Editor: Elanor
There was a momentary silence around them before a long wailing sound came from the distance, like the sound of a howling wind in a land of savagery and madness.
The child-carrying man standing next to Bai Jingan suddenly bent over and started throwing up.
The woman slowly walked over to the corpse and stroked the head that had blown into pieces, not minding the blood and brain matter on her hands at all. Her voice trembled as she called out, “Lil’ Wei?”
As if her touch could make the headless body wake up again and respond to her.
Bai Jingan turned around and left. Xia Tian followed him as calmly as possible, pretending that this absurdly sad scene didn’t exist.
Just as Xia Tian was about to almost step on a puddle of blood, Bai Jingan grabbed him with a powerful grip and pulled him. Xia Tian avoided the puddle of blood and patted the man’s arm.
Due to the dour ceiling pressing down upon them from above, the whole city seemed like a narrow cage. Only those who had been to the Upper City and experienced the freedom and sunlight, could understand what the people of Upper City had deprived from the people of the Lower City.
They could finish this game, as long as they used their brains and held their guns… it was just one day.
Just after taking two steps, the two stopped again and looked at something that was burrowing out of the street.
It wasn’t surprising that such things were everywhere on the streets—it was only that this one was extraordinarily quiet. Xia Tian stood motionless, watching it crawl silently along the corner of the street, and by the time he had reacted, the thing was already in front of him.
The appearance of that thing… It was hard to describe. It was very tall, almost three meters in height, with human-like pale skin, and you could see its blue and purple veins.
The upper half of its head looked like a beautiful human face, but only the upper half. Everything from the middle of the nose down seemed to have been gouged out, and the fracture was covered with dense blood vessels. Its neck was extremely long, and its two oval eyes that were as clear as mirrors were looking straight at him.
It had three human-like hands on each side of its body, the hands were small, white, and almost transparent, completely inconsistent with the rules of evolution.
It was as if this thing had silently followed him, crawling along the street and finally appeared beside him at some unknown time.
Xia Tian stared at it and told himself it was nothing, that it was nothing special, many years had passed already… This was just a game in the Upper World and he had not returned to the Lower City.
He knew a long time ago that he didn’t have the leisure of time to be nostalgic and remember the past, and that he could only go forward.
The next instant, the monster lunged towards Xia Tian, and he quickly shot at it once.
Its snake-like body twisted deftly, and the bullet grazed the side of its abdomen, but this was not enough to injure it, and those small human-like hands grabbed his shirt lapel in a blink of an eye.
It suddenly opened its mouth. Compared to its almost transparent body, it had a huge, fierce-looking mouth, and its fangs glinted under the fluorescent light.
Xia Tian threw the gun—the bullets had already run out—and he strangled its neck, and its snake-like body viciously wrapped around his body. He drew another gun from his back and fired three shots against its head.
The sound of the bullet hitting its skull was muffled. Its head shattered into a large pile of bones and brain matter in his arm. The body wrapped around him loosened up, just like it had done a long time ago… Everything is ok, he said to himself, I can get through it.
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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He turned his head to look at Xia Tian, just in time to see him climbing out of the corpse, stumbling, and almost falling over.
At that moment, he saw something dark and grim beneath Xia Tian’s always bright smile. His comrade cut a sorry figure as he reached for the wall to support himself, then stood up straight and firm, and after two seconds, he bent down and retched.
Bai Jingan walked over. Xia Tian didn’t throw up anything. He had an upset stomach and hadn’t eaten anything before the start of the game other than some water. He touched Xia Tian’s shoulder, and the man was shaking.
A few locks of his hair had become disheveled from the fight earlier and he looked like a mess. The monster’s fangs had cut his right shoulder and the blood was oozing out, but he didn’t seem to notice it.
“We have to leave,” he said as he tightened his grip on Xia Tian’s shoulder.
Xia Tian nodded, looking a bit pitiful. Bai Jingan thought that he would have to find a medical kit later. The medical kit in the Lower City had a so-so effect, but it would still help a little nonetheless.
He didn’t ask if Xia Tian was all right. He obviously was not all right in the slightest.
Jakowski stared at Xia Tian on the screen and zoomed in to focus.
This star, who had attracted the attention of millions of people, his whole body was tense, his hands were shaking, and he even stumbled once when he walked away from the corpse. If Bai Jingan hadn’t helped him… well, he still wouldn’t have fallen; he had good reflexes.
People like him always forced themselves to stand firm and refused to show weaknesses. That was how he had survived in the bloody world until now.
Jakowski thought about the reason why he was here right now.
He had come here to supervise the Commemorative Show. Of course, today was his day off, but the company didn’t care if it was your day off or not. If you were needed, you had to be there.
He was sitting among the many screens with an empty wine bottle in his hand, thinking that this thought was crazy.
It was common knowledge that the people in the encapsulation area were dead without exception.
Although the entertainment industry in the Upper City had changed its ways over the years to discuss the possibility of survivors… Well, according to the tireless analysis of the Upper City fans, escape wasn’t entirely impossible.
The TV station’s attention was mainly focused on the center of the encapsulation area, and it was still possible for people from the bordering area to survive if they were particularly lucky and exceptionally resourceful.
Jakowski made a mark on this part of the video, and then made someone from the planning team check the bordering area for all the battles with mutants that had forms similar to that snake-like monster.
Xia Tian was in one of the battles, he was pretty sure.
This was undoubtedly a huge tipping point.
Bai Jingan swept through a general store.
It wasn’t easy to do business in the Lower City, so these types of places always carried guns.
This was a lightning war. Bai Jingan killed the two mutant creatures that rushed towards him. He got a Beretta II energy gun from under the cash register and was finally satisfied with the caliber.
Xia Tian was responsible for attracting attention. He got a “Doomsday Phenomenon” commemorative edition rifle, and felt that this adventure was really worth the hassle. And Bai Jingan also helped him find a medical kit.
They left the general store, but as soon as they stepped out, they saw the couple standing in the doorway. The couple had left the corpse of “Lil’ Wei”, and had apparently followed them since then.
Bai Jingan didn’t know on what basis they were making their judgments… Maybe there was planning behind the scenes to manipulate their brains and make them act like they were pathetic and follow, in order to create conflict for the Commemorative Show.
He couldn’t look after them nor talk any sense to them; he could only turn his head and pretend that they did not exist.
From not far away came the sound of gunfire, and it sounded like a fierce battle was taking place two blocks away—the vast majority of the weapons in the Killing Show were loud, and safety was largely disregarded to achieve the full dramatic effect.
With cold expression, Bai Jingan and Xia Tian walked over to that place, where there would actually be some Killing Show players instead of ghosts created by the Upper City. The solo-play game allowed for cooperation, and the players who wanted to survive had to cooperate.
Their journey went without a hitch. They had to fire twice, but there was not much trouble. The “residents” just followed them at a distance, and nothing new fucking happened either.
They soon found the place where the gunfight was taking place. It was a square at the edge of the city, and they arrived just as the fierce battle was about to end.
The fighting team was already in tatters. At first, there might have been about a dozen people who had probably decided to team up on the fly after running into each other. But they had just run into a group of creatures with arthropod-like long legs, and now there were no more than a few left on either side.
There was blood and body parts of mutilated corpses everywhere on the ground. People and monsters were mixed together and it was impossible to tell who was who.
Xia Tian swept a glance at the people still fighting, and to his surprise, he found that there were also two of his acquaintances in the group.
Half of Doug’s face was covered with blood. He shot something that crawled out of a manhole cover. The manhole covers in the Lower City were all locked, but the ones here had been completely destroyed.
Doug fired a shot, rushed to the sewer, and stepped on the manhole cover to seal it. At the same time, Feng Shan rushed to a dilapidated house nearby, grabbed a crowbar, then rushed out.
Doug pressed his back against the light pole and stepped hard on the continuously shaking manhole cover. A patch of blood and minced meat was visible on the edge of the sewer opening, and it was obvious that something was trying to come up from below.
An arthropod-like monster rushed towards Feng Shan, but he only tilted his head sideways. Its sharp claws gouged his neck, but he didn’t stop moving. He rushed to Doug and firmly latched the crowbar to the manhole cover.
Doug retracted his foot and raised his hand to knock away the arthropod-like monster that lunged at him again. Its body splattered in all directions, and finally both men breathed a sigh of relief.
From start to finish, they didn’t make eye contact for a second. Feng Shan covered his bloody neck. Doug lowered his head to get the medical kit, fished out a box of healing bandages, and tossed it to him. It was clear that they had ransacked some drug stores before.
Feng Shan caught it. He had been injured before and his hands were covered in blood, and he couldn’t tear open the packaging.
Doug walked over with an indifferent expression, took it, and tore the mouth of the bag open, then touched him, and motioned for him to look up. Expressionless, he helped Feng Shan put on the bandage. Then he stood up, picked up the gun that had just fallen on the ground, and continued to clean up the sporadic monsters.
Feng Shan stood up, picked up his gun, and fired a shot at a monster that was trying to bite his teammate’s neck.
They didn’t say a word during the whole process, nor did they make any eye contact.
When Doug saw Xia Tian and Bai Jingan, he raised his eyebrows as a greeting.
Xia Tian surveyed the surrounding area. No matter how many players there were originally in the group before, now there were only five or six left, and they were struggling to finish off the remaining monsters on the battlefield.
In the shadows, a creature with arthropod-like long legs was creeping towards Bai Jingan. Xia Tian didn’t even spare a look and fired a shot at it. The bullet grazed Bai Jingan’s shoulder and sent the monster flying out.
There was a strange silence after the gunfire. Xia Tian felt a faint sense of anxiety. He turned his head to listen and found that the sound of hitting the manhole cover had disappeared.
There had been something underneath the cover, but at this moment it had already escaped from there.
He subconsciously took a step back in the direction of the wall, stretched out his hand and pulled Bai Jingan and said, “We have to get out of here immediately…”
Then they saw the things that were surrounding them.
These creatures couldn’t be seen at first glance. Their shape was like that of a huge curled leaf and could even be considered quite beautiful in some sense, and you could even faintly see the vein-like pattern of the leaves. They were squirming out from the dark corners of the walls, and one was even sliding down the sloping roof of a house.
He had never seen this thing before. It was probably a new design made specifically for the Commemorative Show.
“Fuck…” Doug cursed.
Xia Tian knew what this curse meant. It hadn’t been long since the show started, but he couldn’t remember how many kinds of monsters he had encountered. As expected from a lightning show. The show had to hurriedly get everything out, making the best use of time—because the stars were many but the time was tight.
Not far ahead, a young man was kneeling on the ground, looking dazedly at a corpse lying next to his feet. The corpse—probably of his teammate—had only the upper half left.
A man dressed in very stylish graffiti clothes stretched out his hand to pull him up, and said, “Listen, we have to first…”
At this moment, a “leaf” jumped up like it was being blown by a gust of wind and wrapped around him from behind.
The moment the leaf unfurled, Xia Tian saw dense red blood vessels in it, full of sharp fangs. It instantly swallowed the whole man in the graffiti clothes, only the forearm that was resting on the other player’s shoulder remained outside.
The white creature became two meters tall and stood on the street like an oversized garbage bag, and the sound of chewing coming from its insides could be heard.
At the same time, its pale skin turned into a faint red color, the veins could be seen faintly as it moved, and there was fresh blood flowing into the veins.
It was hard to imagine what kind of creature would mutate to become like this. But in this world, the majority of the creatures had already reached such a high degree of alienization that people could no longer recall their former appearance.
The young man kneeling on the ground looked dumbfounded, then suddenly scrambled up on his hands and feet, left the monster that was turning redder and redder, and even stumbled on the way.
His teammate’s forearm fell from mid-air and lay alone on the ground. It still had the black edge of the expensive garment.
The white monsters made a rustling sound and closed in on them from all sides.
Xia Tian thought of their itinerary and said to Bai Jingan, “We need to find a place to hide.”
I think something is wrong with this chapter 🤔
Maybe the translator forgot to post it under the novel called Killing Show
Yes. Thank you!!!
I think we all can agree that Doug and Feng Shan is a beautiful cp that gonna have a tragic end 🙂
I feel like Feng Shan gonna die or something and Doug will have emotional breakdown (??)
Thanks for the chapter