Chapter 48: The Weight of Betrayal

“Yo, Ze Ge (TL Note: A colloquial term of address, similar to ‘Brother Ze’).”

Liu Tianze turned, his gaze meeting Wen Qiusheng, who was waving, and Ji Lanxin, who stood smiling beside him.

“What’s wrong? Has something happened?”

He hurried to his companions’ side, his hand instinctively reaching for Wen Qiusheng’s shoulder.

But as his eyes focused, he saw his outstretched hand and arm riddled with black-purple fissures, from which a viscous, festering pus ceaselessly seeped under his horrified gaze.

A gasp caught in his throat, he snatched his hand back, stumbling two steps away.

He blinked, then blinked again, and his arm was as it always was, the grotesque vision nothing more than a trick of his mind.

“What’s wrong, Ze Ge? Why are you so flustered?”

“No, nothing.”

Liu Tianze felt a sudden wave of dizziness, a kaleidoscope of images flashing through his mind, yet when he tried to grasp them, they dissolved into an indistinct, chaotic blur.

“Ze Ge, we’re friends, aren’t we? Brothers, even.”

“Of course we are; we’re the best of brothers. Lan is too.”

“Who said I’m ‘brothers’ with you stinky boys? You’re both just a pair of childish brats.”

The two boys, thus called out, burst into boisterous laughter.

Wen Qiusheng, seizing the moment, draped his arm over Liu Tianze’s back.

“So, Ze Ge, there’s something I don’t quite grasp.

When I asked Lan, she just grumbled about me being too dense.

Could you explain it?”

“Alright, what’s the problem?”

“Oh, it’s nothing too complex,” Wen Qiusheng said, shaking his head before turning to face Liu Tianze.

“Ze Ge, since you consider me a friend, a brother, then—”

“Then why would you hurt Lan and me?”

“!”

Liu Tianze’s heart seized in his chest, abruptly ceasing its beat for a terrifying instant.

He stared at Wen Qiusheng, his own face taut with shock, only to find a faint, unsettling smile playing on his friend’s lips.

“Qiu, I didn’t—”

“Ze Ge, can you help a brother out?”

“Name it, and I’ll help. I swear I will.”

“…”

After a beat of pregnant silence, Wen Qiusheng suddenly let out a laugh.

He clapped Liu Tianze’s back with unsettling force, still shaking his head.

“No, that’s not right, Ze Ge. You’re lying.”

“If you truly considered us friends, then why did you transform us into monsters? Monsters just like you.”

As those words escaped his lips, a sudden, chilling dampness seeped into Liu Tianze’s back, and before his horrified gaze, Wen Qiusheng’s somewhat corpulent body began to liquefy, melting like candle wax.

“No, it’s not—I didn’t mean for this…”

He frantically seized Wen Qiusheng’s hand, but what met his touch was a repulsive, slimy stickiness.

There was no skin, no flesh, only a ghastly, whitish slime that oozed between his fingers.

“Save me…”

Wen Qiusheng’s face was now utterly shapeless, his voice a distorted gurgle bubbling from his throat.

He managed half a step toward Liu Tianze, only for his raised thigh to disconnect from his lower half.

His foot remained rooted to the ground as his torso toppled heavily aside, accompanied by a sickening ‘splat’ of splashing fluids.

“Qiu? Qiu!”

Liu Tianze collapsed to his knees before the grotesque mass that was no longer recognizable as Wen Qiusheng.

He reached out to touch it, yet his touch felt like merely stirring another contaminant into a pool of putrid sewage.

He could no longer discern Wen Qiusheng’s hand from his face; everything had congealed into an indistinguishable, horrifying mess.

No matter how desperately he tried, he received no response, and a profound terror seized him.

Through the haze of his tears, a pair of feet materialized in his blurry vision: Ji Lanxin had approached his side.

“Lan, I’m so sorry.

I never imagined it would come to this.

It’s all my fault, all my mistake, I—”

“We’re willing to wait for you to speak,” a familiar voice bloomed in his ear.

“Precisely because you did so much for us when we needed help, we also wish to do something for you.”

“Lan…”

“We’ve been waiting for you, Tianze.

Even though we were so deeply unsettled by our own predicament, even though we were lost and adrift in this unfamiliar city, we never ceased to believe you would return.”

“We are still waiting for you to speak, Tianze, and this, this is your choice.”

Before her words could fully resonate, a splash of warm crimson splattered across Liu Tianze’s cheek.

He was struck utterly speechless, desperate to ascertain Ji Lanxin’s condition, yet he found himself unable to lift his head, not until that crimson streak slowly slid from his skin.

“You abandoned us.”

Spiked chains dragged at Ji Lanxin’s feet, and with each trembling movement, they gradually pierced her frail body, drawing forth great gouts of crimson blood amidst a symphony of indescribable sounds, which then mingled with the ghastly white slime beneath her.

“You transmuted us.”

“No, I truly, truly never imagined things would unfold like this!”

“You killed us.”

“…”

No, it wasn’t me.

I didn’t…

“You were simply disillusioned with everything, so you sought to harm everyone, Tianze.

You murdered us, who steadfastly believed in you.”

“This strange city, it is our tomb.”

With a sickening ‘thud,’ the girl’s body, mangled and torn beyond recognition by the chains, collapsed before him.

“…”

He wanted to retch, but his stomach remained stubbornly empty.

His head felt as though it had been brutally struck by an iron hammer, and a fracturing pain constricted his throat, stealing his breath.

He found himself utterly unable to accept—indeed, he vehemently refused to accept—the horror unfolding before him.

He vigorously shook his head, desperately trying to dislodge the despair seared into his pupils, to make his vision blurrier, to make the incessant buzzing in his ears louder, hoping it would drown out the malicious curses and the low, self-pitying murmurs.

He had never once intended to harm his friends.

Why had things devolved to this?

Why had not a single event aligned with his expectations?

Why was everything around him decaying with such horrifying speed?

‘I wanted to help you all because I witnessed what had befallen you.

We are all individuals crushed by this unforgiving reality.

I believed we were all alike.

I longed to alter destiny, to invite you along.

If we were all merely destined to remain stagnant, futilely awaiting death, then why not embark on a journey? To do what we desired, to venture where we yearned to be.

As long as we stood together, we wouldn’t have to endure such crushing loneliness.

As long as we remained united, perhaps we could even discover our path.

As long as we wielded power, I believed… we could offer each other salvation.’

Liu Tianze longed to voice these thoughts, to share these words with them, yet ultimately, he never confided in the companions he believed capable of bearing the heavy burden of fate alongside him.

“You fled.”

A strange voice resonated within his mind, interrogating his actions.

‘I didn’t flee…’

“You spoke endlessly of togetherness, yet you abandoned, without a shred of hesitation, the friends whose lives were ruined by your recklessness.

You cared nothing for their fates.”

‘No, that’s not right.

I couldn’t possibly do that.

I just, I…’

“Your self-proclaimed mutual salvation was nothing more than dragging them with you into the abyss.”

‘No, please don’t say any more…’

“Why did you leave?

Why did you abandon them?

Because you had already realized: you are the very source of this calamity.”

…

“This is the ‘truth’ you craved.

This is the ‘reality’ you pursued.

This is your cowardice, your baseness, your self-righteousness.”

…

“Admit it.

You constantly claimed you didn’t want to implicate others, yet in reality, you dragged everything around you into the mire, drowning alongside you.”

…

“You are nothing more than a filthy, cold-blooded murderer.”

‘I didn’t kill anyone…’

“Really? Then dare to look at my face.”

The young man numbly lifted his head.

He saw himself.

“Since you wish to forget, I shall help you remember.”

As it spoke, the body before him began to reshape itself like clay, gradually transforming into the nightmarish image deeply rooted in his heart.

‘You…’

Standing before him was a disheveled old man, clutching a blood-stained club in his hand.

“We are two of a kind, lad.”

‘No, it’s all your fault, entirely your fault.

If it weren’t for you, how could I have…’

“Is that so? So you killed me, then.”

A gruesome wound suddenly appeared on the old man’s chest.

A sinister black claw pierced through his flesh, delivering a fatal blow.

This strike claimed a vibrant life, and officially plunged a heart into eternal damnation.

“Keep moving forward, lad.

You’re almost at the end.”

Liu Tianze’s gaze fell upon his right hand.

No, it could no longer be called a hand; it was more like some profoundly evil cursed object, stained with human blood, covered in pulsating, purplish-black fissures, a constant reminder of an unchangeable reality.

“I’ll be waiting for you in hell.”

With these words, Liu Tianze and everything around him began to fall, descending until his soul, utterly stripped of its original form, briefly succumbed to exhaustion and sleep.

Or perhaps, he had simply awakened from a nightmare.

****

A drop of water splattered onto his face, yanking him from the drowning hallucination like a shard of ice.

Opening his eyes, he saw a dim, overcast sky.

Memories, uncontrolled, surged forth with the return of his consciousness.

Liu Tianze slowly extended a hand, his gaze falling upon a blood-tinged blackness, a mixture of his own essence and Huang Jiaqi’s.

He instinctively touched his head; the spot where he’d been struck by a club just hours ago bore no visible wound, only a persistent dull ache, a stark reminder that the nightmare in the old house was no mere illusion.

Everything had spiraled out of control; he had committed an irreversible act.

Even when he closed his eyes again, the spreading crimson beneath the lifeless body and the dancing flames in his vision replayed themselves incessantly.

That old house, that slaughter, that desperate flight—

“It wasn’t me, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t me…”

He couldn’t recall how he had broken through the magical girls’ encirclement, or how he had fled to this place.

He only remembered something awakening within him as he ran, transforming him into someone he no longer recognized.

His last memory was of falling into a dark “pocket”; when he regained his senses, he was lying here, breathless and gasping.

The police hadn’t found him, the magical girls hadn’t found him, no one had found him.

Everyone had vanished, leaving only him.

“—”

What exactly were parents, what was family, he couldn’t comprehend.

His adoptive parents had always treated him well.

Though their affection shifted after his younger brother was born, they had indeed regarded him as their own flesh and blood.

Had he not discovered their lack of blood relation, perhaps that life could have continued much longer.

They loved him, yet they had participated in a crime; they concealed their transgression, and they were also one of the reasons for his life’s misalignment.

The true intention behind that love was unimaginable to him, especially when he realized his adoptive parents wished him to remain silent about it.

He could no longer treat his younger brother, who lived within a wall woven from lies, as a sibling.

However, what did blood relation matter?

He wasn’t incapable of understanding the contents of the notebook Huang Jiaqi had always tried to hide, and Huang Jiaqi’s assertion, “I’m not a human trafficker,” wasn’t entirely a sophism.

The notebook didn’t record “abduction,” but “transaction.”

He had been sold by his biological father, and in these dealings, Huang Jiaqi had played a role more akin to a clandestine “middleman,” through whom the spread of evil was facilitated.

He had once believed that truth was always more valuable than pretense and lies; he had once attempted to understand everyone around him, but all he gained was a constantly suppressed self.

Liu Tianze wanted to think no more; he was exhausted.

Beyond collapsing here like a heap of mud, he could do nothing.

The long night before him would eventually pass, but he could no longer greet tomorrow.

“At this point, is something like this truly still useful?”

He muttered to himself, lowering his head and slowly pulling a crumpled, blood-stained piece of paper from the deepest part of his clothing.

It was a page he had torn from the notebook in that house, a page about himself.

The most important clue to his identity was now clutched in his hand, so flimsy, almost imperceptible in weight, as if mocking his worthless life.

He stared at that page for a long, long time, until he felt a slight return of strength to his body, like the last spark from a machine on the verge of breakdown.

He carefully folded it and tucked it back into his breast.

Things had come to this; there was no turning back for him.

If all this was truly fated, then he must at least witness the place where this story originally began, even if it no longer concerned him.

So he braced himself against the wall and stood, slowly walking step by step into the night, towards an unknown destination.

****

At the same moment, in the old house where the murder had occurred and now lay in ruins, a figure silently appeared.

“There’s almost nothing left, then.”

Black Mirror murmured, wandering through the unrecognizable rooms.

After the fire at the old house was extinguished, the Magic Supervision Department had immediately entered and taken away most of the useful clues.

By the time she arrived after receiving Rainbow’s message, the area had already been cordoned off, prohibiting entry.

By morning, other personnel would likely be there for a secondary cleanup.

However, while this place might hold no further value for the Magic Supervision Department, for a Corroded Body like herself, the scene still offered a considerably valuable clue, one that subtly unsettled her.

She lingered at the crime scene for a moment, her eyes narrowing slightly.

The residual magic was like a reason-devouring mist; merely standing there, her heart felt as though an invisible hand was slowly tightening its grip.

This indicated that Liu Tianze’s condition was far more severe than those two others.

Corroded Bodies were monsters born from negative emotions, and their appearance and magical properties would collectively manifest this mind-crushing sentiment.

Standing here, Black Mirror felt as if she were experiencing a violent “implosion” firsthand, an irreversible trauma to the soul.

The part that was “human” was slowly draining away.

Panic, agony, despair, and hopelessness mingled, layering upon each other.

Although, judging by the magical intensity, it was likely still at an Immersion-level, standing at the epicenter of this silent explosion, Black Mirror grew increasingly uneasy about the direction of the situation.

She had never believed herself capable of saving others; the role of a righteous hero was something she hadn’t even fantasized about a decade ago.

Yet, she could not simply allow a monster to be born from tragedy and then trigger a chain of further tragedies.

She no longer wished to relive in her dreams those eyes pleading for help; she no longer wished to regret being capable of action yet ultimately doing nothing.

She had already made her choice; she had personally extinguished a bright star, shattered a beautiful dream.

As a Corroded Body, she had already given her answer.

So, perhaps this time, she had no choice but to take another step forward into this world.