Madness often springs from the terror of the utterly unknown, from brain nerves collapsing after being forced far beyond capacity, and from horrifying phenomena too incomprehensible to understand.
Lin Xing’s heart thundered. He admitted that right now, he was very afraid.
He was afraid that he had actually already gone insane. Yet precisely because that fear was growing stronger, he found himself increasingly unable to control himself.
His hands and feet began turning numb and cold. An uncanny chill sank deep into his bones, while phantom creak, creak sounds came from the depths of his brain.
He could not control his abnormal state at all. Under the pressure of that extreme sense of crisis, he could not even move.
The anxiety hanging over his heart quickly became reality. Trapped in a room with no one else inside, he suddenly felt the darkness tightening and collapsing around him inch by inch.
The very concept of space abruptly ceased to function. A near-death sensation of suffocation made Lin Xing scream in terror. His nearly healed ribs were viciously crushed and shattered again, sending uncontrollable, twisting agony through him once more.
He thought he was going to die pathetically just like that, but in the next instant, the freezing floor tiles beneath him vanished without warning. Weightlessness slammed into him. Caught completely unprepared, Lin Xing felt his numb body falling, spinning, falling…
Bang!
He crashed heavily onto an unfamiliar floor. His collarbone cracked, his head spun from the impact, and a thick, sweet metallic taste flooded his mouth.
The mad old woman who had once imitated monkey cries let out piercing laughter in the distance. In his daze, he saw Charlie’s lone eyeball turning at the edge of his vision. Blood ran from his nose. Wriggling leeches extended hideous mouthparts, their dense rows of tiny teeth biting into his broken bones and slowly sucking out the pink-white marrow.
No, those did not seem to be leeches… The egg-sac potion parasitizing his ribs was frantically □□, reproducing, and dividing on its own, continuously birthing malformed, filthy masses of strange flesh.
Elio’s Note: The source itself reads 自行□□、繁殖和分裂. Since those missing characters are already gone in the Chinese, I’m preserving □□ instead of trying to reverse-engineer the sentence.
Lin Xing did not even dare breathe as he struggled to move through the narrow, distorted darkness.
Deep down, he knew everything happening to him might be nothing but illusion, yet he did not dare disbelieve it. He really was going to die. His survival instinct produced neural pain impossible to ignore, while thick, viscous fear pounded and erupted inside his chest.
Lin Xing staggered to his feet, gulped the thin air, and ran forward without any destination.
As he ran, he clawed at the filthy flesh-worms multiplying wildly inside his chest, trying to stop them from devouring any more of his flesh and blood.
His fingernails peeled upward and split away, the pain unbearable, but he did not dare stop. Even gouging several chunks of his own flesh out would be worth it.
“Hehehe… pitiful, pitiful.”
After running through the narrow darkness for an unknown length of time, he finally heard a voice that did not belong to him and saw the first human other than himself.
It was a filthy, disheveled old man dressed in ragged white cotton-linen patient clothes. Lin Xing’s hot, sticky brain turned with difficulty as he vaguely remembered who the man was.
The insane patient who lived next door to Song Zang’s room.
The one who had crawled all over the floor after being whipped with the holy-water lash.
Deep gullies in the old man’s aged face trembled. Savage evil churned in his eyes, and his shriveled lips pulled into a mocking curve.
“Hehe. Pitiful, pitiful.”
Lin Xing tensed every muscle, wary and ready to strike first and kill him, only to discover in horror that all strength had suddenly vanished from his limbs without warning.
He crashed to the floor amid the old man’s mentally contaminating “hehe” laughter, his powerless hands and feet twitching like a fish struggling on the edge of death.
Then he watched the old man raise a rust-covered iron spoon. Its winding curved surface was pitted and uneven, coated in filthy old grime and ancient cement.
He was going to die. He really was going to die. Lin Xing opened his mouth wide in despair, wanting to call for help, wanting to beg for mercy, but he had no control over his corpse-stiff vocal cords. He could only sink into endless hopelessness.
The old man in his hazy vision began to distort. Layer upon layer of dark, grotesque, muddy afterimages spread behind the hunched silhouette and wantonly wrapped around Lin Xing’s weakened body.
A monster… a monster! Lin Xing had long expected that there was more than one monster inside the asylum.
But how could it be this strong? Why? Why?
Terrified and unwilling to accept it, Lin Xing watched in horror as the old man raised the iron spoon and dug open his vulnerable temple. Laughing “hehe,” he stabbed through Lin Xing’s hot, dissolving brain, scooped out a spoonful of pink-white, rank, sticky pulp, and shoved it into his mouth before he could resist.
The instant Lin Xing tasted his own brain, he completely broke down and finally screamed and sobbed without restraint.
“Aaaaaah!”
“AAAAAAAAH!!!”
“…Lin Xing, what are you doing?”
Just then, a gentle, clear young man’s voice suddenly brushed across his hypersensitive, trembling eardrums.
The space crushing madly around Lin Xing suddenly loosened. Seizing the chance, he gulped down air and desperately looked around, tears and snot streaming down his face as he cried out in despair, “S-Song Zang? Where are you?! I can’t see you! Save me!!”
“Mm, I think this is what’s happening… You entered my dream?
“That should be right. Hurry and leave. I’m still not very skilled at controlling dreams. It’s dangerous.”
Song Zang urged him softly, sounding somewhat troubled. His voice knocked through the darkness against Lin Xing’s increasingly fragile nerves.
“How is that possible?! Why?! Fuck, fuck, fuck!! What the hell kind of dream are you fucking having?!!!”
“…I’m not completely sure either.” Realizing that Lin Xing’s mental state was unstable, Song Zang thought for a moment and answered vaguely.
In reality, at this very moment, Song Zang was standing right in front of Lin Xing.
He even waved at Lin Xing on his own initiative, but Lin Xing looked like a blind man at a complete loss, his expression furious and panicked as he desperately searched for the source of the voice like a headless fly.
Mystery solved. Lin Xing could not see Song Zang’s physical form at all.
Song Zang suddenly understood, but he was also quite puzzled. Lin Xing should have been able to see him…
Because Song Zang was currently digesting the supreme, precious knowledge God had gifted him.
【Creation】.
The word meant exactly what it said. He was creating a world of his own.
There was no need to master some exquisitely intricate magic, nor any need for vague, intangible mystical power… As long as someone possessed an immense body of precise and correct knowledge, anyone could follow the pattern and use their own mind and soul to personally create a world.
Of course, before that came the greatest prerequisite of all: one had to possess sufficiently powerful mental consciousness, or the brain would be crushed directly into mush by 【the weight of knowledge】.
In other words, Resistance was extremely important.
As long as, after receiving all the knowledge, his brain tissue did not melt into a hot, viscous liquid, did not become diseased, rotten, or uncontrollable, and did not fall into chaotic madness from overload or incomprehension… then the power of Creation was not beyond reach.
Song Zang considered it a very strange and bizarre form of idealism, but at least in this instance, idealism genuinely worked.
Inside a world he personally created, he would be the one true god. Just like the praise believers heaped upon Jehovah, he could be all-knowing and all-powerful, omnipresent, omniscient…
Unless, during construction, there were a few mistakes, a few accidents, and a few anomalies that deviated from the intended course.
That was exactly what had happened to the God of this instance.
He had personally admitted that when He first created the world, He lacked experience. Certain ancient and mysterious foreign deities had quietly interfered, causing everything to undergo subtle distortions and mutations. More chaotic phenomena could emerge at any moment.
Even God Himself had inexplicably split into three. His different minds could no longer merge and communicate perfectly, while His true self was being relentlessly entangled by a child just as powerful as He was, making it difficult to control the many developments and changes gradually dragging this world off course.
Precision steam trains far too advanced for the era, industrial products appearing centuries early, ornate firearms that did not belong in a medieval empire… not to mention heraldic magic, bizarre but useful leech medicine, and witches and heretics who wielded genuine power.
All in all, the wheel of history had taken several wrong turns and crossed into dimensions it should never have touched, which caused God tremendous distress.
Song Zang half believed and half doubted the explanation He had conveyed, but this 【knowledge】 had been authenticated by the game system itself and was absolutely genuine.
The fact that it had tortured him into vomiting blood and fainting, hurting so badly that he had nearly died, was enough to show just how much weight the information contained.
So Song Zang did not hesitate to begin experimenting with creating a world of his own.
To be cautious, he drew inspiration from Lan Yu Heng’s blind cane item that created dreams and started by tinkering with a small-scale project inside his own dream.
He would combine every piece of information and every element he had obtained in this instance and construct a brand-new asylum world.
That way, Song Zang could secretly practice heraldic magic in his dream while also searching for known clues he might have overlooked. Several benefits at once.
Even if something went wrong, it would not matter. The instant he woke up, everything in the dream world would perish along with it and completely vanish into nothingness.
But Song Zang never expected such an enormous problem, so serious and terrifying, to actually occur.
Lin Xing’s consciousness had somehow been pulled into his dream. And obviously, what Lin Xing was experiencing seemed extremely awful, pushing him close to insanity.
Song Zang had a powerful premonition that if he woke first, then Lin Xing, abandoned inside the collapsing world, would face a hopeless end.
The most dignified outcome would be brain death. Absolutely incurable. One hundred percent beyond all medicine.
Sensing Lin Xing’s mental state on the verge of collapse, Song Zang urged him again, “Don’t worry about what kind of dream I’m having. Hurry and leave, or you’ll die.”
“Fuck, I’m already about to die! That psycho old man is still scooping out my brains with a spoon, mmph… Can’t you see him?!”
Song Zang froze.
He genuinely could not.
But Lin Xing’s words were like some miraculous spell that cleared the ears and sharpened the eyes, instantly illuminating Song Zang’s hazy, dreamlike vision.
Song Zang blinked. The faint mist veiling the dream world suddenly dispersed.
Only then did he realize in horror that this world was not safe.
An extremely powerful foreign force, an extraordinarily evil and filthy twisted will, was openly eroding, contaminating, and infiltrating the boundaries of his dream.
“I thought everything only felt blurry because I was dreaming… Sorry. I made you suffer so much for no reason.”
Song Zang muttered thoughtfully, feeling a little guilty. He crooked a finger and hurriedly rescued Lin Xing, half of whose brain had already been scooped into ruin.
Then he snapped his fingers. The crazed old man instantly burst into flames before them, struggling and screaming as he burned away into a puddle of rotten, foul-smelling ash-mud.
Next Song Zang frowned, and the puddle of sludge vanished into smoke as well.
“Huff, huff… Fuck, what happened? How did you do that?! Why am I not dead yet?!”
Lin Xing turned pale with shock. Feeling his skull, which had suddenly returned to normal, he hugged himself in disbelief.
Song Zang curved his lips and tried to look as gentle and harmless as possible. “Because this is my dream. Hurry and wake up. If you don’t wake up soon, you’ll really die.”
“But what exactly…”
“Oh, right. If Yin Chen finds out you’re hanging around in my dream and refusing to leave… he’ll get very jealous and then chop you to death.” Song Zang narrowed his eyes slightly, using both coaxing and threats.
At that, Lin Xing’s already deathly pale face turned several shades whiter. He took a deep breath, expression twisted. “Don’t tell the big boss. I’ll work on waking up right now!”
Song Zang coughed softly and lowered his eyes uncomfortably.
He did not want to threaten him like that. The main problem was simply that Song Zang was not skilled enough yet and had no idea how to safely move Lin Xing’s consciousness out of his world.
If he accidentally used too much force and gave the man a cerebral hemorrhage or brain death, that would be awkward.
Lin Xing gritted his teeth and began viciously pinching his own thigh, yanking hard on his beard, even nearly gouging out his eyes, desperately trying to leave this place as fast as possible.
It was obvious that the psychological trauma had been immense.
But in the end, what woke him was not any of those acts of self-harm. It was… a tremendous slap from Sister Pudu.
Smack!
Lin Xing jolted awake. His nerves taut, he looked around wildly, clutching the iron spoon in his hand…
Wait. Iron spoon?
Where had the iron spoon come from?!
He steadied himself and met Sister Pudu’s stern, livid face, then lowered his eyes toward the cold piece of iron in his hand.
The rusted spoon was filled with rank pink-white brain tissue. Only then did Lin Xing realize that at some point, he had returned to the confinement room from before.
He sat on the floor, his powerful thighs clamped tightly around the neck of an unfamiliar orderly…
The orderly was long dead, his eyes bulging miserably. Most of his skull had been brutally smashed open, while the soft, plump brain was pitted and uneven, as though someone had scooped away fold after fold of cortex with a spoon.
Presumably, the brain matter inside the iron spoon had come from him too.
Sweating coldly, Lin Xing dropped the spoon and rubbed his head in confusion. “Why am I here? What happened?”
“You suffered a fit of madness, killed two innocent people, and now you’re questioning me?” Sister Pudu crossed her arms and looked down at him coldly.
Lin Xing stared blankly for a long while without taking in what she had said.
His gaze remained fixed on the dark blue-purple bruising around one of Sister Pudu’s eyes.
Terrifying. Yin Chen had not held back in the slightest when he drove that cane into her eye. She had survived even that. Truly a woman favored by God.
What was he thinking about?
Lin Xing suddenly sensed something wrong. His brain tissue seemed to have suffered severe damage. His entire person had become somewhat sluggish, his thoughts uncontrollably wandering in every direction.
So hungry. He wanted meat.
Wow, Sister Pudu’s eye socket was really blue…
“You’re okay?”
After staring blankly for ages, Lin Xing finally spoke again.
Sister Pudu frowned at him. After a moment, she evaluated him coldly. “You look like you’re about to die, a pale shell whose soul has been hollowed out by a demon.
“Go to sleep immediately. Tomorrow morning, I’ll ask Doctor Capet to come treat you.”
“Who’s Doctor Capet?” Lin Xing asked blankly.
“…Hopeless.”
Sister Pudu gave a cold scoff, took out hemp rope, and tied Lin Xing’s hands and feet securely. Unable to resist, she kicked him hard, then turned and left without hesitation.
The confinement room door remained open, but Lin Xing did not struggle.
He looked at the orderly’s corpse on the floor, which still retained some warmth, utterly bewildered. The relaxation of having survived disaster gradually swept over his whole body like fine, gentle waves soothing his damaged, trembling soul.
Sleepy. I’ll sleep again. He thought sluggishly.
In the blink of an eye, thunderous snores filled the room and drool ran from the corner of his mouth.
Blood vessels appeared in the rigid corpse’s eyes as they bulged farther and farther. Within the dilated pupils, a faint gaze seemed to remain, fixed unblinkingly on Lin Xing.
＊
Song Zang woke inside Yin Chen’s warm embrace.
He discovered that he had been changed into a clean set of clothes.
By touch, they seemed to be Yin Chen’s spare sleepwear, expensive oriental silk of excellent quality.
He also smelled fresh mint leaves. A relaxing citrus fragrance filled the room, while the pillows and bedding carried the soft scent of lavender… Not a trace of blood remained.
What a perfect environment for sleeping. So comfortable. Song Zang felt refreshed from head to toe, his spirits soaring as he abruptly sat up.
He could not help it. The thought that he could now be a tiny creator god himself made Song Zang genuinely a little excited.
Just then, a soft bolster was tucked behind his waist. Yin Chen’s warm hand followed, gently touching his forehead.
“Move slower. What’s the rush?”
Faint joy and relief seemed hidden inside Yin Chen’s mildly reproachful voice.
Perhaps he was relieved that Song Zang had managed to wake through his own will.
“Yin Chen, I missed you.” Smiling, Song Zang took Yin Chen’s hand on his own initiative and stroked the sharply defined wrist between his fingers.
“…You slept for a while. Why do you suddenly miss me?” Yin Chen did not resist, but his sharp phoenix eyes narrowed perceptively as he scrutinized every tiny change in Song Zang’s expression. “What dangerous thing did you experience? Tell me.”
“It wasn’t dangerous at all. I’m really amazing now.”
Song Zang returned his gaze openly with a bright smile, his face full of pride.
He held almost nothing back, recounting the entire series of events that had happened when he attempted Creation. He insisted with complete confidence that there had truly been no danger whatsoever.
After all, the person who had actually been unlucky from beginning to end was Lin Xing. He had suffered terribly and received absolutely no benefit.
But after hearing the whole story, Yin Chen still seemed a little angry. He pressed his lips together and stared silently at Song Zang, openly radiating anger and resentment.
“…Yin Chen, don’t keep frowning. You’ll get vertical wrinkles between your brows. It won’t look good.” Feeling inexplicably guilty, Song Zang deliberately changed the subject.
Yin Chen did not take the bait at all. His voice was sinister, carrying undisguised jealousy and killing intent. “Why did Lin Xing get to be the first person to witness you creating a world? What were you thinking? Why does he deserve that?”
There it was. He really was jealous.
Song Zang hooked his fingertip around Yin Chen’s and reasoned with him patiently. “Lin Xing was brutally tortured for several hours. He didn’t enjoy a single thing and even ate his own brain tissue. How could I bear to let you experience such a horrifying, disgusting world?
“Besides, that was only an incomplete prototype. It was even invaded by especially evil Outer Gods. I couldn’t drive Them away at all, nor could I freely use my power. Right?
“Later, when I’m skilled enough, I’ll build a perfect world specially for you alone. You can play however you want. How about that? Is that okay?”
Yin Chen was quiet for a long while before casting him a dark, threatening look, still seeming aggrieved. “Don’t trick me. I’ll chop you to death.”
“Mm-hm, okay. Chop whatever you want.” Song Zang’s eyes curved. “You still haven’t praised me for being amazing. Didn’t I do really well this time?”
At that, Yin Chen suddenly turned his hand, interlaced his fingers with Song Zang’s, and clasped tightly. Still wearing a cold expression, he added, “Also, you’re not allowed to casually try dangerous things like this in the future. The power of false gods isn’t as simple as you think.”
Song Zang immediately grew curious. “How is it not simple?”
“‘False god’ is only a broad classification players use for the strongest bosses in the Infinite Game. Players divided them that way internally. There’s no official universal standard.
“Some bosses are placed within that category, but that doesn’t mean the strength players normally associate with a false god represents the upper limit of their actual power.”
“You mean some bosses are so terrifying they’re practically impossible to kill, like truly omniscient and omnipotent gods?”
“With me here, anything can be killed. But if you take the initiative to make contact with a false god before I act, and some accident happens…”
At this point, Yin Chen paused. He pinched the tip of Song Zang’s ear with a cold laugh and threatened him fiercely, “Bleeding from all seven orifices is only the first step. I’m afraid that one day, when I want to collect your corpse, I won’t even be able to find half a pound of bone scraps.”
“Mm, ngh…”
Song Zang was not frightened, but his cheeks suddenly flushed. Biting his lip, he lowered his lashes as a fragile, lingering gasp escaped between his lips.
Yin Chen immediately froze. The ferocious air he had been putting on receded from his face like a tide.
He did not understand how Song Zang could make that kind of… that kind of strange sound.
Even less did he understand why hearing it had made his hand go weak, with a faint tingling numbness spreading all the way down his spine.
Seeing Yin Chen’s helplessly bewildered expression, looking rather foolish, Song Zang secretly breathed a sigh of relief.
Immediately afterward, Song Zang turned fierce on him instead, threatening with a red face, “You’re not allowed to pinch my ear hard anymore. That’s too perverted. Do it again and you won’t get to touch me for a month.”
Yin Chen stared at the pale ear tip suffused with pink. His Adam’s apple moved slightly. Still bewildered, he instinctively pressed the question without giving up.
“But why is it perverted?”
“Because I’m sensitive. You’re very sensitive right now too, aren’t you? You should understand. It’s basically the same thing.” Song Zang’s lashes trembled as he tried to explain as vaguely as possible.
“But I actually really like… when you treat me that way, even when you deliberately bully me.”
Yin Chen looked thoughtful, his tone gradually shifting from hesitation to increasing certainty.
Before Song Zang could speak, he concluded decisively, “So actually, you like it when I touch your ears too. It feels good to you. You’re saying the opposite of what you mean.”
Song Zang: …?!
How could Yin Chen say something that bluntly? For a moment, Song Zang could not even refute him.
“Stop talking. We’re not discussing this anymore. I’m embarrassed.” Song Zang took a deep breath and reset himself. “Let’s talk about your ‘due date’ first. That’s more important.”
“All right.” Yin Chen paused, then suddenly curved his lips and asked cheerfully, “Are you really looking forward to our baby’s birth?”
No one knew what he had misunderstood. He proactively pulled open his coat, took out a sharp dagger, and handed it to Song Zang, his tone carrying a strange trace of anticipation.
“Go ahead. You can cut my stomach open right now.”