Chapter 403: There Are People Everywhere
“Su Shan, there’s no one there,” Zhang Chenze said. “Are you sure you’re not seeing things?”
“Seeing things…?” Su Shan slowly widened her eyes, letting them turn bloodshot once more. The two human silhouettes grew clearer and clearer. “I’m not seeing things… There are people standing there…”
Su Shan stepped forward with a smile on her face. “Can’t you see them? A man and a woman standing over there… What are they doing…? Why aren’t they moving…?”
The group looked at the display screen and the giant clock, feeling a creeping sense of unease.
“Hey…” Lin Qin reached out and grabbed Su Shan. “You seem to be ‘reverberating too much.’ You need to stay lucid… Remember, you’re the one controlling the ‘Reverberation,’ not the other way around.”
“No… I’m fine…” Su Shan turned her head to look at Lin Qin, fresh tears of blood streaming from her eyes once more. “I can see even more clearly now… I’m re-examining this world…”
Qin Dingdong slowly furrowed her brow. The last time she had worked with Su Shan, they had only moved indoors and never taken her outside, so she couldn’t tell if Su Shan was going mad or actually seeing something real.
“Lin Qin… Your ‘radiance’ is very warm…” Su Shan continued to smile as she reached out and grasped Lin Qin’s wrist. “The characters for ‘Ignite’ are floating all around you… Like a sun, so warm…”
Then she turned to look at Zhang Chenze. “Chenze, your ‘radiance’ has a very peculiar shape. It hovers above your head, drifting with murky ‘Soul Shift.’ From a distance, you look like a black lighthouse.”
Upon hearing the words “black lighthouse,” Zhang Chenze’s expression visibly darkened.
“Xiao Shan, you really need to rest for a while. We don’t need to know the shape of our ‘Reverberations’ right now, but you need to close your eyes for a bit.” Qin Dingdong turned to Lin Qin. “Lao Lin, let’s take her indoors somewhere to sit for a while.”
“Alright…” Lin Qin nodded. Just as she was about to pull Su Shan away, Su Shan pushed her off.
Su Shan smiled as she looked around and said, “Have you noticed? There are more and more ‘people’…”
“What ‘people’?” The three of them looked around as well. All they saw were broken buildings.
“We’re surrounded by ‘people’…” Su Shan laughed loudly. “So this is what the ‘Land of Finality’ looks like? So many people? How lively…”
She slowly walked a few steps forward, coming to a stop beneath an old streetlamp. She reached out and touched the lamppost.
“Why aren’t you moving…?” Su Shan asked with a smile. “Have you been standing here all along?”
“Su Shan…” Zhang Chenze tried to step forward and stop her, but the other two held her back.
“Chenze, it’s useless now…” Lin Qin said with a look of regret. “We’ll have to wait for the next round…”
The three watched as Su Shan talked to the streetlamp, a bitter feeling settling in their hearts. If it weren’t for Su Shan’s eyes, they would all be dead from the Ground Dog’s game.
But it was precisely because of those eyes that Su Shan had lost her reason.
The ‘Reverberation’ that affected the eyes seemed somewhat different from other ‘Reverberations.’
After all, human curiosity is limitless. People pay no attention to things they cannot see. But once they start to see blurry outlines, they will try even harder to make them out clearly.
Right now, Su Shan wanted to see those blurry outlines clearly, and she also wanted to see all the ‘radiances’ around her.
These eyes would be the death of her.
“How strange…” Su Shan smiled as she looked back at the others. “Did you hear what this person said?”
The others noticed that her eyes had turned a dark red, looking especially terrifying.
Zhang Chenze glanced at the streetlamp in front of her and shook her head grimly. “I didn’t hear anything.”
“I didn’t hear anything either…” Su Shan’s expression gradually went blank. “This person keeps opening his mouth, but I can’t hear a word he’s saying… I thought my ears might be broken too…”
She then looked more closely at the countless ‘people’ around her… They all seemed to be talking, yet the silence was absolute.
“How interesting…” Su Shan paused. “It’s like watching a TV with the sound muted…”
“Lao Lin…” Qin Dingdong said quietly. “Let me kill her. This isn’t going to work.”
“Sigh…” Lin Qin let out a long sigh. “Do you still have the strength? Su Shan used to be a police officer, after all. She must have been trained…”
“It’s fine, I’ll find a rock. Even if she’s trained, if I smash her directly on the head…”
“You two… what are you discussing?” Zhang Chenze was taken aback.
“Chenze…” Lin Qin frowned at her. “We’re going to send Su Shan on her way. It might sound harsh, but you’ll get used to things like this eventually…”
Zhang Chenze thought it over carefully. It seemed unfair, but it was a necessary evil.
If Su Shan continued to live the remaining six days in this state, it would be torture for herself as well.
“In that case, I’ll do it…” Zhang Chenze said after a moment of contemplation. “Neither of you have the energy to carry out this task.”
With that, she walked to the side and picked up a rock from the roadside.
The two stared at her blankly, feeling that this woman was a little too rational.
Could a normal ‘newcomer’ really be mentally prepared for something like this from the very beginning?
Zhang Chenze, rock in hand, quietly approached Su Shan from behind. The scene felt familiar, yet not quite the same.
This time, she was going to kill someone who had been kind to her. The feeling was painful.
“But I already have blood on my hands…” Zhang Chenze gritted her teeth and raised the rock.
At that moment, Su Shan was facing away from her. She slowly lifted her head to look up at the sky.
A moment later, Su Shan stepped back half a pace, nearly bumping into Zhang Chenze.
“What…?” Su Shan stared at the sky in confusion, her expression filled with shock.
Zhang Chenze had intended to take the opportunity to strike, but she couldn’t suppress her own curiosity. She followed Su Shan’s gaze and looked up.
There was only a single, dirt-yellow sun streaked with faint black lines in the sky.
“Look…” Su Shan slowly raised her hand, her expression shifting back to a smile. “It’s so lively here… There’s even a woman floating in the sky… Why is she floating up there?”
Hearing these words, the three of them felt a chill run down their spines.
Where in the sky was there anyone?
The dark red sky was utterly bare, not even a single cloud, just a lonely sun hanging there.
“Do you want to come down and play…?” Su Shan stretched out her arms in a welcoming gesture. “Floating so high… Isn’t that dangerous?”
As soon as she finished speaking, Su Shan’s pupils turned pitch black, and black blood began to seep down her cheeks.
Within just a few seconds, her arms dropped limply, and she collapsed face-first to the ground.
Zhang Chenze froze. She quickly put down the rock and checked Su Shan’s pulse. She was dead.
From the nearby screen came the sound of a bell tolling. The ‘Spirit Vision’ had vanished.