The Eldritch Files

”That woman? The woman from the Crystal Skull?”

Han Su, who had been aware of many problems but couldn’t connect them, suddenly felt the clues converging.

The hand gripping Bai Shi’s heart subconsciously tightened, and he asked urgently, ”She...”

”Where is she?”

”...”

”She’s always been in Qinggang. She’s been watching over you this whole time, hasn’t she?”

Bai Shi glared at Han Su, laughing manically. ”The underground queen of Qinggang’s Mysterious World—hasn’t she been protecting you with her life?”

”The Crystal Skull, haha, the Crystal Skull is just a dog she keeps. Her pet...”

”And that dog has been helping you in secret, right?”

”Otherwise, how do you explain the fact that the second excavated Mechanical Fragment just so happened to end up in your hands?”

”...”

’The second Mechanical Fragment?’

Han Su couldn’t piece it all together, and a strange sense of irritation welled up inside him.

”So hypocritical!”

Bai Shi looked at Han Su grimly. Sensing his confusion, he made no effort to hide the mockery on his face.

”Everything is clearly related to you, yet you act like you know nothing.”

”My failure to become an Heir was because of you! Being cast aside as a defective product was because of you! Enduring this torment of transformation, again and again, is also because of you...”

”Even the Mechanical Fragment meant to control us is in your hands!”

”You’ve clearly ruined everything, and everyone is still suffering endless torment. Yet you get to enjoy the peace and comfort of the real world under their protection. And you... you even have the nerve to hit me?”

”You’re the ones who have no regard for human life!”

”...”

Bai Shi’s voice grew louder and more furious. Suddenly, an infinite surge of Spiritual Power erupted from his body, blasting Han Su away. It happened so fast that Han Su couldn’t crush his heart in that split second.

The moment he broke free from Han Su’s grasp, he was once again before the Mother Divine Tree, connected to it.

Han Su didn’t seem to mind his escape, simply saying in a low voice, ”You should know, I can still kill you!”

’I still have a third Spiritual Bullet, but it’s my last one.’

’If I’m forced to use this third Spiritual Bullet, I have to kill Bai Shi outright, or risk this whole thing backfiring on me.’

Bai Shi was stunned for a moment. He looked at Han Su and could tell from his expression that he was telling the truth. But a more intense torment ravaged the depths of his heart, and his voice took on a crazed tone, half-crying and half-laughing, ”You think I’m still afraid of death?”

”From the moment I decided to move against you, I knew that woman wouldn’t spare me.”

”Since I can’t take back what’s mine, I’m at least going to do something for myself...”

”...”

”From the way you acted when we were kids, you don’t seem like someone who isn’t afraid of death...”

Han Su stared into his eyes and said, ”Besides, even if you really aren’t afraid of death, that doesn’t mean you have the power to do anything else.”

As he spoke, he raised a hand and pointed at Bai Shi. ”Now, you only have one last chance...”

”I regret provoking you...”

Facing Han Su’s pointing finger, Bai Shi felt a strange sense of fear. He could tell Han Su wasn’t lying.

Strangely, his voice now held a hint of pleading. ”You beat me up when we were kids, I accept that.”

”I also admit you were right back then. I deserve all the torment I’m suffering now!”

”No one pities a person like me when things go wrong!”

”But...”

He suddenly clenched his jaw, his eyes becoming bloodshot as he said grimly, ”What right do you have to stop me from getting my revenge?”

With a shout, endless blue arcs of electricity once again emanated from his body. This time, they connected even more frantically to the Mother Divine Tree. He struggled to raise his hand, again forming a hook with three fingers, his index finger extended, but he wasn’t pointing at Han Su in front of him.

Instead, he pointed toward the brilliant lights of Qinggang.

As he made this gesture, the entire Mother Divine Tree—every leaf, every flower bud—followed his movement, pointing toward Qinggang. More specifically, they aimed with extreme precision at a certain place within Qinggang.

A cruel excitement glinted in Bai Shi’s eyes. ”I want... Bai Senmang to die!”

[MOTHER DIVINE TREE CONTAMINATION LEVEL DECREASING!]

Outside the temporary containment center, Miss Ai suddenly spoke in a monotone voice. Zhang Chiguo, standing beside her, was startled and turned in surprise. ”There’s clearly a high concentration of contaminating power gathering. How did you conclude that the threat level is decreasing?”

Miss Ai replied robotically: [THE MOTHER DIVINE TREE IS WITHDRAWING CONTAMINATION FROM QINGGANG’S THIRD DEFENSE LINE. WHAT’S BEGINNING NOW...]

[...IS A CHILD’S REVENGE!]

[...]

This strange phrasing made Zhang Chiguo even more suspicious of Miss Ai.

He knew very well that the normal Miss Ai would never speak in such a tone.

’Isn’t she afraid of being overheard?’

’This guy... he’s really gone mad...’

Looking at his crazed eyes, memory fragments of meeting Bai Shi on this lifeline also surfaced in his mind.

On this lifeline, Bai Shi didn’t seem to hate him as much.

When facing him, there was less venomous hatred. His paranoia and greed for the copper were still just as strong, but his obsession with killing ”Bai Senmang” was even stronger.

On this lifeline, Bai Shi seemed to blame fate and others far less. However, given his personality, he would never blame himself. So, most of his hatred was directed at Bai Senmang instead.

He had originally used the Mother Divine Tree to threaten all of Qinggang, but now—perhaps because of the beating from ten years ago, which left a lingering fear in his heart—he was even beginning to withdraw the contamination from Qinggang’s general populace, just to concentrate this single, most powerful bullet.

’Then...’

”Fine!”

Han Su suddenly made a decision and spoke in a deep voice.

Bai Shi was taken aback. He stared blankly at Han Su for a moment.

Han Su slowly took a step back and looked at Bai Shi seriously. ”If you want to take this shot, I won’t stop you. Whether you succeed or fail is up to you.”

”But after you take this shot, I will kill you.”

”In exchange, I want your memories. All of them. The memories related to these events.”

’He was being completely serious. Bai Shi was on a higher level of the mysterious arts than I am. Whether it’s my mastery of the copper or the bullet left in his Spirit World, these things can only help me kill him. They can’t retrieve what’s in his memory.’

’Therefore, an exchange was the only way.’

”You...”

Bai Shi never would have imagined Han Su would say that.

When he prepared to take this shot, he had already accepted that Han Su would stop at nothing to kill him.

But that was also what he wanted. He hated all of them.

So, regardless of whether Han Su was pretending or genuinely wanted to know, if he insisted on asking, Bai Shi was determined not to say a word.

This was his way of getting revenge.

But now, Han Su’s candor took him by surprise. He looked deep into Han Su’s eyes.

This figure seemed to overlap with that mysterious silhouette from the Ancient Castle, the one who was different from all the other children, and it filled Bai Shi with a sense of awe.

Bai Shi spoke with some difficulty. ”Why?”

”Because you were right!”

Han Su took another step back. ”No one has the right to stop you from getting revenge. That includes us.”

”We can’t be friends, we can’t be comrades. It would even be difficult to form an alliance, because we’re after different things.”

”But on certain principles, we are the same!”

”So, the greatest sympathy I can offer you is to let you take this shot. I can even tell you this: whether your shot succeeds or not, I will go after Bai Senmang afterward. If he really was involved in our kidnapping, he will die by my hand.”

”Consider it... an insurance policy for you.”

”...”

Bai Shi looked like he wanted to say something, but his lips moved and no words came out. At this moment, he finally saw something in Han Su’s face that he could trust.

Then, his smile became a little strange. He pointed to his own head and nodded.

The next moment, he fired his shot at Qinggang.

CRACK!

Along with his ”firing” motion, every single leaf on the entire Mother Divine Tree suddenly began to tremble.

From within the great, fleshy patterns, infinite Spiritual Power was rapidly drawn out, gathering above the treetop’s crown.

Then, in the dark red night sky, clouds surged and a fierce wind suddenly rose.

A roiling, turbulent torrent of Spiritual Power instantly converged, roaring as it charged toward Qinggang.

Like a blood-red line, it pierced the entire night sky, pointing at a terrifying speed toward the lights at the edge of the world.

At the same time, the contaminating power that had just been spreading out began to show signs of receding. The frenzied advance of contamination within Qinggang City halted slightly.

Even some of the people whose eyes had already turned red and who were kneeling toward the Mother Divine Tree seemed to regain a bit of clarity, slowly raising their heads. Bai Shi had focused all the evenly dispersed contamination into a single point and fired it at Qinggang.

What began as a threat to all of Qinggang had turned into a targeted strike against a single person within it.

In a way, it had actually slowed the spread of the contamination.

Qinggang.

At the place the dark red beam of contamination was pointing, inside the study of a luxurious, towering manor, a middle-aged man sat at a desk. In front of him was a bottle of Whiskey and a glass.

The open laptop before him was still on some forum page.

He was not part of the Mysterious Circle, but the instant the red beam pointed toward Qinggang—or rather, toward him—the circuitry in the entire manor seemed to become unstable. The lights flickered on and off, as if an infinite pressure was descending from the heavens.

’So this is what it feels like to have your own son trying to kill you at all costs?’

He thought this silently, lowering his head as if in great pain, and even slammed a fist against his head.

But soon, when he looked up again, his expression was full of rage. He grabbed a photo frame from the desk. The picture in it was of a little boy with parted hair and a foolish smile, using the butler’s back to climb onto a horse.

He smashed the frame on the floor with all his might, letting shards of glass fly everywhere. When he raised his head again, his expression had become as cold and hard as pig iron, his eyes holding only a deep indifference.

’Is this my son?’

’No, this is just a good-for-nothing who can’t even grasp the situation, making a pathetic attempt that’s far beyond his abilities!’

’Does he not even understand how much I’ve sacrificed for him?’