Part 2
It was Shu Ci’s whimsical thinking that had suddenly inspired him.
He had once asked himself whether this world was created or an existing reality.
If “Zhao Qinfeng” could truly create everything, why would he need to mold another identity to make events proceed according to his vision?
Initially, when Gu Lanzhu searched the whole city for Shu Ci, Zhao Qinfeng accepted the bounty to tip him off. Later, he appeared at the scene of the cruise ship incident as a reporter from Morning & Evening News to kick them while they were down.
Whether waiting near the prison to help Gu Lanzhu escape or blending into the vox pop scene at the Ice Sculpture Park today, he had done one thing from beginning to end—
Within the limits of his identity, pushing Shu Ci toward Gu Lanzhu with all his might.
Without a protagonist, the stage could not be set.
The troupe would disband.
Lu Wanqing focused his mind, releasing pheromones to strangle the silver-white creatures approaching him, striking their weak points with precision.
They immediately detached from the main body and shattered into pieces.
“You can control Gu Lanzhu, but you can’t control Shu Ci, right?” Lu Wanqing said seriously.
It seemed his partner, the soul from another world, was the key.
Lu Wanqing had repeated his life countless times without changing the established trajectory, yet Shu Ci had effortlessly reversed his fate of being humiliated as soon as he arrived.
If he guessed correctly, the conditions for a reset were either the story proceeding step-by-step to the ending, or something related to himself.
Killing him, the NPC who had awakened self-awareness, would reset everything.
“Shut up—” Zhao Qinfeng’s voice rang in the wind.
The remains of the creatures drooping on the ground and floating in the air trembled, as if Lu Wanqing had poked a sore spot, and began to rampage in humiliation and rage.
The ice layer was lifted by it, and shattered ice flew toward him like a hail of bullets.
No, not toward him!
Lu Wanqing dodged quickly, only to find there was no need to dodge. Zhao Qinfeng’s human form was gone. The silver-white creatures flew overwhelmingly, aimless and chaotic.
Dark clouds churned, blotting out the sun.
A ray of skylight struggled to leak through, then quickly disappeared.
The gap in the clouds seemed like a window torn open in the sky; black clouds and golden light waxed and waned, blending into each other.
Suddenly, a roaring sound came from beneath the skylight.
Lu Wanqing focused his eyes and froze in place.
A helicopter descended from the sky like thunder and gale.
The skids slid across the ice surface. Sitting inside was his marked partner, whose temper and expression looked very unpleasant.
Shu Ci!?
Just as Lu Wanqing saw him clearly, the Plot Consciousness beat him to it. Silver matter broke through the air like bullets, shooting toward the person in the cabin.
“Watch out!”
Lu Wanqing’s pheromones keenly blocked the creatures flying toward Shu Ci. As the cabin canopy shattered, he reached out and pulled Shu Ci out with a speed unreachable by ordinary humans.
Boom! The helicopter was detonated.
Lu Wanqing held Shu Ci, rolling onto the ice surface with the momentum.
The landing spot was coincidentally the very cave they had visited together, and they both rolled into its depths.
“Why are you here?” Lu Wanqing endured the pain, holding up the person on top of him, checking left and right. “Are you hurt?”
Shu Ci’s lips moved. “Does the injured person have the nerve to ask me that?”
With that, he leaned down and kissed Lu Wanqing’s bleeding gland.
On his way here, he had noticed that the black creatures spreading everywhere were the majority, while the smarter, more aggressive silver-white creatures were becoming fewer and fewer.
This meant the Plot Consciousness’s resources weren’t inexhaustible. If it spent a massive amount of energy dealing with Lu Wanqing, the situation in the rest of the territory would become relatively better.
Presumably, Lu Wanqing had thought the same, hoping to consume its attention single-handedly.
“Didn’t you tell Xingxing to meet at the place where we first met? I’m here now, and you’re scolding me?”
“…” Lu Wanqing twitched the corner of his mouth, trying his best to make his brow and eyes less tense and fierce.
“Where did the helicopter come from? You don’t have the authority to fly one from the base.”
Shu Ci turned over and sat up, taking a business card from his pocket.
“Auntie Man gave it to me when she left.”
Shu Ci waved the card between his fingers in front of Lu Wanqing. “This is probably the clout of the Si family’s young master.”
After the entire territory entered a state of alert, his calls were almost directly transferred to Si Man.
On the way to the shelter with Xingxing, an unmanned helicopter developed by a branch of the Si family landed straight on the roof of a building next to him.
“It has to kill you to return to the start, so you can’t throw your life away, understand?” Shu Ci didn’t waste words with him, pushing him deeper into the cave. “You are the man I finally managed to sleep with; it shouldn’t even dream of taking you away.”
“I know.” Lu Wanqing grabbed him backhand, neutralized the force in Shu Ci’s hand, and pulled him into his arms.
Powerful lips and tongue, mixed with the metallic taste of blood and the icy frost, covered his deeply, grinding together as if till death.
It was as if he vowed to suck his lover’s soul into his marrow.
Around their entwined necks, their pheromones drifted.
They patrolled, entangled and alert, blooming thorns along the path, hiding spikes, guarding against sudden attacks from the mutant creatures.
“You fought that guy outside for so long, your clothes are torn like this. Any clues?” Shu Ci hung on Lu Wanqing’s neck, asking between breaths as he pressed against him.
He tapped the shredded fabric on Lu Wanqing’s chest. In this freezing world of ice and snow, his man was still as hot as a furnace.
“Unless all the mutant creatures in the entire territory are eliminated, it will keep resurrecting from them.”
Lu Wanqing bit his ear punitively, holding down Shu Ci’s restless hand.
“That’s very difficult. It requires the cooperation of all twelve districts. And the combat power might not be able to withstand their division and replication.”
“Not necessarily.” Shu Ci turned his face away and took out the phone from his pocket. “Yikes, this guy… destroyed the communication device just by entering his domain?”
“It seems so. That’s why I said, it’s very difficult.”
Shu Ci shook his head. “If you are willing to trust Shen Lin, we don’t need contact.”
Lu Wanqing frowned. “What do you mean?”
Shu Ci knocked on the cave wall. Worried the Plot Consciousness was eavesdropping, and fearing it was wandering outside preparing a charged attack, he gathered a portion of his pheromones to shroud the two of them in the enclosed space.
“The two researchers on Dragon Spine Island just contacted the base. Their research experiment on Purple Pomelo Stone has made a breakthrough. Long story short, besides pheromone attacks, Purple Pomelo Stones injected with pheromone fluctuations can also kill mutant creatures!”
Lu Wanqing froze. “Are they absolutely sure?”
“Certain. The first batch of live combat in the Central District verified it while I was coming here!”
Shu Ci’s eyes shone with light. “Brother-in-law arranged for Ah Ti to contact the major families to centralize and integrate the mined Purple Pomelo Stones on Dragon Spine Island, and to put them into production for the most convenient weapons usable by ordinary people as soon as possible.”
“This way, anyone capable of releasing pheromones, regardless of gender, can become a viable combat force.”
Once the problem of combat power was solved, it was just a matter of seeing how long it would take to wipe out the existing mutant creatures under the joint command of Shen Lin and Marshal He.
If they could trust Shen Lin, trust the people of the entire territory, and hold out until the moment the mutant creatures disappeared, he and Lu Wanqing would have a chance to completely solve the Plot Consciousness.
“Other than trusting, we have no choice.” Lu Wanqing took Shu Ci’s slightly cold hand. “Have you noticed it hasn’t chased us into the cave?”
Shu Ci looked back, retracting a wisp of pheromone he had placed at the entrance.
“Judging by the perception of energy fluctuations, it indeed hasn’t followed.”
He looked up, probing upwards.
“But I can feel it wandering above constantly, very anxious, as if… it’s afraid we’ll discover something, but it can’t come in to stop us.”
Shu Ci paused, turning to look at Lu Wanqing.
The other party instantly understood his meaning. Keeping in step, the two ran hurriedly toward the depths of the cave.
The ice rock deep in the cave, the outlet of the Chengxin Sea’s undercurrent!
If there was any power sufficient to make the Plot Consciousness apprehensive, it was only there!
That was the beginning of his encounter with Lu Wanqing in his dreams, the place connecting him to this world.
The cave structure was also unstable. The rock layers were constantly being churned by the Plot Consciousness, attempting to make this place fracture and collapse just like the ice layer outside.
It frantically wanted to stop their path, but Lu Wanqing and Shu Ci were faster than its destruction!
One step into the deepest part of the cave!
What came into view was no longer the smooth ice rock, but a ball of chaos emitting golden light.
The golden light was tightly wrapped by black-purple chains.
Yet the chains were not real chains, but looked as if shards of glass were connected end to end.
“This… what is this thing?” Shu Ci voiced his shock.
The moment his voice fell, the molecules in the golden chaos vibrated and floated, condensing into a small, exquisite shell.
It was the shape of a person.
From fingers to upper arms, from ankles to waist and abdomen, then to the contours of the brows and eyes, and finally the lips.
Immediately after, the “person” born from the golden chaos spoke in a voice incredibly familiar to Shu Ci.
“As expected of the son I picked. As your unimportant father, I really want to give you a huge hug right now. Unfortunately, I can’t move.”
Shu Ci rubbed his eyes, looking again and again.
He was certain this person bubbling with golden light was exactly the same as the improper man in the video!
“Shu… Shu Changze?!”
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