I forcibly held back my tears as I stood in place, then nodded my head heavily.
“Promise me, be a kind child.” She reached out to hug me, saying in my ear, “Go do whatever you want to do, go do the things an eight-year-old child should do, go love this world well.”
Her tears fell on my shoulder, and I finally couldn’t help but cry bitterly.
Even until the final moment, it was elder sister talking to me… I didn’t say anything to her at all…
“Yingxiong, I’m going now. You must be happy, okay?” She stood up with red eyes, lips pressed tightly together, as if trying hard not to let her tears fall.
But I simply couldn’t hold back. I felt all my tears pouring down at this moment, gathering into the most heartbreaking waterfall I had ever seen in my life.
Elder sister lay back down on the table, and the “Divine Dragon” also slowly raised the knife at this moment.
“I can feel it, your ability has faded quite a bit.” The “Divine Dragon” said, “After tormenting yourself for so long, you can finally stop suffering.”
“Sorry for troubling you…” Elder sister said with a bitter smile through her tears, “Kill me…”
“Mm, pardon the offense.” The “Divine Dragon” said.
Amid my bitter crying, the “Divine Dragon” thrust the knife down.
This knife took away the flesh and blood on my body, the light in my heart, the swallow by my side.
Siwei-jiejie’s wound showed no signs of healing at all. She had given up.
She left this incomparably painful and desperate world. She finally obtained her own freedom.
She went to a place where no one would beat her or scold her, and where no one would control her.
I lost all my strength and cried until I collapsed to my knees.
A few minutes later, the “Divine Dragon” walked toward me and said softly: “Crying is useless.”
My bitter crying gradually weakened. I raised my head to look at her.
Her face, like a gecko’s, was covered in dark green scales, yet I didn’t feel the slightest bit of fear.
“What did you say…?”
“Go do what she wanted you to do.” The “Divine Dragon” said, “Today she brought over a thousand people to my ‘Envious Mandarin Ducks’ to gamble with their lives. I thought this city would completely fall, but she left you behind. Perhaps there’s still a thread of hope.”
The “Divine Dragon” took out a remote control from her pocket and pressed it lightly. All the exhaust fans around the swimming hall began to turn. The water vapor inside the room quickly disappeared. In just a few minutes, the entire game venue appeared horrifyingly before my eyes.
This wasn’t any “swimming pool” at all—it was clearly an incomparably huge “round pot.”
In the middle of the round pot was an arc-shaped divider splitting the pot into left and right halves, like a taiji symbol. Inside the round pot, one side was red liquid and the other side was white liquid. At this moment, both sides of the liquid were bubbling with gurgling sounds.
And in the pot… a large number of corpses were being stewed.
Those corpses flipped up and down with the “glug glug” sound of bubbles. If they weren’t all lacerated with their flesh exposed, I would have even thought they were still alive.
“I couldn’t bear to watch her keep screaming in the red broth, so I pulled her up to give her a quick death, but I didn’t expect you to come.” The “Divine Dragon” said with a sorrowful scent, “It seems you truly are the only concern in her heart. Now that the concern has been let go, she can also leave.”
I see, this was probably the “cause and effect” of this world.
I wasn’t sure whether “Cause and Effect” really gave me those ten minutes, but I knew Siwei-jiejie’s subconscious had always wanted to live. She kept activating “healing” until I arrived here.
I forgot how I walked out of the “Divine Dragon’s” game venue.
I only knew that I tightly clutched the bedsheet elder sister had draped over me and returned to my small room, then lay down on the floor. I was truly so tired.
I hugged the bedsheet in my arms. It wasn’t until the blood on it was no longer cold that I felt the coldest thing was my own heart.
The people in the building were still cheering at this moment about everyone’s successful “ascension.” They were loudly fantasizing about what they would do when it was their turn to ascend tomorrow. I finally understood Siwei-jiejie’s thinking too.
This was already the best outcome, wasn’t it?
Those so-called subjects were even more dangerous than “Wanderers.” “Wanderers” had no aggression, but they did.
The next day, before everyone woke up, I took all the things elder sister had given me and left that building.
I got on my bicycle, then set off chasing the wind.
I no longer needed to care about those people…
I let the wind blow on my face, continuously recalling in my mind what elder sister had said to me.
“Go do whatever you want to do.”
“Go do the things an eight-year-old child should do.”
“Be happy, love this world.”
What I wanted to do… I wanted to ride my bicycle racing through the streets. I wanted to shout loudly.
Yes, I wanted to shout loudly.
“Ahhhhh!!!!”
I cried as I shouted loudly on the street.
“Ahhhhh!!!!”
I didn’t know why I needed to shout, but I really wanted to shout so badly.
I gripped the bicycle handlebars tightly. I shouted as I breathed in the foul-smelling wind. I had nothing left. I could only shout.
“Elder sister!! I’m very happy!!” I cried as I raised my head and shouted, “Did you see? Elder sister! I’m especially happy!!”
How I wished I could be happy, but my tears simply wouldn’t stop.
I stopped the bicycle and charged headfirst into the building beside me, then climbed onto a table, stood up, and jumped with all my might.
“Ahhhhh!!!!” I jumped while crying, while shouting loudly. I seemed to want to stomp the table until it collapsed, “Elder sister! Did you see? I’m doing what I want to do!!”
I’m very happy… I’m very…
My shouting echoed through the empty city, but no one could hear it anymore.
It turned out that after all this time, I finally understood how powerless the things I wanted to do were.
This was just my obsession, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do.
And what I wanted to do had been decided long ago—I wanted to become a true “hero.”