Chapter 161#
The Hunt 12#
The tiered audience seating encircled the entire stage in a ring, each person seated in their own spot with roughly half an arm’s length of space between them.
To eliminate them one by one in this configuration, even ten Gatling guns wouldn’t be enough.
Furthermore, the department store salesclerk had already proven one thing: NPCs had unusual constitutions — enormous strength, capable of sustaining injuries but feeling no pain. Unless a critical part was destroyed, they would not lose their combat ability.
For example, a gunshot to the leg would cause a normal person to lose the ability to walk under the intense pain — but an NPC could continue walking as though nothing had happened.
However, if the entire leg were severed, an NPC would no longer be able to move.
Windsor looked down at the audience below: “If it’s only a single heavy machine gun, it doesn’t seem like it’ll be enough. Ah, Miss Sheena, why didn’t you bring a bomb?”
Sheena smiled faintly. “I’m not very strong — I can’t throw far. It would be terribly embarrassing if I ended up blowing myself up.”
Just as they were speaking, the monkey-jumping-through-fire-rings performance officially came to an end. Enormous curtains rose at the edges of the stage, blocking the audience’s view inside. But from their elevated position, the group could still catch glimpses of the activity behind the curtain.
Circus workers rapidly assembled layer upon layer of circular iron scaffold platforms across the massive stage. The lowest tier was the largest — extraordinarily wide — with each successive tier smaller than the last, every level standing over two people tall. There were seventeen tiers in total.
The final result: the silhouette of the iron scaffold resembled a birthday cake magnified countless times over.
The fire hoops from the previous act had not been removed. They surrounded the stage on all sides, flames blazing fiercely around the birthday cake structure, as though someone might burst into a birthday song at any moment.
Yu Feichen looked at the iron scaffold — one glance was enough to tell it could hold a great many people — and felt the circus had made a very sensible choice.
“Drive all the audience members there,” he said.
Sheena nodded in agreement.
— Sweeping through them one by one would waste both time and bullets, and she couldn’t aim well anyway. Of course it was better to herd them together first, then kill them all at once.
As for how to kill them — everyone here looked completely unworried, which meant they must already have a plan.
Bai Song: “I have blond hair. I can attract the NPCs.”
Sheena: “I have green eyes.”
Beside them, the Goddess of Fate lowered her gaze gently and said, “I am young.”
The three hunting criteria of the City of Mist — and just like that, they had collected all three with ease.
Murphy asked Sheena, “What about Aga? She’s not here?”
“Haven’t seen Aga here in all these days. I tried signaling her on the blackboard to arrange a meeting — she said she was busy.” Sheena sighed. “Though she should have blond hair too. Goes to show what happens when all three of our faces were designed by that painter. When I get back I’m going to the ninth floor and scatter his paints everywhere.”
As everyone knew, compared to Murphy — who painted god-knows-what ugly things — the Painter was a true artist in every sense of the word. He had followed the Main God to the Eternal Day solely for the sake of his art. The Main God was the Painter’s source of inspiration.
As a result, the faces the Painter personally crafted carried just a touch of the divine — like her green eyes, Aga’s blond hair, and Fate’s youth.
The Painter — nothing but a living target-generator for the City of Mist. Sheena ground her teeth and turned her gaze back downward.
On stage, the circus workers moved quickly and had already begun fitting the scaffold with an outer shell.
The scaffold’s previously unremarkable appearance changed almost instantaneously.
A skin of deep black as the base color, with dark umber patterns, fitted seamlessly over the frame. The patterns were abstract — ugly and sinister, like flames sprawling in all directions. The material of the shell was unknown, but from a distance it resembled an ancient, mysterious oil painting recording scenes from a forgotten age. What had been an iron scaffold was thus transformed into a tower-like structure steeped in religious iconography.
Each tier of the structure was fitted with different performance props: some tiers had surfaces of solid ice spread across the entire platform; others bore grotesquely shaped black iron torture instruments. The monkeys filed back onstage in a long queue, standing motionlessly on the first tier with blank expressions.
Once the setup was complete, the curtains slowly fell.
The enormous, visually overwhelming stage structure drew gasps of awe from the audience.
An enthusiastic announcer’s voice rang out: “Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the opera — Hell!!!”
The orchestra began to play. The background music opened with an eerie chord, gradually growing mysterious, vast, and sorrowful.
Yet beneath the mournful melody lurked a faint, simmering madness.
As though within layers of heavy fog, a meticulously planned upheaval was quietly taking shape.
The Duke of Windsor, who fancied himself a man of exquisite artistic taste, couldn’t help but let out a murmur of admiration, his fingers tapping lightly against the railing in time with the music — earning him a bewildered look from Bai Song.
On the other side, Anfei was also listening to the music.
His gaze drifted downward in a cool sweep — across the numbly cheering audience, landing on the sinister and bizarre circular tower. For the first time, a trace of melancholy surfaced in his perpetually cold expression, as though something had stirred within him.
Yu Feichen: “Did you remember something?”
Anfei had lost all his memories, yet he seemed capable of glimpsing something else entirely. How else to explain that phrase — the phantom of hatred.
“No,” Anfei said. “Only a feeling that things should not have come to this.”
“How should they have been?”
“This city is composed of the shadow of hatred and madness. Yet I feel there is another place in the world that resembles it — one that is stable, peaceful, and thriving.”
“Perhaps it is a scene from my memories.”
Down below, the performers entered to the music. There were over two hundred of them, each dressed in a white body-length robe and wearing identical long golden wigs. Their expressions were blank. As they filed in a long procession onto the stage, their white robes billowed and swayed — like a parade of ghosts from hell.
Yu Feichen caught the look in Anfei’s eyes.
“You find them disagreeable.”
Anfei stared coldly down at the scene below: “Everything that once hated me has lost its life.”
— Even the small mole, as compassionate as a teardrop, looked cold and indifferent now.
An indescribable emotion rose in Yu Feichen’s chest, making his heart thump once. He lowered his head, and his lips brushed lightly against the outer corner of Anfei’s right eye.
Like a dragonfly skimming the water — gone the instant it touched.
“If you make another unseemly move,” Anfei’s voice was cold as ice, “jump off from here.”
Yu Feichen: “The fall won’t kill me.”
Anfei gave up on him entirely and looked coldly away. But the wind on the high platform blew his silver hair toward Yu Feichen.
Yu Feichen’s gaze lingered on the gently curling ends of the silver strands.
For some reason, Anfei like this felt strangely familiar to him.
Accepting the positioning of himself as a possession — there was truly no difficulty in that at all.
On stage.
Once the last performer had taken their place beside the circular tower, a woman in magnificent costume descended on a wire, dressed as an angel. She spoke in a grand, aria-like voice:
“Travelers from afar — you have crossed dried and broken rivers, scaled crumbled mountains, and at last arrived at the edge of hell.”
“Here dwell demons who feast upon the living.”
“Here the most cruel punishments await those who have sinned.”
“But travelers from afar, I know your hearts hold not a trace of fear.”
“The gates of hell have been opened to you.”
“Climb to the pinnacle of hell, claim the only crown that awaits, and you shall receive all that you desire.”
“You may even ascend to the bright kingdom of heaven.”
“Travelers—”
The white-robed performers raised both arms high, answering her call.
The music surged into a sudden frenzy. All two hundred performers spun around at once and scrambled toward the first tier of the circular tower!
The surface was rough. They climbed on all fours, and from above they looked like countless pale spiders.
Soon, the first one made it up.
A monkey stationed on the first tier let out a sharp, bizarre cry — and then all the monkeys surged toward whoever had climbed up.
Two monkeys each seized one of the performer’s arms and ran in opposite directions. The person’s body was instantly torn in two from the middle.
Blood and flesh sprayed outward. The audience erupted in roaring cheers, the thunderous applause carrying three streets away.
Then the second person met the same fate.
The other performers seemed entirely unmoved, still scrambling over each other to climb upward.
As more and more reached the platform’s edge and engaged the monkeys in hand-to-hand combat, the monkeys’ numbers proved insufficient, and gaps began to appear in the defense. A few performers broke through and rushed toward the second tier.
The surface of the second tier was covered in sharp iron spikes — as thin as candle holders, reaching up to a person’s waist. They were not densely packed, but anyone who wished to cross would have to crawl over them.
The first performer to reach the second tier had their entire body pierced through by the spikes, sliding slowly down along them to lie flat against the surface.
The cheering grew louder.
Sheena looked away in disgust.
Meanwhile.
Bai Song, chosen as the lure to draw the audience together on account of his blond hair, had already been sent up onto the high-altitude wire. His wig had been removed, revealing a head of brilliantly blond hair.
Sheena said: “Go quickly — walk to the very center, let them all see you.”
Standing on the nearly invisible wire, Bai Song trembled. “I… if I fall…”
Murphy, expressionless, produced a deck of cards, drew one, and said to Bai Song: “You’ll be safe.”
Bai Song turned to Sheena: “Big sis, you’re a lure target too — can’t you walk with me?”
“Ah, well, you know,” Sheena said, “I’m more of a theory person — not exactly built for physical feats.”
If the Goddess of Wisdom was a deity who dealt only in theory with no practical skills, then the Goddess of Fate was surely the same. No one could accompany him on the wire.
Bai Song took a deep breath and made his way laboriously toward the center of the wire.
It was a good thing that dungeon-clearing with Brother Yu had come with physical enhancement rewards, and when the Eternal Night had forcibly opened, the Goddess of Strength had also done a charitable turn and gifted everyone a basic stat boost — he felt confident his life could continue.
Out on the surrounding streets, people had already begun to notice the strange goings-on high above the circus tent.
“What’s happening up there?”
“A live acrobatics performance?”
“It’s a blond one, folks — charge.”
“Go ahead if you want to be mowed down by a Gatling gun.”
“Heh, just kidding.”
Blond hair was a conspicuous presence. The moment Bai Song appeared in the air above the circus, every single audience member tilted their head back, hollow gazes locked rigidly on him.
Bai Song walked to the very center under that immense pressure.
Aside from the performers still scrambling furiously up the tower, every NPC had raised their head. Looking down from above — dense, packed, nothing but faces.
Bai Song was close to passing out.
Yet these NPCs only stared. There was no sign of any movement. They were not converging together to hunt Bai Song the way the group had planned.
Sheena swept her gaze across the crowd below, taking in every person’s posture and body language, and said: “Hunting someone standing this high would be very difficult. They’re hesitating about whether to act.”
Yu Feichen: “Send another one up.”
The Goddess of Wisdom and the Goddess of Fate exchanged a glance. The Goddess of Fate silently stepped onto the wire.
Sheena smiled pleasantly: “Though she may appear to be of the theory persuasion, she is actually very capable. Sorry — the blackboard has been a bad influence on my manner of speaking.”
The Goddess of Fate was seen cradling a brilliant crystal ball in her hands and murmuring something as if to herself.
“I walk here as though on level ground.”
— And then her steps truly became as steady as if she were walking on flat earth, unhurried and composed, as she came to stand beside Bai Song.
A blond target, a young target — both lures present.
The audience rose to their feet in unison. Then they stood where they were, still not moving.
There was no choice but to send another one up.
Sheena covered her eyes with her hands, daring only to look at the scene below through her peripheral vision. She shuffled forward step by tiny step, letting out alarmed yelps at every move.
Once across, she removed her witch’s hat, revealing olive-green eyes, and looked down.
The crowd of audience members surged with sudden agitation.
Savagery and fervor flooded their gazes. They reached their hands upward, grabbing at the air.
And yet — still no large-scale movement.
Sheena: “…Useless.”
Their combined lure was still not enough.
All at once, everyone’s gaze drifted slowly toward Anfei.
Only Bai Song watched their perfectly synchronized movement in confusion, and scratched his head.
Why was it that whenever things got difficult, everyone looked to Brother Anfei?
Could Anfei be some powerful divine official within the Tower of Creation? But the gossip going around in the Garden said that Brother Yu had sent something to the Dusk Shrine — which made Anfei an envoy or cleric from the Dusk Shrine, or something like that.
Gossip really does lead people astray!