Chapter 203: Death Cycle (I)

Previous Chapter ◊ Table of Content ◊ Next Chapter

Chapter 203: Death Cycle (I)

Shang Ke watched the three lion-foxes and two foxes he had given birth to grow into adulthood, marry, have children, and establish a true kingdom of their own. Only then did he and Mutu bid farewell to that world together.

Before Shang Ke could return to the System Space, he found himself drawn into another dream.

“Senior Brother Shou Mo, do you really care that much about that man?” A man in green glared at Shou Mo, a complicated light flashing through his eyes.

Shou Mo sat cross-legged on an ice-jade platform without saying a word.

“Senior Brother, wake up. He is a Godslayer guilty of an unforgivable crime. Several High Gods of the Heavenly Tribulation are hunting him down. Master sealed you here to protect you, so stop trying to escape.”

Shou Mo raised his head and looked calmly at the man in green. “Wu Du, you’re wrong. All of you are wrong. Chen Xiao is not the Godslayer.”

“Senior Brother, you’re still defending him even now. When High God Fei He’s soul was destroyed, Chen Xiao was holding the Godslayer Blade. If he wasn’t the murderer, who was? Besides, he admitted it himself.”

“Chen Xiao isn’t the Godslayer, because…” Shou Mo looked down at his palm and said quietly, “I am.”

As the final word left his lips, Shang Ke felt a sharp pain in his chest, and the scene before his eyes changed once more.

“Chen Xiao, there’s nowhere left for you to run.” Wu Du stood a short distance away, staring at him coldly.

Chen Xiao leaned against the cliff face with the corner of his mouth lifted. Though covered in wounds, he had lost none of his bearing. Shou Mo stood close beside him, gripping his hand tightly.

“Shou Mo, leave him.” Wu Du gazed at him intently. “There’s still time.”

Shou Mo smiled and turned his palm upward. A brilliant flower slowly bloomed above it like a living flame.

“Crimson Skyfire?” Wu Du shouted in disbelief.

“This is the flower of fidelity that Chen Xiao and I tempered with our essence blood. Life after life, we will never betray each other.”

“You actually sacrificed thousands of years of cultivation just to nurture a Crimson Skyfire!” Disdain colored Wu Du’s voice, but jealousy flashed in his eyes.

The Crimson Skyfire was a brand upon both emotion and soul. Those bound by it would live and die together, remain faithful through every lifetime, share their power, and keep their hearts linked. Even through reincarnation, they would always be able to find one another. So long as their souls endured, the Crimson Skyfire would never wither.

At that moment, Wu Du finally understood that he had lost completely.

No. He refused to accept it!

Madness twisted Wu Du’s face. He pulled an object from his storage ring and aimed it at Chen Xiao and Shou Mo.

“Heh. Not bad. You actually managed to ‘borrow’ the Ancient Nether God’s Reincarnation Fate-Changing Lamp.” Chen Xiao looked relaxed, but inwardly his guard rose.

“Then let me see,” Wu Du said in an icy voice, “whether your Crimson Skyfire can withstand the Ancient Nether God’s Reincarnation Fate-Changing Lamp.”

“I curse you to meet, yet never remain together.”

“I curse you to become enemies and wound each other.”

“I curse you to endure separation and death through hundreds and thousands of lives.”

“I curse you to know no peace for all eternity!”

After pronouncing the curse, Wu Du activated the Reincarnation Fate-Changing Lamp in his hand. In an instant, dazzling colors erupted as beams of light wove together in the air.

“Shou Mo, do you trust me?” Chen Xiao asked.

“Of course.”

“Then let’s gamble with him.”

“On what?”

“On all our lives to come.”

Just before they fell into reincarnation, the two split their souls. One hun of Chen Xiao’s soul and one po of Shou Mo’s flew into the Reincarnation Lamp and disappeared into the body of its artifact spirit…

【Congratulations, Host, on surviving perfectly. All Return Keys have been unlocked. Host may choose freely.】

The System’s voice pulled Shang Ke out of the dream. Sorting through what he had learned, he guessed that the “System” was very likely the Ancient Nether God’s Reincarnation Fate-Changing Lamp. Its awakening had probably been influenced by the pieces of Chen Xiao’s and Shou Mo’s souls hidden within it.

Otherwise, Wu Du’s curse would never have been broken, and every one of their lives would have ended in tragedy. The Reincarnation Lamp’s reawakening had sent him through the cycle once more and given him a chance to change their fate.

After so many lifetimes, Shang Ke was no longer the ordinary man who had once lived on Earth. The “real world” he had always believed in was probably only another link in the chain of reincarnation.

He had not expected the Reincarnation Lamp to keep up with the times and issue missions in the form of a “System.” The restriction requiring him to “die heroically” was probably a product of the artifact spirit and Wu Du’s curse, while the reward mechanism was likely the work of those two soul fragments.

Once he worked that out, Shang Ke found it a little difficult to look directly at the “System.”

Several cards appeared in the space before him—the Return Keys he had just unlocked.

Shang Ke was beginning to understand. Return Keys could change endings of separation and death and raise the Perfection Value. The higher the Perfection Value, the stronger those two soul fragments became and the weaker the curse within the Reincarnation Lamp grew. Wu Du’s curse primarily targeted the Crimson Skyfire, whose power came from their feelings for each other. If the Crimson Skyfire ever withered, he and Chen Xiao would never be able to reunite.

Shang Ke settled his thoughts and prepared to choose a Return Key.

The instant his fingertip touched one of the cards, the space in front of him shattered. The world spun violently, and without the slightest warning, Shang Ke was thrown into his next world.

What the hell? What happened to the Return Key you promised me?!

It felt as though Shang Ke’s entire body were being torn apart. The pain was beyond words.

At that moment, the System transmitted information directly into his mind.

In the year 3579, Planet Gulan was struck by a terrifying meteor shower. Bacteria carried by the meteorites infected every living creature on the planet. Some awakened abilities, while others became zombies. Most humans became neither; their physiques were merely strengthened.

Ability users and ordinary humans fought the zombies for fifty long years. Once-prosperous cities were reduced to ruins, systems of civilization all but collapsed, devastation covered the world, and zombies spread across the globe.

The emergence of the Zombie King, Di Kui, pushed humanity to the brink of extinction.

Only after this world’s “protagonist,” Huo Xuan, suddenly rose to prominence, established survivor bases, and created a new order could humanity finally stand against the Zombie King. He became both humanity’s savior and the ruler of the survivor bases.

By a twist of fate, the Zombie King Di Kui, the “protagonist” Huo Xuan, and the lucky passerby whose body Shang Ke had entered each obtained one of three world-essence shards: Dark Realm, Bright Realm, and Soul Tempering.

Di Kui and “Passerby A” swallowed their respective world-essence shards and gained undying bodies. Huo Xuan instead refined the Bright Realm shard into a weapon and fused himself with the sword.

An undying body, however, did not mean absolute immortality.

“Passerby A,” who had swallowed Soul Tempering, could kill Di Kui. Huo Xuan, whose body and sword were one, could kill “Passerby A.” And Di Kui could kill anyone except “Passerby A.”

【Host has two choices for this world’s Main Mission: first, kill the Zombie King Di Kui; second, be killed by the “protagonist” Huo Xuan.】

“Passerby A” was the only person capable of killing the Zombie King, while the “protagonist” was the only one capable of killing “Passerby A.” If Shang Ke chose to be killed by the protagonist, no one in this world would remain who could oppose the Zombie King. It therefore seemed that he had only one real option—kill the Zombie King.

And yet Shang Ke had a faint feeling that his Chen Xiao might not be this world’s “protagonist” at all, but the Zombie King Di Kui.

Even though he was certain the System had tricked him, Shang Ke still could not resist complaining. What kind of name was “Passerby A”? Why did both the protagonist and the villain get impressive names while he alone was saddled with “Passerby A”?

He was one of the three people who possessed a world-essence shard and the only person capable of killing the Zombie King. There was no way someone like that should be called “Passerby A”!

Shang Ke soon had no energy left to dwell on the injustice. The agony tearing through his body nearly made him black out.

A few hours earlier, a horde of zombies had torn him apart. The power of the world-essence shard was now reconstructing his body: shattered bones knitted together little by little, and flesh and blood grew anew. His body might be undying, but the pain had not been dulled in the slightest.

Watching his own mangled remains gradually restore themselves into a complete body was an experience that could only be described as exquisitely awful.

After nearly two hours of torment, the restoration finally ended. Shang Ke struggled to his feet and stood naked among the ruins, long black hair hanging disheveled down his back. Everywhere he looked was desolate and lifeless. A heavy stench of decay saturated the air, and beneath the merciless sun it created an oppressive, restless heat.

The zombies of this world were divided into five ranks: low, intermediate, high, General, and King. Each rank was further divided by type, such as speed, stealth, disguise, or ability-type. Most zombies disliked sunlight and rarely moved outdoors on clear days.

Before swallowing the Soul Tempering shard, “Passerby A” had been an ordinary human. Even afterward, he had not awakened an ability. His undying body had therefore become a form of torture: he cycled endlessly between death and rebirth, suffering countless horrific and agonizing deaths. Compared with him, Shang Ke suddenly felt that all the deaths he had endured before were hardly worth mentioning.

The System had abruptly terminated his return and thrown him into a new world, probably because the curse had begun to push back. If his intuition was right, this might be the hardest world he had ever faced. He was not even sure he would be able to return safely to the System Space after completing the mission.

Whatever happened, his first priority was still to find Chen Xiao.

Chen Xiao had to be either the Zombie King or the “protagonist.” The former was difficult to locate, while the latter’s whereabouts were known, so Shang Ke decided to head for the survivor base and find Huo Xuan first.

Shang Ke looked around, then entered an old residential building and rummaged through it thoroughly. In the end, he found only a few wearable pieces of clothing and some basic necessities.

The building looked as though it had been abandoned for years. Dust lay everywhere, there was neither running water nor electricity, and almost everything useful had already been scavenged.

Fortunately, Shang Ke now had an undying body and needed very little food or drinking water. Even if he went decades without either, at worst he would become a dried corpse—and naturally, an exquisitely beautiful dried corpse with a full set of perfect reaction faces.

He searched for quite a while before finding an outfit that did not look too filthy. Clothes could be ugly, torn, old, even outrageously unfashionable, but they absolutely could not be dirty. Unfortunately, he had no way to wash them right now, so he would have to endure it.

Shang Ke wiped the bathroom mirror with a rag and studied his current appearance. M m. As handsome as ever. Perhaps because the body had repeatedly regenerated, his skin was unusually pale and smooth, while a faintly bewitching quality lingered around his eyes and brows. His hair had gone uncut for so long that it now fell below his waist.

Shang Ke found one thing strange. Why had “he” not stayed in a survivor base? Why had he been alone among the ruins? Shang Ke searched the body’s memories but found little useful information, so for the moment he could only set the question aside.

He packed a toothbrush, towel, bowls and chopsticks, a cup, scissors, and other small necessities into a backpack along with spare clothing, then left the residential building and headed toward the base. He needed to find a reasonably safe place to shelter before nightfall.

Previous Chapter ◊ Table of Content ◊ Next Chapter