“How would I know?” Qi Xia countered.

“These are clearly your own ‘Echo’ and things you’ve done yourself, yet you pretend not to know?” Chu Tianqiu asked.

After hearing this, Qi Xia shook his head helplessly. “Chu Tianqiu, let alone me not knowing—even ‘Heavenly Snake’ can’t read my own thoughts.”

“Oh…?”

“He’s far more clearheaded than I am,” Qi Xia said.

After hearing this, Chu Tianqiu frowned slightly. “So when I was writing these two notes, was I also confused by your thoughts?”

“You’ll have to ask yourself that,” Qi Xia answered. “I’m not you, so I have no idea what you’re thinking. Perhaps I haven’t hidden anything at all—maybe you’re the one who’s gone mad.”

“I… have gone mad?” Chu Tianqiu nodded. “You’re right about that. I didn’t go mad after killing Wen Qiaoyun—I had already gone mad long before I killed her.”

After saying this, he looked at Qi Xia again and asked, “Then when did you go mad?”

“I’m not mad,” Qi Xia replied. “My mental state has never been better than it is now.”

“I see.” Chu Tianqiu laughed bitterly. “True lunatics never think they’re mad. It seems I’m still a step behind you.”

“You can’t say that,” Qi Xia shook his head. “You have a natural advantage over me. As long as you’re ‘Echoing,’ you can become a rational madman. But I can’t do that. Unless I completely demolish all my psychological defenses and rebuild them with the most terrifying things, I could never reach my current state.”

“That’s right.”

“Is this something a normal person could do?”

“Are we… still normal people?” Qi Xia asked.

“We…” After hearing this, Chu Tianqiu smiled bitterly. “Yes… we might not even count as ‘human’ anymore, right?”

“That’s correct. No ‘human’ can leave this place,” Qi Xia said.

“Then how exactly did you demolish your own ‘psychological defenses’?”

“Have you… ever experienced fear?” Qi Xia asked again.

“‘Fear’?” Chu Tianqiu found this word interesting. He extended his slender fingers stained with fresh blood and pointed at the dark red sky here. “Qi Xia, do you know why the sky is dark red?”

Qi Xia raised his head. “Because floating up there is the rotting flesh and blood of all those who have turned to dust over the past several decades.”

After hearing this, Chu Tianqiu pointed again at the corpses scattered across the playground. “Then do you know why those people are lying there?”

“Because someone needs them to die, so they have to die.”

“Exactly.” Chu Tianqiu said. “This place has neither ‘common sense’ nor ‘law.’ Everyone can kill for their own pleasure. We live here in order to die, yet we die in order to live. Those who want to protect you might do so to make you die, and those who want to kill you might actually want you to live…”

“That’s right.”

“Walking on this land where even the streets are sticky, and you ask me if I’ve experienced ‘fear’?” Chu Tianqiu grinned. “Qi Xia, every single day I’ve been here, my back has been ice-cold and my scalp has been numb. I’m truly afraid.”

“Oh?”

“But does that help?” Chu Tianqiu shook his head. “So many people have placed their hopes in me. I can only pretend that everything is fine, pretend to be stronger than anyone else, and then tell everyone that hope lies ahead. Wandering endlessly in this hell-like city, and you ask me if I’ve experienced ‘fear’?”

“But that’s far from enough,” Qi Xia said. “Just having a cold back for decades and a numb scalp for decades—how can that be considered ‘fear’?”

After hearing this, Chu Tianqiu let out a light snort. He turned his head to look into Qi Xia’s eyes and asked, “Then tell me… what is ‘fear’?”

Qi Xia said expressionlessly, “The fear I’m talking about concerns loved ones.”

“Ha.” After hearing this, Chu Tianqiu laughed bitterly. “Loved ones? Your loved one was kidnapped? Or your loved one was killed? Is that a terrifying thing for you? Qi Xia, I killed Wen Qiaoyun with my own hands.”

Qi Xia took a deep breath and said, “What if Wen Qiaoyun was uncontrollably copied into countless versions, with one of her eyeballs ‘enlarged’ and hung in the sky as the sun, while the others were torn apart into flesh and bone and reforged into a city? Her flesh paving the ground, her bones cast into walls, her blood flowing to become the rivers here—rivers so vile that even fish cannot breathe in them. And you walk and live on it every day, each of your steps trampling on her shattered flesh, causing her unbearable pain. Every single day you can smell the scent of rust. This city’s pulse beats constantly, as if it’s a massive living creature, yet you don’t know how to save her and she doesn’t know how to save you. And the only Wen Qiaoyun who can still move, in order to keep you from going mad… pretends nothing has happened and makes meals for you every day using maggots and flesh from her own body… How would that be?”

After hearing Qi Xia’s words, Chu Tianqiu fell into a long silence.

If what he himself had described was “fear,” then the scene Qi Xia depicted could no longer be described by the word “fear.”

The dictionary simply had no accurate words to describe this feeling.

If he stood in a city forged from Wen Qiaoyun’s flesh and blood, what would he feel?

Horror? Terror?

No, that feeling couldn’t be expressed at all.

“Qi Xia, and you still say you’re not mad?” Chu Tianqiu asked.

“I may have already passed through the stage of ‘madness,'” Qi Xia answered expressionlessly. “I feel that I’ve reached a realm I’ve never set foot in before. To process thoughts in this realm, ‘madness’ is no longer sufficient.”

“So this is what you meant… after demolishing all your psychological defenses, you rebuilt them with ‘the most terrifying things,’ and those things are Yu Nian’an’s flesh and blood?”

After hearing this, Qi Xia nodded. “Yes.”

“But even an ‘Echoer’ couldn’t accomplish this, right?” Chu Tianqiu slowly frowned. “How exactly did you do it?”

“This is truly a long story. I definitely couldn’t accomplish something like this ‘miracle’ by myself. I not only needed a ‘deity’ capable of demolishing an entire city, but also a ‘Dreamwalker’ capable of recasting the city.”

“These two people you’re talking about…” Chu Tianqiu was slightly stunned. “No, this is clearly one person, right? ‘He’ alone can accomplish it all… You not only manipulated ‘Qinglong,’ you even schemed against ‘Heavenly Dragon’?”

Qi Xia slowly closed his eyes. “Chu Tianqiu, we have several ‘battlefields.’ I can’t control the other battlefields, but there’s one under my control.”

“A battlefield under your control…?”

“This has nothing to do with you anymore. It’s my own affair,” Qi Xia said.