Chapter 20: 5 Minutes and 50 Seconds (Part 2)_1

First there was a click, then a bang!

Metallic rain burst forth from the gun barrel, instantly blowing the old woman mid-air outwards, crashing into the wall. In an instant, she sprayed out copious amounts of blood like a sieve.

But Liu DongLi's actions were relentless; his hand worked the bolt of the gun, loading a special round designed for Sublimators into the chamber.

Then he pressed forward and pulled the trigger.

Boom!

The old woman, almost turned into a lump of flesh from the close-range double shots, slid down the wall, twitching her limbs as if still struggling—even after taking two rounds to the face at such close distance, she was still alive!

But not for much longer.

Liu DongLi cracked open the gunstock, fished two bullets from his pocket, loaded them, and fired two more shots, and then two more.

Until the barrel turned red-hot.

The lump of flesh on the ground finally stopped moving for good.

Only a face shredded by steel still retained an expression of ferocity and panic not yet faded.

Liu DongLi didn't have time to catch his breath; he turned and walked towards the two men entangled in a fight, swinging the hot barrel and cracking King Ocean on the back of his head with the butt of his gun.

The old man's eyes rolled back, and he fainted, leaving behind Huai Shi, still lying on the ground gasping for air, tears and snot uncleaned.

In that instant, Huai Shi saw Liu DongLi's eyes... His pupils had inexplicably become double pupils!

Fifty seconds had passed.

The fight was over.

Lao Tang lockdown countdown—2:40

"Take this and get moving. We have to at least get out of the church..."

Liu DongLi picked up his own pistol from the ground and tossed it to him, along with a magazine, then he turned, picked up the box, and hastened their retreat.

Huai Shi climbed up from the ground, gasping heavily, and staggered after him.

Then he saw the box tucked under his rib.

That box, that familiar box...

He saw it again.

It was definitely the same box Huai Shi had found; he was sure of it, and it should have been his...

Yes, it should have been his.

Did Liu DongLi really think that taking his stuff would settle everything?

Enraged, he raised the pistol in his hand, aimed at Liu DongLi's back, and pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The gunshot faded, blood sprayed out.

Liu DongLi's body jolted violently and fell to the ground, looking back in disbelief at the young man behind him... that distorted, wooden face.

After firing the gun, Huai Shi also froze, staring blankly downward, noticing the smoking barrel in his hand.

What's going on?

What did I do?

Why did I want to steal that box?

And, why am I here?

Didn't I feel the threat of death as soon as I entered this place? Haven't I felt the growing shadow of death over and over again?

Why did I come to the church?

Why did I shoot at Old Liu?

And what exactly am I doing?

In an instant, his thoughts tangled into a mess, followed by an intense wave of nausea. The contents of his stomach surged, and he bent over abruptly, vomiting.

After that, he felt something being expelled from himself.

It landed amidst the filth on the ground.

That appeared to be a living, squirming... goldfish?

Goldfish?

Again with the goldfish?

The person who passed by just now seemed to have goldfish in their eyes as well, and initially, at the very beginning... that corpse, before dying, had also thrown up... a goldfish?

"Is this the stress response period? Just under six hours and there's already a rejection reaction,"

From behind him, a harsh, unfamiliar voice sighed, "Even the second generation's goldfish can resist, no wonder the earlier Third Generation Goldfish couldn't parasitize. What bad luck. Otherwise, the box would have been ours long ago, and there would have been no need for all this trouble now."

With that husky sigh, the air slowly distorted and a gaunt figure emerged from the empty air, revealing a dark coat, and a cold, indifferent face.

A pair of blood-red gloves.

And the fish tank held in his right hand.

Inside the small fish tank, several slender goldfish fry were swimming slowly.

"...Green Day?"

Amidst the blood, Liu DongLi saw the green circular emblem on the back of his hand and finally realized, struggling to lift the gun, "Huai Shi, get out of here..."

Red Gloves looked down at him with a pitiful shake of his head, "You've got no help to offer yourself, let alone others."

The chill of death loomed suddenly.

Then, gunfire rang out, from behind Huai Shi.

A thud, then another thud!

One shot topped off Liu DongLi, and another was for Huai Shi himself.

Liu DongLi convulsed once and then was silent.

Huai Shi stiffly looked down to see blood emerging from his chest and a gaping hole, as if his back had been struck with a hammer.

It hurt like hell.

He knelt on the ground and cried out, unable to hold back his tears.

But when he turned and saw the person who had fired the shot, his hoarse cry of pain froze in his throat.

"...Old Yang?"

The hunched man with an empty expression also looked up at him, his face, which normally bore a cunning smile, seemed to still have the traces of a smile lingering on it.

Behind those eyes, a goldfish swam about joyfully.

As if it was in its own fish tank.

As Huai Shi watched in stunned silence, he bent over, picked up the box, and stood behind the man, stepping in blood, awaiting orders.

"Go lock the main door as well, then prepare the ritual. We've waited so long, it must have some value."

The stranger commanded, and Old Yang turned and left, without even looking back at Huai Shi.

"Did you know each other?"

The stranger glanced down at Huai Shi and laughed mockingly, "He owed a lot of money for others and could only pay with himself. Don't blame him, nor me... if you must, blame your bad luck."

"..."

In his daze and confusion, Huai Shi suddenly understood something, and although he felt a madness of rage inside, he couldn't help but want to laugh.

To mock himself for struggling like a worm caught in a net for so long.

Everything had already been predetermined.

From the very beginning.

From the moment he received Old Yang's call and joyfully carried his violin case to apply for a job at the Cowherd Club, he had already stepped onto the road of death.

He would arrive at the designated place, then furiously call Old Yang when leaving to report his location and information, and finally take the shortcut home, where he would encounter a corpse, a box, and a goldfish in an alley...

That goldfish should have been swimming happily in his own mind.

He had miraculously escaped once, but then was pulled back onto the original track by the hand behind the scenes to meet the predetermined end.

Just like this person said, his luck seemed to have never been good.

Always inexplicably encountering inexplicable situations, his messy life only got messier—poorer, more miserable, more despondent, and now... he finally plunged headfirst like a headless fly into a dead-end.

Meeting the end.

"Damn it, why?!"

Huai Shi could no longer repress his intense pain and vomited blood, and his tears and snot flowed uncontrollably, "All I wanted was to live a good life, to earn some money and live a little better, to find a decent job, even if it meant slaving away. I wouldn't mind, to marry someone I liked, to have a home that wouldn't reject me... Is that wrong?! What's the reason? Why the hell can't you just leave me alone?"

The man with the red gloves fell silent.

After a long while, he sighed softly.

"For a better world, there's a lot we're powerless to change." He took a gun out of his pocket and aimed it at the boy's face, "I'm sorry, but your sacrifice is for a greater value."

He pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet was deflected.

By a layer of faintly visible light film.

Red Gloves froze.

"Blessing in dire straits?" he exclaimed in astonishment, looking at the weak glow enveloping the young man at this moment, "Did that woman actually give you her life-saving charm?

Are you really her old flame?"

This was the emergency protection granted by the Astronomical Society to each of its supervisory officers, a literal life-saving charm that would activate automatically upon encountering a fatal attack, preserving the life of the user in the worst situation, awaiting rescue...

Within three minutes, unless it was forcibly breached by a Stigma of the Fourth Stage or above, it was an almost impenetrable barrier.

"Forget it."

He holstered his pistol, giving Huai Shi's chest a mocking glance, even without delivering a final blow, the guy would bleed to death.

Time was precious now. He was just one step away from the threshold, and he no longer had time to waste on him.

He turned and walked towards the auditorium.

The plan had taken an unexpected turn, completely beyond his anticipations.

Though the action against the Savior Association was impulsive after seeing that box, it had been through meticulous planning. To avoid alerting the Lord's followers behind King Ocean and arousing their vigilance and detection, he had to start with ordinary people, manipulating an internal strife with the power of his Soul—Sneering Fish Tank, and had Lao Yang stage the final transfer using the utterly unrelated Huai Shi. He hadn't anticipated that Huai Shi would turn out to be a hidden stress-period candidate for Sublimation, resistant to the offsprings derived from parasites, leading to a total failure of the parasitism and a complete derailment of the plan.

Fortunately, he had successfully concealed himself behind the scenes, and with the immense pressure of being an astronomer, the Purified People behind King Ocean didn't sniff out any anomalies — those whose heads were filled only with the Savior were definitively fanatics, utterly devoid of reason.

However, since he couldn't complete the plan covertly, he had to change tactics.

For him, as long as the outcome was not flawed, the process didn't matter; now that he had attracted the attention of the Astronomical Society... why not make a bigger fuss?

He kicked open the door, fired two shots at random, killing an old man who tried to pounce on him, walked through the crowd of screaming chaos, and approached the podium.

The front and back doors were already sealed.

He didn't know how much time was left, but it was enough to complete the final descent.

Only...

"Using the Rebirth Cauldron to make drugs? Did those Purified People even let their subordinates' brains get eaten by their god?"

He looked down at the box in front of him, unable to suppress a sneer.

This container-type relic unearthed from the seventh depth of Hell Relics, while being the best container for Source Substance and easily converting a fanatic's excitable Source Substance into matter, King Ocean himself was probably unaware of what exactly he was in possession of.

The sacrificial weren't just the Believers he had deceived; it included even himself — as long as the Source Substance within was sufficient, it was a framework potent enough to birth ancient spirits into the Current Circumstances!

After the Ranch Owner's Envoy descended through it, probably all living beings within sight would become its food.

Though, what he had to do was not much better.

"Might as well recycle the waste."

He glanced over the Believers who were being continuously harvested for their Source Substance, opened the box, and took out a test tube from his chest.

Under the dim light of the church, he examined the flesh and blood within.

"Let's begin."

He murmured softly, "Lay the insignificant part of our great endeavor."