CH 11.1

“This little black dog is a specialty of our Huaiyang Village.”

“Mr. Chen, who went by the code 0021, brought this little kitten, and its name was Mina.”

The bridesmaid said, “They were destined to have very different fates, but now they are bidding farewell to the world together... Sometimes, humans have the same, aren’t they?”

Upon hearing this, Chen Tian and his two companions’ eyes widened, and seeing the bridesmaid raise a surgical knife, they already knew what she was going to do.

When Chen Tian and Chen Qing were in junior high school, their parents divorced. Originally, they planned to take one child each, but the twins refused to leave each other. They were already in junior high school and could live at school, so their parents didn't force them to separate.

When they got to college, their parents had new families and children, and gradually became indifferent or unable to take care of them. The siblings worked hard and barely made ends meet.

Chen Qing was a medical student, and some classmates saw her working hard at different jobs every day, so one day they secretly took her to their dormitory and said to her, “Chen Qing, do you want to do a very lucrative job? You can earn at least 1,000 yuan per day, and after a month it will be even more, up to 100,000 yuan a month.”

When Chen Qing heard this, she thought it was one of those obscene night jobs. She looked pretty and had been approached by people from that industry before.

“No, it’s not that. It’s live streaming, and some people in our medical school are doing it.”

Later, Chen Qing learned that there was a type of black live streaming called “animal torture.”

There were some people who were obsessed with watching this kind of live streaming.

They liked to see slender hands holding sharp blades, cutting open the bellies and heads of cute pets, and their slender fingers digging deep into the animals’ bloodied body, making them feel excited and crazy.

Some of the pets were even their own pets that they had raised for a year or two.

That was the first time Chen Tian and Chen Qing experienced the perverted and vicious side of some humans before entering the survival game.

Chen Qing naturally refused, and Chen Tian would definitely not let her do such a thing.

Later, the siblings entered this survival game that exposed them to the darker side of human nature, forcing them to confront their fears and the constant threat of death. The game amplified the most negative qualities of humanity to an extreme degree, with commonplace acts of cannibalism and violence.

Nevertheless, they still held on to the bottom line of being human.

They also formed a mutual aid society.

This group of players seemed to be forever trapped in the abyss of death, but by joining forces, perhaps one person could climb out of the darkness in the end.

What the bridesmaid was doing in front of them was like what Chen Qing’s classmate suggested her to do, just more hair-raising.

In front of the cross, two small animals lay on a soft white cloth, the little black dog helplessly and pitifully crying out, while the plush cat may not have known what they were about to face, but it was already sensitively aware of something and huddled anxiously.

Not only were there filming staff in the church but also people sitting in the front row watching the live performance.

Yesterday, they sat here blessing a newlywed couple for a happy and blissful life.

Perhaps the day before yesterday they sat here in prayer.

Or perhaps, one day, this place would be filled with people from all over, watching a bloody feast live.

Every time the knife fell, they would applaud excitedly, no different from demons.

The bridesmaid smiled and said, “Today, let’s make a plush dog by reconciling their fate.”

Li Yin signed to Chen Tian, ‘President, what should we do? Should we save them?’

This game required hiding and evading in many situations, so many clubs have methods of silent communication and code words.

Wang Ming said, “Are you crazy? Do you want to offend the NPCs and be chased by them? They’re not even killing people!”

When Chen Tian furrowed his brow in thought, he spun his head as if sensing something and exclaimed, “Chen Qing is in danger!”

Without hesitation, he ran silently in the darkness, away from the church, and easily jumped over the wall.

Not far away, Chen Qing was running towards him. “Brother, you need to save Ning Su! That butcher is not human!”

Chen Tian replied, “Let’s go. We’ll talk while we run!”

Chen Qing explained, “Ning Su and I followed the butcher from the slaughterhouse to the funeral home, and then to the riverside. We didn’t encounter any problems on the way, so I thought we hadn’t been discovered.”

“But at the riverside, he suddenly turned around and looked straight at us. His eyes...he’s not human. It was really terrifying!”

“My scarf was too small and inconvenient to run, so Ning Su pushed me out and asked me to go ask for help.”

Chen Tian reassured her, “Don’t panic, Ning Su is not as simple as he looks. He should be able to hold out until we arrive.”

***

At the riverside, fireflies flew out from the grass.

Fireflies appear in the hot summer months, and in the spring they should be in their larval stage, so obviously these were not normal fireflies.

The fireflies emitted a faint green light, like wandering ghostly lanterns.

They flickered across the river, floating over the spring grass and river, with the mountains as the backdrop illuminating a small corner of the world.

It was a beautiful and peaceful scene, but when the fireflies flew around the butcher’s face, landing on his curly hair and drilling into his green eyes, most people wouldn’t find it beautiful anymore.

Ning Su watched the butcher in the moonlight, his five fingers stretching and closing.

He was as fast as a shadow, appearing in front of the butcher before he could even react. The butcher’s green eyes trembled.

Ning Su turned around and lowered his head in front of him, revealing the back of his neck collar. “Be gentle.”

“...”