415: Chapter 415 Quickly stop using your supernatural powers!

At the bottom of the pit, the vegetation that had grown and withered wildly also fell into complete silence during its final life cycle. Only a thin layer of ash remained, covering the entire fan-shaped area.

The moment the final layer of the light membrane shattered, the scene inside was exposed.

One hundred and forty-one people.

They lay scattered across the bottom of the pit.

Some were curled up, some were sprawled out, and some were lying face down—but everyone's body was intact.

No severed limbs. No bloodstains. Even the damage to their clothes had been repaired.

The first one to move was Xu Biao.

His right fingers twitched first. Then his wrist. Then his entire arm snapped up like it had been electrocuted.

His eyes snapped open.

For the first two seconds, his pupils were completely out of focus, staring blankly at the dome above, which was mostly shattered. Three seconds later, his focus returned. He slowly raised his right hand, turning it over to look at the palm, then the back.

All five fingers were there.

The joints could bend. The fingernails were pink. There was a black mole on the middle of his index finger that he'd had since childhood.

He flipped it over again.

Still there.

He sat up very slowly. His back muscles contracted inch by inch, like a long-rusted machine restarting. After sitting upright, he looked down at his abdomen—intact. His chest—intact. His legs—they could move.

Then, the memories returned.

Lin Yao's Avatar Army. The overwhelming sea of spell light. The moment he was caught in Lin Yao's Torrent of Knights and his body was severed in the middle. The sensation of his lumbar spine shattering. His vision flipping. The last image he saw in that final half-second was his own lower half still standing three meters away.

Xu Biao's stomach convulsed violently.

He turned to the side and retched twice, but nothing came out.

The second to wake up was a young man wearing a Wind Wolf Corps uniform. His first action upon waking was to touch his neck—the point of fracture had been at the fourth cervical vertebra. After his fingers felt intact skin and a pulsing carotid artery, he began to cry. There was no sound; tears simply gushed out, hitting the ash drop by drop.

More people began to wake up.

Three, five, ten—all across the bottom of the pit, figures were struggling to sit up. Their movements were cautious, as if they couldn't believe they could still move. Some repeatedly checked their hands and feet, some pinched their thighs, and some blew onto their palms to see if they could feel warmth.

Almost everyone's first reaction after confirming they were "alive" was the same.

Turn their heads. Find Lin Yao's position. Then desperately retreat in the opposite direction.

A contestant who had originally fallen three meters away from Lin Yao saw the girl sitting on the ground nearby after waking up; without a word, he scrambled away on all fours, only stopping when his back hit the pit wall.

No one spoke.

No one cursed.

Cursing is a privilege of the living. Having just crawled back from death, they felt only an instinctive, wordless terror toward the person who had caused that death.

Sitting in the pile of ash, Xu Biao raised his right hand and slapped his left cheek hard.

The crisp sound of the slap echoed through the deathly silent pit.

His left cheek swelled rapidly, the finger marks showing a purplish-red.

Seemingly in disbelief, he backhanded his right cheek with another slap.

This time the force was even greater; his teeth cut into the flesh of his inner cheek, and a stream of red with a metallic, rusty smell trickled down the corner of his mouth.

Warm, viscous, and accompanied by sharp pain.

"I'm alive..."

Xu Biao's voice was very soft, every syllable trembling.

He looked down at the ash on the ground, the remains of the plants that had just grown and withered.

The postures of the one hundred and forty-one people at the bottom of the pit began to change drastically.

A small-statured contestant suddenly grabbed his left hand and bit down hard on it.

Crunch.

It was the sound of teeth biting through skin and pressing against bone.

Blood sprayed onto the ground through his fingers, yet he was laughing. He laughed while gasping for air, his tears washing two white streaks through the ash on his face.

Thump.

Thump, thump.

A series of dense thumping sounds rang out one after another.

Someone was slamming their forehead against the metal pit wall, each strike letting out a dull thud.

Someone was desperately pinching their thigh until large bruises appeared under the skin.

This self-harming form of confirmation quickly spread among the one hundred and forty-one people.

They didn't cheer; there was no relief from surviving a disaster, only an extreme, almost collapsing sense of absurdity.

Above the pit, the stands holding a hundred thousand people fell into a strange state of stillness.

Those spectators who had been standing and roaring, waving flags, and throwing trash now looked as if their spines had been removed.

A burly man in the front row, still clutching half a fluorescent board he hadn't thrown, slowly bent his knees and lowered his backside onto the hard plastic seat.

Click.

It was the sound of the seat spring resetting.

Immediately after, a second sound, a third...

The clicking sounds rose in unison, like a silent, continuous ebbing tide.

The dome, which had just been nearly overturned by curses, was now so quiet that the sound of the ventilation system could be heard.

The jackets with names written in blood were discarded at their feet; no one bothered to pick them up.

In the media section, Brother Wang's hands froze above his holographic keyboard.

He had already typed out over a dozen potential headlines on his screen.

"Psychopath Massacres the Arena," "The Blood-Red Twilight of the Organization," "The Elegy of the Wang Family Relatives"...

Every headline precisely targeted the public's pain points; with a single press of the Enter key, these words would become the city's most explosive traffic.

But now, he couldn't bring his finger down.

All the plot deductions, the orchestration of rumors, and even the cost-benefit analysis of whether to help Lin Yu clear his name or help the families protect their rights in his mind shattered into dust at this moment.

Resurrected.

Not just one or two.

It was one hundred and forty-one crushed people, standing there completely intact in less than three minutes.

This had already transcended the scope of "competition" or "superpowers"; this was challenging the entire human civilization's understanding of "death."

The backstage corridor.

Chen Jing was pressed against the glass of the observation port, rubbing his face so hard that the corners of his eyes stung.

"No, this isn't right..."

He turned his head to look at the main control monitor behind him, his voice squeezing out from his throat. "An illusion? Is it an illusion? Did that kid Lin Yu cast a large-scale illusion?"

"Supervisor, the energy feedback is physical." The Security Captain stared at the screen, his voice instinctively lowered. "The vital signs monitoring system... is all green."

"Withdraw the illusion! Tell him to quickly withdraw the illusion!"

Chen Jing slammed the console, simply refusing to believe it. "Those three families have already conceded; the agreement can be signed immediately, and a nine-figure compensation can be saved! What is he still acting for at a time like this?"

His eyes were glued to the screen.

In the footage, Xu Biao was struggling to climb up from the bottom of the pit, his movements clumsy but real.

Stop showing off, Lin Yu, stop showing off!

I'm scared!

What's scarier than more than a hundred people dying in a competition accident?

It's those hundred-plus people coming back to life!