Era of Magic and Martial Arts

Chapter 565 - 549: Let’s Go to Paradise Together...

Feng Mu indeed has a weakness, and this weakness is not hidden deeply.

As long as you investigate carefully, you can naturally find that he just had a reunion dinner at home, knowing that his biggest weakness is his family that he can never abandon.

At this moment, his beloved sister Feng Yuhuai was in crisis.

The desolation on the edge of Zone 9 was like the carcass of a giant beast with its insides hollowed out, lying at the boundary between the suburbs and the Scavenger Zone.

Feng Yuhuai’s boot crushed a severely weathered road sign, the metal fragments issuing a crisp, mournful cry in the silence.

She looked up, the dangerous buildings on both sides were like ribs gnawed by a giant beast, with exposed rebar rusted to a dark red.

"Watch your step."

She softly reminded the dozen or so family members behind her, her voice gentle.

The steps beneath her feet had long since lost their covering, revealing dried and cracked cement, like rotten teeth in an old woman’s mouth.

A gust of wind carrying sand swept by, lifting the plastic bags on the ground, which slapped against the tilted road sign, the three faded characters for "Heaven Street" faintly visible amid the rust.

This was the remaining scenery before the cataclysm; now there was no road to paradise in Lower City.

A damaged plastic mannequin leaned against a wall, half of its face eroded by time, revealing a honeycombed metal skeleton inside.

Its hollow eye sockets faced the opposite street, where black windows seemed more like dark, square holes, the dim figures within flickering.

Some were boarded up, others covered with filthy, colorless rags.

Feng Yuhuai could feel the greedy, vigilant, and blatantly malicious peering emanating from behind the windows.

Some nailed with decaying planks, some hung with filthy, stiff curtains.

Feng Yuhuai could clearly feel the gaze through every gap—greedy, vigilant, blatantly malicious eyes, like countless invisible hands roaming over her, as if they would tear apart her thin red dress the next moment.

Strangely, this feeling of being watched not only didn’t make her uncomfortable, it made the corners of her lips curl up slightly.

"Compared to the city folks wearing fake [Masks]," she murmured softly,

"the people here are quite open about their enthusiasm toward strangers."

Feng Yuhuai turned to look at Ge Qingming, her eyes flashing with red circles:

"Dad, I’m about to have more brothers and sisters, our family will become increasingly lively."

Ge Qingming and his family members all showed similar smiles.

They turned uniformly toward the dim alley entrance, from where the stench of rot and blood flowed.

Feng Yuhuai, however, took a deep breath, her expression intoxicated as if smelling a freshly picked bouquet of roses.

Deep within the alley came the dull sound of fighting, mixed with the whimpering of stray dogs.

Soon, the whimpering turned into a horrifying chewing sound, the crisp noise of soft bones cracking under sharp teeth clearly audible.

A few ragged scavengers staggered out of the alley, accompanied by two mutated hyenas, their beastly eyes glowing with a scarlet light, with a half-eaten human arm hanging from between their fangs.

"Hey, little beauty, what are you looking at? Want to come in and make some friends?"

The leading scavenger licked his yellow-black interlaced teeth, his gaze crawling lasciviously over Feng Yuhuai’s curves.

Feng Yuhuai feigned deafness, gazing upward. The large steel buttocks of Upper City still loomed over the sky, but the once dazzling neon lights were now dim as if dying embers.

Once upon a time, she craved day and night for that eternally bright City of Bright, the cold light of metal and glass refracted even in her dreams.

But now, she took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the scent of decay and freedom.

All the accumulated knots in her heart, the twisted resentment and burning sorrow, were released in this instant.

"The lights of Upper City can’t illuminate this place, just like even Upper City’s buttocks disdainfully lift just a tiny bit higher."

She withdrew her gaze, showing the scavengers her sweetest smile:

"Sure, but not to make friends, rather to become family, okay?"

As the scavengers laughed uproariously and surrounded her, the shadows in the alley swallowed their figures.

Three minutes later, Feng Yuhuai walked out with a light step, followed by a few docile new family members, the two mutated hyenas affectionately nuzzling her skirt.

She stood again by the mottled road sign, her fingertips caressing the rusty characters of "Heaven Street."

"I know the way to heaven now....."

She turned around to announce to her family, her hand pointing at the end of the street,

"The farther from Upper City, the closer to heaven."

Feng Yuhuai’s red dress fluttered in the wind. She would not wait any longer.

"It’s time to set off."

She whispered softly, her gaze cast toward the forgotten ruins at the end of the Scavenger Zone—referred to as the relic of the past by New Era’s population.

That place was so desolate, so lonely, it needed enough family members to warm that cold land.

She suddenly spread her arms wide, her hair dancing wildly in the wind:

"Go, my dear family members—"

Her voice suddenly rose, carrying a manic joy,

"Bring us more family! We will... together....."

In an instant, all the puppet family members’ pupils simultaneously lit up with red rings, their twisted smiles as they marched uniformly toward those dark windows.

Some gently knocked on doors, others directly tore down the teetering planks, each movement brimming with pathological diligence.

"Dear family members, don’t refuse, don’t be afraid...."

They murmured in unison, their voices echoing down the dilapidated street,

"Join us in going to heaven......"

In the shadows, the Wild Beast unconsciously opened his mouth, this man, always so uncouth, was also shocked by the scene before him.

"Feng Yuhuai has gone completely mad?"

He lowered his voice, his Adam’s apple rolling,

"Could she possibly want to turn the entire Transfer Town into her ’family’?"

To make even the destined madmen of the Destiny organization feel madness, the weight of this madness was evident.

The Master of Ceremonies rolled his bleached eyeballs, similarly drawing in a sharp breath.

He recalled having read some Evil Sacrifice-related academic papers in the organization’s archives, his voice trembling slightly with excitement:

"The Evil Sacrifice is inherently an indescribable chaos and madness, the hosts paralyzed and transformed by it will unwittingly slide into the abyss of madness, as if trapped in a whirlpool."

This was the first time the Master of Ceremonies had the opportunity to closely observe an Evil Sacrifice host, offering him a chance to verify book knowledge, filling him with an inexplicable excitement:

"When the madness of the Evil Sacrifice begins to erode sanity, the host’s subconscious will grip tightly onto a certain obsession for survival, like a drowning man clinging to driftwood, as an anchorpoint to maintain one’s clarity and humanity.

This is the body’s instinctive self-preservation behavior, somewhat like when you crave certain foods, though it might not truly be your desire, but your body’s yearning for the nutrients within."

Licking his moist lips, he added:

"Family is Feng Yuhuai’s anchor to humanity. Her pathological craving for ’family’ is precisely her precarious sanity making a final self-rescue!"