Monsters roared, and humans shrieked.
Blood and brain matter splattered everywhere.
Dusk Island had fallen into utter chaos.
Amidst this hellish scene, Yue Shi stood at a street corner, cradling the snow leopard in his arms. Within a three-meter radius around him, there was absolute silence.
No monsters approached him, no rioters attacked him, and not even a single drop of blood stained his clothes.
He stood there quietly, as if he were in another world.
About ten paces ahead of him, there was another pocket of silence.
A woman stood there.
To be precise, she was a girl who appeared to be in the prime of her youth.
She wore a well-tailored qipao with a warm white base and embroidered large red peonies, making her skin look even whiter than snow.
She held a small folding fan, covering her face and revealing only her eyes.
How should one describe those eyes?
Like a spring pool, yet concealing sharp blades. In the shifting of her gaze, charm and innocence intertwined, accompanied by an indefinable sense of mockery.
Her beauty transcended human limits.
But when Yue Shi looked at her, the corners of his mouth tightened slightly.
Because in his eyes, she wasn't a glamorous girl.
She was... a monstrous thing.
Bloated and greyish-white, like a corpse that had been submerged in water for too long.
Her skin was loose and sagging, piled up in layers, covered with countless tiny, writhing holes. It seemed as if something were peering out from within them.
The monster had no fixed form, appearing human one moment and not the next. In place of limbs, unspeakable organs protruded.
And that delicate folding fan, in Yue Shi's eyes, was a segment of a tentacle still dripping with slime.
The two sides stared at each other.
Hell raged around them, but they stood in their respective silences.
The scene was somewhat reminiscent of a romance drama, but unfortunately, the two protagonists were not deceived by beautiful appearances; they saw directly into each other's essence.
A few seconds later, the girl spoke first.
She lowered her folding fan slightly, revealing a glamorous face. Her voice was pleasant and soft.
“My, my... Dusk Island is on the verge of destruction, and I'm sure you have everything to do with it, don't you?”
Yue Shi blinked and put on an innocent expression, his voice matching his look.
“I'm just an ordinary tourist. How can you slander an innocent man like that?”
The girl smiled, a beautiful sight.
But what Yue Shi saw on that bloated face were countless holes opening simultaneously.
The girl lightly twirled the fan in her hand. “While Dusk Island was originally somewhat chaotic, with many conflicts between different sects and groups, it shouldn't have escalated to this point.”
“It was only after you arrived that all their malice reached a massive breaking point.”
Yue Shi looked down and stroked the snow leopard's fur.
The snow leopard squinted its eyes comfortably, ignoring the surrounding chaos.
Yue Shi didn't look up, maintaining his indifferent demeanor.
“If you're going to slander me like that, I don't know what to say. I'm truly defenseless against such accusations...”
The girl burst into a giggle and waved her hand, the fan drawing an arc in the air.
“It doesn't matter. If you don't want to admit it, don't. Anyway, I often refuse to take credit for the bad things I do, too.”
As she spoke, she turned her head to look into the distance.
Yue Shi followed her gaze.
It was the rooftop of a distant skyscraper. The distance was great, but to them, it was nothing.
A man was standing on the rooftop.
Kraken.
He was staring intently in their direction, his brow furrowed and his expression solemn.
The girl retracted her gaze and looked back at Yue Shi.
“Have you already noticed that there's something wrong with that guy?”
Yue Shi didn't answer but asked instead, “What exactly is this island used for?”
The girl blinked, her expression sly. “First, withdraw the influence you've exerted on this island. Come with me, and I can tell you all about it.”
Yue Shi remained silent, his fingers gently stroking the snow leopard's back. The ∞ symbol flickered in his eyes as if he were weighing his options.
A few seconds later, he nodded.
“Alright.”
The two figures vanished simultaneously, as if they had never existed.
...
Kraken was still standing on the rooftop, motionless.
Just now, he had seen that mysterious long-haired man. He suspected the chaos on the island was related to him.
He had also seen the girl with the folding fan who had suddenly appeared.
They stood on the street, so beautiful they didn't seem human.
What were they saying?
Kraken couldn't hear them.
He only saw the long-haired man pet the snow leopard, the girl wave her fan, and then, after looking at each other, they vanished.
Together.
Kraken froze, then looked around frantically.
Nothing.
They were nowhere to be found.
“Who on earth are they?” Kraken's brow was furrowed deeply enough to crush a fly.
He didn't know who the girl was, nor did he know what role the long-haired man played in this chaos.
But one thing he understood very quickly.
Shortly after those two disappeared, the rifts in the sky began to heal slowly.
The monsters that were still pouring out of the cracks suddenly stopped. They hovered in mid-air, looking around in confusion.
Then they began to fly back, drawn by some force, returning the way they came.
Swarms of monsters folded their wings and crawled back into the shrinking rifts.
The monsters by the shore also stopped their ascent. They turned and walked back into the sea, vanishing beneath the waves.
The half-human, half-snake monsters glanced at the island with their vertical pupils, then dug holes and vanished underground.
On the streets, the mutated resurrected corpses collapsed one after another, gradually reverting to human form.
Some family members were still alive, shivering in corners.
They saw their resurrected loved ones turn into monsters... then back into humans, not knowing whether to cry or be relieved.
The rioters had long since fled or died.
After experiencing a period of frantic chaos, Dusk Island suddenly fell silent.
Only the corpses lying in pools of blood proved that everything that had just happened wasn't a nightmare.
Seeing all this, Kraken began to understand something.
The chaos had subsided once those two disappeared.
Rate on N.U.
