MCL CH123

Chapter 123: “I’ve come to take you back.”…
 

Chaotic figures poured endlessly into the United Administration headquarters building. Yan Xingzhou watched the familiar scene appear before him for the umpteenth time, allowing the thick smoke and dust to cover him.

Passersby screamed and ran amidst the gunfire. The defense department, with terrified faces, set up a cordon around the building. Protective barriers erected by ability users surrounded him layer by layer, with only the distant shouting and arguments continuing.

“You must give us an explanation today!”

“They’re crazy! Are the people from the Ninth Administration completely insane? What on earth are you planning to do!”

“It’s a rebellion! A full-on rebellion! With the Executor dead, you’ve all become so lawless?”

“Yan Xingzhou, do you even know what you’re doing!?”

Amidst the jumble of voices, an emotionless voice sounded: “Of course I know.”

Yan Xingzhou instantly recognized it as his own voice. As it fell into his ears, it stirred up memories of the past, which began to tumble chaotically.

More voices began to sound from near and far, like mockery, like curses, like laughter. They rose and fell, layer upon layer, as if constructing countless different voids. But when they fell into his ears, they sounded so real.

It was as if he had returned to that day. The feeling of cold despair was so clear and distinct. With every passing second, Yan Xingzhou could clearly feel the cells throughout his body being torn and screamed at by an invisible force. His body’s instinct was far more repulsed by accepting the cruel reality than his reason.

The few words conveying Lin Xi’s death were short and cold, but they were enough to snap the last string of his sanity.

A dream. For countless nights, it was the first time he had so earnestly hoped that the world he was in was the dream he had woven. At least, there would always be a day he could break free and wake up.

“Yan Xingzhou, face reality. No matter what you do, the Executor is not coming back.”

“I never thought you’d have such a disheveled and失态 day.”

“Regarding Lin Xi, we are also very sorry… But please, mourn and move on…”

The whispers around him grew closer and closer. Yan Xingzhou could even feel the laughter right next to his ear.

On his pale face, his brow furrowed tightly. Although he tried hard to resist the interference of those voices, his thoughts began to spread uncontrollably.

He couldn’t help but think of the nightmare that had trapped him for years, that obituary notice he would rather deceive himself into numbness than accept.

And all this, at this moment, had become a cycle he could not escape. He could only repeat the experience of that time over and over, feeling the despair he once had countless times.

The surrounding scenes began to become more distorted. The United Administration building also became hollow and blurry.

Under Yan Xingzhou’s gradually chaotic consciousness, the ability of “Concretization” further blurred the line between reality and illusion. Countless images were erected and shattered around him. His breathing gradually became difficult. This world, refracted from his thoughts with him at its center, was teetering on the verge of collapse at any moment.

Sometimes, human power is just so insignificant. No matter how one tries to salvage it, one can never break through life and death.

Amidst a huge explosion, the glass walls of the United Administration building shattered with a roar. The scattered fragments seemed to weave a sacred fine rain.

Yan Xingzhou was surrounded by a group of ability users. His lowered eyes seemed to be surging with a rampant storm, his unfocused gaze falling on the gun in his hand. He slowly reached out and gently pulled the trigger.

The most painful past suppressed in his heart was magnified countless times by the chaotic emotions in an instant. This feeling of extreme despair was more than enough to drag anyone into hell.

The last trace of Yan Xingzhou’s sanity was finally completely worn away in his desperate resistance.

Yes, everything was already futile.

Since that person could not come back, it would be better to let all these people who schemed against him—accompany him in death.

Only such a thought appeared in his mind, which was completely unable to think.

If I can’t have it, I might as well destroy it all.

Actually, this is good too, isn’t it?

But… I always feel that person wouldn’t be happy because I did such things.

Yan Xingzhou’s breathing became more rapid. Intense pain surged from deep within his body. He could feel every cell in his body being gradually torn apart by a powerful force.

All his organs, like his consciousness, were being gradually extracted from his body. Covered in a cold sweat, what followed was a bone-chilling cold. Layers of sweat soaked his entire body in an instant. The strong sense of being torn apart made him slowly collapse to the ground, trembling uncontrollably.

In that instant, he seemed to touch death.

He couldn’t control the hand holding the gun, and even less could he control the fear that almost engulfed him after that loss. This was the first time he had felt this feeling of complete separation of spirit and flesh, as if he were being completely torn into irreparable fragments, making him forever cycle through that nightmare he never dared to face.

In his chaotic vision, there were almost no complete images left. Everything he tried to touch turned completely into nothingness. This was supposed to be the concrete world he had created, the clearest display of his consciousness, yet it had completely exiled him from this world.

Unable to touch, unable to see the future, even his hearing was gradually fading…

Yan Xingzhou’s chest heaved violently with his rapid breathing.

Can’t save him.

From beginning to end, he couldn’t save him, nor could he save himself.

He couldn’t save anyone.

Countless supernatural tentacles burst forth. Cracks appeared without warning in this bizarre world, constantly spreading throughout the surroundings, on the verge of complete fragmentation—

Suddenly, a voice sounded in this gradually collapsing world: “I told you to rest well at home, and this is how you rest?”

At the end of his vision, sheets of flame rose.

A figure, bathed in the dancing flames, passed through the fragmented world without hesitation, walking step by step, firmly, to Yan Xingzhou’s side.

Yan Xingzhou, sensing something, looked up and saw himself reflected in those bewitching, strange-colored pupils.

The surrounding flames were as wantonly arrogant and overbearing as in his memory. At this moment, they seemed to directly disperse the surrounding void-like gloom, shining straight into his suppressed and broken world.

Yan Xingzhou’s chaotic eyes narrowed slightly. He saw the person just stand there and look down for a moment, then slowly squat down in front of him, open his arms, and gently hold him in an embrace. A sigh fell from his ear, so soft it was like a murmur to oneself: “But you’ve successfully made me feel regret. Perhaps the moment I came back, I should have come to find you first.”

The moment their bodies touched, the entire world seemed to fall silent in an instant.

Through their thin clothes, they could clearly feel each other’s existence, and in the breath between their noses, only the scent of the other.

Lin Xi’s arm wrapped around Yan Xingzhou’s neck. He could clearly feel Yan Xingzhou’s body trembling uncontrollably due to physiological instinct. His whole body was ice-cold, and his supernatural tentacles were still uncontrollably venting. And at this moment, all he could do was continuously kiss the side of the man’s ear, releasing his contamination radiation to envelop him, thereby comforting him.

“Being trapped by past events is not like you, Yan Xingzhou.”

Under Lin Xi’s continuous kisses, he could feel the trembling of Yan Xingzhou’s body gradually calming down. He didn’t stop his actions. Attracted by such powerful supernatural energy fluctuations, his voice also tightened a little. “And now I’m here, and everything has passed. As for you, if you really lose control completely here, I don’t mind doing something to make you regret it even more…”

The scorching flames isolated an independent space in the illusory world. Even the sound of the wind seemed to be completely blocked outside.

In the silence, the dense contamination radiation and supernatural energy fluctuations continued to merge, comforting each other, and gradually, they intertwined.

The invisible agitation, with the passage of time, also seemed to gradually subside.

The illusory world gradually stopped collapsing, and the clamor gradually returned to tranquility.

In the chaotic flow of time, no one knew how much time had actually passed until Yan Xingzhou’s breathing finally calmed down a bit.

His dazed vision finally found focus. When he looked at Lin Xi and spoke, his voice was so hoarse it was almost difficult to distinguish the pronunciation: “You… did you come here specifically to threaten me?”

“No, I’ve come to take you back.”

Lin Xi caught the gradually returning sanity in Yan Xingzhou’s eyes and blinked slowly. “And I don’t think this is called a threat.”

“But I feel that right now is already enough to make me regret.”

Yan Xingzhou’s gaze lingered for a long time on this completely inhuman face. He slowly raised his hand, his fingertips carefully tracing the edge of Lin Xi’s eye socket. “Take me back, but what about you? Like this… can you still go back?”

“As long as you can go back, other problems don’t matter.”

Lin Xi took Yan Xingzhou’s hand and brought it to his mouth, biting it without ceremony. “Actually, I never told you either. Even if I hadn’t come here, my contamination value couldn’t have been hidden for much longer. So on the point of hiding things from each other, we’re 1 to 1, we’re even. But after we get out, the bill for rushing here without considering the consequences still needs to be settled.”

At this point, Lin Xi paused slightly, not hiding the look of craving from Yan Xingzhou at all.

He licked a trace of blood from the corner of his mouth where he had bitten and kissed Yan Xingzhou deeply on the lips. “Of course, these are all things for later. The most important thing right now is—to help you properly control those damn supernatural energy fluctuations.”

After all, the surrounding environment was simply too tempting for a contaminant.

Tempting enough to want to commit a crime.

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