Editor: Elanor
Xia Tian walked alone through the underground area, and as he continued forward, it became more and more like a different world.
The extremely detailed statues were layered on top of each other, each with a slightly different expression, but there was the same thing present in the stone features—the greed to see blood and death, and the desire to get pleased by seeing the tragic fate of the sacrifices.
Xia Tian unconsciously touched the back of his neck, knowing that once he left the group, the mutant rat would follow him, looking for an opportunity to drag him into the darkness.
He had to lead it all the way to the designated area, not to lose his way, and never reveal any flaws along the way that would allow it a chance to attack in advance.
And in this short period of time, the remaining people would try to make an improvised trap there… However, there was almost nothing in this fucking place that could be used as a trap. They couldn’t make many changes to the building, nor did they have the ability and skills. The rat was the “local snake” here, familiar with all the passages and terrain.
Outside the arena, a mutant rat was just a matter of a bullet. But in a place like this, the situation was so dangerous because there was nothing you could do about it, making you realize how vulnerable you actually were.
Xia Tian continued to move forward in the darkness, his stomach had squeezed into a ball, but nothing was visible from his movements; he was no stranger to desperate situations.
He could hear the footsteps of that huge rat behind him. When he came to the Upper City, he had felt that his life had undergone a major change—although he was leashed, killing around for the rich people, but this was the Upper City that had the bright sky and sunshine, lush greenery, cocktail parties and endless food.
But at this moment, the mutant rat seemed to have emerged from a long lasting nightmare. He found that he himself was the same.
They came from the same place and had never been outside.
Xia Tian was from Zone N and had seen and killed many large mutant creatures.
When riots had taken place in Zone N that year, the Upper City had dealt with it in a very reckless manner, causing the disaster to spread far and wide. Large areas were slaughtered, and the population hadn’t recovered even to this day. And even now, there were predators roaming the darkness, and no one knew if those things were a dog, a mouse, or a person.
The Upper City could easily kill the people all over the world with a small bottle of poison gas, plague, or whatever it was, but they used a carefully crafted, genetically mutated virus instead. This stuff would quickly cause mammals to mutate, turning them into deformed, bloodthirsty monsters that just had an urge to eat everything that moved. Sometimes even cars would be eaten.
Then, those people closed off a large area of the Lower City while stuffing as many cameras as possible into the energy network. In this hell, something crawling from across the street, drooling and having just swallowed a pile of human flesh, might be a rat, a dog, a weasel, or your relatives and friends.
What happened at the foot of the prosperous Upper City was a real-life version of a monster movie; a real death game, with more deaths, more despair, more blood, and higher ratings.
It was too stimulating. While the Upper City was enjoying their 24 hours life of luxury, countless people in the Lower City were fleeing and shrieking amidst the darkness. Actually, saying that there was darkness wasn’t correct; the Upper City hadn’t turned off the lights in the Lower City because they wanted to see the details of the horror clearly.
The massacre was broadcasted massively by the Floating Gold TV station, and the ratings were so high that it was a legend and pinnacle of the entertainment industry that could never be recreated—because there were no longer any riots after that.
Now, nearly a decade had passed since the massacre, but it was still entrenched in their lives with a high degree of presence. The Upper World used the massacre as a basis to continuously make movies, TV series, games and reality shows. They kept things like riots, rebels, and freedom in the Lower City locked up, twisted them into fragments, and then packaged and sold the fragments separately.
That was when the tradition of biological mutation in the Killing Show was passed down from that time.
Xia Tian walked down the dark passageway and felt as if he had walked the same path when he was a child, only this path stretched too far into the future with no end in sight.
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.
No matter what the result of this bait would be, whether it was life or death, he hoped for it to end soon.
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Maybe they wouldn’t be able to pry it loose, maybe the stone wouldn’t roll down the steps and the rat wouldn’t fall, and even if the rat fell, Xie Tian still needed to confront it alone for at least half a minute. The others—actually only three—couldn’t get too close for the fear of being discovered by it. Thankfully it’s nose was injured, or else it could smell the trap at once.
If all went well, everyone would rush over as quickly as possible and kill it together.
Anyway, no matter how dangerous it might become, this step had to be taken.
Xia Tian carefully stepped over the trap and listened carefully to the movements behind him. Once the mutant rat stepped on the stone steps and slipped, he would immediately turn around to launch an attack.
But there was no sound. It was getting closer and closer, and he could already smell the pungent stench of decay. It was too close, already past his safe distance, and it was about to do something—
Instead of stepping on the trap, it stepped directly over.
The thought of escape flashed, and then Xia Tian realized it was impossible.
This was a desperate situation and he was familiar with desperate situations; it was where you sometimes fell in life, meeting death in the dark narrow passage.
You absolutely must not turn around and run away, because there was no escape.
Xia Tian took a breath, stopped abruptly, turned around sharply, and hit the hideous face behind him with the bone spear.
It hit squarely on its injured nose. It hadn’t expected Xia Tian’s sudden move. It let out a weeping wail, and took a step back. It wanted to stabilize its footsteps before leaping forward, but this step led it to stepping on the trap and stone crumbled, making it roll down the stone steps.
Xia Tian chased after it, hit a second time in its remaining eye, and it let out a human-like sob, rolled around, hit the wall, but didn’t hesitate to lunge at him again.
At this time, his comrades who were lying in wait on the other side of the passage finally rushed over. Bai Jingan glanced at the creature with cold eyes, raised his hand, and with the first thrust of his bone spear, he stabbed it in its carotid artery as if he had been doing this job all day long.
He suddenly pulled out his weapon and blood spurted out.
It took them about five minutes to get rid of it—it wasn’t dead yet, just incapacitated.
Everyone was a little hysterical, and the injuries on the rat were definitely well above the overkill threshold. Its belly was riddled with wounds, and its guts were leaking out, while its claws were still clawing about, trying to grab and tear something apart.
When something sticky came out, Fang Youtian stared at it, picked up the bone spear and poked it, and the contents rushed out in a torrent.
They were all human limbs, chewed meat and internal organs, most of which were swallowed whole. In that nightmarish picture, they could clearly see an arm that had a plantain tattoo on it corroded by gastric juice. They immediately realized that it was Xicheng’s arm.
Fang Youtian vomited, and Xia Tian thought that if he didn’t die this time, he would be considered to have experienced baptism in the style of the Killing Show.
In Xia Tian’s opinion, it was time for everyone to shut up, remain silent, and just look sad and angry, but apparently some people didn’t think so.
Fang Youtian walked to the back of the team and said, “He told me that he had brought his parents to the city, and they were watching his game right in front of the terminal. Do you think that after they see this…”
“Can we change the subject?!” Qiao An said.
Bai Jingan walked to the edge of the team, his face pale.
Xia Tian glanced at him and said, “Are you okay?”
Bai Jingan didn’t speak, but just nodded, indicating that he was all right.
He never said much unless necessary. Many times Xia Tian was sure that he was in a bad condition… He didn’t know why he hadn’t seen it before.
He patted Bai Jingan on the shoulder, said nothing, and walked to the front of the team. He was the only fighter left, so it was very natural.
When passing through the door of a passageway, Xia Tian suddenly stopped, stepped back, and made a “quiet” gesture.
Bai Jingan gestured to ask him what it was, but Xia Tian couldn’t answer, so he motioned to see for himself.
The tactical planner carefully took a look, and then shrunk back, saying nothing. He must have deeply understood his “this thing must be seen by yourself” mood.
This was the Killing Show. It would never give you time to get frustrated, because the show was always hot and never cold.
“Is that a zombie?!” Fang Youtian asked.
“How come there are zombies? Isn’t this the Middle Ages?!” Qiao An said.
“This isn’t the Middle Ages, but a reality show,” Bai Jingan said.
Behind the stone wall, two creatures, with pale faces, swollen skin, sluggish expression and wearing soldier uniforms, were dragging their feet and wandering around. Their appearance met all the criteria of a zombie on TV.
The small group of people watched for a while, marveling at how daring the Killing Show was to think of squeezing such a highly contagious virus into the show.
Xia Tian stared at the long sword on one of the zombies; it was very rusty, but it was still a sword.
“It seems that turning into a zombie is ‘eternal punishment’,” Qiao An said, “it’s creative.”
They retreated gingerly. Although the people infected by the zombie virus looked stiff, they were actually faster than those in the movies. Their body was covered with the virus, so if you were hurt even a little by it, you would be having “eternal punishment” together with them.
They quietly crossed the passage, trying to stay as far away from them as possible. On the way, they came across another big centipede-like thing, but the way it crawled was more like a snake, and it wasn’t as big as the previous one; Xia Tian easily smashed it to death.
Fang Youtian, who hadn’t spoken for a long time, suddenly said, “Did you notice that rat’s mouth? I just remembered, a rat’s mouth doesn’t open so wide, there must be a snake gene. They mixed a lot of other things into it. If it had swallowed Xicheng just like a snake, we could have cut open its stomach earlier, and he would have been saved.”
His face was pale, still thinking about the gruesome death.
“Mixed genes,” Xia Tian muttered, “Great, I’m already looking forward to the Archduke played by Wei Ling.”
“Before that, we have to find a knife that is sharp,” Bai Jingan said.
“Oh my God, I miss my .45 caliber pistol from the previous round,” Qiao An said.
“I still miss the 100mm rocket launcher,” Xia Tian said.
“Fried chicken legs, I miss fried chicken legs the most,” Qiao An said.
“I miss a more normal screenwriter,” Bai Jingan said.
Several people laughed. At this time, you had nothing to do except to laugh at the tragedy.
“It would be great if they mixed the snake genes a little bit more,” Fang Youtian continued, “We might have been able to save Xicheng. It is said that the snakes swallow their prey whole, and before the prey gets digested, it only loses its consciousness…”
Xia Tian glanced at him and said, “It would strangle him before eating.”
“But he might just have passed out,” Fang Youtian said.
“It won’t be pretty,” Xia Tian said, “The planning team would be eager to let him experience the full digestive process.”
“But we might have saved him!” Fang Youtian said.
No one answered him; it was a bit cold. Xia Tian felt that Qiao An wanted to say something, but in the end, decided against it.
At some point, you wished someone would come to their senses; but sometimes, you thought if they had a hopeless wish, let them wish, why make them unhappy.
The latter stemmed from desperation.
As the group continued to move forward, the surrounding environment became colder and stranger. They walked several downward stairs that seemed to be heading towards the center of the earth.
Xia Tian knew the physical data of the city suspended in the air, but when he actually entered it, he was still shocked by its immensity. It was clearly a floating city, but it was like hell. There was no end to it no matter how far you went down.
Link to a cute fanart is here. I have put this link on Chapter 4 as well.
And here’s another one.
And if you guys don’t want to get spoiled, don’t search for other fanarts. You might regret it.
The fanarts are wonderful
Thank you very much for the translation
Love the fan art 😍…
Thanks for the chapter ♥️♥️
Thank you for translating and sharing the fanarts!!
Such cute fanarts!!!
“Sometimes even cars would be eaten.” I don’t know why I find this funny.Thanks for the chapter!
Thanks for the chapter ❤️❤️ Love the fanarr