Chapter 76 - The Institute (17)

In ancient times, humans would use blood as a means to please their gods,

They would burn the body's of their enemies and sprinkle the soulless ashes on the altar of the divine,

Now, Chu Yi himself awaited a divine judgment- his life and death completely at the mercy of others!

His body seemed to be pressed down by a heavy weight, his limbs filled with lead, he couldn't move; he could even feel the weakness screaming from his veins as he was rapidly drained of blood! 

As if he had a fever, every inch of his body seemed to be seared by burning flames, however from the depths of his bones, he only felt cold. The frozen chill of oncoming death, the life being slowly ripped from his very veins! 

"Stay...."

There it was again.

The beguiling babble hovered in the depths of his mind, playing this unclear phrase over and over again, as if there were low buzzing murmurs coming from all direction, sourcing from countless open mouths; but also as if the empty white noise from a deep, stagnant sea engulfed him.

In his mind, his chaotic thoughts could hardly be reorganized. The world appeared as broken pictures that were connected frame by frame.The damp and musky scent of seaweed entangled his senses, and the air was like thick walls that slowly surrounded him, forcing out the oxygen in his lungs little by little!

He felt a kind of almost suffocating panic gushing from the depths of his body, and a nearly desperate sense of powerlessness overwhelmed him! 

His heart rate soared and his body temperature increased rapidly, but the air pouring into the lungs became less and less!

And all through this, the green light never lit up!

Chu Yi took a deep breathe and ignored the sense of confusion in his brain from the rapid and sudden lost of strenght.

There were only two viable options before him, the first one was gnarly and cruel and directly involved just cutting his arm off to escape, the other is to leave his fate in the hands of the copy, to wait desperately for the green light to appear, regardless of his rapidly draining body! 

Chu Yi laughed lightly, he knew that both options spelled death one way or another-

Cutting his arm off and leaving himself with only a disabled and mangled stump would put him at a permanent disadvantage for the rest of the time in the Institute and might even cost him his life in the long run! Waiting for the green light, meant waiting for death, If it never appeared wouldn't he just be foolishly allowing himself to be manipulated and directly sent to ferry the Underworld! 

But in such a desperate situation, there seemed to be no other choice!

Below him the players seemed to have noticed the sudden abnormality and the previous tension that had eased rose back up again with full force, the scrutinizing and pitying gazes colored his unnaturally pale face.

Tang Shun stared deeply at the somewhat blurred figure standing at the top of the capsule and a calculating light bled into his peach blossom eyes.

If Chu Yi was there, he would have immediately recognized that this guy was scheming something.

He didn't struggle to get his hand out and instead his eyes seemed to be locked onto a particular spot at the edge of the platform he stood, even as the pain that traveled up his arm slowly edged on unbearable, his sight never left,

Since entering this world, his state has switched between three extremes-either violent and impatient, impulsive and irritable, or listless and chaotic.

This wasn't his normal state of logical chaos, and even the occasional bouts of extreme bloodlust seemed to have had a much higher frequency of appearance than before. This wasn't just from a feeling of excitement, this was something else-

It seems that there was a dark and prevalent existence hidden deep in his mind, the outline of the creature was vague and unclear, but it still whispered in Chu Yi's subconscious constantly, spurring on the tyranny hidden in his very bones.

Water, waves, walls, the feeling of losing blood...

Light, glass, merman...

All of these seemed to combine into a chaotic echo that sounded like shrill alarms in his mind, a negative and corrupted feeling that sought to drive him crazy! 

His gaze looked towards the darkness that always seemed to shroud the building in a despondent and dreary light, unable to be penetrated by the dim sombre light of the lamps,

Even looking at the dark fog, Chu Yi could obviously sense the hungry response from his body. Every cell seemed as if it was violently colliding with each other, clamoring for new blood. A familiar powerful force emerged once again, and scarlet eyes eyes grew eager in excitement, however another new force soon appeared that suppressed these uncontrollable madness.

Everything made him inexplicably irritable, a feeling of wanting to destroy everything, this kind of irrational impulse dominates him, silently urging him to do something,

So he did.

In a manner no one could probably have anticipated, with his hands still stuck in the machine, Chu Yi lifted a slender and powerful leg and kicked out!

Towards the lever on the side of the platform that opens the hatch to the underwater capsule beneath his feet!

Maybe this was just a gamble or maybe Chu Yi had already seen through the secrets of the instance itself but what they did know was that before he fell straight through the metal platform beneath his feet and slammed into the murky green waters of the capsule below! 

The metal cuffs about his hands magically dinged with a glaring green light! Then released! 

He fell-

Entering the territory of the merman! 

The icy sub-zero waters slapped against his skin like a sharp, watery knife, the influxing seawater engulfing his mouth and nose, and an invisible force dragged his body deeper and deeper into the water!

The suffocating feeling from drowning made his head hurt painfully and Chu Yi could feel a bitter, seaweed like taste on his tongue.

The cold water irritated the wound on his hand, causing an abnormal rush of strong stinging pain to travel all over his body. But the strong stimulation of pain did quiet the clamoring cells in his body, and with that, he drifted lazily in the still waters, groping along the wall of the capsule for support, barely leaning on it as he looked up. 

The hatch of the top of the capsule slammed down upon his entry and everything fell back into complete darkness, only a mottled green light that resulted from the photosynthesizing aquatic plants shone through. Green moss and rock covered the bottom of the capsule, closely similar to a miniature reef, however the dark spots of dirt and bacteria that traversed his sight , signaled that the owner had not cared enough to purify the waters for a long time. 

Whoosh...

He vaguely felt a dark shadow of activity.

Accompanied by the sound of chains hitting the rocks, the water all around him rippled with movement, 

At this time, the long and black shadow charged from his right out of nowhere and the long streamlined tail swung out a powerful curve! Like a deep-water torpedo, it approached him quickly- He could only catch sight of a pair of bright, narrow pupils in the turbid waters before in nearly a blink of an eye, the familiar figure appeared before him!

The webbed claws tore through the darkness-like a streak of black lightning!

He first noticed the big mop of dark, silky hair spreading like black tendrils as the water rippled gently around him- then the pale visage that penetrated through the film of light like a hungry ghost! The silky hair, parted as it came closer to him, revealing a pair of clear, ghostly blue eyes that held a radiance filled with eagerness and thirst in the tossing waves of the capsule!

It didn't attack him, but those eyes seemed to spell a type of bloodthirsty curiously.

This was the real test of compatibility, whether they'd be eaten or spared.

No matter how artificial, this was a beast through and through, and therefore he could not judge a beast by humans standards. 

He stared at the merman in front of him with an expression of unconcealable interest, even as he slowly suffocated in the turbulent waters.

Then, in an unexpected twist, he summoned his natal weapon that had been severely underused as of now, the sharp black blade glinted eagerly even in the natural murky light of the capsule.

It wasn't to fight.

Chu Yi slowly spread out his hand under the watchful gaze of the merman and then swiped the blade forcefully in the palm of his hand!

Chu Yi's already ghastly pale face turned even more luminous under the additional blood loss,

What!-

Bright blood scrambled to overflow from between his pale fingers, dripping ticking down, and combined into a bloody haze with light green pool water, eventually dispersing into blood-colored threads that disappeared with the never ending movement of water, 

The mermaid came closer as the blood continued to disperse,

"Is he trying to get himself killed!" Confused and bewildered voices one after another sounded distantly from outside the capsule, the watching players already throughly confused with what was happening.

He fixedly watched his drifting blood colliding with the mermaid's artwork-like face, as it swam closer, like a rose on the white first snow, it's dark eyes gleaming with an almost crazy hunger,

He didn't fear it however, and in response, he slowly reached out his pale hand, voice as gentle as the whispers of a cherished lover beside your pillow,

"Do you want to taste it? Then come.."

Such a ridiculousrequest was accompanied by a faint expression, a kind of careless indolence-neither flattering nor coquettish, nor arrogant nor reserved, on the contrary, with some senselessness and indifference and estrangement, as if saying something what he was saying was absolutely normal, an everyday occurrence.

As if he wasn't enticing a bloodthirsty creature that could rip his throat in one shot, directly in full view.

Death was nothing to him, it was just leaving this boring world ahead of time !

Splash...

The merman moved, with a few flicks of its long tail, it directly bore down on the invading Chu Yi, however to the players suprise, it didn't perform a brutal massacre as expected but instead, webbed claws circled around the fragile wrists presented to him and instead brought the bloody hand to it's mouth!

The previous irritability and lack of interest seemed to disappear instantly at this moment, and a rare fun and excitement ignited again in Chu Yi!

The merman raised his hand to hold the slender palm, his cold and wet fingers seemed to be flexible mollusks, silently wrapping around the hot fingertips of the other party!

The scarlet tongue stuck out like a viper's tongue, gently rolling over the fingertips stained red with blood, the dripping blood staining its sharp, fanged teeth; melting into the water like a ribbon.

It's expression was so innocent and natural, that it could almst conceal the evil and aggression rooted in its very being!

However, the cold tip of the webbed tongue and the slow licking past the fingertips have a suffocating coquettishness, like a deadly blade, which can instantly provoke the heartbeat and fascinate people into throwing away their lives!

It was more like a deadly siren than a beautiful merman...

Chu Yi's breathing was stagnant, and a deep darkness emerged from the bottom of his eyes.

The mermaid raised a dark smile.

Those blue eyes were like hungry wolves stalking in the deep night, releasing a dangerous yet compelling breath.

The divine facial features were shrouded in the murky green light that was gradually swallowed by a dark haze that slowly clouded the capsule. It's outline became grim as it blended with the darkness , leaving the only thing left visible to be the remnants of it's lips stained bright red from his blood,

An evil flame burst in his heart!

Then he was embraced,

He felt the merman's strong webbed hand cling onto the divide of his spine, and it's thick, flexible tail cut through the flow of the water, to push his legs apart in order to support his crotch as he rode, then he was slowly lifted upward, 

Chu Yi never once took his eyes off of it, 

He raised his hand to hold its neck, and his cold fingers pinched the slender throat slightly, seeming to be able to break it with a slight twist,

"Where are you taking me?"

He asked this very gently, his voice hardly fluctuating into tone, soft like poisoned honey, 

Chu Yi's expression was still cold and calm, except for the burning flames in his eyes and the infrared green rays on his face, there was almost no difference from usual, but his lips seemed to tilt in triump when in the dim darkness of the capsule, he heard a low and dull voice whisper,

'Pact'