Chapter 116: The Human-Skin Drum (20)

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“I have no idea.” The uninfected players congratulated themselves on getting away in time. Otherwise, they would have ended up just like the fat man.

“It’s disgusting to look at. Thank goodness we weren’t infected… Let’s get out of here quickly. If we stay around these people any longer, those blisters will eventually grow on us too!”

The uninfected players hurried away from those who had been infected.

At the same time, they looked upon their infected companions with disdain, revulsion, and disgust.

“Why… why are you doing this?” The infected players were filled with despair, feeling as though the entire world had abandoned them.

“I only have blisters on my body. I’m not one of those aberrations. You don’t have to treat me like this, do you?”

“Get lost! Stay away from us!” Some people’s mouths moved faster than their brains, and they openly expressed their disgust through both words and actions. “How are you any different from those aberrations? Can’t you hurt us just the same? The only difference between you and the aberrations is that one kind has consciousness and the other doesn’t.”

“But…”

“Kill them! Burn them with fire! If we don’t burn them, the spores on their bodies will spread forever!”

“On what grounds?” The infected fat man was the first to protest. “We’re different from those monsters! We’re living human beings! How can you attack your own companions?”

“Human beings? Don’t human beings die eventually?”

“Once you’re dead, won’t you become a monster too?”

“What are you waiting for? Hurry up and go to the shop to buy gasoline!”

“If we don’t move faster, we’re all going to die!”

Everyone scrambled into the shop to purchase fuel and other materials to feed the flames. But in their panic, they were blindly grasping at straws. Their minds were so addled that it never occurred to them that the fat man was not a monster yet.

That meant he was still qualified to enter the shop.

He glared viciously at the players around him, all of whom were eager to see him dead. Grinding his back teeth almost to powder, he spent his entire fortune on several hundred pounds of explosives from the shop. Then, resolved to die with everyone else, he lit the fuse.

“If you’re going to burn me alive, then I’ll blow every one of you to pieces! If I can’t live, none of you will!”

“Don’t even think about running! These explosives are enchanted! The souls of every one of you have already been projected into them! Every last one of you—body and soul alike—will be blasted into oblivion!”

“Hahahaha!”

The fat man lit the fuse, and his mad laughter echoed through the endless darkness of the night.

Boom!

A thunderous explosion rang out.

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Even the small inn was blasted open, leaving behind a massive crater.

In a tranquil corner of the village, a beautiful woman with a gentle appearance gazed at the village, which had been quiet for many years. On her face appeared a smile that was at once innocent, pure, and cruel.

“See, Uncle Stone? No matter how many years pass, human nature never changes.”

“They are greedy, deceitful, cruel, and murderous. There is never any so-called warmth in their eyes. All they have is exploitation and plunder directed at the weak, encirclement and slaughter directed at the vulnerable, defamation of sacred life, and worship of darkness and corruption.”

“It is as though, in their eyes, money, power, status, and women are the foundations that mark their success. They revel in the worship of the masses and in the envy of others, yet they never look inward.”

“Look at what their souls have become after falling into depravity!”

“Disgusting!”

The man standing beside her, whom she called Uncle Stone, was a hunched old man. He was also the only person in the village who could stand so close to her.

The old man stooped over and coughed twice. He looked at the woman before him, whose appearance seemed innocent but whose heart had long been riddled with wounds. His eyes were filled with pity and regret.

When a person creates a cause, there will be an effect. Cause and effect give rise to attachment.

And once such an attachment takes root, escaping the cycle of cause and effect that belonged to her became exceedingly difficult.

Even if someone told her that happiness lay just ahead—that if she crossed over, passed through reincarnation, and entered her next life, she would be very, very happy—she would still refuse to break free from the cycle of cause and effect created by the suffering of this life.

She would remain forever submerged in a sea of suffering and desire.

“Oriole, you’ve tormented the people of this village for many, many, many years. Isn’t it enough?”

The woman called Oriole did not respond to the old man.

Her eyes held only the villagers who had bound themselves in cocoons of their own making, along with the tourists who had come to make a spectacle of themselves. She showed no concern for the old man’s care or consolation.

She had heard him.

But she chose not to hear.

“Uncle Stone, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said it. Every time these people come, the result is always the same. Not only do they fail to untie the knot in my heart, they merely provide more material for laughter. Perhaps this is fate… Other people insult me, resent me, hurt me, and hate me. They spend the rest of their lives tormenting and opposing me. But all I want is release.”

The old man had used the same words to persuade her hundreds and thousands of times.

“When you pass through reincarnation, your memories will be washed away. Once a person loses their memories, it is as though they have been reborn.”

Ha. Reborn?

What a joke.

Her soul was already incomplete in this lifetime. Even if she exchanged it for a new body and gained an entirely new life, the flaws in her soul would follow her into the next life, and every life after that.

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There would never be release.

“The cycle of Heaven,” she said, suddenly laughing bitterly and miserably. “It is all karmic retribution.”

“Alas.” Uncle Stone sighed helplessly. There was nothing more he could do. He had tried to persuade her for far too many years. Even devoting the rest of his own life to convincing her had left him utterly exhausted.

But just as the old man sighed in sorrow, the woman’s gaze suddenly darkened.

The smoke dispersed.

Not everyone at the center of the explosion had been killed. Only those infected by the green spores had been reduced to ashes. The uninfected were still standing perfectly well. It seemed that several hundred pounds of explosives had been nothing more than dust to them, incapable of causing them the slightest harm.

“What happened? How are we still alive?”

“Cough, cough… There was so much dust. For a moment, I thought my soul had already left my body and gone straight to heaven!”

Tang Mu was equally astonished that she had survived.

After all, the weapon the fat man had used to blow himself up had been extraordinarily powerful. It was an A-rank item, with a price in the shop starting at more than a million points.

To withstand the power of an A-rank item, one needed an A-rank defensive item as well. A-rank offensive items, such as Tang Mu’s Red Thread Bell (A+), were useless for that purpose. She would have needed a Blue Crystal Tortoiseshell (A) or a Golden Bell Shield (A), but items of that kind also started at more than a million points in the shop.

Tang Mu had no money.

So she had simply given up.

Even if she became a monster, she could still meet Yan Xingwen in the form of a monster.

There was therefore no need to cling desperately to her human identity.

But clearly, the others were different.

They wanted to live.

Their desire to survive had surpassed every external possession. That was why they had spent their entire fortunes purchasing items worth millions of points, all to preserve their lives.

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