Chapter 1349: Grandeur
Everything was ready, and Qi Xia began the final step.
That was to resurrect all the "Participants," "Zodiacs," "Beasts," "Aborigines," and "Ants."
Including Tianlong and Qinglong.
This time, in order for everyone to escape, they had to completely deceive the Twin Dragons. The moment they began to suspect anything, the final result would surely be failure.
At the final moment, he would even have to deceive himself.
Only when his subconscious believed that he was going to fail would Tianlong be able to dream of success.
To make everything start over, he had to restore all living beings in the "Land of the End" to their original state at the same time, including the animals and insects in those bizarre games.
Except this time, those creatures born from "soul transfer" would completely abandon their humanity and become true beasts.
To achieve a flawless step, the only thing Qi Xia could do was use his subconscious to tell himself that this was still seven years ago.
He told himself he had just had a very, very long dream.
In the dream, he had unintentionally experienced "Eternal."
So when he woke up, everything was the same as before, and he had returned to the beginning of despair.
After experiencing "Eternal," Qi Xia found this step to be extraordinarily difficult.
After all, how could the "Land of the End" be more despairing than the City of Flesh?
To be safe, he could only first use the "Aborigines" to test whether his "conviction" was stable.
But Qi Xia had overlooked the impact of "Eternal."
He had stayed in the world of flesh for too long. When he first tried to create a large number of living people at once, he uncontrollably created thousands of "Aborigines" without faces.
The "Land of the End" instantly became populated, yet this eerie liveliness sent a chill down anyone's spine upon seeing it.
If he wanted to deceive the Twin Dragons... to deceive everyone here...
How could there be faceless Aborigines here?
Qi Xia originally thought that with a mere gesture, these people would be swallowed by the world, but he quickly realized this was not his world.
The land here could not directly devour such a large number of faceless people. If he wanted them to disappear... he could only use the most primitive method.
That was to kill.
When he began to act, Qi Xia felt for the first time that these things were truly "people."
They would panic, tremble, run, and they would wave their hands and beg for mercy.
This feeling began to shake a sliver of Qi Xia's "conviction" and also started to awaken the humanity within him that had long been absent.
If killing Zhang Lijuan and Zhang Chenze was a negotiation born of necessity, then killing these people had absolutely no justification.
They appeared here because of a thought of his, and they would die here because of another thought of his.
Qi Xia killed continuously for several days. Because those faceless people had a survival instinct, upon seeing a "murderer," they chose to scatter and flee, which cost Qi Xia considerable effort to track them down.
The more he slaughtered these innocent faceless people, the more his "conviction" wavered.
In this "Eternal," who had been accompanying him?
Why must he kill those without faces... to save those with faces?
Qi Xia struggled to maintain his will. It took him a long time to find the faceless people in various dark corners, and he killed them one by one.
He dragged all the corpses to various dark alleys, buried them under the sunless streets, then re-covered the sand and neatly laid the bricks, making everything look as if it had never happened.
He knew he had to keep this secret at all costs. If the faceless people ever saw the light of day again, it would inevitably bring variables to his plan.
But on second thought... no one would go out of their way to dig deep pits in these dark alleys for no reason, right?
This failure taught Qi Xia a lesson, and he no longer dared to act rashly.
Several thousand faceless people could still be handled, but if he were to recall everyone in the entire "Land of the End" at once, all without faces, then his plan would fail before it even began.
He had endured an "Eternal" that ordinary people could not imagine, not to relive a failure. So he had to ensure this plan was foolproof.
He returned to the "Train" and began to adjust his state of mind.
To succeed, the most direct way was to regain the familiar feelings of the past.
Although he was going back seven years to become the Man-Sheep again, everything began in this gloomy interview room.
He sat in the empty room, staring blankly for a long time in front of the round table.
Beside him, Tianlong once again lost track of Qi Xia's thoughts.
He stood aside, staying silent with Qi Xia in this room for a long time, as if time itself had stopped, frozen within this empty room.
One day, Qi Xia suddenly reached out and lightly created a person.
It was the Man-Sheep in the room.
The Man-Sheep didn't understand what was happening, but he saw that there were only him and Qi Xia in the room.
"Tell me the rules," Qi Xia said.
"Wha—"
"Tell me over and over again," Qi Xia closed his eyes, speaking with a trace of sorrow. "After every hundred times, you can rest for five minutes. The days ahead might be painful, but in the end, I will set you free and wash away all your painful memories. Until I free you, you must never stop."
A sentence embedded itself in the Man-Sheep's subconscious, as if controlling his very life.
Then many more years passed. Qi Xia remained motionless at the table, while the Man-Sheep continuously recited the rules of the "Nuwa Game."
He spoke for so long that his foul-smelling mask, mixed with moisture, covered his face, until his entire face began to rot, until his mind also started to blur.
To stay awake, whenever he had a spare three or five minutes, he would take out the "Zodiac Ascension Gambling Contract" and read it over and over.
This contract held a seemingly invisible hope and also recorded his real name.
His name was not Man-Sheep; he remembered it was Zhang Qiang.
But he had long gone mad. He wanted to die, but he couldn't break free from the shackles of his subconscious.
He felt he had been greatly deceived. Where in this world was there any "absolutely safe zodiac path"?
It was merely a hopeless "Eternal."
To keep himself as clear as possible and to one day truly escape from here, the Man-Sheep had to frantically hint to himself, constantly scribbling on that contract. He wrote with his own hand: "Please disregard the above terms."
He wrote: "This contract is void."
He wrote: "Please commit suicide immediately."
But he could only write; he could not act.
All that awaited him was endless torment.
"Do you want to hear a story?" Qi Xia suddenly turned to look at the Man-Sheep, the first time he had spoken to him in such a long while.
"A... story?"
"There are many people in this world who have experienced 'Eternal,' not just you." Qi Xia seemed to be practicing how to communicate with others, but this step was harder than he imagined.
Because the person he was communicating with had also gone mad.
"Many people... have experienced 'Eternal'?" The Man-Sheep was stunned, staring blankly at Qi Xia.
"That's right. Two million people have endured 'Eternal,'" Qi Xia replied.
The Man-Sheep felt the situation was absurd, or perhaps he truly had gone mad.
With such a vast number, it could no longer be just an "organization," could it? It could only be...
"Are... we some kind of... religion?" he asked.
"Religion...?" Qi Xia paused, then shook his head and said, "Man-Sheep, remember this: we are far more 'grand' than a religion. We have a 'world.'"
"We are far more 'grand' than a religion... we have a 'world'..."
That day, Qi Xia told the Man-Sheep a story about "Eternal."
Two million people had gone through "Eternal" with him, only to be left behind in the void.
But soon, the Man-Sheep would be killed by Qi Xia's own hand, forgetting all that had happened.