Ning Su ripped a black “branch” with a loud crack.
The director of student affairs was still hesitating over whether to rush to the dorms to deal with the chaos among the privileged students when the deafening noise made her and the instructor jerk their heads upward in shock.
No one knew what the tree-like entity coiled around the Reflection Hall really was—or how massive and deep it extended.
By now, the young man was no longer standing on the Reflection Hall’s roof. The roof itself was long gone, and the creature had already been dragged dozens of meters up from the lake’s depths by the young man.
Dark, writhing, smooth yet fractured—resembling branches or tentacles—it sprawled across the entire lake’s surface, hauled into the air by the boy.
Under the dim twilight, this colossal, unknown creature slowly revealed horrifying glimpses of its form.
Even more shocking was that this immense, shadowy being—tens of thousands of times larger than the boy—was being torn apart, strand by strand, by the slender youth who had dragged it from the abyss.
Cracks spread to the "trunk" on the second floor of the dark little house.
This originally thick and sturdy "trunk" now seemed slender and fragile within the vast, sprawling network of branches.
The moment the "trunk" split, Ning Changfeng used his palm like a blade, slicing open the crack to retrieve the transfer neuron hidden inside. He immediately stuffed it into Gui Sheng’s belly.
"Got it! Run!"
The first part was directed at Ning Su, the latter at the dozens of amnesiac players.
As soon as he finished speaking, he grabbed the limp Gui Sheng and bolted outside.
The dark little house trembled dangerously under the black tree monster’s thrashing, its walls already shattered.
Ning Changfeng sprinted across the collapsing bridge with Gui Sheng in his arms, followed by a group of agile players.
The instructors hesitated, unsure whether to still arrest them.
Boom!—
The Reflection Hall, which had stood in Qingyi High School for five years, collapsed.
Even if they caught them, where would they lock them up?
Everyone’s gaze turned toward the enormous unknown creature being dragged out from the lake ahead.
None of them had known that their school’s lake was a bottomless pit, hiding something so massive—a black, sky-blotting monstrosity.
The shock left their minds blank, their bodies frozen in place.
The black creature continued to be pulled out, its sheer size making it seem like a cascading black waterfall pouring from the sky.
They could no longer see the young man dragging out this behemoth, only the expanding black tree-like structure fracturing from top to bottom as it grew.
Thick, dark liquid gushed from the cracks, raining down like black droplets.
Only Ning Changfeng could still faintly make out Ning Su’s figure.
His eyes locked onto that small black silhouette, barely visible now, Ning Su’s body already covered in black veins and viscous fluid.
He noticed that Ning Su was gripping a "branch" in each hand, but performing two different actions.
One hand channeled energy into the "branch," the violent surge of power crashing against the black tree monster, fissures spreading rapidly as the branches snapped apart.
The other hand did the opposite—absorbing, devouring something from the black tree monster, just like when Ning Changfeng had seen Ning Su consume the zombie virus during the guild competition.
Under his grip, the "branches" withered and drooped one by one.
The first light of dawn broke on the horizon, casting its glow over Ning Su.
Covered in filth, his long lashes were thick with a viscous black liquid.
He shouldn’t have been able to see anything—nor did he need to. All he wanted was to destroy, destroy, destroy this incomprehensible monster, to devour the very thing it relied on to survive.
Yet, through the blackened sludge clinging to his eyes, he saw… so much.
Countless figures and images streaked past his vision at blinding speed.
It was as if he had glimpsed a vast universe of memories, where people were as numerous as stars, surging past him—too many, too fast—leaving only blurred afterimages.
The light and shadows were all black, flickering and dark, an unbearable discomfort.
As the phantoms flashed by, at the farthest edge of this memory universe, he saw a solitary black figure standing silently. The man turned his head and smiled at him, the crimson at the corners of his eyes burning like hellfire.
Ning Su frowned. In that instant, he felt it again—the sensation of absorbing billions of zombie viruses before his body ruptured and died.
This monster, the one the system had created to suppress Ling Xiao… was indeed—Ning Su slowly blinked—not so simple.
He shook his head, his hand—overflowing with dark energy—clenched tighter around the black "branches."
The blackness crept up his arm, surging another segment higher.
The dark patterns on the boy’s forehead suddenly expanded, and a torrent of shadowy energy, powerful enough to shake the entire dungeon world, blasted into the black tree monster.
Boom!—
Rain poured from the sky.
Black mist filled the air.
The dawn light blazed bright, twisting and bending through the downpour of inky rain.
Ding ling ling!—
As the wake-up bell of Qingyi High School rang out, endless black rain washed over the campus.
The students rose from their beds, gazing at the strange dark rain. Somehow, they felt… it wasn’t just washing over the school.
It was washing over places they couldn’t see—like some corner of their minds.
Not staining their thoughts black, but seeping invisibly into their brains, clearing away a blank, foggy space… making it sharp and clear.
When Ning Su woke up, he found himself in a strange world.
This world felt like a void—even lying on the ground, he couldn’t sense any solidity.
A sharp pain throbbed in his chest.
Ning Su frowned and opened his eyes.
What greeted him was a familiar face.
Ling Xiao, his long hair cascading down, was cutting into Ning Su’s chest. Dark blood splattered onto his chin, sliding slowly down the sharp line of his jaw—cold, ruthless, and filled with killing intent.
Noticing that the man pinned beneath him had awakened, Ling Xiao lifted his gaze.
Ning Su’s heart lurched violently—not from excitement, but from the instinctive surge of alarm at extreme danger.
He could clearly tell that this Ling Xiao was different from the usual one.
Normally, Ling Xiao’s eyes held only chaos, the faint crimson at the corners like nothing more than an inconspicuous embellishment.
But now, his eyes were endless darkness, the red at their edges like a flowing river of blood from the underworld—a shade that could only be born from countless lives.
The corner of his lips curled up in a smile, the vivid red hinting at boundless bloodlust, his dark eyes utterly devoid of emotion.
His hand, stained with blackened blood, gripped Ning Su’s chin.
The dark red smeared across pale skin as icy fingers traced his jawline. Ling Xiao studied him, then let out an ambiguous chuckle.
"So… a little zombie, huh?"
Even as he spoke, the hand pressed against Ning Su’s chest didn’t stop moving. It carved a deeper wound, black blood welling up from the cavity, his bent fingers nearly grazing Ning Su’s frantically beating heart.
The look on his face, along with the merciless brutality of his actions, made Ning Su certain—in the next second, Ling Xiao would tear his heart out.
Then, realization struck.
Ning Su’s ability was darkness-based, capable of devouring all things sinister.
What he had absorbed from the black tree monster, even if just memories, could only be the darkest fragments.
This Ling Xiao before him wasn’t the fragmented version he had met before.
He was Ling Xiao condensed from memories of pure darkness.
Ning Su: "…"
