Chapter 186: Puppet (2)

Luo Qi shivered, staring blankly at the corpse; only minutes ago, it had been no different from a living person.

Luo Qi asked a terrifying question, his voice trembling, "Do you think... at the very end, did he still have his own consciousness?"

Du Zhengyi did not answer; he stared with a grim expression at the Huangcun surrounded by burning flames, where several dark shadows appeared within the firelight.

"Ten?" he asked.

Luo Qi knew what he was about to do. His throat was so hoarse he could only emit a vague sound, and he reached out to grab Du Zhengyi's forearm. The forearm beneath his palm was scalding, the muscles hard as iron. Luo Qi trembled, "Let me try."

Du Zhengyi looked at him as if he, too, had swallowed a ball of flame, "It's too dangerous. I haven't been able to extinguish that awakening consciousness yet."

"Let me try one, at least one. If I can restore them, we won't have to carry the debt of eleven human lives. If I can't restore them, we won't have to carry the debt of human lives either," Luo Qi said. He looked at Du Zhengyi anxiously; under the sky-filling firelight, Du Zhengyi looked like a god bathing in flames.

"Luo..." Du Zhengyi suddenly realized he had almost said Luo Qi's name. He pressed his lips together tightly and closed his eyes.

Luo Qi looked at Du Zhengyi in astonishment. This was a mistake Du Zhengyi would never make; he could feel Du Zhengyi's agitation. In this Huangcun, Du Zhengyi had been serious from the very beginning, using lethal force and summoning power far exceeding what was needed to deal with eleven puppets. Therefore, Du Zhengyi must have discovered some danger that he had failed to notice.

"What exactly is wrong?" Luo Qi asked.

"I have been here before," Du Zhengyi said. He glanced at Luo Qi, then raised his head to look around at the village behind the firelight. "Not exactly the same, but it must be here. I recognize it."

"When?" Luo Qi also stared at the dark shadows approaching from behind the firelight.

"Not in the real world, but in that Illusion under Guan Jia Jing," Du Zhengyi said in a low voice.

Luo Qi was shocked. He no longer knew if his mind had become more tense or if his nerves had already snapped. "The time I woke you up? You didn't say what kind of Illusion it was back then."

Du Zhengyi turned his head to look into Luo Qi's eyes. He took a deep breath and said quickly, "I saw you trapped in this village, trapped for a lifetime. By the time I found you, you were already a crazy old man."

Luo Qi wanted to be grateful for this night. He had experienced thrilling events, seen madmen and evil ghosts, and even smelled the disgusting scent of human flesh roasting, so nothing else that happened that same night could make him any more afraid. It wasn't that he wasn't afraid, it was just that the reservoir he used to hold fear was already full; nothing more could be added.

In the few seconds while Du Zhengyi told him this, he even had time to analyze it rationally, "When I first started following you, you told me that the future is unpredictable. Do you think that Hallucinogenic Crystal revealed my future to you?"

Du Zhengyi's expression wavered slightly, his voice extremely low, "But I didn't expect to really stand at this juncture. I don't want to take that risk. It is indeed possible that your consciousness could be imprisoned in the depths of time by the old thing inside that stone. In the Magic World, there are simply too many traps."

Luo Qi bit his lip; he didn't feel particularly afraid of these words. He had no time to consider too much; he was already out of time. The cage of flames had only one gap, and the first puppet had already approached that gap.

"Give me a few seconds," Luo Qi said. He turned his red eyes to look at the puppet, "Ten seconds from now, you continue to shut down that consciousness. I promise, I will only touch one puppet, I won't do anything else."

"Don't..." Du Zhengyi said, then tightly closed his mouth, swallowing the useless words that followed.

Luo Qi jumped abruptly into the Consciousness Space. He ignored the shrieking that permeated the entire Consciousness Space; that ancient consciousness was incomplete, reeking of the evil of all humanity like a cesspit. But as long as Luo Qi didn't pay attention to it, his movement speed in the Consciousness World was faster. He headed straight for the human consciousness nearest to him.

In the deep well of his consciousness, Luo Qi easily found the part that had been stimulated to be most active, reading the indices in his body that had soared to the human limit. The shrieking in the Consciousness Space intensified suddenly, like the scream of a dying consciousness. Luo Qi felt another voice; it was Du Zhengyi continuing the process of shutting down the Consciousness Space. The effect was bidirectional; even Luo Qi felt the Consciousness Space shrinking. At such a time, it was more comfortable to let the consciousness return to its own flesh. The pressure caused his work efficiency to increase exponentially; he was frantically scanning human consciousness in the Consciousness Space with red eyes.

Luo Qi seemed to be prying open a human skull directly, with the human consciousness laid out before him. He searched for those parts representing fear, joy, self-defense, and everything that made a person human. In the virtual world of consciousness, Luo Qi reduced the human brain to a two-dimensional plane structure. In the network diagram, many parts of the complex neural structure were missing, and in the topological map, many parts were completely dimmed.

Luo Qi retreated in pain, directly disintegrating his brain function as he left this deep well of consciousness.

The puppet monk, who had been frantically hacking at Du Zhengyi amidst the firelight, suddenly stood still and collapsed to the ground like a robot that had suddenly crashed.

Luo Qi kept his promise, did not tangle with the howling ancient consciousness, and went straight back to the real world.

Du Zhengyi was visibly relieved.

"Burn them," Luo Qi stared blankly at the figures rushing toward them from behind the firelight. "Their self-consciousness has been completely destroyed; they could never come back anyway."

Du Zhengyi said nothing. The fire closed in, the last gap disappeared, and countless fire spirits appeared vaguely within the shadows of the flames. The flames rose, burning ever brighter; the color of the fire was enough to melt steel. For a moment, Luo Qi almost saw the slender ankles of the spirits.

The fire engulfed one human figure after another. The puppets, who were no longer human, were swallowed by the fire. At such flame temperatures, Luo Qi guessed that they probably wouldn't even leave bones behind.

Du Zhengyi continued the process of shutting down the consciousness, and Luo Qi cautiously monitored him from the side. He could feel that Du Zhengyi's pace was very steady, and the ancient, sinister consciousness was losing vitality bit by bit. The puppets in the fire had all disappeared. Just then, Luo Qi suddenly felt that Du Zhengyi's progress had achieved an overwhelming victory; opposite them, it suddenly became empty. If the consciousness had fallen into a deep sleep, it wouldn't be like this.

Luo Qi probed secretly in astonishment, "Did you kill that thing?"

Du Zhengyi stared ahead with a dark face, "It wasn't me."