Chapter 152-I Clean Up Garbage in a Wasteland World
Chapter 152 Kill the VIP (VII)
Lu family basement.
Liu Niannian's entire body was submerged. She suddenly began thrashing violently, barely able to keep the breathing device in her mouth. A burst of bubbles surged through the water.
The Mechanical Butler stood beside the bathtub, watching her with concern. Data analysis indicated that Liu Niannian was in trouble.
Now the Mechanical Butler faced a decision: should she remove Liu Niannian's Chip?
Liu Niannian was too deeply immersed. The neural link had gone too deep. If she was forced back now, she could save her life—but she might also lose her mind permanently and become a vegetable.
The Mechanical Butler should wait until Liu Niannian was less immersed and her emotional state had stabilized before acting.
The question was—could she afford to wait?
......
Liu Niannian had already raised the knife in her hand.
The thin, sharp fruit knife was aimed at her own forehead. Just like in the hallucination—open the skull, scoop out the brain, leave it for those things.
After that, she wouldn't have to face it anymore. Just one thrust and the pain would end.
She felt someone wrench the knife from her hand and grab her wrist. It must have been Zhu Ning or Xu Meng.
But the perception was disjointed. You knew someone was stopping you. Your reason was stopping you. Yet you wanted to snap your own arm off if that's what it took to hollow out your brain.
Her fingernails had already dug into her forehead. Blood welled up. Human willpower was a staggering thing—when you were determined to do something, you didn't need a knife.
She felt a sharp, searing pain across her forehead.
......
Xu Meng had sensed something was wrong the instant the chanting began. She tried to block out the surrounding sounds but found it nearly impossible.
Her leg was in agony.
Her pant leg was shredded. A ten-centimeter gash ran across her calf, and something inside was pulsing, trying to get out.
Fish eggs had crusted over the wound, mingling with blood. Her calf was packed with them—dense, countless fish eggs.
The ones that fell to the floor kept wriggling, then sprouted tiny human heads—like newborn infants.
Human-Headed Fish.
Inside Bao Ruiming's Consciousness Cloud, everything operated in an endless cycle. Outsiders who wandered onto the island became hosts for the Human-Headed Fish.
This was a food chain.
Xu Meng breathed deeply, telling herself it was only contamination—she was fighting it off. But then she heard someone calling her.
"Captain."
Threaded through the chanting, two syllables—low, familiar. Cheng Mofei's voice. Captain.
Xu Meng froze in place. She turned slowly and saw a Snail-Human crouched at the church entrance. A massive snail shell sat on his back, complete with spiral patterns.
Cheng Mofei's handsome face was bloated and swollen from being soaked in slime. He could no longer stand upright like a human, so he could only drag himself forward.
"Captain," Cheng Mofei said as he inched toward her. "Save me."
Xu Meng instinctively stepped back. She knew it was a hallucination but couldn't resist it. She'd once asked Zhu Ning what Cheng Mofei had looked like in the end. Now she was seeing it for herself.
The most terrifying thing wasn't encountering a monster, or death itself. It was encountering a dead comrade who had become a monster.
And being completely helpless. Even wanting to flee.
"Captain?" Someone called from behind her.
Xu Meng whipped around—pure reflex—and a knife was already slicing through the air.
"Captain!" Zhu Ning dodged sideways. The blade grazed her neck. Zhu Ning shouted: "Xu Meng!"
Xu Meng heard Zhu Ning's voice and reason flooded back instantly. She turned again—Cheng Mofei's face was gone. Standing before her was Zhu Ning.
The hand holding the knife was trembling. She had nearly killed her own teammate.
Xu Meng had been contaminated.
Clang— Xu Meng dropped the knife. The first rule when suffering Psychic Contamination was to stay away from weapons. A clouded mind made friendly fire all too easy—she'd nearly struck just now.
Xu Meng had more experience. She took deep breaths, steadying herself. Compared to her, Liu Niannian was the greater concern.
"Liu Niannian?"
Liu Niannian's contamination was the worst. Zhu Ning tried to pin her hands down, surprised by how strong she was.
Xu Meng had already snapped back. She helped Zhu Ning restrain Liu Niannian's arms. As a veteran Demon Hunter, she had her own protocols for situations like this.
Unfortunately, this wasn't the real world. They couldn't inject a Sanity Healer. Liu Niannian would have to tough it out on willpower alone.
This was something every Demon Hunter faced—recovering their reason through repeated bouts of Psychic Contamination, forging their willpower in the process.
What Liu Niannian needed right now was guidance.
After pinning Liu Niannian, Xu Meng caught Cheng Mofei's voice again in the chanting. She fought to ignore it. The chanting was growing louder.
Xu Meng bit down on the tip of her tongue. Blood and pain could bring a moment of clarity. She said to Zhu Ning: "Leave her to me. Go kill the source."
Though this was the Consciousness Cloud, this place behaved like a Contamination Zone.
To stop the contamination, they had to destroy its source.
Zhu Ning had the highest sanity. Unlike Xu Meng, she wasn't wounded. She was the least affected by the Psychic Contamination—the most suitable one to act.
The red-robed, peaked-hood Congregants around them continued their chanting in unison, having long since surrendered their brains to the false god. They were nothing but chanting puppets now.
The chanting wouldn't stop. Kill one Congregant and another would take its place. As long as they could still produce sound—even headless—they would keep singing.
Now it wasn't just Liu Niannian who wanted to claw out her own brain. Zhu Ning felt it too—for the first time, her brain felt unbearably heavy, like dead weight.
Hearing Xu Meng's words, Zhu Ning picked up the knife from the ground. The first rule of Psychic Contamination was to stay away from weapons—a compromised mind made self-harm and friendly fire too easy. Xu Meng had almost struck moments ago.
Zhu Ning was deeply disoriented. She even had to expend effort not to turn on her own teammates.
Her vision was blurring. The floor beneath her feet seemed to shift. The change in her eyes was becoming more pronounced.
She felt something swimming inside her body—her eye sockets crowded, as if the fish eggs in her brain were trying to squeeze out through her eyes.
Her vision darkened. She instinctively touched her eye and felt a single fish egg.
The egg landed on her palm and immediately began to hatch, becoming a Human-Headed Fish with an infant's face.
Babies were supposed to be adorable. This one had been twisted into something profoundly horrifying. Slime still clung to its face—like a newborn still wet with amniotic fluid—and it instantly opened its mouth to gnaw on Zhu Ning's finger.
In that moment, Zhu Ning had the strangest sensation—as if this fish were something she'd given birth to. She should be responsible for it.
Whatever it wanted, she should give. Flesh and blood, or her very life.
The Human-Headed Fish opened wide. A newborn, wrinkled and small, without a single tooth.
Squelch—
Its gaping mouth froze mid-motion. Zhu Ning squeezed, and it burst in her hand.
Her palm was coated in slime. She couldn't be bothered to care. The fish eggs that had been thrashing inside her body suddenly went very still—perhaps having witnessed what happened to their kin.
Zhu Ning gripped the knife. She felt drunk—the floor swaying before her eyes. If this went on any longer, she'd succumb to Psychic Contamination too.
Oppressive pressure saturated the air, seeping into every pore.
The Idol would dredge up your deepest fears and pain. Liu Niannian and Xu Meng had both seen the inside of their own hearts.
Zhu Ning would see hers too.
What was Zhu Ning most afraid of? That her memories were fake? That Zhu Yao didn't exist? The end of the world?
She thought she was prepared. When she actually saw it, it was still a surprise.
Congregants lined both sides. The corridor was narrow and long. A single figure stood in it.
She looked exactly like Zhu Ning. Black trench coat. Rain-damp. Collar turned up. Expression cold.
A shard of metal was embedded in her abdomen. Blood dripped steadily.
The most terrifying, most painful thing inside Zhu Ning's heart was... herself?
It wasn't Prometheus guiding her forward. It was another Zhu Ning.
The other her knew the entire truth—like a demigod.
The current Zhu Ning might not possess a tenth of her power. If this other self guided her toward death, she might actually die.
Zhu Ning walked forward, step by step, until she stood face to face with the black-coated Zhu Ning. Up close, she could make out more details.
The face was identical. The woman from the graduation photo. The woman who'd made the donation.
Two Zhu Nings had met inside Bao Ruiming's Consciousness Cloud—in a grotesque church, surrounded by crimson-robed Congregants.
They faced each other. One in a black trench coat, one in a black raincoat.
They'd never been this close before—close enough to kill each other at any moment.
Zhu Ning tightened her grip on the knife. She moved.
The Congregants watched in unison, anticipating her next action. Would she attack herself? Would she scream accusations?
But nothing happened. Zhu Ning simply shifted her feet—and walked past her.
As though the other Zhu Ning were a tree, a stone, a block of data.
Zhu Ning brushed past the phantom of herself and left it standing there.
No need to dwell on it. That was just a hallucination born of Psychic Contamination. This was merely one person's Consciousness Cloud.
No matter how bizarre it got, she never lost sight of that fact. This was Bao Ruiming's consciousness. Zhu Ning's objective had always been clear.
She gritted her teeth so hard she felt the string in her brain pulled taut—like a rubber band stretched to its limit, ready to snap at any second.
Zhu Ning pressed forward.
A mere twenty meters, yet it felt like a lifetime. By the end, her face was deathly pale, her entire body drenched in cold sweat.
The Idol stood before her. She stood beneath it—a new Congregant gazing up at the god on high.
Strangely, standing at the foot of the Idol brought a wave of calm—as though a deity had come to shelter her, inviting her to lay down every burden.
Why did humanity build temples? Why did they paint the divine in such exquisite detail? Why did they place gods above all else?
Until humans seemed so small before them—so fragile and pitiful, as if a single finger could crush them.
Zhu Ning had been to churches and temples alike. The expression on a god's face was always subtle—looking down at you, yet with an air of compassion.
She had seen it in Desolate Village. That time, it was in passing. Afterward, she'd only watched it repeatedly on video.
This was the first time she'd gazed at it at length. Even though it wasn't a real god—just a string of code fabricated inside Bao Ruiming's Consciousness Cloud.
Even in a virtual world, it basked in worship. In the dead of night, its devotees came to offer the highest praise.
Every outsider who wandered onto the island would pass by. They'd be drawn in by the unspeakable force within, then willingly surrender their brains to join the Congregants.
This was the perfect world Bao Ruiming had crafted.
Zhu Ning raised the knife.
In the vast church, crimson-robed Congregants stood packed together. At the center rose a pure-white Idol. Beneath it stood a woman in a black raincoat, still dripping with water.
She raised the knife.
The crowd reacted. The nearest Congregants tried to stop her. In their fiery red robes, so uniform they'd become a single entity—they surged toward Zhu Ning like a red tide.
A knife blade was thin and brittle compared to stone. Nobody would use a knife to hack at rock.
But here, everything was data. The knife was data. Zhu Ning herself was nothing more than data.
Screeeeech—!
The blade met the Idol in a shower of sparks. The piercing sound rang through the church—so shrill it was like a needle driven into every skull.
In that instant, Zhu Ning felt as though someone had slammed a hammer into her brain—or hurled her into a frozen winter lake. A flash of absolute clarity.
This wasn't a real god. Just data.
Her open eyes streamed with data. She, too, was data.
Zhu Ning dropped the knife. Using her own body as a weapon, she threw herself into the Idol.
The massive statue swayed, then toppled to the right under the Congregants' astonished gaze—its falling form casting an enormous shadow over everyone below.
BOOM—
The white Idol struck the ground with a thunderous crash, shattering into countless fragments. Carried by momentum, Zhu Ning fell with it.
The surrounding Congregants froze. The chanting ceased in an instant. They simply couldn't process what had happened.
Shattered.
The man-made Idol—shattered.
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