122: This world is too bitter, we don't want to endure it anymore!

"Snap."

The tip of the dragon devouring spear flicked lightly, his wrist trembling slightly.

The rusty iron chain, as thick as a thumb, snapped at the sound, splashing a few spots of black mud into the stagnant water.

Lu Sheng kicked open the small, deformed iron door.

The hinges let out a teeth-grinding shriek.

There was no light.

Only an intense, thick, fishy stench rushed toward him, mixed with the foul odor of sparks, aged rotting flesh, and fermenting excrement.

This smell was even more pungent than the Trash Mountain outside, making one's vision go dark.

Lu Sheng stood at the doorway, against the light.

Even though he had seen plenty of life and death in the Apocalypse, and even though his heart had long been tempered to be as hard as iron through slaughter, the moment he saw the scene inside the room, the veins on the back of his right hand, which held the spear, still bulged uncontrollably.

This was no room.

This was a pigsty.

Over a dozen lumps of flesh were discarded randomly in the filthy mud.

That's right, lumps of flesh.

They were once human, and could even sense weak spirit source fluctuations, indicating they were once the pride of heaven who had undergone Awakening of their sequences.

But now, their limbs had been severed at the roots.

The wounds had long healed, covered in hideous, ugly black scabs, as if branded by fire or corroded by some strong acid.

To prevent escape, for easier management, and for... breeding.

Hearing the loud crash of the iron door being kicked open, these already numb lumps of flesh instinctively crawled into the depths of the shadows.

"Don't... don't come over..."

"Isn't it not time yet today..."

In the corner, a woman with hair as messy as a bird's nest and a face covered in sludge curled into a ball.

She didn't even dare to look up, just mechanically opened her mouth, a hoarse, mournful sound like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together coming from her throat.

That was a conditioned reflex.

It was a servility carved into her bones after countless tortures.

Whenever she opened her mouth, it was either to be fed swill or... subjected to even more terrifying violations.

Lu Sheng took a deep breath, his lungs feeling as if he had inhaled a mouthful of glass shards, causing sharp pain.

He forcibly suppressed the giant Dragon in his chest that wanted to roar, restraining the killing intent that was enough to freeze the air.

"Don't be afraid."

Lu Sheng tried to make his voice sound less cold and hard.

"The green-skinned monsters outside are all dead."

He crouched down, his pristine naval coat dragging in the muddy water, becoming stained, but he didn't care at all.

"I am human, from the Dragon Kingdom military, commander of the blazing flame, Lu Sheng." He looked at the woman leading them, "You are saved."

Dead silence.

Only the sound of water dripping from the cracks in the ceiling, "Drip, drip."

"Sav... ed?"

The leading woman was stunned.

These two words were too unfamiliar to her, so unfamiliar that they felt like vocabulary from the last century.

She slowly raised her head, and those turbid, bloodshot eyes finally focused after adapting to the light at the doorway.

No green toad skin, no fangs, no nauseating mucus.

A young man in white, black hair, golden eyes.

It was a human.

Truly a human.

"Heh..."

The woman suddenly grinned, letting out a short, strange sound.

Immediately after.

"Waaa—!!!"

It wasn't cheering, it wasn't tears of joy, but a breakdown.

Two lines of bloody tears washed down her grime-covered cheeks, plowing two bloody trails on her face.

She wanted to reach out and grab the hem of Lu Sheng's clothes, but realized she no longer had hands, and could only frantically rub her stumps in the mud.

"Someone came... wuwuwu... someone really came..."

The dozen or so women around her also began to wail, their voices shrill, as if they wanted to vomit out all the grievances of their lives.

Lu Sheng felt a tightening in his heart and subconsciously reached out, wanting to check the woman's injuries.

"Don't touch me!!!"

The woman who was just wailing suddenly let out a shriek, like a wild cat whose tail had been stepped on, scrambling backward desperately, her eyes full of terror and self-loathing.

"Dirty! Don't touch! I'm dirty!!"

Lu Sheng's hand froze in mid-air.

"I don't mind." Lu Sheng's voice was low, "I'm here to take you home. There are doctors on the ship, hot water, and..."

"Home?"

The woman interrupted him with a miserable laugh, the sound uglier than crying.

She struggled to turn over, exposing the abdomen she had been hiding beneath her to the faint light.

At that instant, Lu Sheng's pupils contracted violently.

That was not a pregnant belly a human should have.

The skin was stretched as thin as a cicada's wing, almost transparent, with dark blue veins crawling across the abdomen like ugly earthworms.

And beneath that belly, a hideous black shadow was writhing violently, occasionally pushing out a sharp protrusion—it was a webbed claw.

"Officer... have you seen clearly?"

The woman stared at her stomach, her eyes as hollow as a dry well: "This isn't a child, it's a monster, the seed those beasts forced into us."

"In this ghastly state, where are we going back to?"

"Back to the crowd, to be the mother of monsters?"

Beside her, a girl who looked to be just over twenty was now as old as a dying crone.

She slammed her forehead hard against the ground, making a dull "thud, thud" sound.

"Big brother, you're a Spirit Source User, right? You must be very strong to be able to kill your way in here, right?"

The girl raised her head, her forehead dripping with blood, mixed with mud flowing into her mouth: "Please... kill me."

"I don't want to give birth to it... I don't want to be a mother to this group of beasts..."

"Kill me! I beg you!"

"My man was eaten by them right in front of me... I've lived until now just to see if these beasts would get their retribution, and now that I've seen it, it's time for me to go find him."

"Give us a quick end! This world is too bitter, we don't want to endure it anymore!"

A group of people.

A group of Spirit Source Users who once had dignity, were now begging for death as humbly as if they were pleading for some rare treasure.

Lu Sheng stood up.

His chest felt as if it were blocked by a ten-thousand-pound boulder, making it hard for him to breathe.

Save them?

How to save them.

Take them back?

Let them carry their big bellies, amid the pointing and whispering of tens of thousands of survivors, and give birth to a nest of man-eating monsters?

Or perform abortions on them right now, letting them drag their broken bodies and live like maggots in the corners of the Apocalypse?

For them, living might be the cruelest punishment.

The leading woman seemed to see Lu Sheng's hesitation.

She tried hard to squeeze out a smile that was uglier than crying, her eyes filled with a heartbreaking resolve.

"Officer, if you can't bring yourself to do it, just leave us a knife."

"We'll find a way ourselves, biting our tongues, crashing into walls, we'll be able to die somehow."

"Being able to see one of our own kill their way in before we die, and knowing that us humans aren't extinct yet, we are content."

Lu Sheng closed his eyes.

Silence.

After a long while, he opened his eyes again.

In those golden vertical pupils, all emotions had disappeared, leaving only an absolute respect for life, and the solemnity of a funeral escort.

"Alright."

Lu Sheng's voice was a bit hoarse.

He slowly raised his right hand, and within his palm, a pure, warm, yet massive amount of golden spirit source began to condense.

"I promise you."

"Everyone... have a safe journey!"

Golden light appeared suddenly.

There was no roar of an explosion, nor the pain of burning.

Lu Sheng precisely controlled every bit of spirit source, the golden radiance like the warm sun in winter, instantly filling this dark and damp corner.

The light brushed past.

The bodies of those dozen or so tortured women, like accumulated snow under the warm sun, saw their consciousness silently melt away.

There was no pain on their faces, but rather a relaxed smile of relief.

As if at that moment, they had truly returned home, returned to that afternoon without monsters, without the Apocalypse, only with sunshine and breezes.

A few seconds later.

The light dissipated.

On the ground, there remained only a dozen corpses with smiles on their faces.

Lu Sheng stood in place, maintaining that raised-hand posture, remaining motionless for a long time.

In this man-eating world, sometimes death became the greatest luxury.

"Collect."

He spoke softly.

Space fluctuated, and the corpses on the ground disappeared into thin air, having been collected into a corner of his storage space.

After finishing all this, Lu Sheng turned around.

His white clothes were still as white as snow, but the coldness in his eyes was several degrees colder than the seawater in the deep ocean of this Apocalypse.

PS: Today's update (4/4).