Chapter 392

Andre and Ozaki Aozora remained silent, staring at the white horse tombstone in the center, their gazes strange.

Without any verbal warning, Andre pulled eight short swords wrapped in Bible pages from his vest and hurled them like lightning at the tombstone, then drew two pistols from his hip and fired them in rapid succession.

On the other side, Ozaki Aozora summoned more beast puppets from the void, their backs laden with machine guns and rocket launchers, bombarding the tombstone with relentless firepower.

"Enough."

The white horse tombstone, though a good person under universal values, also had a temper.

Seeing neither side give her face, she immediately drove the stone coffin into the ground and activated her effect.

Creak—creak—creak—creak—

The concrete ground split open, and hundreds of black, dried corpse arms emerged from the soil, grabbing all of Ozaki Aozora's beast puppets and pinning them into the earth, immobilized.

Ozaki Aozora herself was also dragged down by the corpse arms.

As for Andre's side,

The white horse tombstone raised her left hand, palm clenched, generating a rapidly spinning flame vortex that snatched up Andre's thrown short swords and bullets, melting them into an irregular metal sphere.

Her right arm then lashed out like a whip, striking the metal sphere with perfect precision.

Shhh—

The metal sphere flew backward faster than the bullets had come.

Andre hastily activated the 【Scripture of Proximity】 effect, teleporting thirty meters away.

Yet before his eyes could adjust, the white horse tombstone had already closed the distance, grabbing his collar and slamming him hard onto the ground, denting it.

She pressed her thumb's fingertip against Andre's forehead— for a Level 29 close-combat transcendent, crushing a skull and destroying a brain was faster than the victim's brain could even form the thought of 【Exit the Arena】.

"Now are you two going to behave?"

The white horse tombstone grumbled: "Explain—why did you start a private fight?"

Before entering the portal, all players had signed a magical contract: killing others and seizing loot within the realm would first trigger contract backlash.

Second, even if one endured the backlash and escaped the realm with loot taken from other players,

The organizing body of this expedition—the temporary alliance of twenty-odd guilds—could use methods like "reconstructing the crime scene with magic" to identify the culprit and exact retribution.

Any player with half a brain wouldn't fight to the death.

"."

Andre and Ozaki Aozora, still firmly restrained, remained silent, their eyes darting around, searching for a way to escape.

". Are these two insane?"

Fu Ding Hualong frowned, stepping forward: "Ozaki Aozora, Young Lady, do you remember me?"

As an outstanding operative of the Sichuan Branch's Mobile Task Force of the Special Affairs Bureau, he had once met Ozaki Aozora at the forum:

"Put New Skills to Good Use, Showcase New Appearance, Reach New Heights—Promoting Healthy and High-Quality Development of Private Guilds."

With players' memories, she should remember.

Yet after Fu Ding Hualong spoke, Ozaki Aozora remained silent, even avoiding direct eye contact with his face.

As if his face were terrifying.

Li Cheng raised an eyebrow—his 【Ocean Soul-Binding Bell】 had not activated, proving no illusion effect was nearby. Could it be a curse?

He thought for a moment, drove his Iron Flag Spear into the ground, and activated the flag-planting effect.

Hum—

A ring of light flared around the Iron Flag Spear; Chi Hong Cheshou and others felt lighter, their fatigue and thirst reduced slightly.

Yet Andre and Ozaki Aozora still stared blankly, saying nothing.

Seeing no progress, Li Cheng took out a small chalkboard from his 3D storage and wrote on it: "Can you two understand these characters?"

This time, Andre finally reacted. He took a deep breath and said: "The origin of script, Seneca once said, chaotic brains spin rapidly, eyes illuminate like beasts' bones."

Huh?

Before the players could react, Ozaki Aozora also spoke in a low tone: "Faces—what if pierced, what if not manifested? It makes me ponder deeply—are you bipedal primates?"

What the hell is this?

Are you two pretending to be incoherent idiot AIs?

The white horse tombstone looked uncertain—she wondered if she'd overdone it and knocked these two stupid.

"I get it! They have aphasia!"

Hui Yu, who had been scrolling through pre-downloaded short videos on his onboard hard drive, suddenly brightened, waving his arms: "Their brains are damaged—language comprehension and expression are severely impaired; what they say makes no sense!"

Aphasia is an acquired communication disorder caused by brain injury, commonly from stroke, trauma, tumors, or neurodegenerative brain diseases.

It severely affects patients' emotions and quality of life.

Externally, patients utter seemingly random word combinations to express a single thought.

For example: "You have such high-speed machinery entering China, remember the principle I gave."

The intended meaning might be: "Every vehicle entering the community must follow community rules."

Chi Hong Cheshou froze—he remembered Hui Yu only from the last battery escort mission, thinking Li Cheng's pet (?) could only eat, sleep, play with his phone, watch TikTok, and take hits.

How had his IQ skyrocketed in just a short time?

Was Li Cheng, like him, a genius in Beast Taming?

"Wait,"

The white horse tombstone loosened her grip slightly: "If it's just aphasia, why did they fight each other?"

"Because, besides aphasia, they both have prosopagnosia—they can't recognize each other's faces."

Hui Yu rubbed his palms together triumphantly: "Andre said 'eyes illuminate like beasts' bones,' Ozaki Aozora said 'are you bipedal primates.'

In their perception, everyone except themselves wears non-human faces—nothing like humans at all."

Prosopagnosia is typically caused by epilepsy, migraines, eye disorders, or brain lesions, causing patients to perceive others' faces as beasts, dragons, or humanoid-but-not-human entities.

If a disease like this suddenly broke out, it really would be terrifying. Just imagine waking up one morning to find that, everywhere in the world except yourself, every friend and relative is wearing a distorted human face, asking after you with warm concern.

Considering that Andre and Ozaki Aozora also suffer from aphasia,

from their perspective, the other party—and the newly appeared Bai Ma Mu Bei, Li Cheng, and the rest—might well be some kind of inhuman monster that doesn't speak human language.

Once this point was clarified, Bai Ma Mu Bei hurriedly eased his suppression, and the three parties, by drawing pictures on the blackboard along with animated gestures, finally managed to understand one another's meaning.

Before Andre and Ozaki Aozora suddenly ran into each other, mistook the other for a monster, and started fighting, each of them had encountered a middle-aged man wandering the streets in pajamas, clutching a bloodstained dinner knife, his expression dazed and vacant.

(End of chapter)