Chapter 125#

Going Home#

“I sense the energy—”

The delight hadn’t finished crossing its face before terror replaced it. This was not the energy it wanted.

This was the breath of the man who had brought it nightmares. The one who had destroyed its countless realms.

He had just reached the school gate when Secretary Liu called to say Xu Chenzhu had left work early and was coming to collect him. He waited at the gate for a while, heard nothing, and called himself.

The signal took a few seconds to connect. He walked and waited, stepping out of the main gate and turning left — the main entrance didn’t allow cars to stop.

It rang only a few times before the call connected.

“Zhaozhao.”

The voice was slightly distorted, the signal poor, undercut with static.

“Secretary Liu said you were coming to get me?” He walked unhurriedly. “I’ve already asked for leave this afternoon — come to the left of the main gate, by the plane-tree avenue, and pick me up there.”

“All right.” He cast a sideways glance at the Main God, now without its borrowed human shell. “There’s a small problem on my end. I’ll be there as soon as it’s handled.”

“Sure—” He stopped walking. He had stopped moving entirely.

Beneath the plane trees: a car reduced to scrap metal, another with its bumper knocked sideways. A figure in a monster costume blocked the road ahead of Xu Chenzhu — dragging a filthy, ugly tail, eyes covering it everywhere. Revolting.

That revolting costume. He’d seen it somewhere.

A luxury vehicle collision, a thing in a monster suit standing over it — and not a single person stopping to look?

This was very strange.

“We are the same kind!” It sensed the killing intent and turned. The gap that had been behind it was gone. “Across countless spaces and planes, worlds are constantly dying and being rebuilt — but not every world generates divine beings.”

“If you spare me — I promise I will never invade your world again. And I will give you a third of all future energy I collect. No — half. I will give you half!” It retreated as he stepped forward. “I can swear on the law of consciousness!”

“Future energy.” His frown deepened. “You still intend to plunder other worlds?”

“The strong take from the weak. What is wrong with a god drawing energy from lesser worlds?”

“If there were nothing wrong with it, you wouldn’t have needed to send so-called players to clear instances and draw the energy through their hands.” His voice was contemptuous. “Thieves and bandits should not call themselves divine. You are nothing but a creature born from greed and villainy.”

“Who says a god must be good?!” It saw he wasn’t moved, and the eyes across its body snapped wide, tendrils curling upward. “You simply had better circumstances at birth — your world happened to generate civilization. But don’t forget: civilization means uncontrolled human beings, arrogant, faithless, ungrateful. If not for them, your world would never have produced something that protects humans at the cost of divine power.”

The worst of it was that the vitality born into the human world in answer to those humans was stronger than it was.

It hadn’t noticed the man’s existence at first — because no god tolerates their world producing a creature beyond their control. Only when the man disrupted its instance plots did it register.

The landslide that should have come — gone without trace. The school that should have become a pit of grieving spirits — flourishing. Every anchor point it had thrown into this world had failed.

“You despise the civilization humans created — and yet you want to steal the energy that same brilliant civilization gave rise to.” He frowned, raised his hand, and knocked it to the ground. “Enough noise. You’re wasting my time. I have a boyfriend to collect.”

“Do you know what your boyfriend is? Among all human beings, he is a rarity born once in a thousand years — vitality given form by the collective will of countless living things.” It rolled and tumbled across the ground. “He was born to be the enemy of gods!”

“You — a god — fell in love with the very being that could destroy you. I think you’ve lost your mind!”

You romantic fool, you’ve betrayed the divine order!

He counters you. Doesn’t that mean anything?

Thinking of its own severed tendrils, its closed instances — it hated him and feared him in equal measure.

Unfortunately its eloquence produced no slowing of pace. Another gust hit, and it was slammed down with nothing left to resist.

“Cough!” Every eye on its body turned blood-red, like tumors about to burst, searching frantically for a way to survive.

In the infinite space at that moment, the floor beneath the players’ feet began to shake violently — as if something was about to erupt.

[All players — instance opening in ten seconds. Prepare.]

A large photograph appeared on the player hall screen. A very beautiful young man.

[Kill this person. Successful completion earns either eternal life or return to the real world.]

Eternal life?

Home?

Every player in the hall stared at the screen with something blazing in their eyes.

“Isn’t that—” Tiger Ge stared.

Chao Musheng.

What was happening out there — why was the Main God mobilizing every player to kill Xiao Chao?

This much hatred — did Xiao Chao dig up the Main God’s ancestral graves?

[Countdown to instance opening: five, four, three…]

The countdown cut off.

Players looked at each other across the hall. After a long, dead silence, someone finally spoke. “Did your system just… crash?”

“Mine went silent.”

“Mine too.”

Everyone looked at the main screen. The photograph was gone. Every instance was gone. Only the black void of the display remained.

“Are we going into an instance or not?”

“How would we go in?”

“Where did the Main God and the system go?!”

Several players from the anti-Main God alliance quietly tucked their signal scrambler remotes into their pockets, out of sight.

High-intensity full-spectrum signal scramblers — items Xiao Juan had scrimped to buy and smuggled back into the infinite space. Worth every coin.

Er Qiang, You Jiu, and Qi Shi stood in a corner. No one knew that for all this time, they had been quietly planting wireless remote-control signal scramblers in every corner of the space.

“Our entire pool of instance rewards went into these things.” You Jiu said quietly to Qi Shi. “Do you think Xiao Juan and her golden thigh are going to win?”

“Yes.” He looked at the screen that could no longer function normally. “The Main God is this desperate — mobilizing every player to go after Chao Musheng. That means it has no moves left.”

“If the Main God dies — do you think we’ll be able to go back to our original worlds?”

“I don’t know.” He looked up. The light overhead was growing dimmer — as if in another moment everything here would go dark.

Rather than surviving, one instance at a time, indefinitely — he’d prefer to end with this space that had imprisoned so many people.

“Even if you kill me, you won’t come to a good end.” It rolled helplessly across the ground in circles. “One day you will be exactly where I am.”

Thud.

It hit the trunk of a plane tree and dropped heavily.

“Xu Chenzhu — years ago I could reduce you to half a life, and now even as I die I’ll curse you—”

A foot came down hard on its face, pressing its round form in deeply.

“Chao Musheng!” The blood-red eyes went still. Fury and hatred were replaced by terror.

“Zhaozhao?” He was alarmed, his face gone paper-white.

He’d heard it all — hadn’t he?

“Your small problem is this thing?” He kept his foot firmly in place. He looked down at it once and looked away with distaste. “I think I’ve seen you in my dreams quite a few times. You really do only have one tail.”

“That is my divine tendril!”

“Divine?” He pressed down harder. “Looking like a parasitic virus, and still calling yourself divine?”

He looked up at Xu Chenzhu.

He was different now. Eyes gold. An aura of controlled force that left no room for anything warm. Not a trace of the living about him.

“Do I look ugly?” It lay crushed underfoot, helpless as a mouse that had stopped struggling. “This is my perfect divine form!”

Who wore a human shell voluntarily — only that romantic fool.

“Xu Chenzhu.” He couldn’t be bothered with it. “What is this thing?”

“A thief that can’t abide daylight.” He walked toward him in long strides, and stopped two or three steps away with sudden uncertainty. “Zhaozhao—”

“I already heard what you were both saying.” The situation was so absurd that his steadiness surprised even himself. So that fortune-teller from years ago wasn’t lying. He really did have something to do with the divine.

“The worst thing you can do in a fight is waste time on unnecessary speeches.” He looked at the thing underfoot. “Though the stranger-looking the creature, the faster the sentencing tends to go — and this thing is definitely not a protected species, so killing it probably doesn’t constitute any legal violation.”

“You cannot kill me — if I die, countless people will die alongside me as tribute!”

“Xiao Chao!”

Curly Hair and Wan You came running. Her face was streaked with dust and sweat. “It has a lot of people under its control.”

“Right. So not only a thief — also a trafficker.” He turned to Wan You. “The god in your story — was it this thing?”

Wan You nodded blankly. Xiao Chao seemed almost too calm.

He looked at what was beneath his foot. So this is what the Main God looked like.

Ugly. Small. More pathetic than a sewer rat.

And because of this thing, every player in the infinite space had been torn from their families.

He couldn’t find words for what he felt. Everything tangled together until it came out as a single, terrible comprehension.

The Main God that every player had feared and exalted — was only this.

“It was born from the fear and greed accumulated across countless worlds,” he said. “As long as living creatures fear death and harbor desire, something like this can emerge again.”

“Future concerns can wait.” He turned back. “But you just said it injured you once before.”

He pressed down harder with his other foot. Several firm stamps.

“Knowing I counter you — and you still dared to hurt my boyfriend?”

“If it weren’t for him, how do you think I’d be weak enough for you to step on?” It tried once more to sever its tail for escape — but he was standing on its body.

“Him hurting a trafficker like you — that’s called doing a public service.” He noticed Curly Hair staring at it with barely-contained fury, and waved her over. “Hit it as much as you like. Don’t hold back on my account.”

She launched herself across the distance, raised the shovel, and brought it down with everything she had.

She had wanted to do this for a very long time.

“Why are you standing there?” He waved Xu Chenzhu over. His foot was occupied and he couldn’t move easily.

“Zhaozhao.” He didn’t know what Chao Musheng thought of him now. He extended his hand with hesitation.

“Your hand is so cold.” He closed both hands around the icy fingers. His other hand touched gently at the corner of his eye. “Does it hurt?”

He already knew who the god in the story was.

“It doesn’t hurt.” His eyelids moved. The gold faded slowly from his eyes, returning to their usual warm amber.

“Your collar got a bit wrinkled.” A light laugh. He straightened it. “Before we go home tonight, let’s stop at the supermarket by the compound gate — my dad forgot to buy drinks.”

“Zhaozhao!” His eyes came alive. “You’re still taking me home to meet your parents?”

“Who else would I take?” Their fingers interlaced. “There’s still a lot I don’t fully understand — but you can tell me over time.”

“Yes.” The wound on his hand had already vanished. He cupped Chao Musheng’s hand carefully and pressed it against his own chest. “The thief had one thing wrong. You’re not my enemy — you are the salvation that appeared in my endless years. Because of you, I love the living creatures of this world.”

If Zhaozhao’s destined fate was to be the bane of gods — so be it. He accepted it gladly.

Zhaozhao was born from love and hope, and so he loved this world.

“Who would believe anything a trafficker says?”

He touched something beneath his hand — a heart that was beating for him.

Wan You huddled in the corner, shaking slightly.

Xiao Juan, smashing the Main God with a shovel. Xiao Chao, standing on the Main God while talking about love without any change in expression. And one helpless him.

“It’s not dead yet?” He looked down. The eyes on the virus-ball were still moving.

“Ordinary people probably can’t kill it.” She held out the shovel. “Xiao Chao — want to try?”

“Oh, I couldn’t. I really dislike violence.” He tapped the virus-ball on the head several times with the shovel. Half of it caved in.

It didn’t even manage a plea for mercy.

“Is it dead?” Wan You couldn’t believe it was this simple.

“Standard narrative convention says the villain at this point is very likely to be playing dead.” He lifted his foot. The next moment every compound eye opened, and it used its last tendril as a sacrifice to force a spatial passage open.

“It’s running!”

It ignored every shred of its dignity, hurled its round body toward the opening—

He raised his hand. The gap sealed.

Curly Hair and Wan You exhaled.

Good thing Mr. Xu, despite being a romantic, doesn’t lose his head at the critical moment.

“Let me go!” It lay on the ground, voice cracking. “I truly won’t—”

“Villains die of talking too much.” He brought the shovel down across its mouth. “If I was born with the fate of countering gods — then the only god I counter is you.”

“As long as I am here — you cannot live.”

The wind rose around them. Everything seemed to go still in the wake of that sentence.

The Main God, still thrashing a moment before, appeared to be suddenly desiccated. Its body contracted rapidly, distorting, until there was nothing left but a dried, mildewed scrap of skin.

“The player space!” Her expression changed completely. “The Main God is dead — what happens to the infinite space’s players?”

“When a trafficker dies, the people the trafficker took should return to their own worlds.” He felt as though he’d stumbled into an absurd myth.

“Is — is that right?” She stood stunned. Then why was she still here?

She spun to face Wan You. “Can you still reach those service workers?”

He dialed.

“The number you have dialed is not in service.”

“Not in service…”

The phone numbers of the female players stranded in this world had become empty numbers.

But he and she were still here.

“Xiao Chao — did you always suspect something about where I come from?” She looked at him quietly.

That was why, no matter how many times she changed jobs, he never questioned or pressed.

He smiled. “You know — lately I keep running into people who like to stare at something above other people’s heads. As if there are words written on top of us.”

“Xiao Chao…”

“Come find me tomorrow if you have questions — I have something more important to do right now.”

“What?” She was still a little dazed. Reducing the Main God to a dried skin wasn’t the important thing?

“Bringing my boyfriend home to meet my parents.” He ground the crumpled skin into fragments under his foot. “Fate and gods — all of that can wait until tomorrow.”

He took out a plastic bag and swept the fragments into it.

“Right now — I’m going home with my boyfriend.”

She and Wan You looked at Xu Chenzhu. His eyes held only Chao Musheng.

For the players, this had been everything.

But this was Xiao Chao’s world. The most important things were always going to be his family, his love, the world he loved.

The sun was moving west. His mother and father kept going to the door to look.

From the kitchen, the smell of chicken broth drifted through the apartment. The dog from downstairs had come up again to eat and lounge, lying in the doorway working through a piece of chicken breast while his tail swung contentedly.

“Mum! Dad!”

His voice in the corridor, bright and easy.

“I brought my boyfriend home — is dinner ready?!”

Husband and wife turned together. Their son and Xu Chenzhu, hand in hand, walking toward them.

The evening light came through the corridor window and lay gold on them both.