EDEH Chapter 136

He seemed to have escaped into a non-existent abyss, where dead silence and bizarre darkness swallowed him completely, yet seemed to permeate with absurd colored light and shadow.

 

His consciousness sank with the collapsing crack, his flesh and spirit began to fall, as if sinew and bone were being extracted, turning into a pool of water, flowing down into the abyss, merging with the gradually collapsing stones and the monster’s tentacles…

 

“Sang Jue…”

 

“Sang Jue.”

 

The voice calling him seemed far and near, constantly changing, sometimes ancient and ethereal, in a language he couldn’t understand, perhaps not even calling the name “Sang Jue.”

 

The tone kept changing. Sang Jue was in a daze, his emotions unclear, yet he would always become slightly more alert when hearing a certain cold call.

 

“Sang Jue.”

 

“Little monster.”

 

“My little slave.”

 

I’m not a slave.

 

I’m your male.

 

If you dare find another male, I’ll devour him.

 

His consciousness drifted up and down, finally awakened by an abrupt female voice: “Sang Jue.”

 

He suddenly sat up, dazedly clutching his sleeping bag: “Huo, Huo—”

 

Evelyn smiled: “Huo Yanji abandoned you and left. Stop thinking about him.”

 

Sang Jue pressed his lips together. He hadn’t meant to say Huo Yanji.

 

He always called him Yanji… sometimes “wife.”

 

What he wanted to say was Huo Jiangmian. He seemed to have heard Huo Jiangmian’s name in his dream… and saw the thousand-person team dispatched underground by the restarted “Dawn 2” project.

 

Perhaps it wasn’t a dream.

 

Sang Jue clenched his delicate fists to maintain clear reason—but that enormous, tentacle-covered monster was still vivid in his mind.

 

It was fake.

 

No, it wasn’t fake either…

 

Without Huo Yanji as his translator, Sang Jue found it difficult to sort through his thoughts. He knew what he wanted to express but couldn’t articulate it in words or professional terms.

 

That monster, as massive as several skyscrapers, wasn’t fake, but it and the humans weren’t on the same plane—it was ethereal.

 

But the tentacles coiled around the crack walls and extending upward were real, touchable by humans.

 

But how strange—they were clearly one entity.

 

Was it really a dream?

 

“Eat something, we need to leave.”

 

Sang Jue looked toward Ji Zhen, who had woken him, making a confused humming sound: “Mm?”

 

“Something seems to have happened at Rift No. 2.” Ji Zhen’s hands were trembling slightly, a trace of pain flashing through her usually calm eyes.

 

“Oh…”

 

It wasn’t a dream.

 

Rift No. 2 was quite a distance from here, but when Sang Jue looked back, he could still see billowing smoke and dust rising into the clouds.

 

He suddenly remembered what happened at the end of his dream—

 

In a stretch of silent stillness, the dark monster that despised all living things lowered its head toward him, simultaneously causing countless tentacles extending outward to convulse, the crack collapsed, giant stones crashed down, and the humans who had explored there were buried deep underground.

 

Rift No. 2 had collapsed.

 

Sang Jue felt it was somewhat unreal, yet also had a sense that this was as it should be.

 

“If the crack collapsed, would there still be contamination?”

 

“Of course. Contamination isn’t some gas that needs a passage to spread.” Ji Zhen said coldly, “What really spreads contamination is some substance deep in the crack, not the crack itself.”

 

Sang Jue said nothing more, quietly rolling up his sleeping bag and compressing it into his backpack.

 

He thought again of Dr. Millie’s recording—

 

Was he the “door”? Then what was he closing—the contamination?

 

Perhaps he really came from the depths, but he didn’t know what returning to the depths meant.

 

Death?

 

Sang Jue wasn’t afraid of death. The Doctor was gone, and Yanji didn’t want him either, so dying wouldn’t matter. He didn’t like other humans, nor did he like anything else in this world.

 

They all just wanted to contaminate him, they all just wanted to use him.

 

But it probably wasn’t death.

 

If he had been in the depths hundreds of years ago before contamination began, then it probably wasn’t a state of death, but sleep.

 

Sleep meant losing the ability to move freely. He would lose emotions—anger, happiness, joy, longing… would all become irrelevant to him.

 

…That didn’t sound bad either.

 

He seemed unable to be happy anymore.

 

Sang Jue put on the same kind of veil as Evelyn, specially made from spider silk that could filter larger dust particles from the air.

 

Sang Jue followed their footsteps, walking quietly through the sandstorm, not knowing where the road ahead led.

 

The wind resistance was strong, their pace slow, like lonely travelers lost in the desert.

 

This was completely different from the “home planet” Sang Jue knew.

 

The world the Doctor had woven for him was warm, with four seasons, spring breezes, winter snow, fairy tales, and in the stories even evil dragons could become friends with princes.

 

But the evil dragon in reality was a bit greedy—he also wanted to become the prince’s spouse, occupying the princess’s position.

 

“Whoosh—”

 

Sang Jue wasn’t paying attention and slipped, instantly falling into a spinning hourglass vortex. Ji Zhen ahead turned pale and immediately shot out several spider threads, wrapping around Sang Jue’s body and pulling hard.

 

Something in the sand seemed to bite his foot, even wrapping around his calf—clearly a large monster.

 

Sang Jue saw nothing. The sharp knife-like spider web easily cut through the sand, then he heard Ji Zhen say without looking back: “Let’s go.”

 

Sang Jue stood up, brushed off his feet, and looked back while catching up.

 

He saw that the monster in the sand seemed to finally react, bleeding continuously, soaking the scorching sand.

 

“What was that?”

 

“Sand worm, watch your step.”

 

Sang Jue made an “oh” sound: “Is this some kind of desert?”

 

Ji Zhen said: “Not yet, but it might become a desert in the future.”

 

Sang Jue tilted his head slightly, gazing at the endless expanse of yellow.

 

The surface was a magical existence—unlike the depths with only darkness, here there were all kinds of scenery, terrain, and all kinds of creatures.

 

Sang Jue suddenly had a bizarre god’s-eye perspective mentality—

 

Humans and those countless monsters were merely links in the biological chain. Animals had their language, plants had their means of communication, human speech wasn’t special either, but it was particularly noisy.

 

If humans still survived two hundred years later, when they came to this area, they might also conduct archaeological investigations into what ruins lay beneath, studying why the original civilized cities had become a wasteland…

 

Sang Jue looked up and asked for the first time: “Where are we going?”

 

“The seaside.” Ji Zhen said, “You reacted so slowly just now, what were you thinking about?”

 

Sang Jue thought for a moment, then shook his head.

 

Ji Zhen must have misunderstood. She spoke words of consolation that didn’t match her personality in a cold voice: “You have a long lifespan, all feelings can fade. Don’t think about it, look forward.”

 

“What is forward?”

 

“…” Ji Zhen paused, “Keep walking and that’s forward. You’ll always encounter more scenery, more people, maybe soon there will appear another—”

 

Sang Jue said: “Maybe another male I’ll like will appear.”

 

Ji Zhen: “…”

 

Sang Jue wasn’t stupid: “That’s not what you wanted to say, that’s what he wanted to say.”

 

Who “he” was didn’t need to be said.

 

Ji Zhen showed no embarrassment at being caught in a lie, instead calmly asked back: “Then do you want to hear what I actually wanted to say?”

 

Sang Jue: “Mm?”

 

“Use any method to tie him to your side, confine his freedom, make it so he can’t live without you.”

 

“But he’ll run.” This time he did run, and also stabbed him with a syringe.

 

It hurt—a pain he would remember for a lifetime.

 

“Unless humans build bronze walls and iron barriers around him bristling with artillery fire, how else could they stop you?” Ji Zhen said casually, “If he runs once, tie him up once. If that doesn’t work, break both his legs—”

 

“No, no you can’t…” If his legs were broken, then he couldn’t make love to him in bed.

 

Moving by himself was uncomfortable, always missing the mark.

 

Ji Zhen didn’t know what he was thinking, and continued: “Then there’s an even better method.”

 

Sang Jue asked: “What?”

 

Evelyn ahead, free and unrestrained, laughed. She turned back, using gentle words to speak of cruel schemes: “Every time he runs, you go cause trouble at the safe zone, kill a batch of people, let all humans know you’re killing for Huo Yanji’s sake. Once is fine, twice is okay, but three times, four times… his humans will slowly abandon and despise him. Those who once followed and loved him will hope from the bottom of their hearts that he never comes back—

 

“That’s when he’ll completely belong to you.”

 

Sang Jue seemed stunned.

 

The Doctor had never taught him such things before. The Doctor had educated him in the same way she would educate any child—positive and proactive, never transmitting negative thoughts to him.

 

So Sang Jue had learned to become the way she liked.

 

And later, when he met Huo Yanji, he was always contradictory—sometimes wanting Sang Jue to recognize all the evil in the world, sometimes wanting to protect Sang Jue’s purity.

 

Regarding Evelyn’s suggestion, Sang Jue didn’t feel much revulsion.

 

Perhaps he wasn’t a kind dragon to begin with.

 

He was evil by nature.

 

Sang Jue asked: “Is losing freedom very painful?”

 

On this point, Evelyn had the right to speak.

 

She concentrated on remembering for a while, then against the howling sandstorm, in the vast ruins, she lightly spoke four words: “Better to die.”

 

Living then had no difference from being dead.

 

Perhaps every woman in the underground city had the right to speak—they lived in peaceful environments but didn’t possess independent personalities, merely tools for continuing the fire of civilization.

 

Maybe some would think that compared to losing life, living peacefully yet numbly was also a kind of happiness… but survival in the apocalypse was itself a walled city where those below wanted to come up and those above wanted to go down.

 

Their sufferings didn’t connect.

 

Sang Jue tilted his head, lowering his gaze, not knowing what he was thinking about.

 

They ultimately didn’t see the sea.

 

Sang Jue also wanted to see the sea, perhaps because someone had once said he could go see it for him.

 

But they stopped halfway, with a warm red campfire set up between the three of them. Sang Jue ate cooked monster meat while Evelyn and Ji Zhen sat in silent opposition.

 

“You won’t last half a year, will you?” Evelyn asked softly.

 

“Mm.” Ji Zhen said, “After the incident at Rift No. 2, the genetic restlessness intensified greatly.”

 

Sang Jue had noticed from when they first met a few days ago that Ji Zhen’s life was near its end, on the verge of losing order—perhaps this was the real reason she had left the rebel organization.

 

She wanted to leave her remaining time to Evelyn, who was obsessed with her.

 

There should be some mutual sympathy—Ji Zhen’s life had stopped twelve years ago with her brother Bo Qing’s death, and Evelyn, because of her “death,” remained forever the girl from eleven years ago who spoke of mama and missed her beloved, never growing up again.

 

Ji Zhen had just tested her contamination index—the reading showed 69.

 

One should know that under standard conditions, once the contamination index exceeded 60, one could lose reason at any time.

 

Ji Zhen took out a gun, her eyes heavy as she wiped it, her movements very gentle, as if remembering someone who had already passed away.

 

She handed the gun to Sang Jue, her voice very calm, but her arm trembling uncontrollably due to genetic chaos: “I heard your marksmanship is good. If you feel I’m about to lose order, shoot. Don’t hesitate.”

 

“Okay…”

 

Sang Jue glanced at Evelyn, who said nothing, red flames burning in her placid eyes.

 

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