by Feng Yue
At the back of the crowd were a few figures clad in black robes. Aether rippled wildly around them, as if a music score was brewing within it. They stared coldly at the cornered dark musician, hiding in the safest spot to search for his weak points and wait for the fatal kill. There were more than a hundred guards, sixteen crossbows and four musicians.
Ye Qingxuan did not even need to think about it to know that he was in deep trouble. But gazing at all those cold faces, there was no fear in Ye Qingxuan’s eyes. There was only coldness and pity.
As if their roles had been switched, the high and mighty judge gazed down coldly from the clouds and asked quietly, “Have you ever repented for your sins?” The hoarse voice spread in the silence, wrapping around everyone’s ears as if it came from their hearts.
In an instant, they all felt as if they were hallucinating. They stared at the figure in shock.
They saw Ye Qingxuan slowly raise his arm and slam the cane down by his feet!
Thud! The plaintive melody sounded!
It was a melody filled with wildness and hopelessness, as if one had fallen into the abyss of despair. The sharp and broken melody shot forward like nails, resounding between the walls.
A roar sounded out of thin air. It was the surging black river!
The thousands of long perception threads around Ye Qingxuan’s body suddenly shook and moved like a living object. They covered the entire ward; passed through the layers of obstacles; wove past the ventilators, bars and cracks; and finally pierced into the sleeping minds.
Then, the hopeless melody played! The melody of judgement transformed into a black river surging from thin air. It followed the perception threads and rushed into the muddled souls.
Like a spark landing in a withered forest, it lit up the fallen leaves, the dried branches, a dead tree, and then a second tree, a third, a fourth…until finally, the entire black forest was bathed in wildfire!
Beside Ye Qingxuan, a dazed man behind the railing shook and grabbed his head, crying out painfully. Cries burst from the layers of bars like a chorus. The sleeping souls were shocked awake, the wooden eyes began trembling and the blank features began twisting.
They were writhing in pain from the horror, tortured by despair, and pulled from sleep by the furious melody. Shards of memories appeared before their eyes without permission. Yes, they were remembering, remembering…Remember what those people did to you. Remember the pain and despair you have felt. Remember the fury and wildness sleeping in the deepest part of your soul! Even their nerves were lit on fire by this wild melody.
Behind the railing, the prisoners shook uncontrollably, drowning in their past nightmares. They screamed and cried, or roared in anger! The memories and pain broken and sleeping in their minds were awakened and surged into Ye Qingxuan’s mind along the perception threads. All of it entered the thundering black river.
The river trembled and changed once again. Now, countless pained faces appeared in the river. The dark memories that formed the water had never been so clear before. It was the river where all hopeless memories converged. At this moment, it was almost solid and flowed beside Ye Qingxuan. With one more step, it would be able to resonate with the Originator and become real!
In that instant, Ye Qingxuan saw the pain, fury, and the hopelessness in their hearts…it was so similar to his own hopelessness from before—the fury of being held onto the surgery table and having his future path cut off!
Bang! Inside the cage, a frail man buried his head in his hands and howled, ramming against the wall painfully. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands scratched mindlessly. They cut through the steel bars and left deep gashes in the walls and ground. The souls caught in nightmares had awakened and were now roaring in anger! Their eyes were blood-red.
In the blink of an eye, the musicians in the crowd suddenly realized what was going on and their faces turned pale. “Kill him! Kill him! He’s resonating with the mutants…”
“Too late.” Ye Qingxuan sneered and raised his hand under the angry stares from behind the bars. “Next, you will repent for your sins!”
Bang! A deformed and bloated woman crashed through the bars and broke free. The gills behind her ears shook and she let out a shrill noise. The sound was solid like an ax and it spread, slicing everything in its path into pieces. Beside her, the guards were swept into the scream before they could react and shattered instantly.
Then, roars came from all directions. The empty eyes within the cages rose again. Tangible fury and wildness filled those eyes! The 312 mutants suddenly broke free from the cages and began devouring the uniformed guards. Even if they had lost their memories, they still remembered the hatred that was engraved in their hearts. They still remembered the appearances of those people, the disdainful eyes and the menacing smiles.
A mutant covered in bone material crashed against the cage and rushed into the crowd through an opening of the arrows and axes. He opened his mouth full of sharp teeth and closed it around someone’s throat, rolling on the ground. The beastly nature implanted into them had awoken along with the anger and they knew how to kill without being taught.
Clang! Clang! Clang! The sound of bars shattering rang continuously. The wild experiments charged toward the defenseless guards under the guide of the dark melody, and exacted revenge for the pain and despair they had suffered!
Sirens, bone primates, blood demons, hyenas…the mutants with inhumane body parts wailed and threw themselves onto the enemies. They did not care about their own lives. They attacked as if they wanted to die with the enemy. In an instant, the white lights were covered with a layer of blood-red. The tearing and shattering of meat and bone sounded continuously. This was a feast of revenge!
Under Ye Qingxuan’s command, these mindless mutants converged into a tide of people. They extinguished the screaming and fleeing enemy, swarming upon them and venting their hatred!
In the end, the bloody room was in ruins and there was no longer any noise. Silence had returned.
Ye Qingxuan stood in the puddle of blood. The crazed beasts turned around and stared at the only one standing in the blood that was still alive. They stared at the pair of dark eyes. Finally, they lowered their wild faces and fell, kneeling before him. They accepted the melody in the black river and the guidance from deep within their souls.
“Welcome to the black parade.” In the puddle, Ye Qingxuan looked down and studied the figures kneeling before him. Gazing at the subdued beasts, he quietly assured, “I promise, this will be your night of revenge!”
163 Do Not Struggle
The stillness and tranquility was destroyed in the blink of an eye. Arkham Asylum was thrown into chaos and madness. Sirens rang from every corner. Fire was everywhere. Frantic patients rushed out of the cages like a tidal wave into this bloody and dark building.
The pungent smell of disinfectant could not conceal the smell of blood. As the unrest spread, one could hear the screams and cries from every corner. In the corridor, the terrified doctors and nurses fled, but countless figures broke through the cages and pounced on them, tearing them into shreds.
Candles were knocked over by someone and fell onto the ground. The fire spread wildly as clothes were ignited and people ran in fear. It first came to the corpse warehouse, then the patient ward in B1, and then the laboratory and special research area in B2. Quickly, dozens of the mutants sleeping in petri dishes also went out of control. Those who were close to completion suddenly transformed into demons and went mad. They furiously killed the researchers, leaving blood all over the ground.
In the chaos, someone opened the black door of the warehouse to escape. As a result, he was torn into shreds by the group of bone primates pacing outside the door. Then, those demons raised outside rushed into the asylum too, spreading quickly with the chaos. As the sirens rang, the vengeful spirits hunted frantically for every living thing that had ever been involved in their transformation. Blood was shed wherever they went.
Amidst the chaos, a fleeting
figure was three stories below ground in the guarded library. He leafed through the files and quietly looted this treasure cove. Here were all of Arkham Asylum’s records, including notes on transforming patients into demons, all reports of clinical observations, drugs use records and distribution methods, as well as the transformation skills left by those dark musicians. As he searched, he pocketed all of the the achievements that the parliament had worked so hard on.
Finally, the figure stopped. He had found the most critical file at last and carefully put it in his pocket like it was a treasure. Now, he had accomplished more than half of his goals. The man known as Lord Moriarty laughed hoarsely and walked out.
Quickly, he noticed the chaos outside and the screams from all directions. After reading a dead man’s memory, he learned of the reason behind all this. He fell into silence.
“No wonder he is Holmes, the Vengeful Spirit,” he sighed with shock and pity. “What a shame that I didn’t kill you at the first time I saw you.”
He did not stay any longer. Like an invisible spirit, he walked through the wards and corridors of unrest and entered deeper into the darkness. There, the aether was rippling wildly. The blood sacrifice was reaching its climax!
-
“B1 is completely out of control!”
“The sixth lab is unresponsive!”
“Sir, the imprisoned mutants broke through the gates and ran into the second operating room …”
“The Black Gate was breached! Holmes is going to reach the central security room! We can’t stop him anymore!”
“Mad! Everyone’s gone mad!” a crazed man yelled. “They’re all dead! Dead!”
“Somebody get him out of here!” Alberto roared angrily, but his eyes were blank and panicking. What was going on? How did this happen? How did everything go out of control?
“Where are our musicians? Where did they go?!” Alberto had forgotten all the deaths that had been reported. He screamed, “Where is Yellow Foot? Isn’t he in the third lab? Where is he now? Make him deal with these d*mn pieces of trash!”
“Sir, Sir…” A man stumbled in, fear written all over his face. “We don’t have any more time. Someone’s going to break in…”
Alberto’s scream stopped abruptly as if he was choked. He had never felt a fear this close. He could almost hear the approaching footsteps through the door.
“Drop the gate! Seal the hallway…” He clung to the guard tightly, screaming like a madman, “Why are you standing here? Go, go, go!” The man pressed the button on the wall under his instructions. The door shook as a loud noise sounded outside the hall. The gate fell, sealing off the only exit and isolating him from the outside world.
Alberto would never let himself fall into a hopeless situation. A man who planned for the future must always have an escape plan. Including now. There were many luxurious offices and rooms in the asylum, but he had picked this one room because there was an escape route!
“Come on, hurry up, hurry…” He urged his men to push his wheelchair faster past the secret door, forging into the darkness along the icy damp walls.
At times like this, he could no longer worry about Lorenzo, who was commanding at the front line. Anyway, Lorenzo still had two brothers who would be much more successful than Lorenzo after they matured.
As they escaped quickly, he heaved violently with fear, but he could not help but smile happily. But soon his smile froze. At the end of the passage, at the only exit, stood a burly figure that almost took up the entire passage. The figure seemed to have waited for a long time here. When it noticed Alberto approaching, the broken horse mask revealed a ferocious smile.
“The Butch…Butcher?” Alberto yelped and shook his head, “No, it’s impossible, Yellow Foot should have…”
“Yellow Foot?” The butcher sneered and tossed down a spherical thing. “Are you talking about that dark musician?”
Alberto lowered his head dully, and looked at what the Butcher was holding in his arms—an insect-like head with six compound eyes. It felt heavy, like holding an iron ball. No flesh could be seen. But one could vaguely see the original distorted features on that broken face.
“I’ve never met such a weak dark musician.” In the flickering firelight, the Butcher’s charred bones could be seen. He twisted his neck, producing cracking sounds. His chest had decayed, revealing white bones. A large heart beat firmly behind the white ribs. Caged by the ribs, an inhuman purple-black heart slowly opened an eye. It glanced at Alberto coldly and then shut again, as if there was nothing interesting. It went back to sleep.
That man behind Alberto could not stand the strange stare. He broke down and ran away, screaming. The next second, he was pierced through by a giant bone saw, lifted up and nailed high up on the wall.
“You’re next.” The butcher walked forward.
Alberto screamed and hurriedly spun the wheelchair backward, trying to escape. But the wheelchair overturned in the chaos. He fell down onto the ground, and quickly climbed up again, crawling backwards with both his hands and feet. Under the terrifying shadow of death, he moved quickly. Like a worm writhing on the ground, he tried to escape back the way he came.
The butcher followed behind him. When he passed the corpse he had crucified, he pulled the bone-saw out and put it behind him. He tried to slow his pace down, but he still caught up with Alberto when the old man reached his supposed safe house.
It was still so quiet and peaceful here. Pinewood burned in the fireplace, exuding a fragrance that calmed the mind. But when Alberto fled here, he stopped, not for recalling this warmth, but bout of despair. The only exit in the room had been sealed as per his order. He cried out in despair. Crawling all over, he tried to hide from the huge figure, but he was pinned to the ground by the butcher’s foot.
He blubbered nonsense, like “I still have a family,” like “I can give you a lot of money,” like “the Shaman’s era has passed, come with me to the parliament, you’re so strong, you’ll definitely get a higher position than me.” Or, recalling the past, he asked the Butcher, “Don’t you remember me? I hired you before, we worked together so well before…”
“Do not struggle,” the Butcher interrupted him.
“What?” Alberto froze.
“I said, do not struggle,” the Butcher said softly. “It annoys me and it’s useless.” He picked Alberto up with one hand and gripped the frail neck, his fingers tightening slowly. His voice was cold and calm. “My employer said that since you’re a part of downtown, he wants me to try and leave you a whole body. So, you can’t die in a faster way. I’m really sorry.”
“Sh…Shaman…” Alberto squeezed the last syllable from his throat painfully. He clawed the Butcher’s hands and mask, struggling in the slow process of suffocation. His eyes closed slowly, his body twitched and finally stopped.
But the Butcher still stayed in his position. One second, two seconds, three seconds passed… The still body suddenly began twitching and the tightly closed eyes flew open in fury, glaring at the killer before him viciously. He used his last strength to kick him.
In the end, his face turned purple. After a violent twitch, his body stiffened completely. After the long ordeal and planning, death finally came. That was vicious even in death, the eyes reflected the burning flames outside the window. He was the first one.
164 Many Acts of Unrighteousness
The Ganlu Courtyard of downtown was brightly lit. In the past, this place was suffused with the smell of spices and hookah, and filled with the laughter of girls. It was elegant and opulent, and enthusiastic servants bustled around every corner. Red sleeves and white veils floated in the fragrant air. It was like paradise on Earth.
But now, there was no more paradise, and no more spices and hookah. The girls were all hiding in their rooms; the red sleeves and white veils burned in flames.
There was fire and armed thugs everywhere. The angry men in turbans rushed in from the broken door. Like a tidal wave, they surrounded the man, gripped their weap
ons and waited in formation.
One person. The enemy was only one person.
Attracting the gazes of all the thugs, Ghosthand took out the pipe in his mouth. “Is Silo here?”
A sympathetic sigh came from the back of the crowd. Among layers of guards, Silo gazed at him, his eyes turning regretful. Ghosthand had truly become old. When he first came to Avalon as a young man, everyone said that Ghosthand was the best assassin. No one in history could top him, and his skills were unique to the world. Everyone he had his eye on would die. He was almighty.
But then he took a job he should not have taken, touched something he should not have touched, and broke the Shaman’s rules. His hand was personally chopped off by the Shaman. Ghosthand did not accomplish much after his hand was chopped off.
Even though the hand was put back later, the broken bones could never fuse together and he became the Shaman’s dog…Not only had he aged after all these years, but had he lost his skills and techniques too?
“Why are you sighing?” Ghosthand heard his voice and laughed. Lifting his head, he studied the hawkish eyes in the back of the crowd. “Silo, I’m here to take your life but shouldn’t you be happy that two old friends like us are meeting?”
“Shouldn’t sneaky things like you be coming in in the dark?” Silo asked coldly. “Did you think that I’d give myself to you obediently after you said you’d come and find me?”
“I’m sorry, but you misunderstood.” Ghosthand smiled and shook his head. Snuffing his pipe, he put it back into his pocket. His voice grew gentle. “I was a killer before, that is true. But I was never good at sneaking and secret kills. I’ve never done any work that required lurking and patience. You can say that I’m completely unskilled at that—” He paused, taking off the glove on his right hand. “—Because I like to enter from the front door.”
Six covered buckles on his black leather glove opened as he moved. With each opened buckle, a leather strap tied around his hand would snap up. Snap, snap, snap, snap…