Chapter 28

From 48 hours to 8 hours, no one had any information on Horne.

The people outside were all waiting for the Tower’s death hunt, and they prayed that this disaster would not descend upon their own heads.

Convenience stores were looted. Some people hoarded supplies and planned to hunker down at home for a while, while others patrolled every corner of Loch City.

They were recorded by recon drones, and they themselves became recon drones.

The Red Light District was crowded at that moment, the final revelry before hunkering down.

Ye Shu sat at the bar counter, propping her head up with one hand. She saw another vehicle loaded with supplies pull up at the main entrance and mocked with a half-smile, “Why hoard so much stuff? If the aliens want to kill, hiding at home is useless. It’s just self-deception. Better to stock up on condoms and have some final pleasure.”

Wan Ji buried his head in mixing a drink. The small spoon stirred the liquid, creating a whirlpool. He merely nodded in agreement.

Ye Shu found it boring. She downed her drink and said, “Sigh, how about some gossip instead? Tell me, is this Horne that Horne?”

Wan Ji’s movements paused for an instant. He only mouthed his response: “Don’t know.”

“Then how should we handle this time?”

Bamboo charcoal powder was sprinkled into a glass containing dark rum and blackcurrant liqueur, topped with ten milliliters of lime juice. Wan Ji pushed the Black Diamond cocktail in front of Ye Shu without answering her question.

She gently swirled the tall glass in her hand. The glass reflected the slight upturn of Ye Shu’s eye corner. She took a sip of the drink, and her whole demeanor grew even sweeter and more cloying.

The swirling alcohol matched her thoughts. She stared at the transparent glass in her hand, her pupils gradually losing focus. “How much longer must these days continue?”

Wan Ji glanced toward the entrance, confirming that the area outside was empty at that moment. He lowered his voice to a whisper: “I heard, three months.”

Three months later, everything would reset, or everything would end.

Ye Shu was just about to speak when a hand landed on her shoulder. She startled with a jerk, suddenly springing up. Her hand twisted like a snake, wrapping around the wrist on her shoulder and squeezing viciously with enough force to nearly crush the bone. Once she saw who it was, she abruptly released it.

Horne froze in place, quickly withdrawing his hand. “Sorry, I should have called you directly.”

Ye Shu realized her startled reaction and waved her hand in the air in circles to cover it up. She immediately resumed her teasing tone: “Yo? Five Thousand, don’t take it to heart.”

Horne frowned. “…Five Thousand?”

“Mr. Horne, have a drink on the house.” Wan Ji picked up their conversation and handed a glass to Horne.

Horne glanced at it and refused.

“Come on, this is Wan Ji, the bartender,” Ye Shu blinked as she introduced him. “The Red Light District’s know-it-all. He knows everything that happens here.”

Horne was not interested in that. After waking up, he had checked the list Hels had given him earlier and discovered that most of the descendants from the Military District worked in the Red Light District. He wanted to ask about it.

But before he could speak, a shrill scream pierced the air.

Screams in the Red Light District were normal. Many people turned to look but saw nothing happening and turned back.

But a second scream came, this time from someone else. At the same time, a third scream followed, and fear poured down like a flood.

“The Tower has started killing!!!”

One person lay sprawled on the roadside, a pool of fresh red blood soaking into the brick seams beneath him, spreading a metallic rust smell.

The man gasped “heh heh” twice, his hand dropping to the ground, and then fell silent.

Another person was already a corpse.

A recon drone slowly passed over the corpses without a care before disappearing.

There were still nearly eight hours left.

Ye Shu looked at the gruesome scene on the ground, accustomed to such sights. She chuckled and slowly sipped her drink. “Aliens, you know? Expecting them to be punctual?”

Horne stood silently in place, his breathing quickening. His lips moved as if he wanted to say something.

The final revelry was cut short by death. Chaotic footsteps crowded out in a panic as the people fled in all directions.

Horne’s face turned ashen. He pulled up You Wenjie’s ID on his terminal and sent a message.

Horne: [Hello, Hels gave me your ID. I need some things.]

The corpses at the Red Light District entrance had not yet been cleared. Ye Shu turned her head, wanting to ask what Horne had been about to say, but his figure was already gone from sight.

In its place came the frenzied howling of recon drones across the city, piercingly sharp on the increasingly empty streets.

Someone removed his mask, and all the recon drones turned toward him.

The deathly silent streets, the boundless darkness—in this night, everything gradually fell into utter stillness.

Only the crisp sound of military boots echoed on the oppressive road leading to the Tower.

Horne was escorted into the Tower. His heartbeat remained calm, but his palms were sweaty. The night wind chilled his skin.

He had originally thought the Tower’s threat to him stemmed from some forgotten incident of his own, but the more relentlessly the Tower pursued him and the earlier the hunt began, the more he realized it was not the case.

It was like a nostalgic person learning news of their best childhood playmate and rushing eagerly to meet them.

But Horne did not want to see any aliens. He feared losing control. Even encountering the most ordinary, unrelated alien nearly broke him, let alone the culprit.

Who could pull him out of this pain this time? That vomiting sensation rising from the depths of his heart began to assault his insides again, along with the pain of being stabbed through repeatedly in the game.

So painful, so painful—he could hardly stay calm.

The door closed behind him. They passed through a small plaza, then another door, into a massive plaza.

The Obelisk still glowed eerie green, with black particles hovering in midair.

1999: 58

This alien creation showed slight variations in luster under different lighting, somewhat like constantly shifting colors, different from what he had seen during the thunderstorm.

The deeper they went, the faster Horne’s heart beat. They walked along the west side.

The aliens brought him to a towering building that resembled a medieval cathedral—all buildings in the Tower District were filled with jarring conflicts of high-tech and ancient architecture, which he had noticed last time.

The main cathedral had three archways. The aliens stopped at the largest arched door and gestured for Horne to enter alone.

Perhaps staying on Earth too long had taught them human rules of hierarchy and deference.

The dark corridor stretched on, disorienting in its length. At a glance, the light and shadows were dim. The castle soared dozens of meters high, with arches curving upward to a spire, like humanity’s accusation against God.

Further ahead, wooden kneeling benches lined both sides. Straight in front stood a sacred altar, where an alien sculpture replaced the position of God, looming on the high platform.

Horne’s footsteps were steady and slow, step by step, until he reached the end of the light projected by the rose window.

He restrained his trembling hands. The moment he closed his eyes, he saw the pale expanse of the Frost Plains and the fresh red blood flowing from his mother.

His breathing grew more rapid, nearing a triggered state.

At that moment, Horne received a message.

It was from Hels, consisting of only three symbols: one upward arrow and two downward arrows.

Horne did not understand it, and he had no energy to ponder, for a sound came from behind—the flapping of wings.

An alien flew over his head from behind, stirring a gust of wind that tousled a few strands of his hair before slowly landing on the ground, the strands falling back into place.

But the instant he saw it, Horne’s throat tightened, his heart pounded fiercely. He clenched his fists tightly to keep from vomiting.

A massive six-winged black alien, its wings spread like a devil crawling out of hell. It then slowly folded them, merging with the altar sculpture and blending into the castle’s darkness.

This form did not last long. It rapidly disassembled into millions of particles, which reorganized. A humanoid shape gradually emerged.

“Horne, hello.”

Fate was a massive ring spanning a century, meeting here.

Those particles slowly reorganized, forming human limbs that stepped toward Horne one by one.

Black, like the shadow of death, echoing in the vast space.

“All beings in this world must die one day. How can man bravely face the gaze of death? Better to fight one against ten thousand, for the ashes of ancestors, for the temple of gods.”

It recited this sentence, and as it uttered the final word, the humanoid form completed. It stopped, right in front of Horne.

Horne’s face paled as he looked at this unfamiliar face.

It was very unfamiliar, for in the era he remembered, aliens had not yet learned human forms.

This sentence it recited had once been the pre-meal prayer of Horne’s family: he, his father General Al, and his mother General Yaro, reciting it countless nights around the dinner table. But few knew that back then, they had kept an alien at home.

It was one Horne had rescued from the wreckage of the human-alien war.

Recalling these past events, Horne’s breathing quickened uncontrollably.

It adapted to human life better than other aliens, even its expressions and pauses precise.

“Horne, every time we meet, I think you must surely die, but you are lucky. 100 years, and we meet again.”

Every word it spoke was like a thorn, but it insisted on bringing up the past. The more it did, the more Horne wanted to kill it right then.

“You always survive. Tell me, who saved you? And now, who brought you to the new Loch City?”

Horne clenched his hands behind his back. He suppressed his trembling voice and said coldly, “None of your business.”

It circled in front of Horne, looking him up and down, and reached out to touch his face.

Horne blocked that hand almost instantly, twisting it mercilessly with a crack—the bone broke.

It seemed surprised, silently watching the broken arm dangle at an unnatural angle. But soon, countless particles surged from the wound to envelop it. When they dispersed, the hand was good as new.

It raised the hand, observing the now fully functional limb, and sighed deeply before smiling. “Such a heavy hand, not like you. Horne, where did the innocence of your childhood go?”

Horne’s expression remained blank. “Don’t know. Hell, probably.”

On the day it killed his mother, he had fallen into hell.

Its tone suddenly turned displeased. “I don’t like you like this. I liked the Horne who shouted back then that ‘humans and aliens can coexist peacefully’—silly, very cute.”

Horne suppressed the urge to vomit again, sneered coldly, and said through gritted teeth, “Like? Do you know how I feel right now? It feels like, while walking, you accidentally kick a pile of kitchen waste—sour rotten soup, wriggling maggots, spoiled meat, all spilling onto your shoes.”

It nodded. “A good metaphor. I’ll learn it.”

Horne took a deep breath to calm himself further. “The Tower’s kill order—planning to kill me?”

It chuckled lightly. “How could that be? Without this method, you wouldn’t come see me voluntarily. But after 100 years, I miss you. When I learned recently that you were still alive, I’ve been searching for you.”

Horne’s facial muscles twitched. “So, you just wanted to force me here for a reunion?”

“Indeed, I do want to catch up with you,” it admitted. It sighed deeply, turned to face the vast space, and said softly, “But it’s not the time yet. I have something more important now. In three months, then. In three months, we must find time to catch up properly.”

“Three months?”

“Yes, three months—precisely, 1999 hours.” It walked to the window. From here, the central Obelisk and its floating black particles were still visible, eternally rising, sinking, and reorganizing.

Horne had never known what that countdown was for. He asked, “What do you plan to do?”

At his words, it turned, leaned against the window, looked at Horne with a half-smile, and softly uttered, “I want you… to become one of my kind.”