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Chapter 1598 Final Chapter: Crossing the Sea [58] "The Struggle of the Nameless (1)"

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[Winning first place at the Flower Picking Gathering]

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[Third Stage: The Disciple Game] (Travel is possible. Possible possessors: unknown.) (You can bring one companion and two cards.) (Page 1307)
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The man in black robes steals the newborn members of the Rin clan.

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[197 Seconds and the Death of a Butterfly]

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The world is painted in my colors.

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[The Great Remastered Edition]

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Mingxi campus, night.

Lu Shu was wearing a dark brown striped long shirt, light-colored trousers, and silver-rimmed glasses.

He stood by the sink, holding his breath as he stared at a blood-soaked man inside the stall.

"WARNING-007." Lu Shu knew this was a ghost story: "According to the rules, you need to splash the blood from the faucet onto it and keep watching until you leave..."

"Brother Lü Shu~" A delicate girl tugged at his sleeve and said coquettishly, "Brother Lü Shu is so powerful, Brother Lü Shu must defeat it~ It's all up to you, brother~" Her sweet voice softened people's hearts. If it were a normal person, they would probably be so excited that they would want to protect her.

Lu Shu kicked him, saying, "Don't block my attack."

He didn't want to take these contestants with him at all, but they found him strong and shamelessly followed him, exploring the Mingxi campus at night.

Qi Meng, Qian Lexin, and other contestants hid behind Lü Shu, trying to cling to his leg. WARNING-007 had just killed a contestant right before their eyes—it was terrifying.

Holding the black knife, Lü Shu's mind raced. The strange tale before him was a matter of life and death, so he had to be careful.

Just as the group was on high alert, a figure suddenly emerged from the shadows and touched WARNING-007. Instantly, WARNING-007 collapsed before them, turning into a pool of blood.

"Which contestant is so amazing? They actually subdued the ghost story?" Qian Lexin looked at the person in surprise.

The moment he looked up, his hands and feet went numb and his whole body trembled.

From the shadows emerged a black-robed figure wearing a bird-beak mask. The long, beak-like structure fit snugly against his face. He wore an extremely large black wide-brimmed hat with a deep brim that tilted forward. His hands were hidden in leather gloves, the outline of his knuckles faintly visible beneath the taut leather.

"Tap, tap, tap."

As he approached, a herbal scent wafted over him, like a moving, dark monument, exuding an aura of death.

"This is...this is..." Qian Lexin trembled with fear, wanting to run away, but her gaze seemed to be glued to her.

The bird-beaked man approached, his hands gently stroking Qian Lexin's cheek as if they were lovers touching.

The rough texture of leather slid across her cheek, bringing a fresh herbal scent. Qian Lexin swayed, then suddenly collapsed, bleeding from all seven orifices.

"Someone's dead! Aaaaaaah! I died from just one touch!" contestant number eleven, Geng Lan, screamed, but found that she couldn't move either, as if she were frozen in place.

“If I’m not mistaken…” contestant number five, Anthony, wiped his sweat and said, “This is the ultimate… WARNING-001… the most terrifying existence in this school.”

Everyone stared in terror at the bird-beaked man, awaiting their death.

“WARNING-007.” The bird-beaked man stared at the pool of blood on the ground, his voice hoarse, as if his voice had changed through the mask: “His name is Wen Yan. He was once indignant about the school’s system and stood up for the students. But the security guard was kicked down the fifth floor of the stairs and rolled around in blood.”

"So, from then on, the fifth floor of this school no longer exists. If you see stairs, you need to close your eyes immediately and feel your way back along the wall."

He looked at the group of people who were filled with fear, and then at Lü Shu.

Just when everyone thought he was about to die, he patted his chest as if making a bow, slowly retreated, and disappeared back into the shadows.

The group was covered in cold sweat, and only then did they feel like they had survived a disaster.

“He’s WARNING-001. If we kill him, will we clear the game?” contestant number six, Ward, asked.

"You can kill him?" Anthony slapped Ward on the shoulder. "Touch him and you're dead! Even WARNING-007 turned to blood and gore. If it hadn't spared us, we'd all be wiped out. In this instance, we can only hide, hide until the very end to solve the puzzle!" He stroked his chin. "Strange, why did it spare us?"

Lu Shu pursed his lips: "Let's continue exploring." For some reason, despite how terrifying WARNING-001 was, he had the illusion that the other party was a good person when he saw it.

As they walked out of the restroom, they were suddenly horrified to discover that the original Mingxi campus had been completely transformed!
The stone-brick corridor has been transformed into a wooden walkway, which creaks and groans as you walk on it.

The desks and chairs in the classroom were stained with blood, and some even had iron rings on the armrests and electrical devices on the chairs.

The banner hanging on the gate no longer read "Mingxi Campus," but instead bore several large, rusty characters—

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【White Sand Paradise】.

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At the same time, an orange bar appeared in the upper left corner of their field of vision, alongside the [Health Points] bar.

"Damn it!" Anthony cursed, "Did we trigger some kind of weird thing?! It feels like we've entered a back room!"

“Rovasa is a mirror…” Ward pondered, then his eyes lit up:
"So the dark side of Mingxi Campus is..."

"【White Sand Paradise】!?" Ward and Anthony exclaimed in unison.

Both are campuses, one bright and cheerful, the other dark and gloomy.

“It seems this mechanism is related to WARNING-001. When it is dormant, this is [Mingxi Campus], and when it awakens, this is [Baisha Paradise]!” Anthony said.

"Let's go, be careful," Lu Shu whispered.

……

On the other side, the bird-beaked man disappeared into the shadows and opened his eyes in a room.

“…Patient, you’re back.” A gentle male voice came from outside the room.

"Long time no see," said the bird-beaked man.

"Yes...it's been a long time, it must have been...a very long time," the man said.

"The diseases here should have been cured, so who is it that uses disease to create this world?" the bird-beaked man said.

"Her illness was cured, but the illnesses of millions more remain incurable. The only way to cure everyone is to create an eternal utopia." The male voice said, "Here, there will be no discrimination, no social prejudice, no radical public opinion..."

"Young child, you will not grow up, nor will you grow old. What will torment you will not be the suffering of society, the burdens of family, or those things of adults."

"You will always belong to dreams, to children, to utopia."

The bird-beaked man looked towards the doorway.

A man wearing glasses stood at the door, fiddling with a gun at his waist.

“…Xia Luoyang, the seventh seat in the Disciple Game,” said the bird-beaked man.

"Su Ming'an." The man raised the corners of his mouth:
"Yangxia, it's been a long time."

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Worldly ailments cannot be cured.

It is ever-present, like a shadow.

Countless people's illnesses have converged here; they have returned to this correctional school, hoping to be cured...

A boy subjected to human experimentation, a girl bullied at school, a mother who lost her son, a teacher pushed down the stairs by a security guard, a white-haired boy who died in the woods, the bitter sound of a piano in a music room...

Their diseases constitute this world.

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This time, my identity is—

Su Ming'an took off the bird-beak suit, revealing a pair of cat ears and a pair of jet-black eyes.

【Cat Boss】/【WARNING-001】.

Unlike Mr. Rabbit, who was exploited by capitalists, Mr. Cat became part of the Ghost Stories of the Disciples Game, and he was always researching something.

Su Ming'an pressed the hidden compartment and entered Boss Cat's laboratory. As he walked in, the space suddenly opened up, and he saw bottles and jars standing on the lab table, with unfamiliar terms such as "World One", "World Two", and "World Three" on the labels.

He looked up, gazing towards the center—

A human-shaped object floats inside the glass jar.

The person had silver-white hair and was curled up with their face buried in their knees, making it impossible to see their features. They looked like a silver-white oval, soaking in a jar.

What is the cat boss researching?
Su Ming'an wanted to get closer to take a look.

Suddenly, two voices rang in my ears—

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"...In that year's experiment, besides the Book of the World, the Holy Master's blood, and divine energy, there was also a part of my soul. Now, I have finally found you... a you who has been completely unsealed and has completely possessed divinity... to merge with me, to become the god of this world, and together to look down upon this world... is that alright?"

"Stop dreaming."

"You see, even if you don't admit it, you're still just like me. You once said the world doesn't need dictators, doesn't need me to become a god, and then you fought to the death to stop me... But in the end, you will inevitably become the world's only dictator, the only god. Your ideals, your beliefs, are nothing more than your momentary passion. You will become the very thing you hate most..."

"A dragon slayer will never become a dragon. I am completely different from you."

"No, you... will live forever as me. From the first moment I saw you, I knew you were exactly like me... Haha, hahahaha... In the end, you finally became my best work."

……

As the dazed feeling subsided, Su Ming'an found himself in complete silence.

He recognized one of the voices as Sheng Qi's, but the tone was clearly different. Sheng Qi was always aloof and indifferent; he would never laugh so wildly. The other voice was completely unfamiliar.

"Did Saint Revelation participate in Rovasa's research on the Rin Clan?" Su Ming'an looked at the glass jar in front of him and speculated, "This Saint Revelation sounds crazy, it should be a slice of a higher-dimensional Saint Revelation. And the other voice is probably the newly born Rin Clan."

"So when Shengqi's experiment failed, he left and Cat Boss continued the experiment, hoping to create a perfect Rin Clan."

"So, who is Boss Cat?"

Su Ming'an shook his head. It couldn't possibly be Hui Shuhang.

He approached and flipped through the Cat Boss's experimental records. It seemed that the Disciple Game was also part of the research. The flesh and blood of the deceased contestants would be cut off and thrown into the glass jar in front of him to create the Rin Clan.

He suddenly recalled a scene from "Twelve Stories: If I Had Never Seen the Light," where several staff members complained about mountains of blood and flesh, suggesting that it was a premonition from the beginning.

"The Disciple Game... also serves to create the Rin Clan?" Su Ming'an sighed.

Yes, so many people die every day, there's no way we could ever run out of human subjects for experiments.

People die one after another in this cruel game in order to draw cards and get ahead, but it is all for the hope of the world built with their blood and flesh—the Rin Clan.

But is that sinful hope really hope?
The Lin tribe is pure and flawless, even bound by the "red thread" laid out by Ran Bo. They are just, kind, and selfless, yet they are composed of countless sins. The despair and suffering of countless people, their resentment before death... have piled up to form the Lin tribe.

"A middle-aged truck driver with cirrhosis due to alcoholism underwent a liver transplant. After recovering, he began to have a recurring, vivid dream: he was in a corner of an abandoned factory, burying an oilcloth bag. Out of unease, he reported the location to the police. After digging in the factory, the police actually found a package containing several gold bars—the very same stolen goods that had disappeared from a famous bank robbery a few years earlier."

"By checking the donor records, the police discovered that the liver donor was one of the robbers from that year's robbery. It turned out that the robber was seriously injured during his escape and signed an organ donation agreement before he died. The location where he hid the stolen goods became a mystery until his 'liver' 'drew' a map in his new owner's dream." A cold, flat, inorganic voice came from behind.

A pink-haired girl, dressed in a plain dress, approached indifferently:
“Novelist Maurice Leonard’s ‘The Mad Displacement’ tells the story of a pianist who receives a hand transplant from a murderer and is thus given the urge to kill.”

“Professor Candice Pete, a pharmacologist at Georgetown University in Washington, believes that thought is like a network that runs throughout the body, rather than just existing in the brain. Thought exists in peptides, and the brain uses peptides to provide memory to other major organs.”

Click, click, click.

She moved closer to Su Ming'an without any sense of boundaries, as if she didn't perceive the reasonable social distance between people, her eyelashes almost touching his cheek.

"Once upon a time, there was a captain who was severely wounded. To save him, his crew committed atrocities, plundering innocent people and fusing their flesh and blood into the captain's body. After the captain came back to life, he taught himself magic, swordsmanship, blacksmithing, and court etiquette without any formal instruction..."

"When he falls asleep, in order to prolong his life, the crew will continue to plunder innocent people, absorbing the flesh and blood of more and more people into the captain's body, and the captain's skills will become more and more numerous..."

"The captain became the strongest man in the world. When the world was in danger, he was hailed as the hope of the world, as a brave man, a hero, and a savior."

"Later, the captain only remembered that his responsibility was to save the world, hypnotizing himself to save everyone, unaware that his very birth had already harmed countless people..."

Xiao Bai gently exhaled, her palm pressed against Su Ming'an's cheek.
"The original sin of the Rin clan lies in the fact that it is the strongest of all races stitched together."

She placed her hand on the glass jar:
"It is a ship of Theseus, made from the body of a Rovasa."

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