Chapter 91#
The Magnitude of Life and Death (I)#
Giving life, giving death.
The deity in Greek mythology who governed new life now held the scythe of death.
Ye Sheng stared at that A+, his expression grave and thoughtful.
Of all the heretics he had encountered so far, the highest rank was the Fetal Woman.
As an A-rank heretic, the Fetal Woman, even in a crippled state, had forced him to use all his life-saving talismans on the train. Now, the Ghost Mother appearing in the radio station building was ranked A+, even higher than the Fetal Woman. She was likely an existence in the Seventh Section second only to the Story King.
Ye Sheng turned off his phone, afraid Ning Weichen would underestimate the enemy, and reminded him coldly.
“Ning Weichen, the Ghost Mother is a heretic between A-rank and S-rank. Be careful.”
Ning Weichen stopped, suddenly turned around, and pressed his cold index finger against Ye Sheng’s lips.
Ye Sheng frowned.
Ning Weichen said faintly in his ear, “Shh, don’t speak yet.”
Ye Sheng was slightly stunned, but soon understood what he meant.
Because he heard a gentle and soft female voice coming from the office at the end of the corridor.
The lights were still on in the radio station building on the 24th floor.
Stepping out of the elevator, there was a long, dark corridor. The light ahead flickered, making the silent floor incredibly eerie.
Even more eerie was the voice heard countless times on the car radio.
Late at night, the radio host hadn’t got off work yet. Her enunciation was round and clear, her voice smiling, sweet to the point of being somewhat “cloying”.
[Good evening, everyone. Welcome back to our program.]
[Just now, after Xiao Zui finished telling that story about school violence, many friends in the audience were very indignant. Some kind listeners even called Xiao Zui to ask about the current situation of that boy. A listener friend works at the Huaicheng Education Bureau and said they could help the boy with transfer procedures.]
[Thank you all for your kindness, but our protagonist doesn’t need it anymore.]
[Because, this story happened a hundred years ago.]
Inside the radio broadcast room, a tall woman in a white dress sat on the central chair.
Pale golden long hair cascaded down from the chair, covering the corpses lying in disorder on the floor.
[Xiao Zui also saw it in an old book.]
She leaned down, her fingers, pale to the point of being green and spotted, gripped the speech script, while her other hand choked the microphone. Her bright red lips looked as if they had drunk human blood, gorgeously eerie.
Hera looked sorrowful and said with regret, “Sigh, what should Xiao Zui say? This story is truly regrettable.”
“The snobbish homeroom teacher turned a blind eye to the strangle marks; the hypocritical adults, in order to protect their own children, chose to feign deafness and dumbness. Children’s kindness is the purest, and their malice is also the purest. They punched and kicked the protagonist, spread rumors about him, and slandered him. Even the boy saved from the fire by the protagonist eventually raked him backwards.”
Her face was hidden in a cloud of black mist, her tone mournful and melancholy, full of twists and turns.
“Too pitiful.”
“If Xiao Zui were to write an ending for this story, every bad person should be punished—the teacher who pretended to be blind doesn’t deserve eyes; the adults who pretended to be deaf don’t deserve ears; those who raised their fists and feet against the weak don’t deserve hands and feet; and those who casually spread rumors and slander should have their tongues cut out.”
“As for that cowardly, confusing right and wrong, ungrateful little kid—his heart should be dug out.”
His heart should be dug out.
The female host’s voice suddenly turned cold, the hatred in her words making one’s hair stand on end and shudder without cold.
The air was filled with a thick, gloomy, damp, and foul smell of blood.
Ye Sheng walked step by step towards the broadcast room.
The female host seemed unaware of the approach of outsiders. Her hand, covered in corpse spots, gently turned another page of paper, her movements very skilled.
She lowered her head, lips close to the microphone, and said.
“Oh right, just now someone asked Xiao Zui on the phone. After the protagonist left school, where did he go? Did his father seek justice for him after he returned home?”
“Have you listener friends forgotten? The protagonist’s father was a gambler and a drunkard. After Xiao Qi returned home, not only did he not get comfort from his father, but he was also beaten by his father with a beer bottle for causing trouble.”
“The shattered beer bottle smashed a bloody hole in the back of Xiao Qi’s head. He ran to the balcony. Seeing he still dared to hide, Xiao Qi’s father grabbed a kitchen knife from the kitchen in a fit of rage and rushed over.”
“The drunken man had no reason. The kitchen knife chopped vertically towards Xiao Qi’s face. Xiao Qi hugged his head and shrank at the edge of the balcony. But the man walked unsteadily. When he exerted force, he lost his footing and fell drunkenly from the fifth floor, dying.”
Before saying the word “dying”, the female host paused strangely and adjusted her tone. Her fingers turned another page. She leaned forward, revealing a section of her neck. Strangely, her neck was not slender; on the contrary, it was a bit thick, with a rolling Adam’s apple on it.
The female host said: “Xiao Qi lay on the railing, poked his head out, and looked at his biological father lying in a pool of blood. That was the first time he knew that death was such a thing. For him, it seemed not bad. Because of his father’s death, he came alive.”
“Xiao Qi returned to the empty home. The TV in the living room was still playing cartoons. He was covered in blood, standing woodenly in place. After the ding-dong singing, the Black Cat Sheriff on TV rode out on his motorcycle again, punishing evil and promoting good. The Black Cat Sheriff annihilated the hamsters, captured the monkey-eating eagle, and caught the elephant, hippo, and wild boar that stole red soil. Every bad guy in the forest got their deserved end.”
“If only there were such heroes in reality. Xiao Qi thought.”
“If only my city had such a hero. He would be the city’s protector, able to see all truths clearly.”
“Those who are blind, who spread rumors, who feign deafness and dumbness, who raise fists and feet, will all die.”
Xiao Qi opened his schoolbag. He squatted on the ground and picked up a pencil and paper.
“He couldn’t take revenge on those people.”
“So he wrote a story for himself. The protagonist of the story is a doctor who saves lives and heals the wounded during the day, and a killer who punishes evil and promotes good at night.”
“And Xiao Qi named him—Urban Nightwalker.”
In childhood, the story written with blood and tears hid a boy’s most ignorant hatred and deepest sadness.
At that time, his life was ruined by a group of bad people; at that time, he learned for the first time that death could be a good thing.
He was in the darkest vortex, longing for a hero to descend from the sky, prove his innocence, and punish all the wicked.
But that hero was destined to exist only in imagination. Until he grew up, until he died, he never appeared.
But it didn’t matter.
Many years later, the little boy who had long become the Lord of Urban Grotesque returned to Huaicheng. He looked down on the human world from high above, using the entire city as a background, restoring the story about heroes from his childhood with new grotesques.
When Ye Sheng and Ning Weichen pushed the door and entered.
Click. The female host just turned off the microphone.
The broadcast room was silent, the faint blue light of the computer keyboard screen illuminating the entire room. The cold light illuminated the woman’s face. She sat on the chair, her posture upright.
The shadow reflected on the wall, however, looked like a great mountain.
That great mountain was formed by a dense mass of ghost children.
“You are here.” The Ghost Mother looked up and laughed. Her voice was round and gentle, yet a bit blurry and crazy.
Only when getting closer did one realize that the Ghost Mother’s voice sounded like both a man and a woman, as if hermaphroditic.
Her arms were placed on the table, white as lilies. Golden hair and white dress, holy as a goddess in a mural.
And the moment Hera raised her head, Ye Sheng confirmed the guess in his heart.
This was a fused face.
Or rather, two souls lived in one body.
—Doctor Liang lent his body to the Ghost Mother to parasitize!
A delicate and small woman’s face forcibly surged out from under Doctor Liang’s skin, revealing its contours. The facial features of men and women are very different, so looking closely, whether it was eyes, nose, or mouth on Hera’s face, there were two of each.
One face, six organs, incredibly eerie and incredibly horrifying.
Possessing the identity of the Urban Nightwalker and walking in the human world was Liang Xu; but the one controlling the ghost children to kill was the Ghost Mother.
The A+ rank heretic of the Seventh Section of the forum was different from those resentment-filled heretics of the past. She was holy and flawless, sitting cleanly in the broadcast room full of dead people, still in the mood to introduce herself to Ye Sheng and Ning Weichen.
“Hi, hello everyone, I am Hera.”
Hera laughed and waved her hand. The overlapping and disordered facial features twisted, appearing strange and absurd.
Her voice, however, was very soft.
“Actually, I really wanted to meet you sooner. After all, your lives are wanted by those three adults in the forum’s restricted area, the reward must be very tempting.” She licked her lips: “But the story hasn’t reached its end, it’s not time for your appearance yet, I could only wait patiently.”
Hera extended a finger.
Soon, a group of dark ghost children surged out from the wall. The ghost children giggled and moved two chairs to the front.
Hera sat with a gentle and elegant posture, laughing softly: “Sit. Do you like the story of ‘Urban Nightwalker’?”
“While conducting this story, Huaicheng isolated all nasty things; they couldn’t get in. This city only has people, the difference lies only in living people and dead people. This is a story happening among us humans, possessing compassion, justice, heroism, and kindness and sympathy of people for people that those monsters will never understand.”
Ye Sheng was noncommittal, looking at this woman who claimed to be “human” and separated herself from monsters, feeling only absurdity and irony.
Ning Weichen pulled out a chair with his fingers, turned his head and smiled at Ye Sheng: “Brother, sit.”
Ye Sheng: “…”
He looked at Ning Weichen with a look that said ‘are you crazy’.
But Ning Weichen had already sat down elegantly, hooked his lips in a smile at him, dashing and charming, as if sitting at an ordinary negotiation table. Ye Sheng played with the bullet between his fingers, lowered his eyes, and also sat down with a cold expression.
Hera looked at these two people before her who showed no fear and were calm and unhurried, her lips twitching sarcastically.
She continued to speak slowly.
“The wider the story spreads, the more emotions are harvested.”
“Hero stories can always make us ordinary people tear up.”
“Grateful, excited, surprised, thrilled, curious, fearful.”
“But for a story to be immortal, it must add a touch of tragedy.”
Hera said.
“Blindness, deafness, loss of voice, loss of footing, loss of hand. The end of ‘Urban Nightwalker’ still lacks a person who lost their heart.”
“I heard you are a couple.”
Hera laughed.
“How about this, I’ll give you a chance to get out alive. If either of you can dig out a heart beating for your lover for me, I’ll let the other one go, how about it?”