As Xia Tian and Bai Jingan walked towards the police car, reporters chased after them, asking questions incessantly. For a moment, everyone was shouting. At noon, the garden in full bloom was like a flood breaking through a dam, with the sound of people forming a chaotic roar.
“Did you kill any other important people besides He Dingliu?” someone shouted.
“You already have the ability to get the names of the real power holders in the upper echelons, so what is your purpose next?”
“Are you the leader of the rebels?!”
Xia Tian walked to the car and turned to look at them.
For a moment, everyone fell silent.
He stood in the light, the shadows just as strong, making his entire figure obscure, as if he were confronting the entire bright world.
They looked at him, as if he were not of flesh and blood, but was made up of gold, jewels, gunpowder, gunfire… or some kind of highly symbolic treasure, not belonging to the ordinary and chaotic world; everyone wanted to get something from him.
At this moment, the scene was like a war about to break out, and the fanatics looked at their gods.
Bai Jingan locked eyes with Xia Tian for a brief moment. He could clearly see the cold amusement in the man’s eyes, the kind of coldness that is unique to a Killing Show contestant. There was no passion, no fire in his eyes, just a cold, calculating assessment of every opportunity for survival and destroying others.
He didn’t say a word.
The sun slanted slightly, and Xia Tian cast a dark shadow, so thick that it couldn’t be dispelled, but his appearance under the light was breathtaking to say the least.
He turned and strode to the vehicle, a hulking armored police van—a temporary black hole for the city’s most heinous criminals—but he ascended it as if mounting a throne.
Before boarding, Bai Jingan cast a final glance at the surrounding crowd. No one spoke, a silence that seemed almost unnatural given the sheer number of people present. Countless eyes gleamed with a mixture of anticipation and a hint of darkness, drawn to the enigmatic spectacle unfolding before them.
Nearly a decade ago, the monster in the Lower City had been dissected, price-tagged, and transformed into a sanitized form of entertainment. But after years of brewing, focus, and cultivation, the phantom had grown increasingly powerful in the public eye, its ethereal form yearning for a physical embodiment.
The scorching sun beat down on the Upper City, yet it casted a chill that seeped into the very bones. Countless ghosts opened their eyes wide.
Xia Tian settled into the van, leaning against the black alloy interior, stretching out his legs, and smiling at the sunlight streaming through the window.
His image was captured by countless cameras, copied, replayed, and talked about repeatedly. The Lower City warrior was seated in the shadows just a hair’s breadth from the light, the interplay of light and darkness forming a sharp line. His smile was proud, cold, and triumphant. He was never a plaything for the Upper City entertainment shows; he belonged to the angry darkness of the Lower City and had never stopped resisting.
No one deserved to be another’s plaything.
The huge and enraged specter was about to be resurrected in the God of War.
It had to be resurrected.
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.
Jakowski lay passed out drunk in the bathroom, surrounded by empty bottles.
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Jakowski remained motionless, thinking to himself that big things always happened in the Upper City, with constant talk of grand spectacles, world-ending disasters, groundbreaking masterpieces, and phenomenal events—he even had a roll of “phenomenal” toilet paper right next to him—it wasn’t worth getting up from the bathroom for.
“They’ve discovered that Xia Tian and Bai Jingan are high-ranking members of the Resistance!” the assistant shouted again.
Jakowski’s mind went blank for a moment. He thought he must be dreaming, or that he’d taken too many drugs and was hallucinating. The Resistance was a common element in Upper City entertainment, accompanied by various explosions, wars, destruction, and apocalypses. Even Xia Tian and Bai Jingan were in his dream—a real blockbuster that was sure to drive the addicts crazy for a while.
He suddenly snapped out of it.
It was a cold, creepy awakening, like in a horror movie where you open your eyes in a pitch-black room to find yourself sharing the space with a monster, with the monster breathing against the back of your neck.
He struggled to sit up from the pile of empty bottles, clutching his hangover-ridden head, his hands trembling violently. The assistant was still yelling—another had run off to fetch a first-aid kit—but upon seeing his expression, uncertainly closed his mouth.
Jakowski turned his head and saw his reflection in the assistant’s eyes. Anyone who didn’t know better would think the end of the world had come, and everyone should scream and run for their lives.
So, he forced a smile to show that the current situation was perfectly normal, but the assistant’s expression only grew more horrified. He looked like a crazy prophet from mythology, and no one liked crazy prophets.
“Slow down,” he said to the assistant.
“The police say that Xia Tian and Bai Jingan are high-ranking members of the Resistance and have concrete evidence. It’s possible that Resistance members have infiltrated many important departments in Upper City,” the assistant said. “They’ve been there all along, Mr. Jakowski. It’s absolute chaos out there. We’ve formed an emergency planning team – everyone’s waiting for you—”
Just then, the chief assistant rushed in and injected him with a shot of palliative medicine. Within moments, the throbbing pain subsided under the gentle coaxing of modern medicine, retreating into the depths of his bones, awaiting its next eruption.
Jakowski held onto the toilet bowl and staggered to his feet, with the assistant cautiously supporting him.
“Brief me,” he said.
The assistant sent over a video briefing with practiced efficiency. As Jakowski watched, he washed his face in this prelude to the apocalypse, poured himself half a glass of whiskey, and collapsed into his chair.
Upon his throne, a multitude of related videos, surveillance footage, and reports unfolded around him, the world laid bare in the form of data, stark, tragic and maddening.
Three hours had passed since the incident that had led to Xia Tian and Bai Jingan’s arrest by the Main City Police Department.
The Floating Gold Group had just bailed them out—the evidence was useless, basically a script—the three hours were probably just the company’s way of milking the situation.
This was the Rebel Army they were talking about, the object of Upper City’s conspiracy theories for nearly a decade, the heroes etched in stone, the gods of fantasy, the enemies and lovers of dreams in the entire floating world. They had to get some benefit out of it.
Everyone outside was speculating about the terrible fate that awaited these two “Rebel leaders” at the police station. Jakowski was sure they were overthinking it. These two were the pinnacle of Upper City entertainment, and a mere police station couldn’t bully them.
The most terrible thing that could happen to them at the police station was probably that they had to sign endless autographs.
Nevertheless, he instructed his subordinates to engage in all sorts of dreadful speculations and analyses, amplifying the sense of crisis and creating an atmosphere of imminent chaos.
The main video clip to be uploaded on the official website was quickly edited. Under the midday sun, the two figures in the video exuded such an intense aura of killing intent that it could ignite a person even through the screen.
They didn’t touch each other, maintaining the distance of comrades who had each other’s backs and exchanging glances from time to time. The shadows were still there, but… those exchanges glances were not just for tactical intentions, but more out of habit and for reassurance.
No force could separate them.
In the real-time feed, Jakowski watched as they emerged from the police station. The sun was already dipping towards the horizon, casting an unsettling red glow.
Xia Tian’s gun was casually tucked into his back waistband, with no intention of concealing it. The sunlight cast a burning orange glow on his long hair, which was never the soft fur of a pet on a bigwig’s rug.
Bai Jingan walked beside him, not like a tactical planner, but more like a warrior tempered by blood and gunfire, his presence casting a cold light on the tranquil buildings.
They were discussing a battle from the Zone N riots. Xia Tian recounted, “The scene was massive. You could see the explosions from miles away.”
“I like explosions,” Bai Jingan replied.
Xia Tian chuckled, and Bai Jingan mirrored his laughter. Their words and gestures were as familiar as their breathing, easy and unburdened. The shadows still clung to them, yet together, they seemed to fill in all the gaps.
Sometimes, destroying something was effortless, while at other times, it was a Herculean task.
There would always be those things, the good things, that stubbornly clung to their essence, even in the depths of hell.
They walked beside the bright floor-to-ceiling windows of the hall. Their feet were on the modern buildings of the main city, yet it felt as if they were walking on a battlefield.
Xia Tian, his smile both brilliant and dangerous, launched into another description of a kill to Bai Jing’an. Bai Jingan listened intently, the scorching sun stretching around them. The two Killing Show stars gestured and conversed, their murderous aura suffocating the surroundings.
Jakowski heard Xia Tian say, “I also fucking love explosions.”
On the main screen, a red warning line shot up sharply, like a piercing, shrill note.
At the same time, all the surrounding hovering screens reacted, as if someone had thrown a giant boulder from the void. A wave instantly engulfed the city, blood gushed forth, and chaos filled his field of vision.
Jakowski stayed in his throne, staring at the scene before him.
It was a bird’s-eye view video of a floating city, and he couldn’t immediately identify which one it was. These days, all cities looked the same, as they were endlessly replicated, with the same chain stores, restaurants, malls, and gyms. Only some places were more bustling, with denser buildings, neon lights, and blood and flesh in the gutters.
But on the west side of this sprawling city, a massive collapse was taking place.
Large swaths of buildings crumbled like paper boxes, lakes and streams roared and splashed, and trees trembled wildly before falling and breaking. The floating behemoth that had consumed countless flesh and blood was dying, its shrill roars echoing through the heavens.
Someone in the video shouted, “The floating engine in the Black Forest District of the West City of the Seventh Satellite City!”
“It’s sinking!”
Jakowski thought, to be precise, the Infernal Death Penalty Entertainment Park on the western edge of the Seventh Satellite City… had sunk.
A torrent of close-up information flooded his vision. He recognized the familiar gardens and dilapidated structures, a key filming location for several television stations—the main channel and private online networks—used to torture death row prisoners in the name of death penalty games.
The death penalty entertainment industry in the Upper City was vast, with a web of shady profit-driven conflicts. It had devoured countless innocent people who had crossed paths with the wrong individuals or were simply too attractive, another cesspool of the Upper City’s entertainment industry.
Now, this meticulously crafted, cruel toy was shattering, plummeting into the darkness below that was like a bottomless abyss.
Subsequent information rushed in like a wave, and an organization immediately claimed responsibility.,
The rebels’ fiery ruins insignia glowed red, glaring and defiant. They called themselves the Resistance, numbering around 300 people, according to local security companies’ estimates. Armed with heavy weapons, they had fought their way through the heavily guarded floating engine maintenance area, suffering over 30 casualties.
This was no longer a subtle attack; it was a large-scale, planned, and purely violent act of destruction.
Jakowski scanned the red attention curve on the internet while swiftly reviewing the responsibility claim. Most people would just write a paragraph, but this group had practically written a book, declaring the entertainment park’s crimes to be utterly heinous.
They also demanded the immediate release of Xia Tian and Bai Jingan.
Jakowski had no idea who was leading them; before today, they were definitely not part of the Resistance.
But half an hour ago, they were.
The news anchor’s voice crackled with thrill as he declared that a war was coming. These group had a clear escape plan, far from being mere suicidal attackers. Local police and security forces were already in pursuit, but to no avail. He looked like he was about to burn up in front of the camera when he spoke.
Jakowski couldn’t help but think that these people must have fantasized about destroying that place countless times but hadn’t taken any action until now. But then the Main City Police Department, in front of the cameras, confidently labeled Xia Tian and Bai Jingan as “high-ranking members of the Resistance,” listening to which Xia Tian and Bai Jingan had laughed unrestrainedly under the blazing sun.
With this, the rebels’ pent-up rage and destructive desires had finally found an outlet.
He gazed out the window, breaking into a manic fit of laughter.
The afternoon sun blazed a fiery orange, casting its glow over the seemingly tranquil main city.
But an incomparably vast shadow had descended. It was as if the dead had risen from the depths of hell as a dark form of justice, unstoppable, like a karmic retribution.
Everyone believed so.
And they would perish in this chaotic, agonizing, and desperate fanaticism.
