reality, and so each had the other's contact information.
Wang Yue paid it no mind. He kept writing, setting down everything he knew about Joy Paradise.
About seven minutes later he finally stopped. He drew a deep breath and lifted his head. His gaze seemed able to pierce the ceiling and see some existence in the void, yet he did not curse aloud. He only watched calmly, and then—
Click!
He clicked Post!
A new post appeared on the forum.
Yet the next second, an invisible force deleted the post. At the same time his body gave a violent jolt. He went rigid in an instant and collapsed to the floor. His heart burst, and he died on the spot.
Joy Paradise Player Rules, Article Eleven: No player may leak any information related to Joy Paradise to the outside. Violators—death!
And so Wang Yue died.
Everything he had done had also come to nothing. After all, the post he made was deleted in an instant, and not a single person saw it—
"Hoo—"
In Dorm 208, a cool breeze blew slowly in through the window, making Huang Tian's clothes sway gently. He opened his eyes, divine light clear and bright in them. "After many days, I have finally entered the Soul realm!"
With a stir of intent, a little figure in multicolored immortal robes leapt out from the top of his head. It stretched in midair, then returned into his body. A feeling of seamless, natural harmony rose of itself.
The corner of Huang Tian's mouth lifted slightly. "After breaking through to the Soul realm, I still have quite a few spiritual medicines left. I should be able to press on in one effort and break through one more realm—"
Just as he was about to go on taking the medicine and cultivating, his phone vibrated. The Brain of Light appeared on the screen. "Master, a new oddity incident has been discovered."
Huang Tian's eyebrows rose. "Tell me in detail."
"Yes!" the Brain of Light said. "At 7:09 this morning, a young man named Wang Yue made a post on a forum, speaking of 'Joy Paradise'—"
After hearing the account, Huang Tian said with a touch of feeling, "This Wang Yue has real backbone— The so-called master of Joy Paradise ought to be someone who obtained an oddity by luck. Can you find his trail?"
The Brain of Light replied, "Not yet."
"It seems that person acts rather cautiously." Huang Tian considered. "No matter. I have my own way of finding where he is. Little Light, can you now confirm the identity of any Joy Paradise player?"
"Yes." The Brain of Light said, "Zhou Heng. He and Wang Yue have been friends for many years, and both are Joy Paradise players. When Wang Yue died, Zhou Heng was still calling him, seemingly meaning to warn him not to do anything foolish."
"Mm. Send a message to Zhou Heng. The contents—"
"Understood!"
In a dim room, Zhou Heng sat at the edge of the bed, both hands gripping his hair hard, the rims of his eyes red. "He's dead! Dead—"
When they were about to leave the "Yucai Middle School" instance, Zhou Heng had seen the resolved intent to die in Wang Yue's eyes, and had immediately guessed what he meant to do.
So the moment he returned to the real world, he called Wang Yue at once, trying to persuade him to give up a meaningless act. Leaking information about Joy Paradise to the outside would achieve nothing, and would only get him killed. Why do such a thing?
But Wang Yue did not answer. Alarmed and frantic, Zhou Heng hurriedly drove to Wang Yue's residence. Yet when he arrived and rammed the door open, what he found was a corpse, and a computer screen glowing with a dim, eerie light—
"Ahhh!!"
Zhou Heng shot to his feet and shouted several times. His right hand clenched into a fist and slammed the wall, pounding until the hand bled.
The pain calmed him a little, but the fire in his heart would not disperse no matter what. That fire was both grief over Wang Yue's choice and, even more, fury at the master of Joy Paradise.
If there were no so-called Joy Paradise, he would not have to worry every day about someday dying in an instance, and Wang Yue would not have "sought his own death." Life would still be as calm and peaceful as before.
But now, everything had changed.
Bang! Bang!
He struck the wall with his fists several times more. Only when both hands were bleeding did he stop. He slowly sat down on a chair, braced his face in both hands, and drew deep, trembling breaths.
After a long while he turned his face toward the window, almost seized by the impulse to leap from the high building.
"If I can't get free of Joy Paradise, sooner or later I'll die in some instance. Rather than be killed by a monster in an instance, better to end it myself in reality. At least someone will come collect my body—"
Bzz—
Suddenly the phone on the bed vibrated, startling him out of his daze. He slowly rose from the chair, walked to the bedside with no interest left in living, and picked up the phone.
He opened it and found a text message from an unknown source. It read:
Child, when you fall into deep desperation, pray to that great Supreme existence—Huang Tian, God on High!
High Firmament Zhonghuang Utmost Saint, Xuanshu Creation Great Heavenly Venerable!
Chapter 235