Chapter 33

No wonder Ais had said that none of the people sent out had succeeded. Hels’s insight was terrifyingly sharp. He did not speak not because he was unaware, but because he simply had not thought to ask.

Horne was not good at lying. He clenched his palm tightly and looked into the distance. “No.”

Hels silently watched Horne for a moment before sighing. He reached out to ruffle his hair and said softly, “Alright, I believe you. No matter what, I hope you remember what I said to you after you woke up from your coma that time.”

Horne responded with an indifferent “Mm.”

The countdown continued, but the situation showed almost no progress.

It was too difficult to find a breakthrough with Hels. There was no asking it out of him. The way he spoke always led others straight into his traps. One moment of carelessness, and one’s intentions would be completely exposed.

Noise mixed with the smell of alcohol assaulted his senses.

The Red Light District held several personal arena matches in a row. Horne stayed there almost constantly, sending off every challenger who came up.

Ye Shu, who passed by from time to time, felt like she had missed out big time. If only she had recruited him as security back then, she would not have taken a pure loss of five thousand. And she still had not settled that account with Hels.

The reason Horne came down from the arena was that his wound ached faintly, as if it had cracked open again. He gasped for breath, leaning against the bar counter to rebandage it. Sweat dripped down his hair and along his high-bridged nose. A fierce glint filled his eyes as he stood in the shadows, and no one dared approach.

For two straight days, he was undefeated in every battle and even won quite a few bets. Later on, the moment Horne arrived, the arena cleared out instantly.

He had only wanted to use extreme physical movements to stir his brain into action.

In the end, his brain had not stirred, but it had drawn someone else.

In a small alley beside the Red Light District, Horne slightly bowed his head and leaned against the wall.

Night had fallen, shrouding the alley. Only one dim yellow light source illuminated the entire street, not enough to make out the expression on his face. Two shadows slanted across the ground.

Ais crossed its arms and smirked. “I was still wondering if it was Horne under that mask. You exposed yourself directly. I came to find you to ask—it’s been six days. How’s the progress?”

Horne replied coldly, “You don’t need to know.”

Ais did not mind Horne’s iciness and kept smiling. “You’ve already gotten close to him. Have you looked into the man yet?”

Horne knew what it wanted to ask. He merely snorted coldly and said nothing.

Recon drones filled the whole of Loch City. The Tower monitored their every move.

“Fine. Actually, the reason I came is to show you something.”

It extended its hand and opened its palm.

A lock of hair.

Ais said, “Just letting you know—from tomorrow onward, every day, you’ll receive a part of her. Today it’s hair, tomorrow it might be a kidney, the day after… who knows. How much of her is left at the end depends on your speed.”

Before it finished speaking, its abdomen took a hard kick. Its legs buckled, and it staggered back several steps. Then a fist slammed into its face, sending its whole body crashing against the wall.

The hair in its hand scattered everywhere.

Horne grabbed it up from the ground by the collar and snarled, “You’d better not piss me off.”

Pinned and unable to move, Ais showed no anger. It still smiled brightly. “Piss you off? Do you have a choice?”

Staring into the fury in his eyes, Ais pushed him away, straightened its clothes, and said casually, “Why not think about the next plan instead? How to find that place and kill him. Or does our kind-hearted Horne remain forever pure and kind, unwilling to step on even an ant that crosses his path—let alone take a living person’s life? The word ‘humanity’ is too distant, too abstract. But with a real person right in front of you, so concrete… oh, is ‘concrete’ the right word? Hahaha.”

It paused to think for two seconds, then smiled again. “Whatever, it should be right. Kind-hearted Horne, can’t bring yourself to do it?”

Horne leaned back against the wall, burying his emotions in the darkness. Ais’s mocking laughter rang in his ears wave after wave. The more it mocked his kindness, the calmer he became.

He did not feel angry. He only found it amusing.

The night wind was somewhat chilly, carrying Horne’s voice like a stab of ice. “I have my own plan.”

“Then that’s for the best,” Ais clapped its hands, straightened up, and took two steps toward the alley mouth. “Good ideas are welcome. Alright, I’m off. I hope to hear good news from you soon.”

After taking two steps away, it turned back and winked at Horne. “Oh, right—this face is pretty nice too. Good taste.”

Horne kept his head lowered. With the corner of his eye, he watched the shadow and footsteps in the dark alley gradually recede until he slowly closed his eyes.

Not long after, he crouched down and picked up the hairs on the ground one by one.

“Humanity” was indeed a grand and abstract concept, like how a god might say he loved the world, but not every person in the world was one the god favored. Only when it came down to a specific individual did his talk of “for all humanity” hold meaning. But sometimes, for all humanity required the sacrifice of an individual.

All the words he had not refuted turned into cup after cup of liquor he madly gulped down.

Horne rarely drank, and even more rarely got dead drunk. By dawn, he lay sprawled over the bar counter, unable to get up. His head spun so badly he could no longer sit straight.

The Red Light District was in an uproar—those who lost bets, those who won chips, loud chatterers, table-slammers, foot-stompers. A hellish carnival. This was probably the exact scene the Tower wanted to see: humanity fallen, with no will to resist left.

Ever since Horne returned from the Tower, it had lifted the Kill Order. Those two days of panic seemed like a fleeting illusion.

In this state, with his face slightly flushed, Horne stared at the glass in his hand. An outline of a plan had formed in his mind, though it still lacked some key links.

Wan Ji, who had watched Horne all evening, could not help asking in the latter half of the night, “Do you need me to notify Mr. Hels for you?”

Horne frowned. He always felt Wan Ji had some misunderstanding about his relationship with Hels.

“No need.” As he spoke, Horne recalled what Wan Ji had said a few days ago—that Hels was particularly tolerant of him.

What kind of intentions would someone who was so particular about him and tolerated him to this extent harbor?

Horne’s fingertips tapped against his glass. In the rippling liquid, he saw his current face and thought of his original appearance.

Wan Ji stood behind the bar, looking troubled. “But if you keep this up, I’m worried Mr. Hels will come after me.”

Horne did not dwell on why his drinking would make Hels come after Wan Ji. He just said, “Do what you want.”

Wan Ji went to mix drinks for customers. When he returned, he said, “I don’t have Mr. Hels’s personal ID. Could you send it to me?”

Horne did not want to move. He set down his glass and sprawled over the bar counter, turning his head to expose his ear. In a dazed mumble, he said, “You can just read the info directly and find him.”

Wan Ji was momentarily at a loss. He looked at the spot behind Horne’s ear where the Resident Chip was and said awkwardly, “But I can’t read your chip.”

With half-lidded eyes, looking about to fall asleep, Horne said, “Can’t you just touch it with a finger now? Isn’t that enough?”

Reading someone else’s chip had not been allowed before, but it seemed to have changed later. He could not recall exactly when, only that right after waking up, he had been chased and then rescued by Hels into that small warehouse, where Hels had read his information just like that.

Wan Ji poured Horne a cup of hot water, but Horne did not drink it. He stayed sprawled, unwilling to move.

Confirming that this gentleman was truly drunk, Wan Ji could only politely answer his question. “Mr. Horne, the prerequisite for touching a finger to read someone’s information is that you must have mutually consented and voluntarily bound your chip IDs. Only then can you read info with a touch, and it would permanently share real-time locations. That kind of binding is usually done by family or lovers. How could ordinary people just touch and access a stranger’s information so easily…”

Wan Ji kept talking, but Horne could not remember what he said afterward.

A massive wave seemed to crash through his mind, flipping him onto the shore.

He abruptly opened his eyes and sat up. His eyes were bloodshot as he stared unblinkingly at Wan Ji. His voice trembled in disbelief. “What… did you just say?”

This appearance startled Wan Ji. He frantically recalled his words and probed, “Uh, you have to voluntarily bind to share info with a touch. I-I didn’t get it wrong, did I? No, that’s how it is, right? Hiss…”

Wan Ji was still mulling it over when Horne had already rushed toward the elevator hall. All the tumultuous noise and chaos fell silent the moment the elevator doors closed.

His heart thump-thumped wildly in his chest. Everything in his vision shook. Horne pressed one hand to his chest and braced against the wall with the other to keep from falling. His footsteps stumbled without rhythm or order.

He knew how to set the trap now.

He thought of many recent events.

All it required were some insignificant sacrifices.

His heart raced, his breathing growing more rapid. He staggered out of the elevator and ran all the way to the next room over, pounding on the door. The knocking sounded exceptionally abrupt in the silent night.

After a good while, the door opened.

The moment it opened, before Hels could voice his surprise, his face took a heavy punch.

Hels was stunned.

“You bastard!” Horne cursed. He braced himself against the doorframe, gasping harshly. Behind him glowed the faint light of the corridor; ahead lay the dark living room, unlit.

He staggered forward a step, then another into the room. With each step, his fist clenched tighter. He plunged into the darkness, drawing close to Hels—so close he could even feel the faint heat radiating from the other’s body.

Hels had been woken up and come to open the door without putting on a shirt. His lower half was casually dressed.

The air reeked thickly of alcohol. The pain from the sudden punch lingered on his face, and with Horne so close, Hels’s sleepiness vanished completely. He called out worriedly, “Horne? Why did you drink so much?”

Horne felt like he could not stand steady. He tried to brace himself but still pitched forward.

As expected, he fell into a gentle embrace.

Horne raised his hand to throw another punch, but his fist was caught in an even hotter palm.

Hels held him, enveloping Horne’s fist in his palm and rubbing it. He frowned and said, “Don’t hit. Does it hurt?”

Horne closed his eyes and let himself lean against the other’s bare chest. His ear pressed to the skin, listening to the strong, steady heartbeat. In less than half a second, his own ear grew hot.

Gasping, he said, “You—I have something to ask you!”

Without waiting for Hels to speak, Horne pulled free and forced himself to stand straight. Looking straight into Hels’s eyes, he said very seriously, word by word, “Hels, last time, which places did we go to?”

He meant the beta map in the Holographic Game.

“The Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Finland, right?”

“Mm.” Hels watched Horne’s swaying form and steadied his arm.

“I still want to go to Germany, Austria, other places—America, Africa, Asia. I haven’t been to them yet.” Horne spoke urgently. He rarely sounded so eager, but under the influence of alcohol, any state was permitted.

Hels paused, then asked softly, “Now?”

“Mm, now.”

Hels’s scent was woody too, comforting and relaxing.

With his eyes closed and sprawled on Hels’s back, Horne let out a long sigh of relief. The other walked steadily; even drunk, he felt no dizziness.

In the darkness, Horne hooked up the corner of his mouth into a smile of finally relaxed ease.

The Holographic Game did not carry over Horne’s drunken state. They descended from deep space to the ground, the future reverting to the past.

“Where to first? You decide. I’ll follow you.” Hels said to him.

He had so, so many places he wanted to go—to the Earth of old, to more worlds, to see unparalleled scenery, to experience a life of epic waves.

They tore off their Masks and leaped from the high sky with the wind.

The moment they landed, Horne hurried forward a few steps, then turned back to ask, “Still one hour?”

Hels smiled with pursed lips. “No time limit.”

And so the car raced through the crisscrossing streets of Thirty-Three City in Uruguay, past the mottled, aged Liberty Obelisk, where fountains splashed water to moisten its ocher soil;

Ships sailed toward desolate Tasiilaq, black waves entwining with rust-red mountains;

They went to the Montreal Zoo, rushing past a black-crowned night heron, but a white-tailed deer followed after.

The zookeeper shouted: Hey, where are you going—

They went to mountains and rivers, dense forests and waterfalls, unmanned wilds of wild grass, glacial lighthouses gazing out to distant seas.

Finally, the rich aroma of grassy brew lingered on the tip of his tongue, the green expanse vast and boundless.

Horne lay on the lawn. He felt no fatigue, only the free wind. He asked, “Where is this?” Right after asking, he cut off Hels’ unspoken reply. “Don’t say it yet. Let me guess.”

Above, wisps of white clouds entwined in the blue sky.

Horne closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I hear the sound of sea waves crashing against the rocks. Hmm—Brighton White Cliffs?”

Hels smiled and said softly, “There is no sea here, nor any cliffs.”

“Then where is it?” Horne turned his head to look at him.

Hels’ features were sharp, but at that moment, the warm sunlight wrapped them in a layer of golden softness.

He said, “Hulunbuir Grassland.”