CH 68

[In a brightly lit, underground venue, many impeccably dressed people were wandering around, gentlemen with superiority complexes and gentle ladies gathering in the most spacious area of the hall and shouting with fanatical faces: “Long live! Samal!” [1]

They all wore mysterious masks, things that weren’t even large enough to cover their entire faces.

But even when wearing a half-mask, the horrifying, fervent lunacy in their eyes couldn’t be hidden at all.

They firmly stared at the huge altar in the middle of the hall, leaving behind their original restraint and calmness, instead screaming excitedly, as if expecting something to happen soon.

On the altar, tied to a cross, was a horrified young man.

His blond hair had become messy from constant struggle, and the originally cheerful and handsome teenager gradually lost hope under extreme duress and lack of assistance.

A white silk cloth was tied to his mouth, blocking all of his pleads and curses.

“Mgh! Mgghhh!” The young boy’s blue eyes began to fill with hatred. He glared at the so-called celebrities in the audience, his gaze gloomy and fierce.

He kept every disgusting face in the forefront of his mind.

Someday, I’ll make each and every one of them pay!

A middle-aged woman wearing a black robe with a dishonest face was standing on the stage while beckoning to everyone: “Quiet!! Everyone! Today will be the day our master, the omnipotent deity Samal is reborn, I hope you are all ready to welcome our master! Sacred Samal! Immortal Samal! Believers! Let us cheer!” [1]

After which, the middle-aged woman lit the torch in her hand and raised it high.

Phhwoosh – The cross was ignited instantly, and the struggling boy stopped moving. He bit his lips tightly, refusing to scream.

Every inch of his skin was eaten by the flames, the pain continuing all the way to his nerve endings.

He felt the pain in his body, and his blue eyes increasingly gained flickers of killing intent.

Phwoom!

“Ahhhh!!!”

The blaze breached the altar’s edges, and the closest believers were also burned into ash, the screams ringing through the hall.

Then out of nowhere, the whole hall turned into a sea of ​​fire.

The flames carried all of the boy’s anger and hatred, and it never stopped .]                       ——From《Nightmare》

There was the rustling sound of flipping pages in the quiet room.

Zhou Yu scanned through the books borrowed from the library and slid his fingertips across the rough paper surface, searching for inspiration.

Soon, the portrait of a demon god came into view.

In the middle of the dark background, a burning devil was tied to a wooden frame, hissing and wailing.

A pair of wings lit by the flames spread behind the devil. The white feathers were scattered around the image, and they were gradually stained by dark flames, adding an extra cruel beauty.

Beneath the picture was written this: Samal, the demon god of anger and revenge.

According to legend, the fallen angel who betrayed the Lord and God of Light, was the Lord of Hell – Samal.

Zhou Yu took a closer look at the picture, and then began to draw the appearance of the demon god in his spare notebook.

The sound of the nib across the paper continued on forever, and who knows how long it took before Zhou Yu finally lifted the pen in his hand.

The devil’s long, black, curly hair occupied most of the picture, depression nearly overflowing from the paper.

Zhou Yu wasn’t able to paint the devil’s face, just like the legend, he covered his visage with a layer of shadows and flames, only the deep eyes flashing in the gloomy light.

In this legend, the demon god who had reign over all of the world’s fears took a huge sickle in his hand and covered it under a black robe. That shadow covered a large blank area on the paper.

Zhou Yu stared at the demon on the paper. His beautiful emerald eyes just matched the look in the demon’s extraordinarily gloomy eyes.

If only I had paint, Zhou Yu frowned angrily.

That way, he could fill the eyes of this demon god with his favorite azure blue.

Just like Morris’…..

Zhou Yu tore the sketch out of the book, and looked at this portrait of the god exuding an uncomfortable aura, his eyes flashing.

There might be something wrong with his head, he actually felt that this demon was similar to Morris.

How could that be?

If Samal symbolized all the sins in this world and the end of all sinful karma, then Morris was the kind of person born to hold wine for the god of light. His heart was always pure, like an angel, sometimes so much so that it made Zhou Yu feel inadequate, disdainful that he’d made it to Morris’s side.

Zhou Yu walked out the room and found his cheap father Eugene still sleeping, then went into the master bedroom next door and stuffed the god’s portrait into the nightstand.

After doing all of this, Zhou Yu looked at the unchanged room, the corner of his mouth drawing up, displaying a particularly weird smile.

Good night, have a good dream, my father, Eugene.

The dark-haired teenager walked out of the large, cluttered master bedroom with a blank expression.

After a long time, a cloud of invisible black vapors emanated from the bedside table, silently covering the sleeping man in the living room.

The man’s heavy breathing stagnated, and then became even again, but there was an unknown, invisible dark mist between his eyebrows.

*

The sky seemed to be burned into a crimson red, like blood.

Zhou Yu looked up at the sky, and walked expressionlessly down the empty street. His hard soles touched the abnormally flat tarmac and made crackling footsteps.

He was dreaming, and he knew it.

In this dream, there was no one else, only himself.

In fact, he rarely dreamt. This was his first dream in two weeks. Still, it was such a weird dream.

*

*

Ch. 68.2

The sky was stained red, and all the houses in the town were dilapidated.

There was only one asphalt road running through the town, which was exceptionally straight, as if someone had intentionally paved it that way.

The flow of time in the dream was very strange. He walked on this strange avenue and observed the surrounding scene aimlessly.

He felt like he’d walked for countless years, but he actually didn’t even get out of the small town.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

A scream cut through the silence of the blood-red sky.

Zhou Yu got a little irritated from the sound in his eardrums. He closed his eyes until the unbearable shrillness eased over a short while.

Who is it?

Why would there be such a noisy person in his dream?

Zhou Yu opened his eyes, and the scene had changed.

He was inside of a dilapidated and abandoned factory.

There were bloodstains everywhere in the rusty iron corridor.

Scarlet, bloody footprints stretched from the corridor in front of Zhou Yu to the corners in the distance.

He followed those footprints to a furnace.

A huge metal pot was filled with red-hot iron sludge. Zhou Yu stood on a steel bridge above the furnace, looking down at those burning hot flames. Even his black hair was pushed back against his face from the heatwaves, curling up into spirals. 

“Let me go! Please! Ahhh!” The screams rang out again, and the pain and pleading notes they contained made people feel extremely miserable.

“Jiejiejie~, seriously, dear Paul, you are suited to practicing tenor, what a standard scream, listen, it’s so pitiful, oh, I really want to sympathize with you, really!” Another hoarse and low voice rose, sounding extremely malicious.

“However, you shouldn’t have hurt him, you damn son-of-bitch Paul!” The hoarse voice, which seemed to have been full of fake cheer, became deeper, the speaker’s anger no doubt revealed.

“Now, take a hot bath, oh, bathe well, and maybe I’ll forgive you, ne, jiejiejie!” The man’s voice once again became full of malicious delight.

The scorched man clasped the human’s neck with sharp claws, hanging him over the boiling pot below, and gazing at him screaming for mercy.

“No, no, no! Don’t throw me down, I beg you, ahhh-” Paul, who was strong and tall, was easily grasped by the unknown man and hung from his neck.

He struggled and kicked with his legs, trying to escape his fate of being thrown into the sea of molten metal below.

But unfortunately, demons never had extra sympathy for others.

His screams soon disappeared inside a broth of red-hot iron.

Ding— a smattering of noise in this empty factory was very harsh on the ears.

It turned out that Zhou Yu had accidentally knocked a broken iron block and kicked it into the furnace below.

The man in an ill-fitting school uniform turned his head in an instant, and the figure of a dark-haired boy entered his field of vision.

The young man’s emerald green eyes stared straight at him, his pale cheeks a little ruddy from the flames light.

The boy looked at his face, and tilted his head in doubt, his red, plump lips twitching slightly, before he murmured, “Morris?”

“No, it’s not!” The man’s scarred face disappeared instantly, leaving him at a complete loss.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about!”

*

Riiinngggg — the alarm went off.

Zhou Yu opened his eyes and saw a familiar ceiling in a certain room.

He’d woken up.

Sitting on the bed, Zhou Yu looked at the sky that still wasn’t bright enough to penetrate the window yet. There was some cold sweat on his pale face, and his hair was matted on his forehead, showing a slightly fragile appearance.

Was everything just a dream?

*

In the morning, the cold, misty air hadn’t yet dissipated, and some students started to step into the school one after another.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” The screams cut through the sky.

Some people found the famous football player Paul wielding a knife in school, screaming madly that the gods were dead, and that the devil had been resurrected.

In this town with a strong religious atmosphere, any disrespectful words to the gods could only be said in private, otherwise you’d be treated as a psycho, then be caught and sent to an asylum.

The whistle of a police car sounded, and Paul, who was completely crazy, was soon shoved into the car.

Next, after the interrogation, they would send this blasphemous lunatic who also randomly attacked people to the asylum for rehabilitation.

Zhou Yu stood on the side of the road, watching the police car drive away from the school gate, the expression in his eyes stirring slightly.

He remembered the dream from last night, the guy who kept screaming above the furnace.

However, that was just a dream. What did it have to do with these occurrences?

Zhou Yu turned around and walked into the campus.

The first class was English. The bell rang, but the teacher still wasn’t at the podium.

The classroom was really noisy. It was clear that news of Paul’s arrest this morning had spread all over the campus, and the bored students finally had more to gossip about.

“Hey, have you heard about Paul?”

“Of course, what’s wrong with it, that guy’s been unpleasant for a while now, he must’ve finally gone crazy!”

“No, no, I have inside information. He was said to be possessed by the devil!”

“Being possessed by the devil? Who told you that crap?”

“Hey, don’t you know, I have an aunt who’s in a holy sect…”

Squeak— the classroom door opened and the old-fashioned English teacher came in.

The classroom quieted down for a moment. Zhou Yu glanced over at the two classmates who were chatting with each other with indifferent eyes.

Holy sect?

“Class, we have a new transfer student in our period from today on. Introduce yourself!” The English teacher looked back at the female student who followed her in.

“Hello everyone, my name is Karina, I transferred from Kandi City, and I hope I can get along with everyone!” The girl with long blond hair smiled, and her beautiful face that carried a sense of heroic spirit was very attractive.