132: Chapter 124 Six Dragons Burned Out

Pei Duo placed the fragments and the jade pendant side by side on the table.

On the left was the black jade pendant. Nine black dragons were coiled on its surface, and dark gold patterns pulsed with her breathing, appearing like nine clusters of living fire trapped within stone.

On the right was the silver fragment. The heart inside beat once every second, steady and honest.

There were three centimeters between the two items.

Pei Duo reached out and pushed the fragment forward.

The silver shell touched the edge of the black jade.

The sound was faint.

But the lights in the entire building flickered violently.

They didn't go out—it was as if someone had seized them by the throat, causing them to gasp. The current in the light tubes shuddered fiercely with a low hum before receding.

The two items on the table pressed tightly together. The heart inside the fragment gave a throb, and the silver shell began to seep into the cracks of the jade pendant like water into stone crevices.

The nine black dragons moved simultaneously.

The outermost one lit up first. Black-gold light poured from the dragon's head along its spine all the way to the tail, and its body swelled in size—

It was eating.

The Authority of Death within the fragment surged across the contact surface. The black dragon opened its mouth and bit down, swallowing it whole.

The first bite.

The second bite.

By the third bite, the light on the dragon vanished.

It didn't fade slowly. With a 'snap'—like a filament burning out—the black-gold patterns from head to tail were extinguished all at once.

The first dragon was dead.

A dull pain pulsed through Pei Duo's palm. It wasn't heat, but cold. The kind of cold that felt like ice water being poured into the marrow of her bones. Her fingertips turned white, and a purple hue appeared beneath her nails.

Meng Tian's shadow suddenly exploded.

Black ink spread in all directions from beneath Pei Duo's feet—three meters, five meters—creeping along the floor tiles. The shadow of a spear tip flickered within the black expanse as the entire shadow desperately tried to squeeze between Pei Duo and the table—

"Back off."

Pei Duo's voice wasn't loud; her throat was dry and her breath was short, but she articulated every word with absolute clarity.

The shadow froze.

"Commander," Meng Tian's voice rose from beneath her feet, raspy like sandpaper scraping iron, carrying a stubbornness that two thousand years had failed to wear away. "The Law backlash has already begun. The second dragon won't be able to withstand the next round—"

"I know."

Pei Duo pressed her other hand down as well.

Ten fingers tightly gripped the junction where the jade pendant and fragment met, her fingertips pressing into the patterns of the black dragons. The chill climbed up her knuckles to her wrists, and a layer of white frost surfaced on her skin.

The second dragon lit up.

It swallowed twice.

Then it was extinguished.

Meng Tian's shadow bounced outward as if struck by an electric shock, only to be forced back. The butt of the spear thudded against the floor tiles with a muffled sound, like suppressed rage.

"My brother gave me this jade pendant—"

Pei Duo stared at the light of the third dragon, her lips devoid of color and her speech punctuated by gasps.

"—not for me to enshrine, but for me to use."

The third dragon swallowed a portion of the Authority of Death.

The patterns from its head to its body flickered unevenly, looking like short-circuiting wires.

"If it breaks, he will be heartbroken," Meng Tian said.

"Heartbroken is one thing."

The corner of Pei Duo's mouth twitched; it was hard to tell if it was meant to be a smile.

"But if he knew I was holding this jade pendant while watching someone die—he would be even more heartbroken."

The third dragon was extinguished.

A crack on the surface of the jade pendant raced from the bottom left to the top right, emitting a very faint, crisp snap.

It wasn't shattering.

It was splitting.

The rhythm of the heartbeat within the fragment changed. It was no longer once a second—it became once every two seconds.

It had slowed down.

Pei Duo looked down. Two-thirds of the fragment's silver shell had already melted into the jade pendant. The heart was now wrapped in a thin, black-gold light membrane; the Imperial Authority Law and the Authority of Death were on opposite sides of the membrane, pushing against each other.

Neither could consume the other.

They had reached a balance.

She picked up the combined jade pendant and fragment from the table.

When she stood up, her knees buckled, and she had to steady herself against the edge of the table to keep from falling.

"Xu Mo."

Xu Mo was already standing beside the fourth row of wheelchairs.

Chen Muyu's body was slumped against the back of the chair, her lips gray-white and her nostrils motionless. He cleared away the silver wires from around the chest wound and disinfected it with an iodine swab.

His movements were very light.

Like the final step of preparation before a surgery.

Pei Duo walked over.

Seven steps.

With every step, the floor tiles beneath her cracked. It wasn't from her weight—it was the aftermath of the two rules clashing within the jade pendant venting through her body; wherever she passed, the ground shattered.

Reaching the wheelchair, she knelt down.

She met Chen Muyu's eyes at the same level.

That face was very young. She looked even younger than the twenty-six years written on her medical record, likely due to her thinness. Her cheekbones pressed against her skin, and her chin was pointed, like a face that hadn't fully matured.

Pei Duo pressed the combined jade pendant and fragment against the wound on Chen Muyu's chest.

The fourth dragon lit up.

The fifth.

The sixth.

The three dragons simultaneously bore the clash between the Imperial Authority Law and the Authority of Death. The black-gold patterns on their bodies flickered like neon tubes on the verge of failure.

The heart shed its shell from the fragment.

The silver soul core, wrapped in that layer of black-gold light membrane, sank bit by bit into the wound.

It was in.

Pei Duo lost sensation in both hands at the same time.

It wasn't cold. It was empty.

Like the blood in her veins had been sucked out and replaced—replaced entirely with ice shards.

She gritted her teeth.

She didn't make a sound.

The fourth dragon went out.

The fifth.

The sixth.

Three seconds. All six dragons were dark.

Only three dragons remained lit on the jade pendant. Cracks covered the entire surface, and black-gold light seeped from the fissures like a lantern about to shatter.

The waveform on the heart monitor jumped.

Flatline.

Flatline.

Flatline.

And then—

"Beep."

A peak.

Pei Duo's hand was still pressed against the wound.

She felt it.

That heart gave a throb beneath the skin. It wasn't the vibration through a shell like in the fragment—it was a real, warm pulse transmitted through a layer of breastbone.

"Beep. Beep."

Two beats. One second apart.

On the monitor screen, the green waveform regained the silhouette of a sine curve. Peak and valley, gliding at a steady speed.

Chen Muyu's chest began to rise and fall.

Pei Duo let go.

She stepped back half a pace.

Her knees finally gave out, and she sat directly on the floor.

Meng Tian's shadow silently lunged behind her, steadily cushioning her back.

Chen Muyu's eyelids flickered.

It wasn't the uniform, mechanical movement of a puppet.

It was human—the kind of struggle to emerge from a very, very deep sleep. Her eyelids trembled three or four times, her brow furrowed, and her lips pursed slightly as if swallowing dry saliva.

Then they opened.

The eyes were normal. Black pupils, white sclera, and covered in bloodshot veins.

Her focus was scattered. She stared at the ceiling lights, dazed for two seconds.

Xu Mo didn't move. He gripped the underworld emissary token with its copper face down; the Ghost Seal Script was completely extinguished.

Chen Muyu's lips moved.

No sound came out. Her mouth moved slowly, as if her throat were stuffed with cotton—her vocal cords were straining, but no air could escape.

Pei Duo leaned forward slightly.

A second time.

There was sound.

Fragile and light. Like a faint echo returning from a very, very distant place.

"He is not the God of Death."

Pei Duo held her breath.

Chen Muyu's eyes finally found focus, meeting Pei Duo's gaze.

In those bloodshot eyes was a deep exhaustion, one that had been submerged underwater for far too long.

She used all her strength to squeeze the last few words from her throat.

"He was the first... trapped... by this position of 'Death'."

Her voice faded away.

Chen Muyu's eyelids closed. Her breathing was steady. Her heart beat once every second.

She had truly fallen asleep.

The corridor grew so quiet that only the monitor could be heard.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Xu Mo adjusted his glasses.

The eyes behind the lenses stared at Chen Muyu's face for five seconds. His lips moved, but he didn't speak.

He looked down at the old phone in the wheelchair's side pocket.

The screen lit up.

No one had touched it.

The lock screen wallpaper lit up for a second before going dark, then it unlocked itself and jumped into the photo gallery.

The photos began to flip automatically.

One by one.

Shen Ruocheng in the kitchen, burning eggs.

Shen Ruocheng sitting in a wheelchair, sunbathing with an open book on her lap.

Shen Ruocheng arranging a row of succulents on a hospital windowsill—crookedly placed, with two surviving and three dead.

Shen Ruocheng making a face at the phone screen; above the screenshot was Chen Muyu's video call avatar.

Page after page.

All of the same person.

They reached the last one.

It wasn't a photo.

It was a three-second video.

In the frame, Shen Ruocheng sat on a plastic stool with a park lawn in the background. she made a "V" sign at the camera, smiling to reveal a canine tooth.

A voice called out from the background—

"Muyu, come quickly!"

The video ended.

Filming date: July 13, 2021.

The day before the accident.

The phone screen stayed on the final frame. Shen Ruocheng's hand was still raised, index and middle fingers spread, half a canine tooth showing.

Pei Duo looked down at the jade pendant in her hand.

Three dragons. Cracks everywhere. The dark gold light was intermittent, like a flashlight running out of batteries.

It was enough.

She hung the jade pendant back around her neck.

The moment the chain touched the back of her neck, the remaining three dragons glowed slightly.

It wasn't recovery.

It was recognizing its master.

Deep underground.

That voice did not speak again.

But the dark gold light on all the silver wires throughout the building—all those still connected to living people—receded by an inch.

Only by an inch.

It wasn't crushed by the Imperial Authority Law.

It receded on its own.

Xu Mo stared at the frozen smile on the phone screen and rubbed the copper back of the underworld emissary token three times with his right index finger.

He suddenly spoke:

"The nutrient solution on the sixth floor... needs changing."

The sixth-floor corridor was eerily quiet.

The fire door slammed shut behind her, the muffled thud of the spring hinges echoing twice against the concrete walls before falling into total silence. There was no sound of air conditioning units running, and the ventilation ducts were dead.

The only movement on the entire floor came from the sound of a heart monitor inside a half-open door at the end of the corridor.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Steady as a rock.

Lin Sa walked over. In the seven or eight meters of the corridor, only one light tube was lit, its white light flickering unevenly. Her shadow lengthened and shortened on the floor like a fish being held firmly by its tail.

The door wasn't closed. Xu Mo had been here and hadn't shut it when he left.

She stood at the doorway.

Scanning the room, the ward was only about fifteen square meters. The curtains were sealed tight. A wall lamp cast a warm yellow light. The corners of the white sheets on the medical bed were folded so neatly they could drive a person with OCD mad.

The nutrient solution bag was nearly empty, the liquid dripping down the tube one drop at a time. The sound of it hitting the wall of the drip chamber was even fainter than the monitor.

Shen Ruocheng lay quietly on the bed.

Lin Sa stood at the door for three seconds before drawing the dagger from behind her waist, the back of the blade pressed firmly against the crook of her left thumb. The wound from Meng Tian's strike hadn't fully healed, and the blood on the bandage had dried to a dark red.

She didn't rush in. First, she checked the door frame, her fingers tracing the metal edge and her fingertips not missing a single rivet. There were no residual arrays, no hidden runes, not even a stray fragment of silver wire.

Clean.

Truly clean.

Across all six floors, from the basement to the fifth floor, it was all damn puppets, silver wires, and Western altars. Only this room was so clean it felt like it had been carved out and placed into another world.

Lin Sa sheathed her dagger and stepped inside.

Her soles made no sound on the floor. The tiles had been wiped—not with the perfunctory mopping of a janitor, but with a cleanliness achieved by someone kneeling on the ground and scrubbing them one by one.

Kneeling for a long time would leave circular indentations on the tiles. Lin Sa saw them to the right of the foot of the bed.

Two shallow pits.

The distance between them was exactly the width of an adult's knees.

Lin Sa knelt down and touched them. The indentations were shallow, but the glaze wear at the edges was the result of years of accumulation; it was definitely not something that could be caused by kneeling once or twice.

Three years.

An unspeakable, terrifying existence had knelt honestly in this room for three years.

Lin Sa stood up and walked to the bedside.

Shen Ruocheng's face was very small. Her medical record said she was twenty-two, but she looked like eighteen or nineteen. A nasogastric tube was inserted through her left nostril, secured with medical tape on her cheekbone, the corners of which were slightly peeling—it was almost time for a change. However, the tube itself was exceptionally clean, with no scabs or foreign matter.

Her breathing was steady. Her chest rose and fell with perfectly consistent amplitude.

On the monitor screen, the green waveform glided at a uniform speed. The peaks were neither high nor low, the intervals precise to the millisecond.

Too consistent.

Lin Sa's brow twitched.

A normal person's heartbeat, even in deep sleep, will have minute fluctuations. Changing positions, having a dream, or even a little noise outside would leave a tremor in the waveform.

But Shen Ruocheng's waveform looked as if it had been drawn with a ruler. Every peak and every valley was a hundred percent copy-pasted.

A person who hadn't dreamed for three years.

Her heartbeat had also been put on pause. No, she wasn't dead. she was waiting. Like an Ultrabook on standby, all parameters were locked to factory settings, just waiting for that restart command to be keyed in.

Lin Sa sheathed her dagger, pulled over a plastic chair, and sat broadly by the bed.

The chair was old, the cushion indented. Someone sat here often.

She stared at Shen Ruocheng's face, her gaze deep.

Twenty-two years old. Three years ago, she was nineteen.

Lin Sa was also nineteen three years ago. That year she was a rookie, entering the D-rank dungeon 'Rainy Night Orphanage' for the first time. There were six people in the team, and three survived. Among the three who didn't make it was a nine-year-old boy.

Not the one in the eleventh cubicle of the basement downstairs. Another one.

Same age, same scrawny frame.

That day, she had also draped her jacket over that child. But it was useless. The broken rules of the Thriller Game never cared for human sentiment.

Lin Sa moved her gaze from Shen Ruocheng's face to the bedside table.

A light blue plastic water cup with a rabbit missing an ear printed on it. The lid was screwed on tight; there was no water inside.

A plain black hair tie, looped three times. A few long hairs were caught in it.

They weren't Shen Ruocheng's. Shen Ruocheng's hair was spread on the pillow, the ends just past her shoulders. But the ones on the hair tie were longer than the collarbone.

Those were Chen Muyu's.

Lin Sa didn't touch those things. She leaned back, the back of her head resting against the wall. The wall was bone-chillingly cold. It was clearly June, and the thirty-two-degree heat outside felt like a giant steamer, yet it wasn't even ten degrees in this room.

Cold.

She pulled the tactical jacket off her shoulders.

She was very familiar with this movement. She had pulled it off the same way three years ago to drape it over a nine-year-old child. This time—

She draped the tactical jacket over Shen Ruocheng, covering her from her collarbone to her abdomen. The jacket was broad, and Shen Ruocheng was too thin; the sleeves hung empty off the sides of the bed.

In the next second, a sudden change occurred.