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墨書 Inktalez
The rebels surrounded us tightly, scanning the area. Everywhere we looked, there were these monsters, stretching far beyond our sight. We all realized that this time, there was no escape; we were completely trapped. The Demon King approached, scratching his head as he glanced at us and then at the surrounding rebels.
After a long pause, he finally spoke, "Well, you really came."
"I did come," Feng Tang Song replied with a nod.
Feng Tang Song threw his long knife to the ground and turned to look at us, signaling for us to drop our weapons as well. The mercenaries looked at me, and I nodded. I reached out and took the weapons one by one from the three of them. Juan Juan seemed worried, so I patted his shoulder and said, "Trust me."
I tossed the weapons aside. Feng Tang Song nodded and addressed the Demon King, "I know you are looking for me. To show my sincerity, I have already discarded my weapon. You can deal with me however you wish, but I have one condition: let them go."
The Demon King laughed uproariously as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world. After a long while, he finally spoke again, "Is that so? It seems you are quite lost in your own fantasies. Is this really the time for you to make demands?" With that, he shook his head dismissively.
Before I could react, the guards on both sides drew their long knives and plunged them directly into Yan Junde and Mary’s chests. Blood dripped steadily from the blades as they stared blankly at the weapons protruding from their backs.
"No!" Juan Juan shouted, "Te!"
He had just opened his mouth when Feng Tang Song covered it with his hand. Just as he uttered a single word, darkness enveloped us; the ground shook violently as deep fissures cracked open beneath our feet. The sky split apart again, creating an apocalyptic scene. A sound echoed from above, booming as if it came from another world.
"Now is not the time!" Feng Tang Song insisted, covering Juan Juan's mouth. "We’ve been here long enough; do you want to give up now? We’ve found the real Demon King! As long as we kill him, everything will be better. We just need to kill the Demon King!"
Juan Juan struggled desperately, biting down hard on Feng Tang Song's hand. He winced in pain and instinctively pulled back.
"An!" Juan Juan managed to say a second word. In the distance, a fierce sandstorm roared as massive meteors fell from the sky, crashing into the ground and creating deep craters. Fires erupted everywhere; we could barely stand on the trembling earth. The Demon King appeared utterly terrified, confused about what was happening.
"We can only come to this world once!" Feng Tang Song shouted frantically. "Next time, they will understand everything; we won’t be able to eliminate them anymore!"
The enormous walls began to crumble under the impact of falling meteors, sending massive stones flying everywhere. It was impossible to know how many people were crushed beneath those colossal rocks or how many perished in the raging flames. A large boulder came crashing down right where we were fighting.
"Danger!" I pushed Juan Juan and Feng Tang Song away with all my strength.
The boulder crashed down upon us, along with the demon king, burying us beneath the rubble. I felt as if my lower body had turned to dust, completely devoid of sensation. Any slight movement caused blood to spurt from my mouth. I knew it wouldn't be long before I succumbed to death.
"We've failed after all! I'm not willing to accept this," Feng Tang Song shouted.
Through the haze, I glanced over; Feng Tang Song was relatively unharmed, only his legs were broken. But Juan Juan was a different story—she lay beneath the stones, covered in blood, seemingly without breath. I couldn't comprehend what had happened or why things had turned out this way. All I knew was that she was dead.
"Help me, please!" The demon's voice came from beside me. I looked over and saw him trapped under a nearby rock, struggling to crawl out.
The demon king noticed me as well. I crawled toward him with great effort. He laughed and said, "Ha ha, what do you think you can do? Without a weapon, how do you plan to kill me?"
I ignored him and continued crawling closer. The stones around us kept falling; everyone was too preoccupied with their own survival—Feng Tang Song, the demon king, and I were all trapped. We all knew we would die beneath the rocks. The demon king seemed to have given up on survival, staring blankly as I crawled past him.
"You are quite persistent," he remarked with a laugh.
"My mission is just this," I replied calmly, raising my hand to reveal a long key—the key to our cell that I had taken from Juan Juan when we collected our weapons. A fleeting expression of surprise crossed the demon king's face before the next moment saw the key plunging into his skull.
I crawled back, leaving a long trail of blood behind me. I had heard that someone whose lower body was completely crushed could still live for a while; now I realized it was true. As I crawled, I muttered, "The demon king has been killed by me."
Feng Tang Song shook his head and looked at me. "It's useless; we can't go back now. Only if Juan Juan speaks the guiding words will it matter. You’re trapped here now. Didn't you regret not running away? You could have escaped. Why did you save me? I'm different; I'm from this place—I’ll be fine..."
I remained silent and crawled toward Juan Juan. She lay there with her eyes closed, and I gently arranged her hair beside her. Suddenly, Juan Juan opened her eyes wide and stared at me, tears streaming down her cheeks. I wanted to say something, but she uttered her final word: "Group."
Then Juan Juan closed her eyes again.
Feng Tang Song suddenly burst into laughter, a sound filled with excitement and desolation. In that moment, everything in the world came to a halt, and everyone began to float. The faces of the Demon King and the warriors flashed before me. I suddenly remembered why I had come to this place.
We had defeated the Demon King, found the demon hidden within Feng Tang Song's multiple personalities, and eliminated him.
Suddenly, a bright light filled my vision. I opened my eyes and looked up; the ceiling lights were so bright that it was hard to keep my eyes open. In an instant, I tore off the straps binding me and looked around for the others. Feng Tang Song was waking up slowly like me, holding his head as if he were dizzy. However, the other three members of the Special Investigation Team remained completely still, showing no signs of waking up.
“ Juan Juan! Mary!” I kept shaking the three of them: “Yan Junde!”
Several doctors and specialists rushed in. I stared blankly at the three of them, recalling what Juan Juan had told us earlier: each of us had only one personality. If we were killed during hypnosis, we would truly die—not just in a metaphorical sense but become soulless shells—vegetative states.
“What’s going on?” I asked a professor, pulling him aside.
The professor looked at me and shook his head. “If there was danger, we should have recited the guiding words earlier; otherwise, we cannot forcefully awaken you from outside. After hypnosis, we have no idea what happened to you in whatever world you were in! Yang Xiaojuan, as a psychologist and the guide for this mission, should know this best. Why hasn’t she woken up?”
As he spoke, he and several others began to move the three away. He said to us, “We need to conduct a second hypnosis immediately to see if we can bring back their consciousness! Otherwise, they will sleep like this for a lifetime!”
My head spun as I watched the doctors push the three away. I slumped down on the floor in disbelief.
Feng Tang Song approached me and pulled me up. He looked at me seriously, as if he wanted to say something but ultimately held back. His expression was grave; I knew he felt guilty. I forced out a trembling smile and said, “It’s not your fault; it’s okay. They will definitely wake up.”
I couldn’t even believe my own words.
For an entire week, I stayed by their bedside, but they showed no signs of waking up at all. I wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come. My subconscious told me that none of this was real; it was all an illusion. Perhaps that was true; Juan Juan had said that behind falsehoods there isn’t necessarily truth—often it remains falsehood.
I had been following Feng Tang Song’s case closely for a month now, observing continuously and conducting hypnosis sessions. We discovered that the violent personalities within Feng Tang Song had been eliminated by us. With the disappearance of his inner demons, those malevolent personalities vanished along with the Demon King.
Feng Tang Song has now recovered; his multiple personality disorder has been deeply cured through hypnosis. Unfortunately, his true self, the first personality, has also dissipated in this apocalyptic collapse. I do not know what his true self was like—perhaps weak, perhaps insecure—which led him to create false personalities to accompany and protect himself.
Feng Tang Song once said, "My childhood dream was to be able to chat with myself."
But when one can truly achieve this, it is a profoundly sad thing for a person. The boy who was abused by his stepfather and witnessed his mother’s suffering, living in this world, is a cruel reality. Perhaps forever sleeping deep within is the best choice.
The one who committed murder is not Feng Tang Song; it is another personality within him. But since that other personality has died, the killer is no longer Feng Tang Song. In our country, this kind of case is unprecedented. No matter how obscure and dark his past may have been, tomorrow is a brand new beginning.
"I’m leaving," Feng Tang Song said to me in the hospital room. "They..."
I shook my head and said nothing.
"I want to thank you," Feng Tang Song sat down on a chair and said, "for killing them."
A heaviness settled in my heart as I did not understand why Feng Tang Song would say such a thing. Yet, I felt something ominous was about to happen. Sure enough, Feng Tang Song on the chair looked at me as if I were an idiot and said, "Let me tell you a story, okay?"
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