The severity rating of a Nightmare Disaster is determined by three dimensions: the degree of materialization, the intensity of dispersion, and the number of people dragged in.
If any one of these three dimensions reaches Class S, the Nightmare Disaster rating will be Class S.
If all three reach Class S, the rating becomes Class SSS.
Class SSS Nightmare Disasters are extremely rare. Every occurrence has left a stroke of “heavy ink and vivid color” in the history of humanity's battle against Nightmare Disasters.
Of these, the “heavy ink” is drawn from the pitch-black night that never sees the light, and the “vivid color” from the endless flow of blood.
Right now, the Nightmare Disaster had only just descended, and its intensity of dispersion was still unknown.
The spreading speed of a Nightmare Disaster was also non-linear. No one could predict at what moment the nightmare would sweep into more of reality, but at least for now, the Nightmare Disaster on the 46th floor had not yet spread to other floors.
The number of trapped people also had to be verified multiple times along with the scope of the Nightmare Disaster. Currently, according to the consciousness frequency scan results sent back by the drones, there were quite a few people stranded in the disaster area, though not everyone had fallen into a deep sleep; most individuals were still conscious.
As a result, the Class S warning from the central dispatch could only be due to the degree of materialization. No one expected this Nightmare Disaster to materialize so quickly; the nightmare had already invaded reality right at its beginning.
“Did the drones capture any footage? What is the situation on the 46th floor? What are the characteristics of the materialization?”
The drones circled the perimeter of the 46th floor over and over again, filming continuously from different angles, yet they failed to capture a single shot of materialization.
The operator was completely baffled and reported with a tight frown:
“Reporting to the Boss, the drones have not captured any anomalies. The entire outer perimeter of the 46th floor is completely normal. We are currently performing an infrared scan of the interior, and the results also don't seem to show any issues.
“We cannot rule out the possibility that the nightmare scenario is extremely similar to reality, and some real-world items have been replaced with identical substitutes.
“But this is a good thing; at least we don't need to spend extra effort understanding the rules of the nightmare world...
“Wait, no!
“Something is wrong!
“All units, lower altitude, look up at the ceiling of the 46th floor!
“Target locked, transmitting the feed now.”
The members of the Special Response Squad standing by in the front courtyard opened their terminals in unison. When they saw the image light up on their screens, their eyes widened, and they froze on the spot.
“Is that... the security cameras came alive?”
Li Ji's eyes narrowed. Looking at the eyeballs wildly scanning around inside the lenses of every security camera on the 46th floor, a faint worry grew in his heart.
...
Yu Jin constantly felt like someone was watching him.
Not just his main body, but also the red-haired Yu Jin who was still confronting Xia Jie in the alley.
This needle-like unease pricking his back made him increasingly vigilant.
Dreams were different from reality; no one knew what might suddenly happen. To lower the probability of multiple risks erupting at once, the red-haired Yu Jin spat out a mouthful of blood and charged at Xia Jie once again.
Before facing the unknown, he had to extinguish the known dangers first.
However, Xia Jie on the opposite side did not think so.
In his eyes, his opponent was simply throwing their life away.
Of course he wanted to kill Yu Jin, but the premise was that he could kill him.
He did not want to finish him off this time only for him to make a comeback shortly after, becoming even more troublesome and difficult to deal with than before.
Rather than getting caught in an endless loop, he wanted a permanent solution.
But the prerequisite for a permanent solution was to first figure out why the other party could come back to life. Of course, if he could learn this resurrection ability for himself...
Xia Jie began planning his retreat.
Unwilling to entangle himself too much with Yu Jin, he pondered how to shake him off.
But he had forgotten that in a battle between evenly matched opponents, any hint of retreat would become a fatal weakness.
When one side was risking everything while the other was unwilling to fight to the death, the one who died was often the one holding back.
Xia Jie retreated as he fought, attempting to climb through a shattered window to use the indoor partitions to put some distance between himself and the red-haired Yu Jin.
Just as he was about to repel Yu Jin and slip inside to maneuver, the red-haired Yu Jin gritted his teeth and lunged forward, taking the bone blade aimed straight at his heart head-on.
Under Xia Jie's astonished and dark gaze, the red-haired Yu Jin took the heavy blow raw. His entire ribcage collapsed, and a deep, bone-deep gash was torn across his chest.
Yet he neither dodged nor retreated. Using the mangled flesh and shattered bones in his chest, he firmly wedged Xia Jie's bone blade for a split second. Taking advantage of Xia Jie's brief lapse in reaction, he drove his own bone blade straight up into the other's jaw.
Xia Jie thought he was done for, but he hadn't expected the red-haired Yu Jin's direct thrust to be so inaccurate as to hit his head.
Heh.
You've probably forgotten that I cannot be killed by a blow to the head.
Xia Jie's lower jaw was completely shattered. The bone blade pierced through his cheek and exited at an angle.
The tip of the blade curved backward like a wasp's stinger, suddenly snapping around to pierce straight toward Xia Jie's neck.
Calm and unhurried, Xia Jie sneered as his mangled flesh transformed into tentacles that tightly clamped onto Yu Jin's bone blade. He mocked him:
“Wishful thinking.
“I told you, everything you have comes from me. How could you possibly kill me with my own bone blade...”
Slash!
The voice cut off abruptly.
A blanket of blood-red flooded Xia Jie's vision. His eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at Yu Jin, then used his very last ounce of strength to look down at his own neck.
He couldn't see where the wound was, but he could see that in the middle of the bone blade tightly bound by the tentacles, several bone joints had somehow bloomed into umbrella-like bone flowers radiating the aura of death.
If these expanded umbrella-like joints had been positioned just slightly higher, they would have done nothing more than shred some tentacles, and the endless swarm of tentacles would have quickly wrapped and contained them once again.
However, the point where the bone blade had pierced through the cheek this time was too low. The position was incredibly delicate; the spinning bone blades not only shredded the surrounding tentacles but also sliced right through Xia Jie's neck.
In a normal clash, Xia Jie would never have made such a mistake. But right now, most of his mind was focused on escaping.
This tiny lapse in concentration ensured he would never have another chance to be distracted.
His pupils dilated.
His strength ebbed away.
Xia Jie only felt that the Yu Jin before him was becoming redder and redder. When his entire field of vision bled into the same crimson as Yu Jin's red hair, he faintly heard the other say:
“A parting gift to my mentor.
“I will find you again.”
?
I'm already dead, why won't you let me go?
Where are you going to find me? Hell?
Xia Jie did not understand, nor would he ever get the chance to understand.
The culprit behind the Qingniao Street tragedy thus collapsed in the dream.
Looking at the corpse slumped lifelessly by the window, the red-haired Yu Jin suddenly gave a self-deprecating laugh. Utterly exhausted, he dropped to his knees, gasping heavily.
He knew this wasn't the real Xia Jie, but being able to kill him in a dream was a rare comfort to himself.
“How are you?”
Yu Jin asked anxiously from the hospital.
The moment Xia Jie closed his eyes, Yu Jin had tried to recall the red-haired Yu Jin, but to his surprise, the Sneering Revolver, which worked perfectly fine in reality, was completely useless in this dream.
No matter how Yu Jin flicked the hammer, the red-haired Yu Jin could not turn back into a bullet.
Both shocked and terrified, Yu Jin furrowed his brow and immediately set off toward the red-haired Yu Jin's position.
The red-haired Yu Jin felt a bit cold, but he forced himself through the agonizing pain throughout his body, tsked, and said:
“A minor issue... cough, cough... I won't die.
“Cough, cough... I said I'd throw trash into the trash can.
“I'm a man of my word...”
“...”
Let's not try to act cool at a time like this. We're both “ourselves,” who are you even showing off to?
Yu Jin felt the red-haired Yu Jin's pain as his own. Jerked by the severe pain, his running was somewhat unsteady. With great difficulty, he managed to reach the elevators, only to find that the needle-like sensation of being watched had grown even stronger.
He stopped abruptly, turning around to look behind him. There was no one.
The eerie feeling made Yu Jin's heart beat like a drum. He asked uneasily:
“I keep feeling like...”
“Your feeling... cough, cough... is correct. Someone is indeed watching... us.”
The red-haired Yu Jin felt it too. He not only felt the gaze upon them but could also sense a crisis approaching.
But right now, he was powerless. Though he wanted to look around vigilantly, he couldn't even raise his head.
At the edge of losing consciousness, he only heard a sudden flurry of footsteps at the corner of the alley.
Straining to turn his head, he saw a group of six people barge into his field of vision at the alleyway entrance.
It was clearly the configuration of a Special Response Squad. Seeing the “reinforcements” arrive, Yu Jin felt a surge of joy.
But before this joy could show on his face, the captain leading the six-man squad walked up to the kneeling red-haired Yu Jin with a serious expression, showed his ID, and said in a rather stern tone:
“Citizen, you are suspected of exceeding your authority to kill a fugitive. You have committed the crime of Replacing Evil with Good. Come with us.”
“!!??”
Exceeding authority?
Replacing evil with good?
What on earth is all this?
The weak, red-haired Yu Jin had no strength to resist. The moment the cold handcuffs locked around his wrists, he could only leave Yu Jin with one last sentence:
“Don't come over. Hide back...”
Rate on N.U.
