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Chapter 553 - 550: "Who Killed the Raven of the Tower?

Chapter 553: Chapter 550: "Who Killed the Raven of the Tower?

"What the hell is this white stuff?!" someone fired a shot, but there was no response whatsoever.

"Defense equipment is all ineffective against him! Even the submachine guns are sliced by him!"

"This guy is a monster! A monster! Run for it!"

They screamed and fled in utmost disarray.

In the face of these foreigners intent on unleashing a virus war, Su Ming’an was far from showing the cordiality he had towards Zhao Weidong.

The extreme dichotomy of human nature’s good and evil was starkly evident in these two groups of people.

As he was about to decapitate someone, a bearded middle-aged man fell to his knees with a thud in front of him and began to weep bitterly and confess, like a sinner looking for redemption in some detective movie:

"Please! I beg you, spare me, don’t kill me. We were doing this for the world too, we just wanted peace..."

Watching the man’s behavior, Su Ming’an let out a laugh, his blade continuing its descent without pause.

"Shush!"

The middle-aged man’s head rolled to the ground, eyes still filled with fear. Su Ming’an flicked his blade, casting a crescent-shaped trail of blood on the ground.

"You probably fed the same line to an innocent purple-haired little girl," Su Ming’an said to the corpse: "’For the sake of world peace’."

But as they plunged the scalpel into her,

Did they ever hear her cries?

He sheathed his sword and continued towards the underground laboratory. The white tendrils swept up people like pythons, crushing them, a cruel death that struck terror into the hearts of the many researchers, who cried out as they fled.

The deeper he went, the more he felt he could hear a girl’s pleas for help, the girl who always longed to sleep, always feared pain, seemed to be calling out to him from afar—

[You’re finally here to save me.]

Su Ming’an remembered that Yuan Shuangshuang had died at night; if it was daytime now...

The door to the underground laboratory wasn’t locked. He hacked down the guard and kicked open the door—

Twisted, gray-white pipes sprawled everywhere, and directly in the center of his view was a familiar white bed, tied with tubes.

"Drip, drip."

The oscillating line on the monitor kept emitting crisp sounds, one after another, sustaining the frail life of the girl.

The purple-haired girl lay quietly in bed, a diary beside her hand. Her body was filled with tubes, her skin was dotted with lesions and broken open, her limbs as shriveled as a dry spider’s legs.

...But her eyeballs were still moving.

He saw that she was still alive.

But what made Su Ming’an stop was a black-haired youth sitting beside her bed, reading her a story.

"’We must preserve unshaken belief in the world revealed to us, and though every angel from Heaven should come down and tell me their tale is otherwise, I would not believe them against the conviction of my own scriptures, and would rather shut my eyes and ears, for they are unworthy of my attention.’"

The youth looked gentle and not despondent, sitting elegantly, his body slightly leaning forward, slowly turning the pages of the book on his knee, his manner intimate but not intrusive:

"’All faithful believers have the power to shut their eyes and ears, disdainful of things unworthy to be seen or heard, and it is from this that they draw the strength to remain steadfast...’"

As he read, he suddenly closed the book.

"Luther’s words might explain why you people have fallen so far," Su Rin tilted his head, looking towards Su Ming’an standing at the doorway. "Are you surprised that I got here before you?"

He sat at the edge of the bed, very close to Yuan Shuangshuang.

"There have been many generations of Su Rin in Pulaya, and you have a skill resembling ’Cloning’, so it’s not strange," Su Ming’an said.

"..." Su Rin smiled.

Seeing Su Ming’an approach, Yuan Shuangshuang’s eyeballs slightly wobbled, full of doubt about who he was and why he had come here.

She tilted her head, revealing the extremely short hair that had been shaved for the convenience of the experiments.

It seemed she didn’t want to be seen, her body instinctively shrinking back, but she was unable to move and could only emit a slight grating sound.

...

"... My face is all scabbed, and my legs have turned black, it’s ugly, the spots on my body are so disgusting... I really look no different from a monster now, right?"

...

"Xiao Ai suddenly said I don’t need to hold on anymore, that I can sleep soundly now."

...

"Who... are you?" she said. "Are you... Xiao Ai? Have you come... to let me sleep?"

"I am not Xiao Ai." Su Ming’an said.

"Su Ming’an, let’s make a deal," Su Rin’s hand rested on the cover of the book. "You and Xiber, you both possess [Energy], right? Since the two of you have Energy, give me a share. In exchange, I won’t stop you from gaining the Black Crow Authority. This way, we can both fulfill the three elements of becoming a deity—we can ascend together."

His hand moved slightly forward, drawing closer to Yuan Shuangshuang’s arm embroidered with a crow, which was her Black Crow Authority.

He was using this as a threat. If Su Ming’an didn’t agree, he might kill her and forcefully take her Black Crow Authority.

"So eager to become a deity, do you want to stay in Qiongdi?" Su Ming’an said.

"How could I?" Su Rin smiled. "I just want to see the strength of the deities of this world."

Su Ming’an glanced at Xiber, wanting to hear her thoughts.

Xiber’s eyes shifted slightly.

"Fine, you can take my Energy," she said to Su Rin. "Come out with me; this basement is too cramped for the transfer."

"Can I trust your character, Number One Player?" Su Rin looked at Su Ming’an. "She isn’t planning to lure me out and then give you the chance to ascend first, is she?"

"...You go," Su Ming’an said.

He didn’t know what Xiber planned to do; she must have had her own considerations.

Su Rin and Xiber left.

Su Ming’an was about to speak when he saw Yuan Shuangshuang close her eyes.

"So noisy, you guys," she said. "The one called Su Rin... he kept reciting stories I couldn’t understand to me. I said I didn’t want to listen, but he still read on... preaching like evangelism..."

Su Ming’an always felt that Yuan Shuangshuang’s judgement seemed familiar, as if someone had said the same about him...

"I’m so tired, so very tired..." Yuan Shuangshuang blinked her eyes. "Just now, there was a lot of commotion outside. I heard screaming, what... did you do?"

"Nobody will persecute you anymore; those researchers are no longer around," Su Ming’an said.

She exhaled a breath, that childish, scab-covered face stretched into a smile, as if a great burden had been lifted.

"Then you... you saved us, you’re a good person," her eyelashes fluttered. "Good person, can you promise me... from now on, no other child will have to suffer like I did... is that possible?"

"..."

"As I thought, it’s still... not possible?" she said and suddenly coughed up blood.

"I really wanted... I really wanted to wear more dresses, I wanted to eat chicken wings so badly... but I can’t fit into any clothes anymore, and I vomit everything I eat..."

"..."

"I don’t care about world peace, I’m just so tired, so very tired... so painful... I just didn’t want to be called a ’monster,’ but in the end... I think I really did turn into a monster.

Are we, the people of Qiongdi, monsters to begin with... or did those researchers force us to become... monsters?"

She gasped for air, her eyes filled with red veins, yet they appeared exceptionally clear.

The halo of light in the room fell on her pale face, dancing like on a patchwork of stained glass.

On her, deformity seemed to turn into a kind of beauty. The contrast between her appearance and her inner self was like ice and fire intertwined, her deformed bones and rotting flesh mixed together, weaving a contrast.

Such a child, pure as a sheet of paper.

——What force could have drawn such monstrous features upon a blank sheet of paper?

Yuan Shuangshuang gazed at him.

She seemed to be taking in everything, memorizing the last scene before her eyes.

So greedily, she gazed at the world.

Moments later, she slowly, gradually closed her eyes.

"Good night," Su Ming’an said.

"...Good night," she whispered softly.

This person didn’t despise her monster-like self, and still talked to her, unlike that inexplicable intruder who had barged in and read her stories for a long time.

Although she didn’t know who the person at her bedside was, he was very gentle.

She hoped that the children like her who would come after could meet such gentle people,

So they wouldn’t have to be like her.

Too bitter.

Too painful.

...

[I don’t understand what "death" is.]

[Closing my eyes, not feeling pain, could there be anything better than this?]

...

Her time had come.

The time of her death was exactly the same as recorded in her diary, down to the last second.

With her eyes closed, she looked more beautiful than when she was alive, her mouth’s fresh blood like overflowing red wine.

The blood-colored raven on her arm turned into a bracelet and hovered in the air, like a shimmering gemstone.

Looking at her decaying corpse, Su Ming’an remembered the story of the raven that Flora had told him.

In the time of Charles II, the ravens of the Tower of London had multiplied excessively.

There was an ancient prophecy—[Once the ravens fly away, the Tower of London will collapse, and England shall face doom.]

The Gran monarchs of generations held the ravens as a symbol of the nation’s rise and fall. To ensure they remained permanent residents of the Tower, these ravens had part of their flight feathers clipped to prevent the prophecy’s fulfillment.

The ravens, unable to fly far with clipped feathers, lived day and night within the tower, became victims of the tourism industry, lost the freedom to soar far and wide, and contributed to the splendor of the land.

So, in Qiongdi,

——Who killed the ravens in the tower?

Was it the curse-bearer driven by survival instincts, the greedy ancient castle researchers, the well-intentioned but harmful outsiders, the young tribe leader trying to cover the truth, or the deities wanting to destroy living beings to alter the era?

Or was it...

The humans capable of ostracizing ’foreign bodies,’ refusing to accept ’reason,’ and clipping their own feathers?

Who should wear the shackles, the seemingly "unstable" Number One Player,

Or the ordinary people already on the verge of madness with paranoia?

——Who killed the ravens in the tower?

——Who killed humanity itself?

...

[(Yuan Shuangshuang) is dead.]

[You may obtain the (Black Crow Authority)]

...

Perhaps it was Little Love who gave Su Ming’an the opportunity; she didn’t come to snatch the authority.

This was his last step from Bai Shen.

Su Ming’an reached for the Black Crow Authority, but his hand was stopped by another.

The one who stopped him was Xiber, who had rushed back, visibly aged a lot, her hair dry and white, her skin wrinkled, and her lips looked parched.

Clearly, she had not chosen to give her energy to Su Rin.

"You’ve... sacrificed your life force again?" Su Ming’an said.

"I couldn’t let a guy I don’t trust become a god," Xiber said. "To drive him away, I had to do this. It’s okay, this cycle is almost over, and my life force will return."

"Is he dead?"

"Not dead. He said he was ’returning the respect he owed to Knight of Pulaya,’ and then he disappeared," she said.

"He really said that?" Su Ming’an said. "I hope he’s not planning a big move. If he can just quietly get to the end of the instance, I’ll happily write him a thank-you letter."

Xiber didn’t continue the topic, turning her gaze instead to the Black Crow Authority floating above Yuan Shuangshuang’s corpse.

She stared at the authority intently, her gaze as if glued to a searing hot iron.

"Su Ming’an, I’ve realized that you’re no saint either; your moral compass is quite blurry..." she said. "If people like you can become Bai Shen after fulfilling the conditions, then what exactly are the deities we’ve been worshipping?"

In such a final moment,

She had posed the same question that Fengchang once did.

Her way of thinking, long separated from her brother’s, suddenly converged.

"——Whether it’s a Righteous God or an Evil God that blesses people, does it matter anymore?" Su Ming’an said:

"——Whether we are awake or asleep, calm or insane, does it matter? Our survival justifies itself more than any reason. The distinction between good and evil, the oldest and most illusory division, means nothing.

Maybe we’ve been mad all along, just like the other day, already lost in pleasant illusions, foolishly believing we’ve made it this far, including the cycles of illusion, but what of it?

The weak, those beyond cure, the greedy, the selfish... powerless in the face of many things, all we can do is comfort ourselves, yearning for the freedom of the soul and the lack of regrets at the end of the road, not a ’perfect’ ending."

"Xiber." He continued: "——We’ve achieved everything we could."

Xiber lifted her eyelids.

With just a slight tremble, the tears that had been accumulating since she first glimpsed the outside apocalypse began to fall.

Her throat emitted a faint raspy sound, but no words came out; her fingers twitched, her whole body trembling.

——Just being alive and free was enough.

——It was enough for us to be alive.

She slowly released Su Ming’an’s arm, the wrinkled, slightly weathered face lighting up with a slight smile.

Tears filled her eyes.

For the sake of the world, she was scarred,

Yet her eyes brimmed with tears, her heart full of fervor.

"Regardless of their good intentions or malice—" she looked into Su Ming’an’s eyes as if seeing her own reflection in a shadow.

She spoke slowly, word by word—

"——Or how they regard us as ’heretics’?"

...

[Perfect Completion Progress: 99%]

...

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