The Final Torch

[Main City]

The people‌‍​‌⁠⁠​‍⁠‍​‍‍⁠⁠⁠‌‌​‌‌‍‌⁠ waited, but the announcement from Black Tower never came.

They had no way of sensing the decision-makers’ anxiety at that moment. Just the various anomalies Molly was broadcasting were already enough to make an ordinary person’s sanity collapse.

“There are more and more anomalies.” A little girl cried as she hugged her mother’s leg. “Who exactly are we waiting for to save us? How much longer do we have to wait?”

No one responded.

Eye lowered his gaze, his brow furrowed, and he said softly, “The second torch will relieve the deepest sorrows of days past.”

Pus and blood splashed down from above An Yu’s head.

Thick filth dripped messily down his hair. He had fallen from a great height and rolled onto the ground. Intense pain coursed through his entire body, as if he had been shattered completely.

The dying gasps of the giant creature echoed within the shipping container. The rough panting of the brass octopus stirred waves of foul, hot wind that sprayed onto An Yu’s face.

After a long time, he finally managed to move his fingers through the intense pain. His ten fingers gripped the ground, and he pushed himself up.

Ling Qiu lay sprawled among a floor covered in burst octopus-people. From the chest down, he had transformed into tentacles, and he was staring fixedly at him.

An Yu stared blankly at the blood covering his body for a good while before he slowly remembered the accident on the shuttle bus, the miasma-shrouded District 53, and how he had followed the Spire’s Protectors to track them to this warehouse.

Pain suddenly erupted from the depths of his heart. He looked at Ling Qiu and approached him, completely at a loss.

The bright smile of the past seemed to have vanished forever from those black eyes. Ling Qiu panted in pain, and the words he spoke were bone-chillingly cold.

“An Yu, I protected you for ten years, yet you are going to kill me without hesitation?”

An Yu’s raised foot suddenly froze for an instant, then lowered hesitantly.

“You already see me as an aberrant so quickly? Despising me as if I’m not your companion?” Ling Qiu laughed mockingly as bloody foam choked him up from his throat. He stared deeply at An Yu. “Will killing me let you secure your footing in the Spire?”

The sharp pain in his heart suddenly subsided.

Ling Qiu would have never spoken like that.

An Yu stopped a few meters away and looked down at the person on the ground. Blood stained those familiar eyes, but they were not as clear as he remembered.

He suddenly felt alarmed and turned his head. His gaze swept over the dying figures of Ryan, Jiang Xiao, Zhu Tao…

Someone seemed to be missing. A very important person.

He shouldn’t have fallen from such a height alone. He was just a weak human. Something must have been supporting him, enabling him to…

A sharp pain suddenly shot through the depths of his consciousness. An Yu said, stunned, “Commander?”

A bizarre smile suddenly erupted on Ling Qiu’s face. He whipped his tentacles toward An Yu’s neck! At almost the exact same instant, An Yu snapped his head around and his pupils turned into vertical slits.

Time flowed at an accelerated rate over the dying body. That bizarre smile froze. Ling Qiu looked down in disbelief, watching as the octopus limbs instantly spread to his neck and burst, section by section.

“So you had this trick up your sleeve.”

A sinister voice sounded right next to An Yu’s ear. An Yu violently ripped his consciousness out!—

On the terminal, the mental strength that had been stagnant at 0 for a full minute instantly shot back to 100%. An Yu’s eyes snapped open and red light flickered within his golden irises.

Zhong Ke’s face vanished from the screen. An Yu focused his intent, and the chaotic static on that screen instantly froze!

Time had frozen!

But unfortunately, he was still too late.

The instant the screen froze, Zhong Ke’s face appeared on a different one.

The people in his earpiece exclaimed, “Corner, are you okay?”

“Check your status, you…”

An Yu paid them no heed. Anger spread across his eyes. He abruptly turned around and looked at the next screen.

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Large clumps of bloody foam spilled from Ling Qiu’s mouth. His life was perceptibly ebbing away, but just as he always had, he smiled gently at An Yu.

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He slowly approached Ling Qiu and said hesitantly, “I went to the Main City… to find you.”

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Ling Qiu cut him off, continuing to mutter, “I spent so many years trying just to get into the Main City. My life had just started. Is it all going to be ruined…”

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He stood motionlessly. Grief and vigilance rang simultaneously in his consciousness, like two clashing, noisy bells.

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Ling Qiu looked at him and pleaded, “Can you please not kill me? You…”

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“If you are going to insist on playing him,” An Yu looked at him grimly, “you should at least stick to my memory of him. Don’t try to be clever.”

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On the central screen, the accumulated time dropped by a chunk without warning. Although Zhong Ke had still managed to escape, the momentarily frozen time-space had shaved off a portion of his time.

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The scene of Ling Qiu’s death replayed infinitely.

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The Ling Qiu before him was fake, but in the real world, Ling Qiu had truly died, and he had died at his hands.

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Ling Qiu said softly, “Do you remember? You once asked me to remind you that those who dare to gamble their last chance of survival will not lose.”

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Ling Qiu’s face suddenly twisted, becoming Zhong Ke’s.

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“I know.”

An Yu lowered his head. The repeated mental exhaustion had made him very tired. He murmured softly, “But did you really think that, time after time, I was just stepping into your trap for nothing?”

His consciousness violently broke free. This time, besides the screen that had trapped him, nearly half of all the screens fell into an instantaneous stagnation, and then, just as instantly, recovered.

The time on the central screen was instantly cut in half. Zhong Ke had been hit hard this time, but he still hadn’t been captured.

Immediately after, the time, which had just been sharply reduced, surged violently again. Across the world, large-scale time-plundering anomalies occurred once more.

High Peak mused, “Zhong Ke is a thing without substance. As long as even a sliver of him break free, he can recover by plundering others’ time.”

Someone in the Spire asked, “What would happen if we forcibly cut the connection between all the screens and the central console?”

Qin Zhilu spoke. “You aren’t faster than him. If he detected it, he might instantly plunder everyone’s time.”

That pair of black eyes staring at the screen were incomparably cold and dark. He said in a deep voice, “Until he is caught, we have to play along with his game. If he suddenly decides he doesn’t want to play anymore, the whole world will suffer.”

The time console.

An Yu’s pupils were bloodshot. Cold sweat rolled down his deathly pale face. He gritted his teeth and said, “How many times was that?”

Yan Xi replied, “That was the eighth time.”

“Fine.” An Yu exhaled lightly. “I probably need to play two more rounds with him.”

No one answered. No one dared to answer.

In that towering Black Tower, there had long been no one who could sway his decision.

Qin Zhilu connected to the private channel. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry, Commander.” An Yu wiped the sweat streaming down his face, let out a soft laugh, and whispered, “It was very close now.”

For the ninth time, An Yu opened his eyes in the shipping container.

This time, he was already fully conscious when his eyes opened. He was kneeling in front of Ling Qiu, the short knife raised high overhead.

Beneath him, that pair of eyes, as gentle and firm as in his memory, gazed at him. He gave him a smile of relief and said softly, “This time, it’s your turn to protect my dignity.”

“If possible, break through this miasma in my place.”

An Yu’s heart felt as if it were being cut by a knife, but his hand only gripped the knife tighter, until the veins on his hand bulged.

“This was your last chance to use Ling Qiu to torture me.”

He raised the knife high and brought it down hard on Ling Qiu’s neck!

Regardless of whether it was Zhong Ke playing the role, this scene had already occurred in the objective world.

The moment the blood sprayed out, he still closed his eyes and said softly, “Goodnight, gege.”

This time, Zhong Ke had fled long before An Yu got up from the ground. He slowly released his consciousness, detaching from the screen.

Zhong Ke was long gone, and the screen in front of him had completely extinguished. He stared blankly at that screen for a long time before he raised his head again, surveying the countless screens in the space.

Zhong Ke had already connected with almost everyone in the world. This made his recovery incredibly easy, and it also made finding his specific screen an impossible task.

An Yu closed his eyes and felt the compilation of time. A moment later, all the active screens suddenly stuttered—just for an instant, like an illusion.

In the Main City center, Molly, on the external wall screen, suddenly frowned.

—During the live broadcast, for about half a second, she hadn’t received any little hearts, bullet comments or gifts. This was highly unusual. Since the broadcast had begun, it was the first time the stream of interactions had broken.

Although it was only half a second, imperceptible to humans, the servers had calculated it clearly.

Molly hesitated for a long time before she said, “Black Tower, I suspect that a worldwide time-stop has just occurred, even if only for an instant.”

Black Tower did not respond.

Outside the cathedral, Eye, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly looked up at the sky again and said in a low voice, “The final torch awakens amidst humiliation.”