Chapter 59
Chapter 59
“Deal.”
After discussing it, the players gave their answer. Their enemy became an ally. Only Huang Jinsheng remained bound.
Strangely, he no longer resisted. He sagged limply, his expression dazed, as though he had lost the will to fight.
Only the emotion in his eyes remained, like a venomous snake concealing its presence and watching everything around it.
Beneath the low-hanging crystal chandelier, wineglasses on the table refracted the light.
Scattered white gleams divided Huang Jinsheng’s face into light and shadow, creating a peculiar sense of separation.
The little girl moved away from Number Six and came before Huang Jinsheng.
He rose onto his toes and touched Huang Jinsheng’s cheek, his fingers stroking the blood along the path of the light.
Number Six hurried over and led the girl away. “Be good. Your dad… We can’t let him go just yet.”
“Are you hungry? Shall I get you something to eat?”
Sure enough, something caught the little girl’s attention. But it wasn’t food. It was outside the window.
He silently approached the windowsill and looked down. Number Six stood beside him and looked down too.
Only Xiuli Palace remained brightly lit in the night. Outside, the dazzling lights were gone, and flames soared into the sky.
Gunshots and sounds of unrest mingled with the distant riot. Human roars and sobs came on the wind.
The smell of blood mingled with moisture in the air. A downpour seemed about to arrive.
Blood from the little girl’s hand stained the window. As though discovering something fun, he used it to draw a childish smiley face on the glass.
Number Six vaguely sensed something wrong. But then she thought of the little girl’s young age and apparent mental problems.
With a father like Huang Jinsheng, an innocently cruel disposition was hardly strange either.
The Longhu Society’s Incense Master stayed awake all night, guarding against the riot while gathering the Tianding Society’s remaining forces.
The “medicine” supplied by the players worked very well. The clearheaded gang members established a safe zone with Xiuli Palace as their base.
The players also prepared to enter the underground factory. They took Huang Jinsheng with them and left Number Six on the top floor.
“So do you understand what I mean?” Holding an umbrella, Zhao Xiuming crouched on a low wall.
Like a cat looking down from above, he tilted his head at Ah Hao and Shuai Zai, who were hard at work rescuing people in the alley.
Below the wall stood the masked man, who had stuck to Zhao Xiuming’s side since the riot began, never leaving him.
He made no offer to help. Though he too was in the alley, he merely kicked away anyone who came close to Zhao Xiuming.
Ah Hao knocked down an approaching man with a stick, protecting Shuai Zai, who was carrying three children. Both men’s faces were injured.
Ah Hao rubbed his nose. “Can’t follow you. Don’t get it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What do you mean it’s all fake? Getting hit over the head with a stick hurts this much. How could it be fake?”
Shuai Zai put the children in the tricycle and pedaled desperately. “The adults go mad, and the kids suffer.”
“We need to reinforce the door to the apartment building’s stairwell. And find some food, or we won’t last more than a few days.”
Once they had figured out what was happening outside, the two began rescuing people. Call them kind, and they wouldn’t rescue adults.
Call them unkind, and they had brought back plenty of children.
Ah Hao guessed Zhao Xiuming’s rented room could keep people from going mad, so he packed all the children into it.
That left Zhao Xiuming obliged to remain in the instance, admiring the chaotic streets.
Shuai Zai hadn’t pedaled far when he spotted a fish-ball stall, with a child crouching beneath it.
The stallholder had already been hacked to death, so Ah Hao went over to bring the child back as well.
He realized this wasn’t enough. The two of them couldn’t do it alone. “We can’t keep going like this.”
There was no telling when the riot would end. The police outside wouldn’t concern themselves with the walled city, much less come to the rescue.
Shuai Zai remembered some gang members they had met earlier, men they had greeted in the past. They said Xiuli Palace was safe and was still taking in Tianding Society members.
So he suggested, “Why don’t we collect the kids in the rented room and go to Xiuli Palace together? I hear they give you medicine there, and once you take it, you stop going mad.”
“Mr. Zhao, do you want to come with us and take shelter?”
Behind them, Zhao Xiuming jumped down with a hand on the masked man’s shoulder and held his umbrella out to one side. “No.”
Shuai Zai hesitated. “I know you’re powerful, Mr. Zhao, but there’s strength in numbers.”
“With your abilities, if you go to Xiuli Palace, you might take advantage of the chaos and become the boss. Then we’ll follow you.”
Shuai Zai truly hadn’t understood Zhao Xiuming’s words. Ah Hao was only pretending not to understand.
According to Zhao Xiuming, what they were experiencing now was a past that had already happened. Whatever they did, they couldn’t change the outcome.
They didn’t know what that outcome was, but how could they just watch and do nothing?
Shuai Zai kept stealing fervent glances back at Zhao Xiuming, still wanting to argue his case.
Ah Hao really admired Shuai Zai’s reckless courage. He tried to simplify the part he had understood and explain it to him. “Mr. Zhao says Xiuli Palace is the most dangerous place.”
“It’s to do with those… those game players and the anomaly.”
“Yeah, the players are those foreign masters pretending to be mainlanders.”
“They’re fighting a supernatural battle with the anomaly Huang Jinsheng keeps. Why would we go and get mixed up in it?”
Shuai Zai still didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“Ah Hao, help me persuade Mr. Zhao. He says rescuing people is pointless, but he’s never stopped us.”
Ah Hao and Shuai Zai weren’t saints. Normally, they stole things and fought in gang brawls.
They had all the usual failings of petty thugs. Ah Hao was sharp and quick, full of crafty ideas; Shuai Zai was a little rash and a little slow.
Saving children was their last shred of conscience, their final line. Even so, they wouldn’t deliberately sacrifice their own lives to do it.
Shuai Zai wanted to persuade Zhao Xiuming to take over Zimu City simply because he hadn’t understood the situation. His fervent admiration for Zhao Xiuming also made him see the man as a saintly savior who would save everyone.
Ah Hao was exhausted. He took out a cigarette to smoke and turned to look at Zhao Xiuming.
Instead of staying properly beneath the umbrella, Zhao Xiuming had pushed away the masked man holding it and was deliberately playing in the light rain, catching water in his hands.
Ah Hao didn’t know what Zhao Xiuming was. He didn’t seem like an evil anomaly.
An evil anomaly wouldn’t save them, much less resurrect Dahu.
Of course, Zhao Xiuming wasn’t a savior either.
A savior wouldn’t turn a blind eye to Zimu City’s sudden riot.
Zhao Xiuming seemed more like a bystander drawn into the unrest. He looked like hope, but he wasn’t.
Sometimes, Ah Hao desperately wanted to grab Zhao Xiuming by the collar and demand to know what he really was.
But he didn’t dare.
Lost in thought, Ah Hao burned his hand on the cigarette he had lit but hadn’t smoked.
In fact, if he asked, Zhao Xiuming would certainly answer honestly.
But Ah Hao probably wouldn’t believe what he heard.
He remembered waking in the rented room to Zhao Xiuming watching the spectacle with a bright smile.
At the time, Dahu, who had become a monster, was nowhere to be found, so Ah Hao had asked about him.
Zhao Xiuming had answered with complete certainty. “Naturally, he’ll go and do whatever he wants.”
“The same goes for you.”
Ah Hao had asked what had happened, only to be inundated with unheard-of concepts: instances, players, anomalies, and more.
He tried to understand, but his mind was a muddle. He simply couldn’t accept or make sense of everything that had happened.
He could only explain his surroundings through what he already knew: Zimu City had gone out of control because of the anomaly Huang Jinsheng kept.
The anomaly had unleashed a madness-inducing plague on the walled city, making people become possessed and kill.