Editor: Melike
A group of people arrived in three black tank-like armored vehicles. Beneath the black paint was a fiery red pattern, reminiscent of fire on a furnace, making them look like they were burning chariots from hell. They would look extremely striking on camera.
Following them was a group of police officers in riot gear, looking like they were ready for war. But they were probably just trying to show off in front of the reporters.
The God of War’s new home was a spacious garden. On cloudy days, the part of the sky where the clouds pressed down towards the ground would look dark like mountains, while the direction of the rising sun would be a blinding white. Today was a sunny day with clear skies.
In the short time Xia Tian and Bai Jingan were eating, more people gathered, making it seem like a scene from a small-scale Killing Show.
The leading police officer, wearing a new uniform, introduced himself as Wan Chenglie, the head of the Main City Police Department. He stood menacingly in the garden with his troops and showed the duo, who had just come outside, an arrest warrant.
Then he raised his hand, and the man behind him handed over a pair of high-end control devices.
Resembling a black shark, the device gleamed under the sunlight. It was an exorbitant creation that wouldn’t crack even if nanolevel weapons were used to destroy it.
Xia Tian stepped forward and stood in front of Bai Jingan.
“Try it on me,” he said.
Wan Chenglie stared at him, and they held each other’s gaze for a few seconds. The high-ranking officer stepped forward, his eyes never leaving Xia Tian’s face.
“We found his DNA at the 405 Feed Factory, Xia Tian,” he said.
Xia Tian listened expressionlessly, standing provocatively in front of him and his large entourage with a gun in hand. The poppy fields, bathed in the noon sun’s harsh brilliance, mirrored the burning flames of a battlefield. Bai Jingan stood beside him—at a distance where he could make a tactical response—looking every bit the full-fledged criminal. There were just the two of them, but they were trying to fight against the whole world.
Wan Chenglie still looked at Xia Tian. His eyes were filled with fanaticism and inexplicable malice, as if the celebrity was his age-old nemesis.
Bai Jingan was pondering the events of that night and considering if anything had been overlooked that could serve as evidence, when Wan Chenglie raised his voice and said, “Do you remember He Dingliu?!”
Bai Jingan was taken aback, thinking: Who?
“The general of the Ministry of Defense. He was the one who single-handedly promoted the outsourcing of the Zone N massacre to the Floating Gold Group and was the first to sign the virus plan,” Wan Chenglie said coldly, “Later, he was sent to the Iceberg Private Security Company, and his cases also included the T2 Suppression and The Ghost Song incident. You must be very well-informed—”
Xia Tian quickly glanced at Bai Jingan, his eyes filled with confusion, while Bai Jingan also looked back at him, his gaze just as uncertain.
“He is one of the true culprits behind the Zone N massacre.” Wan Chenglie’s voice boomed, “Don’t pretend you didn’t know!”
However, the two figures opposite him, their faces masks of cool indifference as they listened to him, felt a jolt of bewilderment pierce their hearts.
In the next moment, more new journalists continued to gather in their direction. The duo didn’t know how they got the access rights.
Bai Jingan glanced around and saw that while most of the people in the crowd listened excitedly, a few people grew tense and lifted their phones to make calls.
The atmosphere was fermenting, and all around them were the logos of the top program groups in Upper City. This space was in a state of high heat, the entire city seemingly fixated on the unfolding drama. Under the intense glare of the midday sun, it felt as if countless hungry eyes were watching them.
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.
The police clearly showed no urgency in getting the two suspects into the car, for they were eager to conduct a public trial on camera.
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“If you had died in the third round of the Killing Show, you would have been nothing more than a pile of scrap, forgotten completely. But now, who in the Upper City doesn’t know about the God of War?”
Bai Jingan suddenly realized who Wan Chenglie was talking about.
In the scrap heap of the feed factory, they had seen an expensive shirt. It belonged to one of the deceased, who had been stabbed over a dozen times. Xia Tian had studied it for a long time before concluding that the shirt was beyond salvage.
Someone had been to the feed factory before them to destroy a body.
The atmosphere was electrifying. Bai Jingan logged into the police department’s website with a stoic expression, searching for relevant information as quickly as possible.
“Stop pretending. You have been planning this murder for over a year,” Wan Chenglie said harshly to them in front of the cameras.
“You planted security loopholes around him as early as March of last year. This was a meticulously and ruthlessly planned murder spanning a year and two months—a true masterpiece,” he said. “I kept wondering, He Dingliu’s identity is secretive, and he’s well-liked in the upper circles, so how could he have made such a formidable enemy? We explored all the possibilities, and do you know what we found in the process?”
He paused deliberately for effect, and the surrounding crowd held their breath.
“He Dingliu,” Wan Chenglie said, “is at the top of the assassination blacklist of the Lower City rebels.”
The crowd outside burst into a wave of hushed whispers, each voice brimming with sparks of excitement. At first glance, it was as if there was an infinite gunpowder storage ready to combust under the sun at any time.
Xia Tian listened with a nonplussed expression, and he thought Bai Jingan was probably thinking the same thing as himself:Rebels?
Why did it start again? So annoying!
Over the years, the Zone N incident had been portrayed as the king of the entertainment circle in the Upper City, and the most exciting and repeatedly dramatized part was the rebels.
They were depicted as heroes of the Lower City who were cloaked in secrecy, bearing the scars of a dark and tumultuous past. Their desire for revenge had been burning relentlessly, refusing to be extinguished. Practically every conspiracy theory involved the rebels. Every year, film crews from the Upper City would go to the Lower City to shoot “Secrets of the Rebels.” Anyone they disliked was labeled as part of the resistance.
This organization didn’t exist, but no amount of explanation could convince the Upper City otherwise.
Even an assassination list was mentioned, which must have been compiled by a group of media workers themselves.
“Someone gave you the information about He Dingliu’s identity.” Wan Chenglie looked at Xia Tian. “You came to the Upper City and met with Bai Jingan. In order to approach him, you even participated in the Killing Show—”
Under the sun that was beating down mercilessly, his words flowed effortlessly, each sentence delivered with practiced ease. Yet, beneath the surface of his polished delivery lurked a sinister conspiracy that could have been pulled straight from the episodes of a suspenseful thriller TV drama.
From not far away, a reporter shouted, “It’s said that the current chief planner of the Killing Show, Qiao Ge, is also on the assassination list. Are you planning to kill him as well?”
His voice was loud and animated, rising in this sunny garden like a fuse ready to ignite.
“How many of you have infiltrated the Upper City?” someone else shouted.
Bai Jingan thought that in places he didn’t know half the world had obviously confirmed the identity of the team of male protagonists of their fantasy TV dramas.
Gazing at the countless faces filled with fervent enthusiasm, he couldn’t fathom their unwavering belief in the existence of rebels. It was difficult for him to comprehend that these people seemed to have never considered that the rebels didn’t exist—couldn’t exist—that it only belonged in movies, TV series, documentaries, games and novels.
For the past decade, the media in Upper City had been creating, relentlessly discussing, unearthing, and consuming the story of the massacre and the desperate riots that followed.
They had meticulously dissected every element, packaged it in a gleaming wrapper, and sold it for cash. This was the game in Upper City, where everything was a game.
The dead bodies sold quite well; everyone in the Upper City bought them. The grim, bitter and indignant souls of the Lower City melted away into the cheerful sunlight of the Upper City. There, the inhabitants, who had intoxication running through their veins, transformed those poor souls’ sufferings into stimulation, high ratings and views, making them just another part of the Upper City.
In the boiling cauldron of the Upper City, which was drugged enough for people to hallucinate, the rebels were real.
Bai Jingan scanned the rows of armored vehicles, riot police, and enthusiastic reporters. The flowers in the garden were in full bloom, their colors wild like a battlefield.
These guys didn’t just look like they were here to wage war; they were literally here to wage war.
Against something that didn’t exist.
Xia Tian glanced sideways at the floating screen that Bai Jingan had thrown over, to get a general understanding of the case.
—On the night of May 17, Lieutenant General He Dingliu disappeared from the celebration banquet he attended as a team competition advisor. No one saw where he went after that hallucinogenic feast.
The main city police investigated the scene but found no video evidence—the banquet camera network was as black as a sieve—but they still locked on a suspect.
The information showed that it was a young woman named Di Lan. She was most likely the killer.
She was definitely at the banquet after the second round, at the same location and almost the same time as their murder.
She chose the same place to dispose of the body as they did.
At the 504 Feed Factory.
They had probably disposed of their respective victims within a short span of time.
Xia Tian’s gaze flicked across the information on the hovering screen, the orange tint of his contact lenses casting an ethereal glow over his eyes. Bai Jingan watched him, captivated by the way his pupils looked like pools of honey under the sunlight.
“That witness was madly in love with you, Xia Tian, treating you as the one who will save him from hell,” Wan Chenglie said. “We used the latest truth serum on him, and he finally spoke up.”
Throughout his speech, his eyes never left Xia Tian.
The officer no longer looked at him as a star of the Killing Show, but rather as a powerful figure from a conspiracy theory—a tragic hero at that.
Bai Jingan didn’t like the way he looked at him. He knew that look. He wanted to touch Xia Tian.
Everyone around them was like that. It was as if they were trapped in hell, starved for ages, and Xia Tian was a deity perched high in the clouds whose mere touch could grant them a bit of his glorious radiance.
This made Bai Jingan irritable. Despite the sun shining brightly, he felt trapped like prey surrounded by hungry creatures in a dark, stifling nest.
Xia Tian scanned the pumped crowd of Upper City people. Clad in a dark shirt, he was a warrior from the darkest part of the Lower City, his eyes cold, perpetually sharp and filled with pain, never to be illuminated by sunlight.
But suddenly, he smiled—a smile both arrogant and brilliant, as if all the light had gathered on him.
He said, “He truly had no reason to live.”
A surprised scream rippled through the crowd. The poppies were blooming exuberantly as if they had gone mad. The bloodstains in the Lower City spread out across the sunlit Upper World in a dazzling and magnificent display.
Bai Jingan’s fingertips unconsciously rubbed the matte texture of his black gun’s handle. He remembered the heat and recoil from each shot. Whenever he got excited, he always wanted to grab a gun.
He spoke up, “But confessions obtained through truth serums can’t be used as evidence.”
Everyone turned to look at him.
“The judicial interpretation of criminal procedure issued on November 13th last year,” Bai Jingan said, “states that since hallucinogenic drugs cause 30% of human memories to be false, information obtained from truth serums and all brain imaging-related technologies are no longer included in legal evidence. This is an era where reality and phantoms cannot be distinguished—”
He continued speaking. He was very familiar with all laws, new judicial interpretations, and cases related to crime in the Upper City. It was always useful to know more about this kind of thing.
Several police officers stared at him in shock, while a group of reporters bowed their heads to look up information. The laws in the Upper City changed monthly due to power struggles among the elite, and ordinary people didn’t care about them at all.
“It’s a shame. I think the witness might have been hallucinating,” Xia Tian said to them. “You know how popular movies about the rebels are in the Upper City.”
“I know it was you!” A tall police officer said viciously, “The rebels still exist. You’ve never given up!”
He stared at the two of them, his expression very serious, and the two “high-ranking resistance members” looked back expressionlessly.
“You won’t find any evidence,” Bai Jingan declared, his tone steady and unwavering. Sunlight, dazzling as a white conflagration, enveloped him, yet it seemed to cast no heat.
A group of reporters were taking pictures, and he guessed he probably looked like a serial killer or an evil Boss-level character.
Wan Chenglie looked at him fiercely, waved his hand, and said, “You two are coming with us to the station now!!”
Although he wore an expression of righteous indignation, Bai Jingan was certain that the reason he was letting the two of them go on this trip was simply to increase the case’s popularity, make the plot more symbolic, and multiply the official website’s traffic by dozens of times.
At that moment, he saw Wan Chenglie take a step forward, intending to grab Xia Tian’s arm—
Without thinking, Bai Jingan raised his hand, pressing the gun against his head.
The surroundings fell silent instantly, yet it was about to boil over.
“He can walk on his own,” Bai Jingan said.
Wan Chenglie froze in place. Bai Jingan’s hand was on the trigger, the safety was on, and he could shoot his head at any time.
Xia Tian turned his head to look at Bai Jingan. His shirt was dark blue, outlining his elegant and powerful figure. A few strands of hair fell down across his forehead, shining golden brown in the sunlight. They looked so warm that it made him want to reach out and touch them.
Wan Chenglie raised his hand and took two steps back. At this moment, Xia Tian suddenly smiled at Bai Jingan. The brilliance of his smile under the sunlight was blinding, its radiance akin to the fire of destruction itself. The same fire burned in their eyes.
It was a smile between comrades, so Bai Jingan smiled too.
Precious😍
That officer better keep his appendiges in check or else
Thank you for your hard work!
👹
Well that emoji is misplaced
Didn’t mean to aggressively thank the translator but here you go
I receive your aggressive thanks!
I don’t even understand what he was trying to do by grabbing Xia Tian’s arm…
A quick amputation maybe? Definitely a foolproof way
Might even get the deluxe forever anesthesia