20: Chapter 20: A Substitute for Death, Xu Lan Goes Mad
At this moment, at the city gate.
The real world.
Zhao Linfeng clutched his chest, leaning against the city wall, watching the scene before him with a face full of shock.
The New Federation convoy, which had been so arrogant just a moment ago, had now turned into a ground full of wreckage and mangled corpses.
The woman named Xu Lan stood there screaming frantically, as if she were possessed.
“Don't come over here!!”
“Die! Just die!!”
The golden pistol in her hand continuously spat tongues of fire.
As for her team members...
Except for her, everyone else stood frozen in place as if hit by a binding spell, motionless.
They allowed Xu Lan's bullets to pierce their skulls.
They allowed the three C-Class Abominations controlled by Xu Lan to tear their bodies to shreds.
“Cap... Captain...”
The last team member was a young man in his early twenties.
He watched helplessly as Xu Lan's ghost shadow pierced through his chest, his eyes filled with despair and confusion.
Until the moment he died,
he did not understand
why the captain, who was usually the most protective and powerful,
would suddenly become like this.
Puchi!
As the last team member fell,
Xu Lan was the only one left standing alone in the field.
She was covered in blood, holding a still-smoking gun, with a maniacal smile on her face.
“All dead...”
“The abnormalities... the abnormalities are all dead...”
“Hahahaha...”
“I won...”
Inside the main hall of the Desolate Temple,
Lin Chuan watched this scene, his eyes as cold as ice.
“That's enough.”
“It's time to let her see the truth.”
Snap.
With a thought from Lin Chuan, the rules of the illusion instantly dissipated.
In the next moment, the mist before Xu Lan's eyes cleared.
The hideous abnormalities she had 'suppressed' all disappeared.
In their place
was a ground covered in severed limbs.
All she saw were familiar faces and pairs of eyes that refused to close in death.
Li Ming, Zhang Qiang, Wang Dali... these were all her most trusted subordinates.
And now,
they all lay in pools of blood.
The wounds on their bodies were all caused by her.
The golden bullet that had pierced through Li Ming's brow still flickered with a piercing light.
“No...”
The gun in Xu Lan's hand fell to the ground with a clang.
She knelt down trembling, her hands cupping a puddle of warm blood.
“No!!”
“How could this happen?!”
“I was clearly dealing with abnormalities...”
“Why... why is it you?!”
The massive psychological shock instantly crushed her defensive line of sanity.
[Gained +8000 despair fear value from Xu Lan!]
[Gained +4000 despair fear value from Xu Lan!]
[Gained +5000 despair fear value from Xu Lan!]
Deep within Lin Chuan's consciousness, the panel kept popping up notifications.
At this point, Xu Lan also gradually understood everything.
From beginning to end, she had been inside an illusion.
“Aaaaaah!!!”
Xu Lan let out a shrill wail, grabbing her hair and slamming her head against the ground.
Then, she stood up stumblingly.
She wanted to escape!
However, Lin Chuan did not give her the chance.
“Trying to run?”
“Did you get my permission?”
As Lin Chuan's grand and cold voice fell,
immediately after,
an irresistible force descended.
Xu Lan found that she could not move.
Now, let alone escaping, she couldn't even commit suicide.
Her body became stiffer and stiffer, and her eyes gradually became hollow.
In her vision,
the world changed again.
The scene at the city gate vanished once more, replaced by a slowly manifesting boundless dark void... Within the void,
a massive, hideous, distorted yet sacred black Buddha statue looked down at her.
The statue seemed to be composed of countless agonized human faces, emitting an aura of chaos and disorder... a rule-based aura that could contaminate everything.
At the center of the statue's brow, a blood-red vertical eye opened and closed repeatedly, emitting pulses of eerie light.
Stared at by that vertical eye, Xu Lan felt her soul trembling.
“Don't... no...”
Tears streamed from the corners of Xu Lan's eyes, her heart filled with extreme fear.
Boom!
Soon, an even more intense pain descended!
It was a suffocation and torture more despairing than death!
The countless memory fragments in her mind were peeled open, extracted, and scrutinized bit by bit by Lin Chuan using the Peeping rule.
After a long time,
Lin Chuan slowly withdrew his rule power.
As for Xu Lan, she collapsed on the ground like a pile of mud, her eyes rolling back and foam coming from her mouth.
After the impact of Lin Chuan's Peeping rule and the repeated mental collapses, she was still alive, but she had become a walking corpse.
“I see.”
Lin Chuan digested the information obtained from Xu Lan's mind, gaining a detailed understanding of the so-called 'New Federation' she mentioned.
According to Xu Lan's memory, after the complete collapse of order, the New Federation suddenly rose, integrated most of the Ghost Controllers in Qinglong Prefecture, and established a doomsday base city with a population of three million!
And the founder of the New Federation was a mysterious Ghost Controller named 'Guardian'!
That 'Guardian' was originally an ordinary person.
But by chance, he had mastered an A-rank Abnormality named 'Scale'!
After obtaining various pieces of information from Xu Lan's mind, Lin Chuan used his 360-degree perspective to give her one last look.
“Since you no longer have any utility value,”
“then...”
“I'll send you on your way.”
With a thought, Lin Chuan directly activated Life-Reaping Sanskrit Sound, intending to obliterate her and then extract the three C-Class Abominations from her body.
However, at the moment the rule descended,
a sudden change occurred.
A seemingly ordinary jade pendant on Xu Lan's chest suddenly burst open.
A piercing golden light instantly erupted.
Within that golden light was a very special rule power.
It actually managed to forcefully block Lin Chuan's rule attack.
“Hmm?”
Lin Chuan let out a soft sound of surprise.
He saw the golden light enveloping Xu Lan's body like an invisible barrier, firmly protecting her.
A moment later, space distorted, the golden light flashed,
and Xu Lan's figure... vanished into thin air.
In her place, only a burning, fragmented Paper Effigy remained.
Clearly, this Paper Effigy was an extremely powerful life-saving item tainted with abnormal rule power!
“She escaped?”
Lin Chuan looked at the burning Paper Effigy and didn't care too much... As everything settled,
Zhao Linfeng looked at the corpses scattered outside the city gate, his eyes full of awe.
“My Buddha's divine might!”
He took the lead in kneeling toward the temple hall where Lin Chuan was located.
Behind him, Qin Yao, Zhou Kai, and all the guards also knelt down in unison.
“My Buddha's divine might!!”
In this battle,
although Xu Lan survived under the protection of a supernatural tool,
the thirteen elite Ghost Controllers of the New Federation were completely wiped out.
And they were killed by their own captain's hands.
“Clean up the battlefield.”
“Confine all the abnormalities within these corpses.”
Lin Chuan's voice echoed in Zhao Linfeng's mind.
“Yes!”
Zhao Linfeng excitedly accepted the order.
With these abnormalities, the strength of the Ghost Controllers in Rebirth City would definitely... rise to another level.
As for the escaped Xu Lan and that powerful New Federation?
Zhao Linfeng was not worried.
In his view, with Lin Chuan, the True Buddha, presiding over them, even if the New Federation sent more people, it would just be sending them to their deaths... Meanwhile,
a thousand miles away.
New Federation Headquarters.
Inside a massive underground palace, golden light flickered.
Xu Lan, covered in blood and delirious, fell out of thin air into the center of the hall.
“Ah... ah...”
Shrill, pained moans escaped her mouth, her eyes full of fear and madness.