Chapter 230: The Town Where Memories Are Forbidden
Chapter 230: The Town Where Memories Are Forbidden
Chapter 230: The Town Forbidden to Remember
As a close witness to the battle, Rat-Eye felt an indescribable shock.
At first, the earth began to tremble, foretelling the arrival of a disaster.
One after another, houses rose from the ground, like trees uprooted by a storm, their foundations pulling out countless dark soil particles, leaving behind deep, hollow cavities that resembled the silent scars of the earth's lament.
These houses ascended into the sky, walls meeting walls, eaves colliding with eaves, as if grasped by an invisible giant's hand, brutally assembled into a massive, misshapen structure.
Amidst the thunderous roar, bright windows, colorful facades, intricately sloping eaves, and winding pipes... everything spun before Rat-Eye's eyes, deconstructed and reassembled in an instant, forming a towering mountain that cast jagged shadows over several streets.
Rat-Eye was also enveloped in the shadow.
He stood frozen, his ears filled only with a buzzing sound, like a swarm of bees dancing wildly, followed by a terrifying silence.
Warm liquid dripped from his ears, and only then did Rat-Eye realize:
It wasn't that the environment had truly become quiet...
His ears had already been rendered temporarily deaf by the sound levels far exceeding physiological limits.
Plugging his ears with cotton balls to absorb the blood, Rat-Eye, seeing the house where he was hiding about to be affected, gritted his teeth and ran.
He belonged to the [Death] domain, with an Ability named "Death Gap Traversal," which allowed him to instantly teleport to a location marked by death or corpses—fortunately, this town was not short of bodies.
Rat-Eye traversed several times, finally stopping a few streets away, where he drank a Life Domain potion, gradually restoring some of his hearing, though the sounds were still muffled, as if heard through a thick layer of water.
As he watched the battle from a distance, he was secretly alarmed: The scar-faced man had already melted at least two long streets of houses, yet the malformed "mountain" continued to rise, fusing new parts without any sign of stopping.
— Just how terrifying must the opponent be to elicit such a reaction from the scarred man?
Confronting this mountain, Rat-Eyes realized he might have underestimated the "serpent’s" strength...
Rat-Eyes narrowed his eyes and noticed that the space near the mountain seemed to have undergone a slight distortion, with ripple-like patterns spreading out, much like the distorted and wavering scenery on an asphalt road under the scorching summer sun.
From within the distorted patterns, a massive shadow gradually took shape.
Rat-Eyes’ pupils trembled, slowly reflecting its cold golden vertical pupils, dark red and chilling snake tongue, neatly arranged scales, and agile, slender body...
It was even larger than the mountain, slowly and deliberately winding its way up the slope, seemingly in pursuit of the fleeing scarred man.
The serpent’s movements appeared light and nimble, but no one would underestimate its power—wherever it slithered, debris crumbled and fell, steel bars and pipes emitted ear-piercing screeches, audible even to Rat-Eyes who was half-deaf from several streets away.
The mountain was slowly constricted by the serpent’s body, leaving deep grooves and indentations.
Rat-Eyes clenched his teeth, his back drenched in cold sweat.
He could not estimate just how long the “serpent” was—hundreds of meters, thousands of meters, or even longer?
Rat-Eyes had no way of knowing.
Because he couldn’t see its tail, just as he couldn’t see the edge of the city at a glance.
In great shock, Rat-Eyes almost wanted to curse his ancestors—why didn’t the recording mention that the “serpent” was a giant creature straight out of a disaster movie?
Is this a snake?
This is clearly a behemoth!
Given the size difference, Rat Eye felt that even if this serpent were nothing more than a giant mutated animal, devoid of intelligence or mystical powers, it could still overwhelm most Ability users with its sheer size.
Just the impact of its tail hitting the ground would be akin to an earthquake caused by a mountain collapse or a sinkhole.
Moreover, Rat Eye was inclined to believe that the serpent couldn't possibly lack Abilities...
What domain of power did it possess?
Rat Eye swallowed nervously, his eyes fixed on the serpent's path.
Even though he had deliberately set up the situation for Scarred Man to be in danger, he couldn't help but feel a pang of concern for his former companion.
Observing the direction of the mountain's growth and the serpent's movement, Rat Eye suddenly understood why Scarred Man had constructed such a tall house-mountain.
Perhaps, Scarred Man wasn't attacking—
but fleeing for his life.
His seemingly aggressive act of melting houses and raising the mountain was actually him building an escape route, desperately trying to flee from an enemy he couldn't face.
But with the serpent relentlessly pursuing, Scarred Man had no choice but to keep raising the mountain higher and higher...
It was like being in a leaky canoe, where the only option was to continuously bail out water, delaying the inevitable drowning in despair.
—Scarred Man was finished.
Rat Eye quickly came to this conclusion.
After all, how could a human compete with a monster in endurance?
Even for those with Abilities, this is an unrealistic feat, unless they have already grasped the reins of their domain powers and transcended into beings of divine nature…
However, the scarred man clearly does not fall into this category.
Thus, he is destined to be caught, just like his fallen comrades who once faced the "serpent."
The rat-eyed man exhaled a long, heavy breath. He thought that after being overpowered in their first direct confrontation, there could only be one outcome for the scarred man.
That is, to die atop the mountain he had forged with his own hands.
To perish at a height so close to the sky yet from which there is no escape.
Though he had already reached a conclusion about the battle's outcome, the rat-eyed man did not abandon his observation of the fight. His eyes remained fixed on the sky, unwavering.
He had not forgotten that tomorrow, he himself might become the "prey"!
He took this opportunity to carefully observe the serpent’s abilities, at least to deduce its domain… of course, finding its weakness would be even better.
Blinking his increasingly sore eyes, the rat-eyed man noticed that the houses the giant serpent had crawled over seemed to be changing—
The exterior walls of these houses were no longer fresh and vibrant; they showed signs of weathering, with large patches of plaster flaking off, whether due to the heavy pressure or…
A hypothesis formed in the rat-eyed man’s mind: or perhaps, they were becoming "aged"?
Time, like a flood breaking through a dam, was accelerating its erosion on these houses touched by the serpent, leaving these marks behind.
The walls faded, cracked, and peeled…
These were the traces left by the passage of time.
"Temporal Domain," Rat Eyes muttered, his face darkening, "This is even more troublesome."
Among the ability users in the Playground of Gods, those with the Temporal Domain are almost the rarest, rarer even than those of the enigmatic Fate Domain.
Thus, few have experience fighting against this domain's abilities.
The few scattered evaluations that have been passed down are invariably described as "uncanny" and "tenacious."
Everything moves within time; how does one defeat time?
Rumors suggest that the Temporal Domain has a unique characteristic: when ability users in this domain reach mid-to-high ranks, they vanish without warning, never to be heard from again, as if they had evaporated into thin air.
Rat Eyes searched his memory carefully but could not recall any notable figures in the Temporal Domain... Is it because this domain lacks talent, or is the rumor about mid-to-high rankers vanishing true?
Suddenly, a shout interrupted Rat Eyes' thoughts.
He heard it faintly, but he knew that the scream must have been shrill and hysterical enough to be caught by his now weakened hearing.
"No, don't come closer..."
"Aaaaah—!!"
It was Scarface's voice, spreading farther and farther through the desolate, war-torn street.
Then it was abruptly cut off, followed by silence.
Rat Eyes touched his ear, regretfully thinking that if his hearing were still normal, he might have heard Scarface's bones being crushed or his entire body being swallowed by a snake.
With Scarface out of the way, he would have much more room to maneuver in the town.
He believed he had a chance to escape the town before the snake noticed him!
...
On the rugged mountain peak, broken glass and tiles from houses occasionally rolled down, making a clattering sound.
The serpent coiled around the mountain's surface, its sharp pupils constricting into deep black slits as it stared at a flat paper box left behind by the scarred man in his final moments.
After observing for a while, it lifted its tail and paused in front of the paper box.
At the base of the serpent’s tail, there was a structure resembling the upper body of a human, vaguely outlining the shape of a male human.
It had long arms, an oval head, and underdeveloped facial features, but no smooth skin—its entire body was still covered in scales, and its posture was bonelessly limp—more like a mutated form of a snake than a human.
The humanoid seemed to struggle to grow and detach from the serpent, but no one could possibly consider it a fellow being.
Embedded in the serpent’s tail, presenting a dual-headed snake appearance, it only evoked the uncanny valley effect, appearing bizarrely eerie.
This was a mimicry that the serpent had gradually evolved after observing human appearances and behaviors.
Compared to the serpent, it possessed a more agile and lightweight body, along with five fingers capable of grasping objects. At this moment, the humanoid clumsily tightened its fingers, picked up the paper box, weighed it a few times, and then tossed out several strange things made of rolled paper.
The humanoid slowly tilted its head, recognizing these as the items the scarred man couldn’t bear to part with.
That human seemed to enjoy standing by the window, holding such paper rolls in his mouth, exhaling a grayish mist.
Hmm... would these paper rolls be delicious?
Like the meat in those metal cans?
Picking up a cigarette, the humanoid inserted one end into its mouth, but tasted nothing.
It flicked out its tongue—now, its tongue was still long and thin, with a forked tip like a serpent’s—and thought it must be eating it incorrectly.
Pausing for a moment, the humanoid recalled that when the scarred man puffed on his cigarette, the other end of the paper would glow red intermittently... So, indeed, its method of trying was wrong.
Red... red...
The end of the paper needed to be stained red.
After some thought, the humanoid pressed the cigarette to the ground, dipping it in the blood left by the scarred man.
The blood-stained paper was just as vividly crimson, just as it remembered.
Satisfied, the humanoid nodded, clumsily mimicking the scarred man, pinching the slender cigarette between its fingers, placing it in its mouth, and letting its forked tongue circle the paper, but still tasting nothing.
Only the scent of fresh blood from the other end lingered in its nostrils, somewhat sweet.
It slowly realized that the "food" the scarred man couldn’t put down was actually not tasty at all.
The humanoid tossed aside the cigarette box, its spine slithering like a snake, and it lay in an odd posture on the tail of the serpent. The two heads at either end of the serpent’s body—one a serpent’s head, the other a human’s—both had inhuman golden eyes.
The serpent silently departed, leaving behind the peculiar mountain-like structure formed by the house, which slowly crumbled where it stood.