Editor: Elanor
By the time they got home, it was already midnight.
With a gloomy face, Xia Tian went to the shower to wash away the smell of alcohol, drugs, and bodily fluids from other people.
Those people had drugged him very heavily. He felt a burst of dizziness while turning on the shower so he had to hold onto the wall just to stand up straight. He lowered his head and caught sight of the blood oozing from the teeth marks on his right foot. He still remembered someone grabbing his ankle… someone’s tongue slowly licking up along the toes…
He threw up once again, then spent about an hour in the bathroom before changing his clothes. Then, he went upstairs to see Dee Dee.
The little girl was sleeping soundly under the window from where she could see the glittering stars twinkling in the night sky.
He just sat next to her in silence for a while. Living in such a place was her dream, and so was his.
At the banquet, the crystal lights on the ceiling had shone like a starry sky, and drinks and snacks had flowed endlessly. The banquet seemed to last until the end of the world and beyond. This was a place for people to indulge in pleasure. In this never-ending enjoyment, there was extravagance, bloodshed, and thrill. There was no dignity, no future, and no life of one’s own.
Xia Tian didn’t treat his wounds. The medical level of the Upper City could make minor injuries disappear in a blink of an eye, as if they had never existed, but there was no such treatment or practice in the Lower City.
He wanted the wounds to remain on his skin, let them burn like fire, to make him feel alive. He needed to do something.
He had already gotten what he had wanted when he first came here, but he didn’t feel any better.
An indescribable anger burned in him. He would kill those people, look into their eyes, and let them know the price to be paid for what they had done.
After he sat next to Dee Dee for a while, he got up and went downstairs.
Bai Jingan was sitting on the sofa in the living room, with a cup on the table… It looked like herbal tea.
He was looking down at his mobile phone. He neither used external speakers nor earphones. The light shone on his face like snow, making him look murderous and almost a little bit unfamiliar like a stranger.
He took a look at Xia Tian, who had just finished showering, and raised his hand to project a holographic projection.
It was a man wearing a gray coat that seemed to have texture like fish scales. His hair was dyed in a similar shade. His eyebrows were sharp and cold, giving him a ruthless aura. There was a kind of cold and sentimental effect which might be a type of micro-plastic surgery. Xia Tian then realized that Bai Jingan was watching a Honey Pavilion’s video.
“This person,” Bai Jingan said, “there’s a bit of a problem with his clothes.”
He magnified the clothes. “This brand is called ‘Slow Speed’, and the one he is wearing isn’t on the market yet.”
Xia Tian stared at the floating screen. He remembered this person. It was him who had pressed on him, clasped his chin tightly, forced him to open his mouth, and then… This person had also said to the camera, “He tastes like whiskey with ‘sugar’.” That was the name of a drug.
Xia Tian once again had the urge to vomit, but held back from running to the bathroom. He couldn’t throw up anything anyway.
“He is either a powerful person who can get clothes directly from the designer, or someone inside the brand,” Bai Jingan continued, “‘Slow Speed’ is a niche brand and hasn’t yet reached the high-end circle of the powerful.”
Xia Tian nodded and went to the bar to pour himself a glass of wine. He had an inside relationship with “Slow Speed”, he thought to himself, and this was the first step.
The bar was installed at the last moment before he came to this house, and it was full of good wines from the sponsors—in fact, he couldn’t drink it, but it didn’t affect his happiness when he knew the fact that it was all good wine.
As he pulled the cap off, his hand shook, and the bottle almost fell, so he carefully poured half a glass using both hands.
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.
Then he took the glass and walked over to Bai Jingan and sat down on the sofa.
“P’ii gfmbuclhf tlw ktfc P rff tlw jujlc,” tf rjlv.
Djl Alcujc rtjgfv atf oliafgfv lcobgwjalbc klat tlw jcv Wlj Kljc ibbxfv vbkc ab gfjv la. Ktf ajmalmji qijccfg aliafv tlr tfjv ab ibbx ja tlw jcv atfc ragfamtfv bea tlr tjcv ab abemt tlr mtlc, ktlmt tjv j ofk qegqif olcufgqglcar bc la.
Xia Tian ducked a bit and Bai Jingan said, “Don’t want to deal with it?”
“I’ll take care of it later,” Xia Tian said sullenly.
They sat in silence for a while on the haunted house-like sofa, drinking from their respective glass and cup. For a moment, Xia Tian wanted to laugh at Bai Jingan’s herbal tea, but thought better of it. He was too depressed to even have the energy to laugh at others.
“So,” Xia Tian asked, “did you grow up here?”
Bai Jingan raised his head and glanced at him, but said nothing. Xia Tian said, “It doesn’t look like it.”
“Do you want me to show you the photos?” Bai Jingan asked.
“I mean, it looks like a haunted house,” Xia Tian said, “but you don’t look like a ghost.”
Bai Jingan held the cup tightly. After a while, he said, “I didn’t clean up the house after the accident.”
Xia Tian nodded, indicating that he could see that.
“I…don’t remember clearly,” Bai Jingan said, “I think there was a time when I lived here happily, but after the accident… nothing felt right. I guess I just wanted to keep the house as it is, and maybe find another suitable place later.”
“It’s impossible to find,” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan just stared at the cup, saying nothing for a while. Eventually he said, “I know.”
“Sometimes you feel like it’s just never going to get better,” Xia Tian whispered, “Pain is pain, and some questions never have any answers.”
He leaned against the cushion in the corner of the sofa and finished drinking half a glass of wine. The wine was very strong and burned his stomach.
He remembered that, a long time ago, when his stomach had ached, his sister had cooked porridge for him and laughed at him, saying that when he really became famous and successful in the Upper City, he could afford to get sick, and she wouldn’t have to do this anymore and could enjoy some of his good fortune.
Next to him, Bai Jingan took out a blue capsule, unwrapped it, and poured the powder into the herbal tea.
Xia Tian looked at him curiously, and Bai Jingan said, “It helps with sleep. Insomnia.”
Xia Tian was still looking at him and Bai Jingan said again, “Starmount Studio’s Genetic Virus 17-3.”
Xia Tian nodded. He had seen this stuff in Bai Jingan’s medical record—the famous “Zone N Massacre Virus”. The epidemic situation was not competently brought to a conclusion—or deliberately not brought to conclusion by the TV station—and the Virus spread around, half-emptying the area around Zone N, with a faint ripple effect in the Upper City.
The effect of this virus varied from person to person. For Bai Jingan, it almost emptied his long-term memory area. After he lost his parents, he couldn’t even find his own location.
But if he hadn’t read the medical record, Xia Tian would have never been able to tell that Bai Jingan had brain damage. The man was always confident, planning all the details, and knowing where he was. He never let himself look like a victim.
Xia Tian wondered how much effort it took for him to do that.
Bai Jingan looked at him as if he wanted to say something, but in the end did not say anything. The two of them just sat on the sofa in silence, the shadows weighing down around them, making it impossible to talk.
In the end, Xia Tian just stretched out his hand and smoothed Bai Jingan’s curled up hair.
Bai Jingan was startled, but didn’t move. In the dark of the night, the man looked sad and gentle as if just a gust of wind would blow him away.
Xia Tian retracted his hand.
The hand was still shaking.
Xia Tian took a glass of wine and walked through the banquet hall wearing a cold expression.
He now fully implemented Huitian’s advice: Never take anything from a stranger’s hand, and take drinks directly from the encapsulated container or from a waiter with an official name tag.
Like a little girl lost in a fucking forest.
In view of the stipulations in the contract, he had countless “must attend” banquets. This kind of banquet that continued for several days was called “deep carnival”, which continued to this day without any decency.
As Xia Tian crossed a corner, he found two people fucking right around the corner. Seeing him looking, one of them stared at him and made a gesture of oral sex.
There were such scenes everywhere so he turned a blind eye to them and directly walked past them.
He was still looking at the names of the people of Honey Pavilion filtered through the terminal. This… “pornographic terrorist organization” had its own official website and fans, was skilled at overall business development, and was certainly not short of money.
Some of them weren’t short of bed partners either, and might really be able to keep stars (as a mistress) and whatnot. But they just liked to rape others at banquets, promote the theory of “slave sharing”, and then shoot videos of all the nasty details, give pointers, and give fucking scores.
In the past two days, he and Bai Jingan had checked all their videos, narrowed the search scope, and determined that the guy with the ID “Eat Dry Clean” was mainly active in the fashion circle.
When Xia Tian was in the Lower City, he only knew that there were endless banquets in the Upper City. Now he knew that these things were actually divided into themes and types. For example, today’s Killing Show banquet mainly invited people in the fashion circle.
Xia Tian was wearing an expensive suit, making his whole person look tall, elegant, young, and handsome. As he walked through the hall, his expressionless face was filled with killing intent.
Xia Tian passed by a group of fashionable people gathered in a corner, and suddenly stopped.
He turned his head and looked at the back of a tall man.
The appearance didn’t match exactly, but he remembered the scent…
It was hard to describe. It was a sweet and a warm fragrance, but it was also a bit pungent and aggressive… That kind of scent was rare. It wasn’t perfume, but like a certain smell from a confined environment.
Somewhere in Xia Tian’s heart something tightened. He turned around and walked towards the group of people.
This group was talking about… “Children of Darkness”—the drama that Dr. Xu liked very much.
The drama was finally coming to an end, and the heroine was expected to live a sad but hopeful life with the unlucky Bai Lin’s posthumous child in her arms.
A tall, dark-haired man, filled with indignation, was fighting to refute the misconceptions that people in the Upper City had about Bai Lin: Get real! He wasn’t an overpowering God of War, okay!
He was handsome and sturdy but not bulky, and was wearing a flashy style metallic jacket. These days there were no ugly looking Killing Show players that could survive a round.
Xia Tian found that he recognized him.
This person was called Mo An, and it was said that he was a pair with Luo Qingtian. They didn’t draw together in the third round. Many people expected them to meet again in the fourth round, for which various predictions were made.
The outcome was that the match had only just begun before Xia Tian finished off Luo Qingtian’s team.
At yesterday’s banquet, the reporters had dragged Xia Tian and Mo An together for an interview with some difficulty. The other party had acted as if he were at odds with him, and would have fought him and killed his whole family, if he hadn’t been pulled away by his companion who was concerned about the overall situation. The reporters had happily taken a lot of footage.
Watching him so devotedly talk about some dog blood drama today, he seemed to have already forgotten about yesterday’s events.
Xia Tian felt that he should be tactful, and join the conversation calmly, pretending to ask inadvertently, but… who the fuck had watched “Children of Darkness”.
He walked into the crowd and showed them a brilliant smile, and everyone smiled back at him reflexively.
He said, “Can I borrow this person for a moment?”
A round of enthusiastic responses came from all around.
“Who?”
“Of course, of course.”
“You can borrow anyone.”
Xia Tian grabbed Mo An by the collar and dragged him out of the crowd.
The other party was completely stunned by his behavior. He tried to struggle, but Xia Tian had grasped him tightly and wouldn’t let go.
“Stop it,” the other party whispered, “What are you doing? You killed Xiao Luo, and I’m the one who should be angry… I haven’t offended you, right?”
“That perfume, on you,” said Xia Tian, “what’s that smell?”
Mo An didn’t listen to him at all, but nervously looked around.
“I can’t be caught speaking to you in public,” he said, “Can you stop dragging me like this… Listen, I don’t want to be rough to you. But if you continue your ways and the reporters caught onto your actions, I’ll be forced to be impolite to you—”
Xia Tian thought about it for a moment and thought it made sense, so he grabbed him by the collar and dragged him away from the crowd. Mo An yelled helplessly from behind, “Look, I personally have nothing against you. I’m sorry for what I said to the media, it was because of the image planner, they made me say it.”
Xia Tian thought to himself that Mo An was portrayed to the outside world as an impulsive high-strength fighter with a reckless personality who would do anything for Luo Qingtian, but reality was a complete opposite.
“Uh, while I have the chance, let me tell you first that I’m very grateful,” Mo An continued in the back, “Really, when I came off from the arena and learned that Xiao Luo was dead, I thought I was too hopeful that I was hallucinating.”
Xia Tian finally couldn’t help asking, “Weren’t you two a couple?”
“Don’t mention about it. We ran into each other in the last round, and then the disaster began!” Mo An said, “He’s the tactical planner so of course I’ve to listen to him. I don’t understand why everyone thinks I worship him… I just wanted to act friendly, that’s all!”
Xia Tian opened a door to a room and saw several naked bodies, their limbs entwined and entangled into a ball. If it was before, he would have watched for a bit longer, but now, he just slammed the door with a bored face.
“And then this fucking loyal dog label couldn’t be torn off from me anymore!” Mo An continued, “My image planner said that if I couldn’t protect him at all costs, I’d be blacklisted. What was I supposed to do?!”
“You know, I’ve scored high on all of my tactical planning courses. But just because I met him, I had to play an idiot who only had muscles and a mind full of trying to please him, using my dignity to set off his intelligence! Oh please, I don’t like his mouth at all, I couldn’t even get hard when he slept with me!”
He paused for a moment. “Uh, can you keep my words a secret, please?”
Xia Tian finally found an empty room and pulled him in.
Thank you for new chapter
Mo An just going on a rant 😂
Thanks for the chapter ♥️♥️
…They were “a couple”? Which eye saw that???
Now he knows that no matter how much you grow up, danger will still come chasing after you. That’s why, one should always act like a little girl!
Mo An seems to have finally found a chance to vent lol. He is going rapid fire.
Thank you for the chapter!
This boy talks wayyyyy too much lmao
Thanks for the chapter