Chapter Ninety-Eight: Absolute Darkness

The tavern on Nightmare Street was operating as usual. Everything there seemed perfectly harmonious, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that an atmosphere of intoxication and decay permeated every corner. Once people stepped inside, they were liable to lose themselves in it and never quite recover. No matter who you were, once you entered the tavern and breathed in that heady fragrance, you would instinctively take the drink offered by the voluptuous waitress, sink back into your chair, and savor a moment of peace, easing the tension built up by the scenario.

The tavern had been deliberately set up by the company for this very reason, so that those playing the game would not become depressed or lose their minds. After all, if the players were to turn into psychiatric cases, the game would instantly be shoved into the eye of a public storm by countless idle self-appointed champions of justice. Of course, the tavern served another purpose as well, and that was the most important one: making money. No matter how dreamlike or wondrous a place might be, it could not escape the stain of profit. Since money had been spent building it, it was only natural, and only reasonable, to turn a profit from it.

A tavern existed for consumption and amusement to begin with, and here that principle was taken to the extreme. The first drink was free, gleaming with an amber luster. It looked like a tempting piece of jelly, yet dissolved the moment it touched the tongue. Everyone could taste in it exactly what they needed most, and then, once ensnared, could not help but buy another. The second glass was a little more expensive, but still acceptable, only one hundred credits. After that, however, each additional glass cost one thousand. And yet it was so irresistible that everyone who tasted it could not stop at three.

Just as the name of the drink suggested, Nightmare Paradise let each person enjoy a heavenlike ease and delight, only to bring them back to their senses in the nightmare of a hemorrhaging wallet and return them to ordinary life. Naturally, the wealthy did not care about such sums. The company had prepared a more suitable drink for them: Drunken Life, Dreaming Death; a Thousand-Year Dream of Ecstasy; an Empty Awakening to Mourn Yellow Blossoms at Dawn.

At that moment, in the tavern hall, a group of young men and women in matching uniforms were reveling in high spirits. On the shoulders of their clothes was a badge depicting a giant tree against a deep blue background. Their uniform was a white trench coat, with the words Heavenly Radiance written across the back, while the rest of their outfit could be freely mixed and matched. This white trench coat was a rather special garment. When purchased, it came by default with the archaic Chinese word for justice written on the back. After buying it, the player could alter those words once, up to a maximum of eight characters. Clearly, they had all changed it to Heavenly Radiance. And the coat did not occupy the upper-body slot; it was classified as an accessory, because it could be worn over whatever the player was already wearing.

Naturally, clothing like that was not cheap. It cost a full one million game credits to buy, which translated to ten thousand yuan in real money. For an ordinary person, that was no small expense, but the market for it was still quite good, because it looked cool. The Heavenly Radiance studio was also happy to spare itself the trouble, and simply bought the coat as a uniform. Of course, there were also people who, purely to show off, would insist on wearing such an outfit even when they were just starting out, then change the back to things like Number One Under Heaven or The Supreme Ruler of Heaven and Earth, which was enough to make one laugh and cry in equal measure.

"Flash Nightmare, how come you got out so fast? Did you get matched with a bunch of scrubs this time? Fun stomping noobs?" A young man who looked to be about twenty-six or twenty-seven leaned against the table, a glass of Drunken Life, Dreaming Death in his left hand and a cigarette between the fingers of his right, speaking with the grand air of an old hand to a somewhat younger, refined-looking youth beside him.

"Ah, Drunken Cat, you don't know how unlucky I was this time," Flash Nightmare said. "I hit on a pretty good opportunity at first, and I was planning to make a grand entrance at the very end and crush everything flat. But then..." As he spoke, he picked up a glass of Nightmare Paradise from the table and drained it in one go. Mimicking Drunken Cat, he leaned against the table too, stared up at the beams of the tavern, and said gloomily, "In the end, they didn't even give me a chance to appear. I got taken out for no reason at all."

It really was bad luck for Flash Nightmare. By a stroke of chance, when his level was still extremely low, he had once entered an Eastern cultivation scenario and obtained a cultivation manual. With that manual, his path had been smooth sailing all the way, advancing triumphantly without hindrance. This time, the moment he entered this scenario, he sensed that the spiritual energy in the polar region was exceptionally dense. What made him even more ecstatic was that absorbing that spiritual energy could also accelerate his evolution. He had planned to evolve all the way to a seventh-order creature in the polar lands and sweep away everything in a single stroke. But the place where he had appeared happened to be one of the key nodes of the Polar Prison, and just like that, he was inexplicably carried along with the falling ice crystals into the rift.

But well, there was no but. Even Lance had not managed the slightest resistance. How could a cultivation brat of low realm possibly defy heaven?

At that moment, a crushing force descended. Flash Nightmare did not even have time to react before he was instantly killed, and then he came here.

Let us return now to Evolution Island. After the violent tremors in the polar region, there was a brief period of abnormal, eerie stillness. Then came a dull boom. The ice layers of the polar region cracked outward in all directions like a spiderweb, and in the very next instant the thick ice itself had vanished entirely. In its place rose an astonishingly dense mist of steam.

The steam carried with it a burst of heat, turning the biting wind into a warm current. Even the surrounding environment seemed to have changed. There was no longer any polar wasteland, only a vast sinkhole. For several minutes a soft white radiance flickered, followed by a blinding brilliance, as though a brand-new sun were about to rise from the depths and cast out strands of blue-black light.

"Too dazzling," came an ancient, distant voice from deep within the sinkhole. Like an order issued from primordial times, it compelled the light not to shine so fiercely. The light, suddenly cowed, drew back all its brilliance in fear. In the end, all radiance vanished like a spark with no source, gone in an instant. Everything returned to darkness, merging into the dim abyss.

Luo Hanya sat calmly in the air, supporting his head with both hands as he watched everything unfold below. His black-and-white eyes held no emotion. He looked like a king grown accustomed to the end of the world, incapable of taking any interest in even the slightest change before him.

"An interesting fellow, but you don't seem to belong here," the weathered, ancient voice sounded once more, though the authority in it had faded. It was now like the voice of a weary loner.

"I do indeed not belong here. I am only a passerby," Luo Hanya said, staring at the immense sinkhole, his tone neither warm nor cold, neither glad nor sorrowful.

"A passerby. Interesting. Hahaha." Satisfied with his reply, the presence within the sinkhole let out a hearty laugh. The laughter thundered, stirring ripples through the air.

"Is it really that interesting? Is that your favorite line or something? Hey, old man, could you please stop laughing so loudly? You're shaking my ears off!" Luo Hanya rolled his eyes, covered his ears, and shouted back toward the sinkhole.

The being in the sinkhole fell silent for quite a while, as though deep in thought. After a long moment, it finally spoke, and only two words came out.

"Absolute Dark!"

Those two words seemed to possess some mysterious power, stirring all things between heaven and earth. In an instant, light rose again, and endless brilliance swallowed every trace of darkness. The blazing radiance was like a sun at noon, shining with the utmost intensity and dazzling splendor.

And the moment that blazing sun came into being, an unimaginable force erupted forth. That force originated from deep within the sun itself and brought with it endless darkness. The daylight of heaven and earth was torn apart in that eruption. So overwhelming was this power that it could reverse the cosmos, shake the laws of heaven, and force daylight to crumble before it, shattered into fragments and swept back in reverse, until this world was replaced by darkness, ruled by the remnant night.

Everything returned once more to darkness. What had just happened seemed no more than a dream.

Luo Hanya fell into thought. He closed his eyes and remained silent for several minutes, then nodded heavily. Standing up in midair, he clasped his hands and bowed toward the sinkhole in a sincere gesture of respect.

"Thank you for your guidance, senior. I understand now."

"Remember this! My name is Absolute Dark! In time, you and I will surely meet again. It is time to erase this trace."