Chapter 267: Payment

Lin Wei stretched lazily, but her nose caught a faint scent of blood.The source of the smell was the darkest corner of the room.

Lin Wei cautiously walked over.

A large, bulging black garbage bag sat in the corner.

The bloody odor was emanating from inside it.

Lin Wei hesitated for a moment, then reached out and untied the tightly fastened opening.

An even stronger wave of metallic blood scent assaulted her senses.

Curled up inside the bag was the corpse of a man, his face ashen, eyes wide open, a trace of terror frozen within them.

The fatal wound was on his neck, a single, clean, and efficient strike.

Lin Wei examined him carefully and was surprised to find that this man was actually an Awakened individual, with a strength roughly around the second stage of the Stream Realm.

Beside the corpse lay a crumpled piece of paper, with a line of words scrawled on it in what seemed to be blood-stained fingers:

【This is your payment. You are free.】

Lin Wei held this piece of paper, stunned for a long time.

The next second.

She nearly collapsed, sitting down on the floor.

That lord had truly let her go.

He hadn't killed her to silence her, and had even paid her.

A second-stage Stream Realm Awakened individual. Once she absorbed him, her own realm would definitely improve!

This far exceeded Lin Wei's expectations.

In her view, merely surviving was already a stroke of luck. She never expected the other party to be so... true to their word.

Among Aberrants, such an action could be considered merciful.

...

Su Zhan now wore an entirely new face.

He wandered leisurely through the streets and alleys of Lincheng.

This was the first time in over a year he dared to do something like this.

A new face, a new identity, and also a new beginning.

Lin Wei held no more value for him. He had let her go and even prepared a payment for her.

Naturally, this payment was his handiwork.

Su Zhan felt he had become somewhat cold-blooded now.

If it were before, he would never casually lay hands on a stranger.

But reality had continuously battered him, causing the faint glimmer of hope he once held for humanity to gradually, gradually sink away.

Killing the innocent indiscriminately.

Hah...

Su Zhan had completely lost such moral concepts.

Over a year of surviving in the Mist had gradually worn away part of his humanity.

Indeed.

He was an Aberrant by nature, so why did he ever possess such good moral principles before?

How laughable...

Su Zhan dared not say he now stood on humanity's side, nor dared he say he stood against them.

After all, the Mist should be the common enemy of both Aberrants and humans.

The Mist's invasion of Blue Star naturally made it humanity's enemy.

Aberrants, because of the Mist, became Aberrants, turning into monsters that needed to constantly hunt humans. They gained power, but also increased their risks.

But if all humans died out, how would Aberrants hunt humans to evolve?

During his over a year in the Mist, Su Zhan ate and drank nothing, surviving on the Mist's nourishment.

But he wasn't sure if this was due to his special constitution or if all Aberrants were like this.

Even if all Aberrants were like this, they could only meet their basic nutritional needs within the Mist, utterly incapable of advancing.

If humanity went extinct, the Aberrants' realms might be permanently fixed.

And that was the best possible scenario.

Aberrants were a product of the Mist's invasion of Blue Star.

After humanity's extinction, would there even be a need for Aberrants to exist?

Would the Mist be so kind?

Su Zhan believed it would not.

Moreover, one could not place one's own life in another's hands, begging them for mercy.



Laughable.

Therefore, he had always believed the Transcendence Society was a bunch of lunatics. Their ideology was completely untenable. If humanity perished, Aberrants wouldn't fare much better either.

This was the case of "when the lips are gone, the teeth feel the cold"!

Because of this, Su Zhan still retained a shred of morality within him.

At the very least, he couldn't undermine the foundation of Daxia, such as killing those geniuses or some very important people.

However, all of this was predicated on them not provoking him.

Otherwise...

then there was no need to talk about any morality.

Su Zhan walked alone on the street.

The sunlight was just right.

The streets gradually became bustling and crowded.

Office workers hurried along with quick steps, students laughed and playfully chased each other towards their schools, the breakfast stalls by the roadside wafted out waves of enticing aromas, couples leaned against each other, strolling leisurely.

All of this was brimming with the vitality of life.

Su Zhan moved through it, completely out of place amidst the surrounding liveliness.

A sense of loneliness, which even he hadn't noticed, welled up in the depths of his eyes.

Liu Ziming, Xu Hao, Feng Jue... The days at Vermilion Bird Academy, though brief, had once included comrades fighting side by side.

Teacher Wang Mingyuan's care and concern.

Even the later, mutually exploitative temporary partnership with Lin Wei had, at the very least, given him someone to talk to on this long road of escape.

Even if it was all pretense and deception.

But now, he was truly alone.

The path of the Transcendence Society was basically blocked because of Lin Wei's failed test.

He also wouldn't think that just because his mental power was strong, he should go try the Transcendence Society's test.

The goal of obtaining the method to summon the Mist was temporarily unworkable.

What should he do next?

A sense of confusion surged in his heart.

Return to Vermilion Bird Academy?

That would be walking right into a trap.

Qin Bai and the Aberrant Purge Division would never let him go.

Continue lurking on the fringes of Lincheng or other human cities?

Drifting aimlessly?

What was the meaning of such a life?

Become stronger?

Yes, becoming stronger was an instinct, the cornerstone of survival.

But the method?

The Mist Creatures within Mist incidents were still at too low a realm now. If he wanted to advance, he'd have to wait at least another half a year.

As for entering the Mist to hunt Mist Creatures.

That carried far too great a risk.

Su Zhan stood at a crossroads, watching the traffic light turn from red to green, watching the tide of people cross the street, yet he himself didn't know where he should go.

The world was vast, yet it seemed there was no place for him.

Su Zhan could only subconsciously move forward with the flow of people.

Appearing exceptionally lonely and... lost.

As he thought, he suddenly remembered a person.

Last time in Black City, that gambler...

He was a member of the Transcendence Society, but... he didn't seem as fanatical as the other Transcendence Society Aberrants. He was also very afraid of death, willing to betray his comrades with just a little pressure.

This kind of Aberrant was the only outlier from the Transcendence Society he had ever encountered.

The other Transcendence Society Aberrants he had seen were all fiercely loyal to the death. It was impossible to get any information from their mouths.

They would self-destruct immediately upon capture.

Su Zhan frowned as he thought about it.

That gambler last time, that Transcendence Society outlier, he had first chopped off one of the other's arms. At the time, he seemed to recall that Qin Bai had a method to seal an Aberrant's self-destruction, and some of the Heart-Interrogation Needle's acupuncture points were on the arm.

So last time, he chopped off one of the other's arms, one or two... he couldn't quite remember.

Anyway, at the time, he thought this move might be useful, and if it wasn't, it wouldn't do any harm.

Su Zhan felt he had found a new line of thought.

That's right. Now the target had shifted back to the Transcendence Society.