Chapter 154
Chapter 154
Water.
Water everywhere.
Ji Feifan was sinking. His arms and legs felt as though something had bound them, leaving him unable to move. Water surged in from all sides, flooding his mouth, his nose, and his lungs.
“Mmph…”
He opened his mouth, desperately trying to scream, but no sound came out. Only bubbles escaped his lips.
There was light above him, dazzlingly bright, but he couldn’t reach it.
He stretched out a hand. After an agonizing struggle, his fingertips finally brushed the surface. He was almost there–
A hand shot up from below and seized his ankle.
Then he was dragged out of the water. The hand hoisted him into the air, leaving him dangling, soaked to the bone and gasping desperately for breath.
A gigantic face loomed before him. Its mouth stretched into a grin that reached its ears, and its scarlet eyes stared straight at him.
The face was laughing, positively delighted.
“Little Dog…” the thing said in a high, shrill voice. “My Little Dog… has come back…”
Ji Feifan tried to struggle, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t make a sound. All he could do was watch as the face drew closer and closer, its mouth opening to reveal rows of jagged teeth–
Then the scene shattered.
He fell to his knees in the middle of a vast, empty space.
There was a racetrack beneath him, its gray concrete covered in black tire marks. Something else was mixed into those marks, something dark red.
Sounds surrounded him-laughter and screams.
He turned his head.
People were everywhere on the track.
Women were running while cars chased them from behind. The vehicles were dilapidated, their windows smeared with blood. Madmen sat on the roofs, laughing as they pursued the women and hurled things at them.
Grenades.
Boom!
Several women were blasted off their feet. Before they could get back up, the cars behind them ran them over.
Ji Feifan heard bones snapping, flesh tearing, and the Madmen shouting excited obscenities. The sounds blended together until his ears went numb.
He wanted to leave. He wanted to escape this place.
But he couldn’t move. He looked down and saw countless hands clutching his legs. The hands were deathly pale and stained with blood, some of them with broken fingers.
They reached up from beneath the racetrack and clung to his ankles.
Slowly, he lowered his gaze. The space below was packed with people. Their faces were covered in blood and grime, their eyes wide open as they stared directly at him.
Why?
Why would you do something like this?!
Ji Feifan’s heart skipped a beat. He recognized those faces. He had personally found some of them.
Why?
Ji Feifan didn’t struggle. He looked down at the hands, then at the faces, and suddenly smiled.
“That’s just fate. The strong survive. I only wanted to stay alive.”
He raised his foot and stepped on the hands, then the faces, walking forward one step at a time. The hands shattered beneath his feet. The faces twisted out of shape. But he never stopped.
He made it out.
Standing beyond the sea of hands and faces, he looked back at the arms still reaching for him, the eyes still staring at him, and the Madmen still slaughtering humans for sport.
He took a deep breath.
“I’m so… fucking sick of you goddamn morons.”
Die, die, die, die–
He pulled a grenade from his pocket, yanked out the pin, and threw it into the crowd of Madmen.
BOOM!!!
The explosion swallowed everything.
Ji Feifan didn’t look back. He kept walking.
Then, impossibly, a hand reached out from the smoke and dust and seized his ankle.
He jerked his head down.
A young, childish face emerged from the dust.
“Don’t even think about running.” Its lips curled into a grin.
Ji Feifan’s pupils contracted.
It gave a vicious yank, sending Ji Feifan crashing to the ground. Countless hands reached out from the dust once more, dragging him underground.
“What gives you the right?!”
Ji Feifan shot upright in bed.
He gasped for breath, drenched in sweat. Cold sweat had soaked through the sheets beneath his back. He lowered his head and stared at his trembling hands.
He’d had the dream again.
It was always the same. Every time he closed his eyes, those faces came for him.
He drew a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
It was fine. Just a dream.
He got up and walked to the window.
Outside lay a vast racetrack. Cars stood parked around it, their bodies smeared with blood. Human hands had been taped to the windows as decorations.
This was the Madmen’s Torture Arena.
They drove people onto the track, chased them in cars, and hurled grenades at them, watching them run and listening to them scream. Whoever lasted the longest got to live one more day.
Ji Feifan had witnessed it countless times. He had stood in the grandstands, watching those people run, watching them get crushed beneath the cars, listening as their screams mingled with the Madmen’s laughter.
He had long since gone numb.
Creak–
The door swung open.
A head poked inside. A length of intestine was looped around its neck, still dripping blood.
“Hee-hee…” It beamed at Ji Feifan. “Food… Food…”
Ji Feifan stared at it expressionlessly.
“I know.”
Carrying a basin, Ji Feifan walked through the Madmen’s stronghold.
Inside were provisions for the captured humans: a few pieces of moldy bread and half a bucket of water. The Madmen didn’t need to keep their captives well fed, but they did need to keep them alive. Only living people could run, and only when they ran could the Madmen have their fun.
He stopped in front of an iron cage.
Seven or eight people were locked inside, both men and women. They huddled in the corners, and when they saw him, a jumble of emotions flashed through their eyes-anger, fear, and a faint trace of hope.
Ji Feifan pushed the basin through the bars.
“Eat.”
No one moved. They only stared at him.
Ji Feifan frowned impatiently. “Suit yourselves. You’re the ones who’ll go hungry.”
He turned and left. He still had another group to feed.
Ji Feifan was carrying the empty basin back when he stopped in front of a door.
This door was different from the others. There were no bloodstains on it, and two Madmen stood guard outside. Unlike the Madmen elsewhere, however, they weren’t frenzied or agitated.
Ji Feifan knew who was inside. He couldn’t even be bothered to knock. He simply pushed the door open and walked in.
A boy sat in a chair.
It didn’t look very old-seventeen at most. It wore an oversized hoodie spotted with blood, the hood pulled over its head and shadows concealing half its face.
It showed none of the usual signs of being a Madman. If you passed it outside, you might mistake it for an ordinary high school student.
But Ji Feifan knew better.
It was a Madman.
And it was also… his “savior.”