Chapter 1639 The World’s Gamble_2

Hill spoke as he raised both hands high, as if he really were about to bow his head to that yet?to?exist sovereign of all evil.

Sai Zong said, "You really are a thoroughgoing Tyrant, huh, actually trying to make the choice for everyone."

"Everyone? I’ve never considered ’everyone.’ Don’t imagine me as too great, Sai Zong," Hill confessed. "Everything I’ve done was never about some grand ideal like saving the world or redeeming humanity’s soul."

"Then what is it?"

"Revenge. Revenge against the Devil," Hill smiled. "And I’ll save the world along the way."

Sai Zong shook his head. Even after learning so much, he still didn’t think highly of Hill. "Unfortunately, the outcome of this wager isn’t yours to decide."

Hill suddenly stepped forward. His voice began to twist, the young timbre overlapping with a turbid rumble, as if Hill and Envy, those two dominating consciousnesses, were speaking to Sai Zong at the same time.

"But likewise, the outcome of this wager has nothing to do with Envy itself, does it?"

This time Sai Zong was silent for a long while. He suddenly recalled long ago, when Hill first invited him to join his plan, the words Hill had spoken then.

From the very beginning Hill had never had absolute certainty that Sai Zong would act according to his will, yet he did it anyway. Hill’s explanation was that he liked to gamble, obsessed with staking all his chips on human nature.

Now, Sai Zong could more or less understand Hill’s stubbornness and risk?taking.

"Goodbye."

Sai Zong no longer wasted time, and no longer clung to this place in the slightest. Without looking back, he stepped through the door; after a brief distortion, Hill was the only one left in the room.

The smile faded from his face, replaced by a pure, glacial chill. Hill moved with lumbering steps and sat down upon Sai Zong’s throne built from piled blades.

This was a wager that used human destiny as chips, and what would determine victory or defeat was a single ordinary soul.

Hill straightened his posture. His gaze seemed to pierce through the door, landing on that battlefield in the Land of Eternal Night.

Just as Hill was about to fully sink into that looming, tempestuous grandeur of feeling, a strange noise drew his attention. He looked into the darkness to one side and saw a wheelchair moving at an extremely slow pace, an old man shriveled beyond recognition seated in it.

Hill didn’t know his name, but remembered the title they used for him in the Undying Club.

Hill froze for a moment, then couldn’t help but laugh. One second the atmosphere was shifting like storm clouds, suffocating and heavy; the next second he was faced with this absurd scene. Maybe life was simply full of black humor like that.

"What, Old Undying, you’re joining the revelry too?"

Old Undying didn’t respond. He’d lost the ability to speak many years ago. His withered hands, moving at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye, labored to turn the wheels. No one knew how long it had taken him to push himself here.

Hill let out a long sigh, sweeping away all the pretentious emotions in his heart. Like a cordial passerby, he began to push Old Undying’s wheelchair, sending him toward the Hell beyond the door.

...

Clamor, blood, death, and resurrection.

With the Undead Legion joining the fray, a vast surge of Ether converged in the Butcher’s Pit, and as the concentration of Ether kept climbing, the reality of this zone grew ever more fragile, to the point where a collapse of reality had appeared at its core.

Arcs of lightning and sparks burst nonstop, and the ground bizarrely formed great chunks of ice crystals in defiance of physical law. The Undead paid these supernatural phenomena no heed at all—or perhaps they did notice, but simply didn’t care.

At the rim of the Butcher’s Pit, upon the petals of upthrust boulders, once the Undead took on the pressure of the battlefield, Bologue and the others actually found themselves idle.

In truth, Bologue and his group also wanted to join that flood of slaughter, but after watching from afar for a while, they realized the Undead’s fighting style was utterly feral. Aside from Bologue, who was also Undead and could withstand the intensity, the others wouldn’t last long.

Hinda was seeing such a spectacle for the first time and couldn’t help exclaiming, "They’re insane. Do they have no fear of getting hurt?"

The Undead had gone far too long without battle; now they poured themselves wholly into this carnival. They tore enemies apart, or were torn apart by them. The pain of blades and swords cleaving into their flesh drove them into an ecstatic state, eyes brimming with hot tears.

Serey spoke up. "They’re Undead, remember? They don’t even fear death—why would they fear getting hurt?"

The battlefield was like a meat grinder, splattering all manner of scarlet fluids.

Hinda’s face turned pale. "Then what’s with all that wild laughter?"

"As much as I hate to admit it, a lot of Undead have this particular kink," Serey said, looking a bit embarrassed. "Masochism. They’re obsessed with pain, as if only the genuine reactions of their flesh can make their utterly numb selves realize they’re actually alive, in the true sense of the word."

Hinda had no idea how to respond, and could only frown as she looked down on it all.

"So in other words," Palmer eyed Serey suspiciously, "do you have a masochism kink?"

"No. Absolutely not," Serey said stiffly. "My only bad habit is drinking, that’s all."

As they spoke, the sound of shattering glass grew clearer, louder. The core of the Butcher’s Pit had completely caved in into a radiant expanse of ashen white. Under the influence of the immense Ether, the Material Realm had overlapped with the Ethereal Realm, and on the back of reality’s distortion, the Dark Void molded by the Night King swelled ever larger.

The murky darkness reared high, like a vast, writhing thing that devoured all light. Many Undead vanished into it, and then many more charged toward it in rapture. But no matter how they hacked and swung, no matter how they unleashed their powers, they could not affect the Dark Void in the slightest.