Chapter 97 Patience and Deterrence (11)
Most babies' first cry to the world after opening their eyes is "Mama".
"MAMA" is almost the easiest sound for their immature vocal systems to produce.
A newborn baby babbling is somewhat adorable, but Shu Ningmiao only felt nauseous at this moment.
...According to the rules of human pregnancy, this thing should be considered to be born from Su Ni.
Looking at the bloodied man in front of her, with his flesh peeling off and staining red, she realized that the dense black lines on his body, resembling tattoos, were actually scabs formed from the glued-together flesh.
As Achini drew closer, Shu Ningmiao finally raised her hand and grabbed his neck. Her fingers dug into his flesh, creating a wound the size of a fingertip, which quickly healed when she released it.
"Aren't you going to do it?" He tilted his head, his bright red arm reaching out to touch her, and grinned in a chilling way: "Your eyes tell me you want to kill me."
She let go of his arm that was clinging to her: "If I just wanted you dead, you wouldn't be standing here."
The girl pushed him into the pool, crossed her arms, and looked down at him as he raised his face from the water.
A long, dark red dagger floated on the water's surface, mingling with the spreading blood, like a continuous, burning fire.
Shu Ningmiao's face was hidden in a faint blue halo, her voice cold and clear: "Because you will die sooner or later."
“Prometheus was just a rabble. Now, everyone knows that you are the one behind it all.”
She slowly leaned down to look at him, her voice low but her enunciation carrying a clear chill: "I don't know what method you used to build a shield outside the church, but as long as you use a large amount of Pandora, the energy inside the shield will leak out, and the military will find you soon. The reason you haven't made a move is because you're afraid."
If Achini had no reservations, he wouldn't have chosen to blow up the bridge to escape when facing the black-clad enforcers on that day.
Therefore, Shu Ningmiao was able to conclude that he was not invincible, nor was he 100% certain of victory.
“Hmm…you’re right. If we make a move, we won’t have time to talk here.” Achini knelt before her, his face showing no surprise. “But if you tell the people of Pigne my location now, I might die even faster. Why not?”
He repeated, "Why?"
Shu Ningmiao remained silent, and he didn't seem to care: "I haven't made a move because I'm waiting for you... You came here alone, weren't you also waiting for me?"
“I’ll answer anything.” The water was almost up to his chin, and he stared at her with his eyes wide open, making no attempt to hide his gaze: “Because this is the last hour… I’m so glad you came.”
"In one hour, I will burn all of Pandora underground, and everything on this planet will return to its original state."
wrong.
"Impossible." Shu Ningmiao gripped his shoulders, her mind racing. "You haven't taken away Eric's powers yet."
Erice had previously told her that she hadn't seen Achini during the days she had been missing since leaving school.
Sacrifice requires the sacrificed person to be willing, and the current Erice is no longer as foolish as before, willingly handing over her superpowers.
Erice isn't good at lying, so could it be that from the moment she was teleported from the school to the church, her ability 'purification' had already fallen into Achini's hands amidst the flames?
"Because... from the very beginning, I took away her abilities."
Achini placed his fingertips on his face, and the cut skin healed instantly: "Naive children are easily misled by the meaning of 'saving'. Did she tell you that? I told her that if she didn't want to help, my backup plan was you."
"There are some people in this world who are born with a special connection to the will of the world. In layman's terms, they are the darlings of the planet and the protagonists of the world."
Achini paused for a moment, not flinching at her murderous intent: "These people's abilities contain the 'string' of the world's laws. Only those with such abilities are qualified to truly change the world, like that poor girl, Erice—like you."
"She said you wouldn't agree, but she's willing to help me."
It's too late to say anything now.
Shu Ningmiao's eyes flickered slightly as she looked at him coldly: "Then what will this world become after you use 'purification'?"
She wasn't so naive as to think that the "purification" in Achini's hands was on the same level as the "purification" in Erici's hands.
“Look.” Achini didn’t answer her question directly. He picked up a small pool of Pandora stained with blood. The red mixed in was quickly enveloped and disappeared by the ball of light. “So-called purification is nothing more than returning to the origin. A handful of water, no matter how much filth it is stained with, will still be a handful of clean water once it returns to the origin.”
“Going back to the beginning, that’s what it means.” Achini spread his fingers, letting all the liquid drip through them: “Going back to the cleanest, spotless world, without Pandora, without pollution, and without disease.”
Where are they?
“Of course, there’s no one there either.” Achini’s voice was matter-of-fact: “Pandora has already driven humanity to the brink of despair. If left unchecked, everyone will be corrupted.”
He said something incomprehensible: "Everything will be better as long as there are no humans."
So this person, after going around in circles, will eventually realize the Prometheus stereotype joke popularized by Pines, turning the world into a primitive grassland without terminals, signals, or energy.
Facing Achini was like facing a naive yet cruel flame; all of this made her realize that human reasoning did not apply to the logic of monsters.
His shoulder joints cracked under Shu Ning's skillful hands, and a hint of bloodshot was visible only when she was very close to his eyes: "Are you sick?"
"Hurry up," Achini murmured, avoiding direct confrontation.
Even in the icy water, he could feel the burning heat of Shu Ningmiao's palms.
She was in very poor condition; no one can maintain a high level of energy after traveling for more than ten days.
He grinned, his smile wide: "The shielding barrier only lasts for an hour. The people of Pinne will find this place soon. Are you still going to waste your time?"
Shu Ningmiao stood in the water, not answering, and after a long while said, "Why do you call me mother?"
She still cared about that, as expected.
Before he could answer, she raised her head, and a dagger popped out from her other hand, the tip pressed against his neck: "Stop talking nonsense, I know you're not human."
“I was born because of you, I was ‘created’ because of you—understand it however you like.” His eyes followed her movements, looking somewhat pitiful and pleading. “You can think of me as a doll driven by Pandora.”
“My body is nothing more than a shell made of flesh and blood, but even a puppet needs someone to control it. A soulless shell cannot stand in front of you and speak.”
“You can define my essence as Pandora, or something else.” Achini leaned in happily: “But as a ‘human,’ I was born from your flesh and blood, so you are my mother.”
Shu Ningmiao often had her computer crash due to his surprising remarks.
Could it be that someone actually stole her genes to conduct some unethical experiment and created a child for her?
"Shh." He seemed to have guessed what Shu Ningmiao was going to say next, and gently put his index finger to his lips: "Don't rush to refute me. You know that part of my superpower comes from you."
He chuckled softly, twirling a small strand of hair floating on the water with his finger: "When you think about how we can both steal other people's abilities, haven't you ever felt strange?"
“There’s no one else in this church.” Archini narrowed his eyes. “Erigie and Suni, who do you think set up the shielding barrier?”
“It’s you.” Shu Ningmiao interrupted him.
“Yes, it’s me.” He reached out and grabbed the hem of her clothes. “The people in Prometheus are very useful. They are weak, but their superpowers are not weak.”
Shu Ningmiao's brows were furrowed, and in the quiet cave, only her breathing could be heard.
No wonder Prometheus left at the base with only a few scattered and easily defeated superhumans. These superhumans were no different from a buffet in front of Archini.
“My ability is a little different from yours.” A smile appeared in Achini’s eyes: “My body is ‘dead.’ Once I accept the ability of someone else’s sacrifice, my body will be fixed. If I want to change it, I must abandon my original body.”
In exchange for this, Achini was able to unleash power from the massive Pandora that even the original user of the ability did not possess.
Compared to her special ability "Jealousy," it is both a constraint and an enhancement.
So, the fact that he just emerged from the blood sphere that Su Ni was in means that he has already taken away Erici's superpowers and reshaped his body for the second time?
One Su Ni's flesh and blood might not be enough... so the underground cemetery beneath the church, with its numerous missing corpses, may now be nourishing the body before her.
"How were you created?" A metallic taste rose in Shu Ningmiao's throat again: "A failed experiment by the National Research Center? Or did the Manra virus mutate?"
She searched through all the science fiction movies in her mind, and could only come up with these few answers.
Pandora isn't a plant that will flower and bear fruit if you just nurture it.
If Achini could be born naturally through Pandora, then Shu Ningmiao believes that the next time someone dumps waste into the sea, the seawater might suddenly spit on them.
Achini gave her a meaningful look and answered ambiguously, "Like any human being, I was born in union."
"If that's the case, why did you kill me—" Shu Ningmiao took it as nonsense from someone unwilling to reveal the truth. She didn't care where Achini came from; getting to the bottom of it would only annoy her and bring no benefit.
She decided to lay it all out: "Last time, you killed me in Edwina's office. This time, you're still relentlessly pursuing me. What exactly is my place in your plan, and what role do I play?"
Shu Ningmiao revealed the "second loop" world, a world only they knew, word by word.
She was now certain that Achini, like her, had reloaded his save file from the previous ending and was starting over.
The only difference is that she knew nothing, while Achini might be the key to knowing the whole truth.
A moment of confusion flashed across Achini's face, then a complex smile appeared on his face, and he remained silent.
Shu Ningmiao grabbed the folding knife in her hand, held it to her heart, and looked at him coldly, her gaze sharper than the knife itself: "I remember the knife you stabbed into my chest with your own hand. Don't you remember?"
"Ah, that's right."
After a while, low laughter echoed from the cave. The laughter grew louder and sharper until it no longer sounded like laughter, at which point Achini stopped laughing.
"If you refuse to cooperate, I will have to use tools to strip away your superpowers."
A faint, ethereal laugh escaped Achini's throat, yet it was perfectly clear: "It makes no difference to me who I choose to carry out the plan, so this time I chose Erice."
"But I didn't kill you—"
His voice stopped abruptly as Shu Ningmiao punched him into the water. She grabbed his shoulder and twisted it with a snap.
Archini coughed, blood streaming from his mouth and nose, but his eyes still darted around nimbly: "You won't listen to me, or you simply refuse to listen! You saw that Erice is still alive; one stab won't kill you, and taking your powers won't be fatal—"
"Last time, I did lay a hand on you, but didn't you already know who really killed you?"
His eyes were bloodshot, and he kept making noises.
So annoying.
Shu Ningmiao's eyes flashed with a cold light, and she felt a tingling pain on her scalp. A fleeting memory pierced her nerves, alternating between the image of her chest being pierced and the reality before her eyes.
"Shut up," she said in a hoarse voice.
“You had already thought it all through the moment you stepped into this place.” Archini, however, refused to shut up: “Why didn’t you tell your teacher, the police—or your brother—anything about me?”
Shu Ningmiao gently closed her eyes.
She wasn't particularly intelligent, but she had an almost animalistic intuition in this regard.
Achini opened her hand, her fingers gripping the terminal that had somehow been taken from her coat, and repeatedly pressed the power button.
The screen is unresponsive.
Most terminals have a 5% reserve power for emergency calls, but Shu Ningmiao's terminal had to be manually and repeatedly forced to start up, to the point that even the reserve power was exhausted.
“You are really… really strange.” Achini whispered in her ear, his words as seductive as a whirlpool: “You carry a military terminal with you, know that there is a locator in the terminal, know that forcibly destroying it will trigger an alarm, and repeatedly turn it on and off hundreds of times to use up the battery, yet you still carry it with you.”
"Do you want to believe it, or do you not want to believe it?"
Achini smiled, a hint of disdain in his voice: "It seems the Pigne government considers your life less important than the secrets in Edwina's office."
Ah... I knew it.
When they found Edvina in her office, the people of Cornunos and Pinheis were not most concerned with whether she was alive or dead, but rather with what they found in her office.
Whether she was dead or alive at the time, as a dead person, she allowed many living people to continue to sleep peacefully.
After all, she had already been stabbed in the back by Achini.
As she pieced together the last missing piece of the death puzzle, Shu Ningmiao suddenly smiled slightly.
The most jarring aspect of the story at the beginning is the official silence surrounding her mysterious death at school and the complete disappearance of Shu Changyan.
Why did Achini attack Edwina in her office?
Perhaps it's because... only she died here in peace.
Her death was kept behind a door, becoming a mere speck of dust beneath the secrets of Pandora—a laughable, cheap truth.
Everyone behind this massive organization is an accomplice to the monster before them.
She looked up, her long eyelashes naturally crossed, and the blood droplets on her eyelashes trembled slightly, making her skin appear somewhat pale.
Based on this conjecture, she stood before Achini, abandoning the game on the terminal and giving up her biggest trump card.
Perhaps it was blood, perhaps it was tears, but a whole reddish-brown color gradually spread before her eyes, and the sound of her heart pounding violently seemed to be thumping in her ears.
A mundane thought pushed her patience to its limit.
"That's enough," Shu Ningmiao heard her own weary voice.
There is a limit to the pain that a person can bear and tolerate. The fleeting anger, hatred, and escapism in her mind eventually turned into a helpless exhaustion.
“If you want to end all of this,” he breathed close, his chest pounding in unison, “then you’ll have to kill me.”
The next second, the liquid in the pool gushed out, splashing like blades.
Shu Ningmiao concentrated all her strength in her hand and slammed him hard into the bottom of the pool. The surrounding stone walls cracked under the immense pressure.
The entire underground tomb began to collapse a second time. Shu Ningmiao stabbed him in the chest with a knife, and blood gushed out in the churning Pandora liquid.
She grabbed Achini's long hair, forcing him to look up, and saw thick blood flowing from his eyes, drop by drop, like embers about to burn out.
"This cut is to repay you." Shu Ningmiao pulled the knife out inch by inch, the cold liquid and the scalding blood mingling together. She curled her lips slightly: "Then, die."
The pressure from her hand was so strong it made it hard for him to breathe; Achini's face was tense, yet he seemed to be smiling.
The collapsing rocks above kept falling into the murky liquid. His smile gradually froze, his eyes trembled slightly, and his lips opened and closed, slowly exhaling a ball of flame from his thin, bright red lips.
The Pandora liquid splashing around was instantly ignited, turning the surrounding area into a hellish inferno.
Achini's wet body slipped smoothly from her grasp.
"I've finished reminiscing; I need to get down to business."
The scalding flames licked at her, and Shu Ningmiao's hand suddenly went empty as she watched Achini's body fall straight down into the flames beneath her.
The flames scorched her skin, causing pain to her internal organs. The blood-red figure was barely visible in the raging flames, with a gaping wound faintly visible.
He's trying to escape!
Shu Ningmiao's blood surged, and her throat burned from the fire, leaving her speechless. She watched helplessly as he used the sacrificial fire to open the teleportation channel.
"It's too noisy." His voice came from the crackling flames, familiar yet distorted: "The sounds around me... are too loud. There are so many painful cries in the flames. I just want some peace and quiet."
The two looked at each other across the flames.
"A quiet...new world."
Achini laughed and then collapsed completely backward.
Just as his figure was about to disappear, countless golden, semi-transparent chains intertwined and pierced through his limbs, binding him to the spot, rendering him unable to move.
The layers of chains not only restricted his movements but also blocked the transmission channels within the flames.
Shu Ningmiao's left hand hung at her side, her eyelashes lowered, making it impossible to see her expression. She held the other end of the chain in her palm.
She had long suspected that he would use the sacrificial fire to escape.
So she came to him with Edvina's "Golden Chains" ability.
“You…” Achini seemed to want to say something, but in the end he said nothing.
He pulled on the chain, opened his palm and pushed it towards her. Flames overlapped in layers, like a fire dragon opening its blood-red maw, about to completely devour her.
The air was thick with heat, and there was almost nowhere to escape it.
Shu Ningmiao dodged the flames that suddenly attacked her, expressionlessly wiped the bloodstains from her face, raised her other hand, and silently closed it.
Click, click.
The chain swung from the other hand extended upwards, breaking through the overhead wall panel until it completely destroyed the entire underground space.
"Boom—"
Inside the church, the once peaceful underground cavern collapsed again with a deafening roar. Erice, clinging to the shifting floorboards, was caught off guard and half of his body fell down.
She climbed out with all her might. The place she had just been in was filled with dust. A chain mark nearly seven or eight inches deep split the ground, revealing the grayish-brown soil underneath.
Erici was startled as she saw a figure fly out from above her head along golden chains, followed closely by a series of blazing flames.
In an instant, the entire church was engulfed in raging flames.
Looking back, she heard another loud bang as the figure crashed to the ground, and only then did she realize that the figure descending from the sky was Shu Ningmiao.
Shu Ningmiao turned her head, gave her a gloomy look, and dragged the blood-covered Achini. The two of them fought from the ground to the ground. The smell of blood, along with the cold wind from their fight, stung her face.
Eric leaned back as far as he could and looked down into the gaping hole beneath his feet. To his surprise, he saw a surging sea of fire and felt dizzy.
More importantly, she felt that this place was about to be destroyed by them.
The few remaining broken walls also began to shake violently, as if they were about to fall apart at any moment. The ceiling, several meters wide, would fall down, and any one of the pieces could smash a person's head open.
Fireballs kept scorching Shu Ningmiao's body, tearing her flesh and skin open several times. Overusing her powers caused blood to seep from her eyes, ears, nose and mouth.
Shu Ningmiao, seemingly oblivious to the pain of the burns, relentlessly chased after Achini and continued to beat him.
She couldn't hear the increasingly loud roars around her; all she could hear was a long, persistent buzzing in her head.
The rubble, engulfed in flames, exploded into countless pieces before her eyes. She coughed up a mouthful of blood and, with her enhanced and powerful body, slammed him violently against the wall.
Achini's light movements were no match for her speed. Shu Ningmiao quickly pressed down on his body, twisted his arms behind his back and pressed him to the ground, pressing his back down with her knees.
Shu Ningmiao destroyed the entire spring, locked his supernatural abilities, and cut off his escape route.
She saw Shu Ningmiao lower her head, her lips twitching slightly, but she made no further move.
The long silence between them was broken when Achini spoke.
“Ultimately, Pandora and people are both resources that Pines can utilize. The advantage of people as resources is that you don’t have to pay too high a price or wait too long. Just leave them there, and they will grow back in batches.” Achini looked up at her: “Under the power of authority, you are no different from anyone else.”
"Even though you've come all this way, you still can't see the truth behind this world."
Even at this point, he just laughed, blood dripping from his forehead, looking like a demon or a ghost. He raised his eyelids and said, "Keep pretending to be stupid, like an ignorant lamb. One day you'll die in the sheepfold, just like... when you died the first time."
"I have eyes, I can see for myself."
She grabbed the chain: "I believe what I see is real, and I don't need you to teach me how to live."
Shu Ningmiao's expression now seemed more peaceful than his: "When I was a child, I always thought, if a game has to have winners and losers, why can't I be the winner? — I may have lost once, but that doesn't mean I will lose next time."
“Piné or you, I don’t care about any of your motives, nor do I care what the world becomes. I only want…”
All power, wealth, honor, and status became nothing but air in the face of her ridiculous death. Only now did she realize that no desire was more precious and intense than living.
"Alive".
Shu Ningmiao gritted her teeth and exhaled. She had been running around until now, mostly relying on her willpower to keep her body going. Even now, her eyes still burst with an almost crazy vitality and life force.
She swallowed the metallic taste rising in her throat, slowly lowered her head, and whispered a sentence in his ear.
Achini's voice abruptly stopped, his pupils dilating in astonishment at her words.
Erice watched helplessly as the golden chain in her hand tightened and pierced through the blood-soaked body.
The moment her skin and flesh were pierced, it was as if a thin membrane in her mind was also pierced at the same time. The terrifying nightmare that seemed invincible in her eyes was extinguished by Shu Ningmiao's own hands.
My vision began to sway and blur, as if I were in an unbelievable dream.
Her fingers, which had just regained sensation, trembled with excitement. The muscles in her numb legs quivered slightly, blood rushed to her head, and a numbing and painful electric current coursed through her limbs.
Shu Ningmiao staggered to her feet from the pool of blood.
Erice tried to take a step forward, and a sharp pain rushed up all at once, but she felt unusually clear-headed.
Step by step.
Arrighi stumbled and bounced up like a spring, running barefoot frantically toward Shu Ningmiao, reaching out to hug her tightly, refusing to let go.
Strange... The fingers gripping the other person's clothes were trembling strangely.
In that instant, Erice couldn't remember anything; all her worries and fears turned into futile tears of guilt.
She buried her head in the girl's shoulder and burst into tears.
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