125: Chapter 117 Believers

Pei Duo crouched in front of the eighth window.

Inside the window was a woman in her thirties. She sat cross-legged with her hands on her knees. Her posture was upright, and her back was straight.

She wasn't writing.

A silver threads extended from her heart, uniform in thickness, its surface faintly shimmering.

A faint smile hung on the corners of her mouth.

Pei Duo pressed her palm against the observation window.

black-gold patterns seeped from her fingertips, penetrating the window and landing on the woman's forehead.

The Imperial Authority Law poured in.

The silver threads jerked. The woman's body shuddered violently, her smile vanished, and her vacant gaze became sharp.

She saw Pei Duo.

She was awake.

"Can you hear me?" Pei Duo pressed herself against the window.

The woman nodded.

"Do you know what that thread on you is?"

The woman looked down at the silver threads on her chest.

She looked up again.

Her eyes were clear and calm, even containing an indescribable light.

"I know."

Her voice came out muffled through the window. It wasn't loud, but every word was articulated clearly.

"It says it needs me."

Pei Duo's fingers, pressed against the window, paused for a moment.

"What?"

"It needs my soul to complete a great undertaking."

The woman's expression was neither crazed nor dazed. She spoke with the tone of a neighbor chatting about domestic trifles—

"I have been chosen."

Lin Sa walked over to Pei Duo's side and looked down at the woman inside the window.

The woman didn't stop.

"I used to be just a clerk. No one needed me. After the divorce, even my daughter stopped taking my calls."

She touched the silver threads on her chest with her hand. Her movement was very gentle.

Like touching an umbilical cord.

"But it said my soul purity is Grade A. There are fewer than twenty Grade As in the entire city."

She looked up at Pei Duo.

"Do you know what it feels like to 'be needed'?"

Pei Duo didn't answer.

She pushed the Imperial Authority Law up a notch.

black-gold patterns exploded on the woman's forehead, forcibly washing over her consciousness.

The woman's body jerked back, hitting the wall. The silver threads trembled frantically.

Five seconds.

The law receded.

The woman sat upright again.

Her gaze was even clearer than before.

Then she raised her hand and, using her worn-down fingers, continued to scratch her name on her knee.

"I know you want to save me."

Her voice was flat.

"But I don't need to be saved."

Word by word, crystal clear.

This wasn't the sleep-talk of someone brainwashed.

It was the choice made by a fully conscious adult who had thought it over and understood it completely.

Pei Duo crouched in front of the window, staring into those eyes.

Clear. Calm.

There was even a hint of—pride.

This was countless times more terrifying than those unconscious, rolling eyeballs upstairs.

Meng Tian's shadow clung to Pei Duo's feet, the tip of his spear pressing against the ground, letting out a low, vibrating sound.

It wasn't battle intent.

It was anger.

"This thing... first robs them of their sanity, then returns it," Meng Tian's voice grew half-hoarse. "To make someone jump into a fire pit while fully conscious, and even feel that it is their final destination. It is worse than murder..."

He forced himself to swallow the second half of the sentence.

The words were stuck in his throat, unuttered.

But Pei Duo understood.

Worse than murder, it's destroying the heart.

---

Lin Sa had remained silent the whole time.

She stood behind Pei Duo, her gaze scanning one observation window after another.

At the door of the eleventh cubicle, she stopped.

Inside the window was a child.

Eight or nine years old. A boy. Wearing a blue and white striped short-sleeved shirt. He was curled up in a corner with his back to the window, arms hugging his knees.

The silhouette of his shoulders. The angle at which the hair on the back of his head stuck up.

It wasn't that child.

Lin Sa knew it wasn't.

The one from three years ago was thinner than this one, and his hair was shorter.

But her hand rested on the hilt of her blade, her thumb pressing against the copper buckle.

Three seconds.

Five seconds.

Seven seconds.

The boy turned his head.

He was also smiling.

That kind of smile of being needed, of fulfillment, like a martyr.

Such a smile on an eight or nine-year-old face.

Lin Sa's thumb slid off the copper buckle.

She didn't look at Pei Duo.

She walked ahead.

Her footsteps were a bit heavier than before.

Only a bit.

Pei Duo didn't call her.

She stood up and followed.

---

The spiral ramp continued downward.

There were more and more cubicles on both sides. The people inside were in various postures—crouching, kneeling, cross-legged, leaning against the wall.

The only thing they had in common was that silver umbilical cord growing outward from their chests.

And that spine-chilling serenity on their faces.

They passed the last cubicle.

The ramp reached the bottom.

An iron door stood ahead. It was open.

The space behind the door wasn't large, the ceiling was very low, just barely missing the top of one's head when standing straight.

In the center was an operating table.

Empty.

The surface was wiped spotless, reflecting the light.

On the floor around the operating table, silver threadss converged densely from all directions, all plunging into the floor directly beneath the table and disappearing.

The main vein.

The terminal for all the silver threadss.

Pei Duo stood at the iron door, not in a hurry to step inside.

Because she heard it.

It wasn't chanting.

It was a heartbeat.

"Thump—"

Extremely slow. Extremely heavy.

The interval between the two beats was so long that one would unconsciously hold their breath, waiting for the next one to fall.

Pei Duo looked down.

The jade pendant on her chest was also beating.

The same frequency. The same rhythm.

Perfectly synchronized.

She placed her hand over it.

The vibration bored from her palm into the marrow of her bones, crawling all the way up her arm to the back of her head.

That heartbeat wasn't coming from under the operating table.

It was from somewhere deeper.

Somewhere much farther away.

"It's waiting," Pei Duo said.

Lin Sa turned to look at her.

"From the first step I took into Passage No. 5," Pei Duo stared at the operating table, "it has been syncing its heartbeat frequency with my jade pendant."

Meng Tian paused for a beat.

"The General means—"

"The fax paper said to take Passage No. 5."

Pei Duo pulled that twice-folded thermal paper from her pocket, glanced at it in her palm, and stuffed it back.

"No. 3 was the obvious trap it laid out. No. 5—"

She looked up.

"Is the second trap it hid inside the first."

Lin Sa pulled her dagger halfway out of its sheath.

"Then we're still going in?"

Pei Duo lifted her foot and stepped over the threshold.

"Yes."

---

Pei Duo didn't walk toward the operating table.

She turned around.

"Go back."

Lin Sa, who had drawn her blade halfway, retreated again. She didn't ask why.

Meng Tian's voice emerged from beneath the shadow, carrying a hint of surprise: "The main vein is right beneath our feet."

"Don't touch it yet."

Pei Duo walked back along the spiral ramp. Her pace wasn't fast, but her direction was clear—the cubicles.

Those people who had grown silver threadss from their own hearts.

"The General wants to save them?"

Meng Tian's tone wasn't one of questioning, but of confirmation.

Pei Duo didn't answer.

---

She walked to the first observation window.

The man inside was still scratching words with his nail-less fingers. The character for 'Liu' had been written hundreds of times, wearing a layer off the wall surface.

Pei Duo pushed the door. It wasn't locked.

The man didn't look back. He continued scratching.

She raised her right hand, and black-gold patterns condensed into a single point at her fingertip.

The blade fell.

The silver threads was severed at the base where it emerged from the skin of his heart.

The man's body arched violently—like a drowning person being pulled ashore, the first breath of air flooding into his lungs.

He turned his head, and things returned to his eyes layer by layer. First bewilderment, then fear, and finally, an overwhelming clarity.

He saw his own hands.

The nails were gone, the flesh was turned out, and the bloodstains had dried into a blackish-brown.

His whole body curled into a ball as he wailed aloud, clutching his head.

It wasn't crying.

It was a sound wrung out from his very internal organs.

Pei Duo stood for three seconds, then turned and left.

The next six cubicles.

Her cutting method became increasingly efficient. Black-gold light point falls, silver threads severs, law injected—the entire process was compressed to under four seconds.

The reactions upon waking varied. Some crouched on the floor shivering, some lunged to grab Pei Duo's sleeve, some bent over retching.

Most were crying.

Pei Duo didn't stop for any of them.

---

She walked to the eighth window.

The Female Clerk.

In her thirties, sitting upright and cross-legged, the silver threads growing from her heart, its surface faintly glowing. A faint smile hung on the corners of her mouth.

Pei Duo pushed the door and entered.

The woman looked up at her. Her eyes were clear.

"You're here."

It wasn't surprise, nor was it fear.

It was the calm of "I knew you would come."

Pei Duo didn't waste words. She raised her right hand, and the black-gold light point fell.

The silver threads broke.

The woman's body didn't arch. She only swayed slightly, like someone being woken from a nap by an alarm clock.

Then she stood up.

The hospital gown hung crumpled on her, but she stood with the posture of someone wearing a business suit.

Pei Duo took half a step back, preparing to turn to the next window.

*Slap.*

She was struck across the face.

It wasn't heavy. The Female Clerk's hand had little strength, and her fingers were icy. But her palm landed squarely on Pei Duo's left cheek, the sound ringing out crisply in the cubicle.

Lin Sa's dagger was halfway out of its sheath.

"Stand down."

Pei Duo didn't raise her hand to cover her face.

The Female Clerk's hand was still suspended in mid-air. She wasn't mad; there was no vacancy in her eyes, let alone hysteria.

She looked at Pei Duo, articulating every word clearly—

"What right do you have to take away my only chance to be needed?"

Her voice wasn't loud or shaky; it even carried a sense of pedantic seriousness, like arguing over spreadsheet figures with a colleague in an office.

"I've lived for thirty-two years. I'm divorced, and I've been laid off twice. My mother thinks I'm a disgrace, and my ex-husband thinks I'm useless."

She paused.

"My daughter's number is saved in my phone. I let it ring for four seconds and then hung up because I didn't know what to say. I was afraid she'd ask me how I was doing, because I couldn't make up a lie."

She lowered her hand.

"Then it came. It said my soul is Grade A, one of fewer than twenty in the whole city."

She touched the place where the silver threads had been severed on her chest.

"Do you know what it feels like to have something tell me 'you are very special' for the first time in thirty-two years?"

Movement came from the hallway outside.

Pei Duo's peripheral vision swept over.

The third person she had rescued—the woman in her early forties who had worn her knuckles down writing her name—was kneeling in her cubicle, holding the severed end of the silver threads with both hands, trying to press it back onto her chest.

It wouldn't go back.

The thread was dead.

But she was still trying.

A sound also came from the direction of the fifth window.

The seventeen or eighteen-year-old youth didn't go for the silver threads; he sat on the floor staring at his empty palm for a while, then stood up, walked out of the cubicle, and leaned against the sixth observation window—inside was a middle-aged man whose silver threads hadn't been cut yet, a serene smile on his face.

The youth said softly, "Uncle, don't be afraid. It'll be quick. It doesn't hurt at all."

He was comforting someone who hadn't been "saved" yet—telling him not to be afraid of being consumed by Thanatos.

Pei Duo's footsteps stopped.

In the shadow, the tip of Meng Tian's spear carved a crack into the floor.

"General. I request permission to forcibly remove everyone here—"

"No."

Pei Duo didn't look back.

She crouched down to look the Female Clerk in the eye.

The grayish-white light of the basement fell on both their faces.

One had just been slapped, the other had just delivered the slap.

The handprint still remained on Pei Duo's left cheek. She didn't touch it, nor did she rub it.

It was quiet for two seconds.

Then she spoke. Her voice was very soft.

"Your daughter's call—did you ever answer it?"

The Female Clerk's eyelid twitched.

Pei Duo didn't wait for an answer.

She stood up, turned, and left.

Her footsteps echoed in the hallway one by one, not fast, but unceasing.

The cubicle behind her remained silent for a long time.

The Female Clerk looked down at the wound on her chest. At the edge of the severed silver threads, there was an extremely thin membrane. It was black-gold and semi-transparent, clinging to the inner wall of the wound like a fresh scab.

Pei Duo hadn't left it there intentionally.

It had automatically seeped into the surface of the soul when the law severed the silver threads.

It did nothing.

It didn't heal, it didn't brainwash, and it didn't force clarity.

It was just there.

The Female Clerk reached out to touch it.

The moment her fingertip made contact, a scene flashed through her mind—

A phone screen. The caller ID said "Mom."

The ringtone sounded for four seconds.

Her finger reached toward the answer button.

The image broke.

The Female Clerk froze in place.

Her finger hovered over her chest, not lowering for a long time.

---

The eleventh window.

Lin Sa stood before the observation window.

The boy was curled in the corner. Blue and white striped short-sleeved shirt, a tuft of hair sticking up at the back of his head.

This time she didn't wait.

She pushed the door and entered.

She didn't draw her blade.

From behind her waist, she pulled out a spare talisman paper that Xu Mo had stuffed into her earlier; the exorcism patterns on it were crooked. Xu Mo said it could be used for emergencies; she had never believed him, but she hadn't thrown it away either.

She walked up to the boy.

She crouched down.

The boy looked up. That smile of being needed and fulfilled still hung on his face.

Lin Sa pressed the talisman paper against the base of the silver threads.

The talisman itself couldn't cut this thing, but the ripples of law splashed from Pei Duo's cutting along the way had permeated the paper's surface—Meng Tian had confirmed that for a silver threads that was already loosened, it would be enough.

The silver threads broke.

The boy's smile vanished.

His gaze became blank, and then there was nothing left.

He looked at Lin Sa.

He didn't recognize her, he wasn't afraid, and he didn't cry.

An eight or nine-year-old child, his eyes perfectly clean, like a sheet of white paper just pulled from a printer, not yet having had the chance to have any words written on it.

Lin Sa took off the tactical jacket she was wearing and draped it over the boy's shoulders.

The jacket was too big. The collar bunched up to the base of his ears, and the hem dragged on the floor.

She pulled up the zipper.

Her finger lingered on the zipper pull for an extra second.

She didn't speak.

She stood up, turned, and left.

At the door, Pei Duo was leaning against the wall, waiting for her.

The two of them exchanged a glance.

They said nothing.

They continued walking down.

Behind them, the boy, wrapped in the jacket three sizes too large, tilted his head and buried his nose in the collar.

He smelled the scent of a living person.

The smell of sweat, the smell of rust, and a very faint scent of soapberry.

His eyes blinked once.

---

The bottom of the spiral ramp.

The operating table.

Pei Duo stood back at the iron door.

The underground heartbeat had resumed. One and a half seconds, faster than before.

"It's absorbing," Meng Tian's voice grew heavy. "The residual soul energy from the silver threadss cut just now didn't return to the hosts' bodies; it was intercepted by the main vein."

Pei Duo looked down at her palm.

She had used too much of the law; the black-gold patterns on her fingertips had dimmed by thirty percent, and the temperature of the jade pendant was also dropping.

She had saved eleven people.

At least two of them had tried to press the silver threadss back in.

One was comforting an "un-rescued" person not to be afraid.

One had slapped her.

And all the residual soul energy from those severed silver threadss had been intercepted by Thanatos.

It was as if she had personally fed the thing an extra meal.

Pei Duo leaned against the doorframe, looking up at the water-seeping cracks in the ceiling.

Countdown—one hour and nine minutes.

Lin Sa walked to her side and slid her dagger back into its sheath.

"Thought of a way?"

Pei Duo shook her head.

She really hadn't.

The heartbeat beneath the operating table quickened by another beat.

One second.

Steady.

Even.

It was laughing.