Chapter 165 Fear Tax
The messengers are still walking in the sand.
Ye Xing and Luo Hun had just left the sand vortex and walked to the bottom of the sea. Wherever they went, the fog gradually faded, and the tall figure of the squire emerged from the mist.
"Old man." Ye Xing and Luo Hun saluted.
"Tell Vansalar a message for me," the old man said gently, "that the gift it longed for has appeared."
"Yes." "With great pleasure."
The old man gave each of them a candy and left happily. The two messengers said goodbye to the old man and walked through the foggy passage to another entrance to the underwater valley. The docile monsters were already waiting there, each of them trembling.
Ye Xing, holding his single-edged sword, stepped aside. The tall, burly Luo Hun stepped forward, scanning each person with a mechanical, cold gaze. He was dressed in solemn black, holding a book, like a pagan priest.
"Wanderers of the Mist, it's time to collect taxes," it said. "Is there anyone here who dares to defy Lord Vansalar?"
Silence.
No one spoke, not even the slightest movement. Everyone stood still, their hearts drenched in numbness.
Luohun looked at each person one by one and raised his voice.
"Lord Vansalar died long ago. Resurrected on the borders of this Heavenly Prison, it is but a reflection of its former god, a mere 'reverse image' of a particle 2.
The same goes for us messengers. No matter how great we were back then, now only low-quality residue remains. Did you hear that?
He nodded silently. Still no sound came out. He just hurriedly nodded and shook his head, as if he were a dog afraid of angering its owner.
"Then let me ask again. Is there anyone here who dares to resist Lord Vansalar?"
The monsters fell silent. Afraid of the messenger's gaze, they lowered their heads... looking at the white sand that buried them ankle-deep...
Luohun took out a brass knuckle shaped like an animal's claw and slowly put it on himself, wrapping it tightly with a bandage. He walked into the silent crowd and came to the only conspicuous outlier among them: Wufka, who had just made a wish. Wufka's face was pale, but he didn't say a word.
"Did you make a wish?" Luohun asked.
Wufka nodded shakily.
He grabbed Wufka's head with one hand and pushed it down hard, then slammed his right knee into the poor man's face. The impact shattered the bones in his face, and Wufka's features were almost reduced to a pile of rotten flesh.
But Luohun didn't stop. He raised his knee and slammed into Wufka again, as if to smash the poor man's head in, mercilessly inflicting violence. A second time. A third time. The man's face was shattered into a mass of flesh and blood. Then he slammed Wufka into the sand, where the disfigured man twitched.
"What about now?" Luohun asked, "Is there still no one who wants to resist? Is there not even one person left with the courage?"
"there is none left……"
The disfigured man lay in the pit, panting like a dog.
"No more...Mr. Envoy...
We have already lost... given up... we... accept it!"
Tormented by nightmares year after year, day and night without rest, pain has long become a part of their lives. The pain of a simple beating, no matter how deep or painful, is bearable. Even more devastating than the physical pain is the emotional humiliation. But having been reduced to this state, no matter how humiliating, what can be done?
Instead, they hoped that the messengers would become even angrier and more excited. If they impulsively killed someone, that would be a good thing. They could finally die!
So, Wulfka did nothing. He knew no one else would act either. He knew even more clearly that he still had a wish for a good dream. Even if it lasted only one night, even if the nightmare would gnaw at him again tomorrow, it was still a hope worth waiting for. Such a tiny hope was enough to make one endure immense humiliation.
"Okay then." Luo Hun returned to his indifferent look. He took out the small book he carried with him and turned to the last page.
“Taxation starts now…”
His next words made Wolfka, who was lying in a pool of blood, tremble all over.
"The person who needs to pay taxes this month is Wolfka!"
The dying man suddenly rose to his feet. The monsters offered him no sympathetic glances; most of them closed their eyes, unable to bear the sight of what was to come. Wufka knelt on the ground, clutching at Luohun's trouser legs, his voice a laugh, his fear so intense it made him laugh.
“Please…” Wolfka stammered incoherently, “I just made a wish! Lord Fallen Soul! Please!!”
"History that has already happened will not be changed by your pleas. Even if I remain silent at this moment, what was supposed to happen has already concluded." Between Luohun's fingers, the book's title appeared: "Requiem Revelation." It read out the words on the page, word for word, like a death sentence, reciting the "history" recorded by the hands of the heretic of death.
"Through this field investigation, we have officially confirmed the origins of the Allied soldier Wolfka, Dust Island, and the entire process of the demise of the 'Lenna Kingdom'.
Your hometown officially perished 481 years ago!"
Wolfka raised his head suddenly. "You're lying! The Allies saved my hometown. I saw it with my own eyes! The Allies dispelled the fog you created!"
Luohun did not react to his actions or words, but simply recited the past mercilessly.
"The cause of the death of the Kingdom of Lunnar was the contamination of the outside world caused by the passage of the natural disaster, the Wrathful Demon. The local Bone Prayer monks had issued warnings beforehand, but the people chose death on their own."
"Your nation was fortunate. It wasn't captured by the Rainbow Evil for its evil experiments, nor did it encounter the evil god like you did... It simply lost itself to the erosion of the light poison, devouring each other, dissolving in the process of self-destruction, and becoming a huge pile of torch corpses."
"That glowing corpse, formed from the lives of an entire kingdom, still wanders among the Dust Isles. It has already turned 270 Dust Isles into dead places, known as 'Lenna's Corpse Mountain.' So, there's no need to be too sentimental; at least your country hasn't been forgotten."
Wolfka's nails dug into his flesh, and he covered his bloody head and howled.
A heart-wrenching howl.
For those who have long since fallen into the fog, unable to return to the shadows of reality, their greatest attachment is to their hometown. Unable to hear news from the outside world, they imagine it existing peacefully. With no news of their former friends and family, they imagine them living out their lives in peace.
But this fantasy would always be cruelly shattered. The messengers would reveal the truth, causing the people in the fog to suffer utterly. With this premise in place, taxation could officially begin.
Luohun had no intention of stopping. He read calmly amidst his miserable wails, delivering the cruel truth to everyone's ears.
"Now begin the reading of the death of Allied soldier Wolfka and his wife and daughter."
"In the four years since Wolfka joined the Allied Forces, his wife and daughter have frequently argued with the townspeople, defending their husband's image and thus becoming unwelcome. After the outbreak of the glowworm tide, the two followed the crowd to the port, but were unable to secure a ticket to leave the island, missing the last escape ship and becoming trapped in the Kingdom of Renner. Meanwhile, glowworms swarmed the port, and the crowd erupted in commotion. His wife, in her attempt to protect their daughter, was injured by the trampling, becoming incapacitated and the first to be devoured by the glowworms. His daughter..."
“Stop talking!!!”
Large tears, mixed with blood, fell onto the sand. The man's wails were no longer human. A fallen soul gazed down at the weeping figure. With pity, or perhaps contempt, he offered words of comfort.
"There's no need to be so sad," Luohun said indifferently, "Even if you hadn't joined the Allied Forces and stayed in the Kingdom, what was going to happen would still have happened... Your wife and daughter would have died the same way. This is fate."
"——I told you to shut up!!!"
Wufka howled, scrambling to his feet and charging frantically at the messenger. The disparity in strength between the two was too great. His fingers broke, bones shattered, and his desperate charge left him shattered. Yet he continued to howl, pounding the heretic messenger with his bony hands. He cared nothing more, not about life or death, not about pain or damnation. He simply wanted to kill these heartless heretics, he sought only the destruction of these Scourge lackeys!
But that pitiful power only added a bit of blood color to Luohun's black clothes. Luohun pulled a dark sphere from the book, grabbed Wufka with one hand, and pressed the sphere against the man's chest.
"Indeed, I don't need to explain any more." Luohun said calmly, "This is drawn from the past, the feelings of your wife and daughter before they died. You can use your soul to personally experience their death and their fear."
“This is the tax you have to pay!”
Wolfka was held in one hand like a rag doll, tears and blood dripping from the fingers of the fallen soul. The ball of fear touched his clothes and crashed into his heart. However, the ball stopped before the clothes, because the other hand clamped the fallen soul's wrist tightly.
He looked down and saw a fist with bulging veins. The punch directly penetrated his face, sending the messenger of fear flying!
A flicker ignited in Luohun's eyes, a light of utter brilliance, as brilliant as the sun's fire. The flames pierced the fog, slashing through the stunned monsters, transforming into a sharp sword that slashed through the sky. Watching from the sidelines, Ye Xing struck with one hand, his blade dim as the night, neutralizing the Pure Fire Sword with just the right amount of force.
Luohun landed on the ground, wiping the blood from his lips. He saw the source of the hostility: the blonde woman carrying the flaming sword, and the man protecting Wolfka.
"This is a place where cowards gather. Extinguish your sword immediately." Luohun declared, "According to the rules of the Nightmare City, those who have lost their courage must not light the flame!"
Chu Hengkong set the severely injured man down, letting the Pure Fire heal his wounds. He stood before the messenger, not retreating a single step, like a steel sword unsheathed.
"This rule is abolished from today!"
(End of this chapter)
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