Editor: Junyans
Before falling asleep, Bai Jingan had a nagging feeling he might have nightmares, but despite his worries, he slept soundly and peacefully.
It was already afternoon when he woke up. He was holding Xia Tian’s waist, as if he couldn’t let go of the other person even in sleep. Xia Tian had one arm draped over his shoulder and was still asleep.
Bai Jingan didn’t move, maintaining this posture. He raised his hand to touch Xia Tian’s back. The whip marks seemed to have lightened significantly, and looked like they would heal soon. The medical technology in the Upper City was truly astonishing.
He felt that he should look at what time it was, but he was too lazy to move. This warmth, just like an anchor, stabilized and soothed him. His mind blank, he lay there doing nothing for about twenty minutes.
It wasn’t until Xia Tian woke up and touched Bai Jingan’s terminal to check the time with his eyes squinted that he finally felt it was time to get up.
So he rose and headed to the kitchen to prepare food, Xia Tian trailing close behind to lend a hand. Xia Tian unpacked some containers and decided to make porridge.
Neither of them were good at cooking, so they just threw whatever ingredients they had into the pot. Bai Jingan seized the chance while the porridge simmered to take a shower and change his clothes. He could hear Xia Tian moving around outside the whole time.
Surprisingly, the porridge tasted pretty good, probably thanks to their grumbling stomachs. The two devoured it in no time, and Xia Tian burrowed back under the blanket before grabbing Bai Jingan’s terminal to browse the internet.
Bai Jingan also returned to the bed and sat next to Xia Tian. The person was curled up in a blanket, leaning against some sofa cushions that he had dragged over. His hair was tied up in a mess, and he appeared on the verge of drifting back to sleep at any moment.
Bai Jingan divided a screen to see the situation outside.
The Floating World Paradise had sunk, with its sturdy supports, land, oceans, castles, and lush vegetation all crashing down before it smashed to pieces on the Earth’s surface.
Below it lay District M2, where the population was halved the year before due to the outbreak of the Melting Disease. Although the vaccines hadn’t kept up, the special programs covering the incident had made quite a bit of money. Due to the already thinned population from the Melting Disease, casualties from the falling of Floating World Paradise were relatively small. The footage on the TV station showed those people with blurry faces, their features dissolved into monstrous visages, lifting their heads from the darkness and watching this spectacular “fall of paradise.”
In all the games, movies, and novels of the Upper City, the big shots were unbeatable.
They were the enigmatic forces lurking in the shadows, the ultimate antagonists whispered about in conspiracy theories, the monsters that ultimately strip away the glory from even the most valiant heroes. This underlying narrative had woven itself into the very fabric of Upper City culture.
But today, this myth had been shattered.
The dazzling Floating World Paradise of the elites, which was as dreamlike as a fairyland and unimaginable for the common people, had been burned and shattered by two humble Killing Show contestants, falling into “hell” early this morning.
The Floating City incident ignited a meteoric surge in public attention. Ratings charts displayed an unprecedented, needle-sharp peak, a stark anomaly compared to anything documented before.
It was unbelievable that there were videos of the Guest Show all over the internet.
In the midst of his escape, Bai Jingan had known that some videos from the God of War Temple had leaked to the external network. He had thought they would be deleted soon—Guest Shows were the private property of the big shots, and their image in the show wasn’t very flattering—but now, when he went online to check, these things were actually being traded openly, just like the Killing Show videos. They had been released in an official version and were now being bought and sold!
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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The slogan was exciting and sensational. Bai Jingan used the authority of the Sacrifice Hall to check the backend data of the website and immediately realized why the powerful people were so quick, enthusiastic and willing to lower themselves.
The amount of money involved in the Guest Show was simply staggering. The hourly income could match half a dozen Floating World Paradises!
Of course, the elites were certainly not short of money, but this was a sum so large that it couldn’t be ignored, and seizing was their instinct.
In the Upper City, wealth held absolute sway. This colossal entity loomed over the entire floating city, shining brightly beneath the sunlight. Its roots burrowed deep into the darkness, sucking in the pain, corpses, and corruption that festered in the gutters. No one could escape its grasp.
In this way, this twisted and crazy show entered everyone’s terminal. At the same time, standing at the pinnacle once again was the paranoid, angry, and unyielding God of War.
This time, the God of War was silent. He didn’t show off in front of the camera, nor did he have any famous quotes. Even the cameras watched everything from the shadows.
This was his life.
It was the epitome of despair.
But it was also the epitome of awesomeness and pride.
Bai Jingan sat cross-legged on the bed—Xia Tian had thrown a blanket over him—checking the situation outside.
It was safe outside the house. The market’s din was a distant murmur, and the house’s location out of the sun kept things relatively quiet. The camera offered a clear view of the surroundings.
But Bai Jingan could feel it: the deadly heat gathering from all corners of the world, so intense it made his skin crawl.
He remembered the escape route he had planned before rescuing Xia Tian—because Xia Tian had a chip implanted in him, all the planned hideouts were in the Lower City, the most likely place to block signals… or maybe the signals wouldn’t be blocked, but he couldn’t control it anyway.
At the moment they fled from the Floating World Paradise, the God of War Temple had received a new offering: a high-end pet management interface with a built-in destruction program in the backend.
Bai Jingan didn’t know who provided this thing—probably some advanced programmer. It was a high-end management program, and the other party directly gave him a one-click bomb virus removal.
This thing destroyed all the “pet” management connections and permissions of the bigwigs in an instant. Even if they put all their efforts, it would still take at least ten days to half a month to restore it.
He felt a cold chill of realization snake down his spine. In the face of this bottomless crisis, he seemed to have also gained some kind of unfathomable power.
Xia Tian logged into the God of War Temple—the number of logins was so high that it made people wonder if there was an issue with the program—and stared at the Sacrifice Hall for a while.
Bai Jingan found that sacrificial offerings had tripled since their escape and were still increasing rapidly.
He recalled the special program on Floating Gold TV. In the footage, the entire Upper City seemed to be running a high fever. Countless screens emanated an eerie red glow, dyeing the sky of the Floating City blood-red. The scene resembled a firestorm-filled battlefield, or perhaps a nightmarish vision of a gaping, scarlet abyss hanging upside down in the sky.
The upper world was hurtling toward a place of scorching heat. No one knew its destination, only that the temperature continued to rise without end.
At this point, what players were eager for was no longer money, cheers or adoration, but the authority of the Upper City’s truest power.
But there was no real God of War. It was merely an illusion created by the Upper City’s culture of violence. All that existed was Xia Tian, a criminal from the Lower City. He was emotional, liked to laugh, had a younger sister, had lost a lot, was full of anger, and was trying hard to survive.
The God of War existed only in the Upper City’s vacuous blood-red carnival, and the sacrifices were also piled up towards the void. But when you possessed such terrifying power, the illusion would eventually become reality.
Just then, a video advertisement suddenly popped up on the terminal, which was from the Guest Show.
Xia Tian was tied to a big crimson bed like a huge plate. Those people had pulled his limbs apart, and several snakes lazily slithered on him, occasionally sticking out their forked tongues. A golden snake had wrapped itself around his hair, forcing him to keep facing the light.
He was in great pain and was crying. The orange-red light shone on his face, and his tears were like gold.
Someone with an extra digit in his hand—his six-fingered hand looked more like claws—reached out to touch his tears, licked them in his mouth, and said, “It’s delicious.”
Xia Tian abruptly reached out and turned the terminal’s screen off.
He glared at the blank screen, his body rigid. His breath was coming in short gasps and his rage was boiling over. His eyes were dark like the sky before a storm, filled with the desire to wreak havoc.
The aging light bulb flickered, and the room suddenly became dark. For a moment, it seemed as if the whole world had plunged into darkness and an abyss.
With a cold expression, Xia Tian activated the immersion mode and entered the God of War Temple—at least, there were no ads there.
When Bai Jingan followed Xia Tian into the God of War Temple, Xia Tian was counting weapons. Most of the space was immersed in shadows, with only a faint light from the stones illuminating his figure. The God of War’s face was devoid of any expression, his focus entirely on the task at hand, and his body seeming to burn with white-hot flames.
Once he finished counting, the weapons would vanish into his fingers, as if they had been absorbed. After all, there was a possibility of exposure here, and they instinctively hid all their weapons, keeping them for when they had no choice but to use them. They would never hand them over.
This power was never meant to belong to any one person or group, nor should it have been concentrated in the hands of criminals from the Lower City who were filled with rage.
The ground of the Upper City was tilting, a jagged wound of gaping holes marring its once-solid surface. No one knew which way it would finally fall.
Xia Tian gripped the Ministry of Defense’s “Abyss” longsword, its highest authority unlocked. Its pitch-black shadow reflected in his eyes, resembling an abyss with no bottom.
Exiting the immersion mode, Bai Jingan, who was seated beside Xia Tian, broke the silence. “I’ve been thinking…”
Just then, his terminal rang.
Bai Jingan paused. It was a private number, which was untraceable, known to very few people, and reserved for emergencies. Xia Tian’s terminal had long disappeared, and they could only be contacted through this terminal.
He picked it up, and it displayed Huitian’s number.
The moment he saw it, his heart sank, and for a moment, he wasn’t sure if it would beat again.
He answered it, and the voice of their image planner came through, sounding exhausted and trembling.
She asked, “Where are you guys?”
Huitian was on her own, but they knew what she represented.
She stood in a corner of the living room, wearing a black-and-white swirl-patterned suit that was copied directly from a fashion magazine. It was a hodgepodge of trendy elements, bright and exaggerated, making the wearer look like a surreal wisp of mist on the edge of a cliff.
She said, “They’re not pleased with this development.”
Bai Jingan listened to her coldly, while Xia Tian stood beside him with an equally stern expression. Bai Jingan nervously paid attention to him at all times, keeping him within sight.
“They want to talk,” Huitian said on the phone. Bai Jingan didn’t say anything, so she added, “You have no choice.”
She didn’t say anything more, as if words had reached the edge of the cliff and she didn’t want to take another step forward. Bai Jingan understood what she meant, and she was right.
At this point, the elites had torn off the mask of the most basic game, and the behemoth sat at the negotiation table, assuming a posture of communication. But they all knew it wouldn’t be a negotiation.
Just like many big guns had smiled at them at banquets, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t devour them.
Bai Jingan’s head began to ache again as he pondered the possibilities. He didn’t think they would swarm up again to capture them, nor would they want to kill or truly destroy them. Too much money was tied to the duo, and even the most powerful personages couldn’t ignore such a sum.
But you could never know what the powerful were thinking. Their minds were a swirling chaos.
“You have two choices,” Huitian said, staring at the ground, as if it might crack at any moment and everyone would be irretrievably lost.
“Qi Xiashang proposed a restart. Go back to the second day of the event, when you discovered the spy program in the car. The car will take you directly to the feast, where you will both be locked in cages, and they…”
She stopped. Those people must have taught her what to say—there would definitely be cameras following her in—but she paused for a long time, as if the next words exceeded the scope of language to express, unspeakable.
In the end, she didn’t say it.
“Jakowski… said that a show is a show after all, and if it breaks the rules, it will lose all the fun. He proposed a compromise… and they agreed.”
She continued, “I’m here to tell you that you must accept this proposal. Those people must get what they want—you won’t like it, but if you don’t, the show will restart, and you should absolutely not go back!”
“What do they want?” Bai Jingan said, his voice chilling enough to make one shudder.
“They want you in bed,” Huitian said.
