Chapter 1369: The Call of the Stars (Part 12)

Xu Shangqi, who had watched countless horror movies, deeply understood one truth: if one day, you traveled to the world of a horror movie, then the most important way to survive in the dangerous horror movie journey is "don't be curious."

Don't be curious about how the world became like this, don't be curious about what the world will become, don't be curious about what this is and what that is, and most importantly, don't be curious about where you came from and where you are going.

There is no mission that must be completed, nor is there any truth that must be explored. At the moment the apocalypse descends, these are no longer important. What's important is living. This is the thought of Xu Shangqi, an ordinary person.

Of course, it might not be like this for superheroes, because they already have abilities beyond ordinary people, and it's normal for them to feel that they shoulder the mission of saving the world.

But clearly, in this damn world where Xu Shangqi is now, super abilities will only be counterproductive, and even intelligence and keenness will be counterproductive.

"What exactly happened to the two of them?" Jarvis sat by the campfire rising on the roof, looked at Wanda with a dull expression, and then looked at Riley, who was shivering all over, with a look of confusion on his face.

"Is it that I'm abnormal, or are they abnormal?" Jarvis looked down at his hands. This wasn't actually a question, but Xu Shangqi answered immediately: "They are abnormal."

Jarvis covered his eyes with his hands and said: "What is going on? Why can't we just use magic to clear out the monsters? Or open a portal to go home?"

"Haven't you noticed yet?" Xu Shangqi looked at Jarvis somewhat helplessly and said: "The disaster in this world is far more than just the monsters on the street, or do you think these monsters are really worthy of being called a disaster?"

Jarvis looked left and right. Even though the bar roof wasn't high, it was enough to have a panoramic view of the nearby streets. It was very quiet there, with no chaos, no screams, and the shadows that flashed by were only blindly pursuing subtle sounds and didn't cause much damage.

Then how did New York become the ruin it is now? Jarvis couldn't understand. It was as if an invisible hand had smashed everything in New York and then retracted.

Xu Shangqi pointed to his temple with one finger and said: "This kind of disaster might be attacking human spirits directly. Otherwise, why would the two of them become like this?"

"Then you..." Jarvis just wanted to ask "Why are you okay?", but he soon remembered, why was he okay? Because he was actually a robot?

Xu Shangqi reached out and pinched the jade pendant around his neck and recited the Heart-Clearing Technique in his heart again, but his tone still contained a slight tremor. He said: "Not thinking, not associating, and blocking all intuition and sensing might be a little better... but it's only a little better."

Xu Shangqi swallowed. He could clearly feel that the operation of the cultivation method was becoming more and more raw. In his inner vision, the characters of the Heart-Clearing Technique that built a high wall for his heart had obvious shaking.

Xu Shangqi knew that once this high wall collapsed, he wouldn't be any better than Riley and Wanda. It was just that by then, because his power was weaker than the two, the damage he could cause after losing control would be smaller.

And Riley, who had been tortured by his intense spider-sense, seemed to finally be unable to take it anymore. He started to shake his body back and forth non-stop, clenching his hands into fists and beating his forehead, spitting out slurred, delirious words.

"It's not spider-sense, this is not spider-sense, the kind of ringing sound I hear in my brain is not spider-sense..."

"Then what is it?" Jarvis asked instinctively.

Xu Shangqi wanted to reach out and cover his mouth, but it was too late. Riley shook even more violently. When he rocked forward, his head almost hit the ground. He roared:

"That's not spider-sense, that is... that is..." Riley raised his head and said in an operatic tone: "... that is a song!"

Riley jumped up and instinctively waved his fists at the air. Xu Shangqi couldn't care about much else and pounced on him, wanting to pin him down, but his strength was no match for Spider-Man's. He was sent flying with one move.

With a "bang," Xu Shangqi smashed heavily onto the ground. He clutched his chest and let out a painful cry, but hearing his scream, Riley paused, shook his head vigorously, and seemed to regain a bit of clarity.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Jarvis hurriedly rushed up and pinned him down. Jarvis's strength was much greater than Xu Shangqi's, but as Riley's struggle became more and more violent, Jarvis couldn't hold him down either.

Xu Shangqi stood up staggeringly, but before he could rush over, Riley sent Jarvis flying directly, and even rushed toward Jarvis, and even grabbed his neck.

Just as Xu Shangqi wanted to rush over to save Jarvis, Riley suddenly let go again. He stretched out his fist and punched himself, even hitting himself until the corner of his mouth bled.

"Riley! Riley! Calm down!" Xu Shangqi shouted.

In Xu Shangqi's field of vision, Riley widened his eyes, stared at the sky, and then slowly knelt down, full of horror.

But if one looked closely, in the tide of fear surging on his face and in his eyes, there was a ripple of perseverance that was difficult to shake.

When the shivering young man stood up, it was as if he were carrying a weight of ten thousand tons on his shoulders. The sound of bones being crushed was teeth-aching.

The huge power from Spider-Man resisted the invisible pressure. Riley struggled to stand up as if his bones had been broken in another world, but fell down helplessly again.

"Xu... Xu..." Riley called Xu Shangqi's name in a dying tone. Xu Shangqi hurriedly ran over. Riley's unfocused pupils couldn't even focus, but he still squeezed a sentence out from between his teeth:

"Branch, branch... give me, give me a branch..."

Xu Shangqi was stunned for a moment. Riley tried his best to twist his head, and his lifeless eyes fell on the campfire beside him. His chest seemed to be pressed by a large stone, motionless, but his limbs started to twitch.

"Quick, quick... I can't be controlled by it, hurry up!!"

"..."

In Riley's sharp scream, Xu Shangqi couldn't care about much else. He staggered to the campfire and picked up a branch that hadn't been completely burned.

Riley, however, seemed to have a flash of brilliance, propped up his upper body, and snatched the branch from Xu Shangqi's hand. His lips had started to open and close uncontrollably. The syllables of that song seemed to have reached the tip of his tongue, about to blurt out.

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Tears kept overflowing from the young man's eye sockets. The predicament he bore, beyond the tragic fate of Spider-Man, and the hardships that made him think about the meaning of his existence countless times, made Riley as firm as if he had grasped the throat of fate when he grabbed this branch.

In Xu Shangqi's shocked gaze, Riley grabbed one end of the branch and then stabbed the sharper other end into his eardrum fiercely.

"Pfft! Pfft!"

Accompanied by blood gushing out from Riley's two ears, the young man finally let go of his hands, as if he had untied a restraint. His hands hung down. Jarvis rushed over and held Riley's head, but Riley could no longer hear what he was saying.

Xu Shangqi walked to Riley's side, looking at Riley's bleeding ears. That kind of fear he couldn't resist at all gradually took root and sprouted in his heart.

Riley sat back by the campfire, his eyes staring straight at the flames. Xu Shangqi and Jarvis also sat by the campfire. Jarvis said to Riley with his mouth shape: "Are you okay?"

"I have to speak as little as possible." Riley said in a dry voice: "It wants me to sing..."

Jarvis was silent, and then he looked up at Xu Shangqi and said: "Are we just waiting here? Until when?"

"Until dawn." Xu Shangqi swallowed and said: "Must wait until dawn."

"Will it really be dawn again?" Wanda's voice came. She didn't even realize that her tone was becoming more and more ethereal and light, and she didn't even realize that she had been staring at that flame for a long time in one posture.

"Can you still contact Chthon?"

When Jarvis's voice came, Wanda regained some sanity. Wanda took a deep breath, rubbed her eyes hard with both hands, and then said: "I'll try."

After speaking, she closed her eyes and concentrated, and then heard a faint echo in the completely dark chaos.

"What is that?" Chthon's voice came intermittently.

Wanda felt puzzled.

"Behind you."

Wanda started to fear.

"Wanda..." Chthon's calling voice became weaker and weaker, and before their connection was cut off, Chthon still tried hard to speak, leaving a piece of advice:

"Remember, before dawn arrives, do not close your eyes."

Wanda woke up abruptly and found that Xu Shangqi and Jarvis were both staring at her. Jarvis asked: "What did Chthon say?"

Wanda shook her head.

The night grew deeper, but this also meant that it was getting closer and closer to the sun rising. Wanda had been staring at the flame.

Wanda's eyes were already so dry that tears flowed out, but she didn't dare to blink again. The darkness left when her eyes opened and closed became longer and longer. She already understood that if she closed her eyes, something would open them for her.

Suddenly, Wanda, with bloodshot eyes, stretched out a hand and picked up a branch tremblingly.

Jarvis looked at her with horror, but a Chaos barrier rose in front of Wanda, blocking Xu Shangqi and Jarvis.

Behind the barrier, Wanda's eye sockets became redder and redder, and then she started to shed tears. A kind of childlike innocence and holiness appeared on her face, as well as helplessness like a little girl.

"It's coming, it's coming..." Wanda's sobbing could no longer be suppressed. She trembled while panting, shook her head uncontrollably, and cried:

"My talent allows me to turn the virtual into reality, and if I see them when I close my eyes, they can really descend, descend into my body, and gain my power..."

"What's wrong with you? Wanda! Don't do anything stupid!" Jarvis kept knocking on the barrier, but Wanda looked at him with tear-filled eyes and said:

"If I lose control, you will all die... I can't let it descend!"

"But it's almost dawn!" Jarvis shouted.

Wanda kept swallowing, clearly terrified to the extreme. She looked at Jarvis with somewhat dull eyes and said:

"The moment before dawn, Chaos is at its most intense... it's coming!"

At this moment, among the fear and cowardice on Wanda's face, a powerful momentum inherited from her father that could not be provoked was emitted. She shouted in a tone she had never used before:

"I say—you cannot descend!!"

"..."

Powerful Chaos power swept out, knocking Xu Shangqi and Jarvis to the ground. Endless red light became more intense in the darkness of the last moment before dawn.

And then, all the power was gathered into Wanda's body and flowed into her eyes, making her eyes like glowing ghost fires, retaining the last bit of light in the pitch-black night for the campfire that had long since gone out.

After all the Chaos power that Wanda controlled was condensed into her eyes, the branch in her hand was inserted into her eye socket. She raised her head, her red hair swung back, and she let out a terrifying scream:

"Uh!!"

"..."

"..."

And the ruthlessness and decisiveness also inherited from her father made Wanda continue to exert force until she gouged out her own eyes.

The eyeballs rolled onto the ground, and something seemed to be surging out from the uncontrollable Chaos power within them. Wanda used her last bit of strength to crush the eyeballs, letting her power and those strange shapes vanish into ash. Scarlet Witch roared in a savage tone she had never used before:

"Get out!!"

"..."

"..."

The Scarlet Witch, who had lost all her power, knelt on the ground, raised her head, and her empty, bleeding eye sockets stared at the starry sky, just like a statue of a god abandoned in the ruins of an altar because it wasn't pious enough.

But the blood flowing from her eyes was like moss traveling against the current in the endless desolate time, growing wildly with a powerful and vivid vitality outside the stable fate of being piously blessed by gods.

As the first ray of dawn shone into the eternally frozen ruins, the stars watching all this retreated unwillingly.

Endless radiance rose from the distant horizon, and the golden morning mist, like a surging ocean, gently and powerfully brushed over the ruins of the city.

The long first night finally passed, and it was dawn. ===== CHAPTER 1370 =====