Apocalyptic Forecast - Chapter 21
Chapter 21: Five Minutes and Fifty Seconds (Part 2)
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation
Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
First, there was a click, followed by a loud bang!
Waves of metal sprayed out from the gun’s barrel. It struck the old woman in mid-air and sent her flying backward instantly, slamming against a wall. A large splatter of blood burst out from the bullet’s entry point.
Yet Liu Dongli did not stop. He pulled the gun’s bolt and slid special bullets that targeted the Ascender’s characteristics into the chamber.
Then, he pulled it close and pulled the trigger once again.
Bang!
The old woman, whose face now resembled a pile of rotten flesh, lifelessly slid down the wall, her limbs twitching. It seemed as if she was struggling to stay alive. He held his gun inches away from her head, pointing it directly at between her eyes before firing two more rounds but she was still alive!
But she would not be alive for long.
Liu Dongli removed the gun’s magazine and emptied two more bullets from his pocket, sliding them in. He then took aim and fired the two rounds before discharging another two.
Unrelenting until the barrel burnt red.
The pile of flesh on the floor finally lay motionless.
The only thing that remained was an old face that was torn apart by steel, a look of dread and terror still plastered on its features.
Before Liu Dongli could even take a breath, he had turned around and walked toward the two who were still fighting. He then raised the hot barrel of his gun and slammed the buttstock into the back of Wang Hai’s brain.
The old thing’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as he fainted, leaving a speechless Huai Shi to collapse onto the floor, who still had not wiped the tears and snot off his face.
In that instance, Huai Shi noticed a change in Liu Dongli’s eyes, his pupils… He did not realize but the pupils in his eyes had multiplied and doubled in number!
Fifty seconds and the fight was over.
Countdown to the Old Pond’s closure – 2:40.
“Hold this, let’s go. We must at least leave the church…”
Liu Dongli picked up his gun from the floor and tossed it to him, then stuffed a magazine into his arm pocket. Then, he turned around and picked the box up, making a hasty retreat.
Huai Shi got up from the ground, gasping heavily, and staggered behind him.
Then he saw the box he had tucked beneath his rib.
That box, that familiar box…
He saw it again.
There was not a shred of doubt that it was the box he had found. Huai Shi could deduce that the box was supposed to be his…
That is right, it was supposed to be his.
Did Liu Dongli think he could just take his things without him noticing?
In a fit of rage, he held up the gun in his hands, aimed it at Liu Dongli’s back and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The sound of the shot rang out, and blood spewed out instantly.
Liu Dongli’s body shuddered violently as he fell to the ground. He glanced back stiffly, looking at the teen behind him in disbelief… That twisted and dazed expression.
Huai Shi was stunned after firing the gun. He lowered his head in a daze and stared at the gun barrel that was still smoking in his hands.
‘What happened?’
‘What did I do?’
‘And why am I here?’
‘Didn’t I feel the dangers of death the moment I stepped in here? Weren’t there countless times when I felt the gradually growing shadow of death hanging over me?’
‘Why did I come to this place?’
‘Why did I shoot Old Liu?’
‘Also, what the hell am I doing?’
His mind was in a mess. He suddenly felt sick. He felt his stomach churn, then he doubled over, opened his mouth and threw up.
He felt himself regurgitate something.
It dropped onto the dirt-ridden ground.
It seemed like it was alive and jumping…a goldfish?
A goldfish?
A goldfish again?
The person that had brushed passed him just now seemed to have a goldfish in his eyes too, and the back then, way back then…before that corpse died, it had also spit out…a goldfish?
“So, it’s the Developing Stage? It hasn’t even been six hours and the rejection is already showing.”
Behind him, a stranger’s hoarse voice sighed, “Even the second-generation goldfish could be resisted, it’s no wonder the three earlier generations of goldfish were unable to parasitize; how unlucky. Otherwise, I would have gotten the box by now, and there wouldn’t be a need for such a troublesome situation.”
The air started to slowly swirl along with the sound of the hoarse sigh, and a skinny figure appeared out of thin air sporting a pitch-black windbreaker and a cold, indifferent expression.
A pair of blood-red gloves.
And a fishbowl in his right hand.
Within the small fishbowl, a few tiny goldfish were swimming around leisurely.
“… Green Day?”
In the pool of blood, Liu Dongli saw the green ring-shaped coat of arms and finally reacted. He tried to lift the gun’s muzzle. “Huai Shi, hurry up and go…”
Red Gloves lowered his head and glanced at him, shaking his head pitifully, “You can’t even take care of yourself, why would you worry about him?”
The chill of death appeared.
Then, gunshots sounded from behind Huai Shi.
One bang followed quickly by another.
He fired one shot at Liu Dongli, then another at Huai Shi.
Liu Dongli twitched before going silent.
Huai Shi looked down stiffly and saw blood slowly seeping from his chest. There was a hole there like someone had taken a swing with a sledgehammer.
It hurt like hell.
He fell onto his knees and cried out shamelessly.
But when he turned back to look at the person who fired the shot, his hoarse cries died in his throat.
“…Old Yang?”
The hunchbacked man with a blank expression raised his head to look at him. His face often took on a cunning expression, and it still seemed to possess the faint hints of a smile.
Behind his eyes, a goldfish swam happily.
As if it was in a little fishbowl.
As Huai Shi stared at him, stunned, he bent over, picked up the box, and trudged through the blood on the floor to stand behind the man.
Waiting for his order.
“Go lock the main door, then prepare for the ceremony. After waiting for so long, it must have its worth.”
The stranger gave his order and Old Yang turned to leave, not even sparing a glance at Huai Shi.
“Are you two familiar with one another?”
The stranger glanced down at Huai Shi, then smiled playfully. “He owes a lot of money to a lot of people, so he can only use himself to relieve the debt. Don’t blame him, and don’t blame me… You can only blame yourself for having such bad luck.”
“…”
In his trance-like state, Huai Shi suddenly understood something. Even though there was so much anger inside him that it felt like he was about to lose his mind, he could not help but feel the urge to laugh.
To laugh at how he had been struggling for so long like a bug caught in a spider’s web.
He was doomed from the start.
From the very beginning.
When he had received Old Yang’s call and willingly carried the cello case to the gigolo clubhouse to apply for a job, he had already placed himself on the path to death.
He would arrive at the scheduled location and when he stepped out the door of the building, he would angrily call Old Yang to report his position and information. Lastly, he would take the closest road home, find a corpse in an alley, along with a box, and a goldfish…
That goldfish, it should have been happily swimming inside his head instead.
He had unintentionally eluded disaster, but he was still pulled back on track by the hands behind the scenes and had met his inevitable end.
It was just like this person said, his luck had always been awful.
He had always encountered inexplicable things that would make his already messy life into more of a mess. He became poorer, more miserable, and more hopeless by the day, even to this very moment… then finally, like a headless fly, he had plunged himself into a dead end.
Ushering in the end.
“Damn you, why?!”
Huai Shi could not bear the overwhelming pain and threw up blood; tears and snot gushing from his orifices. “All I ever f*cking wanted was to have a good life, to earn a little money so I could lead a better life, to find a good job. It didn’t matter what kind of job I had to take. I just wanted to find someone I love and marry them, and have a home where I wouldn’t be an outcast… Is that too much to ask? Why? Why can’t you f*ckers just leave me be?”
The red-gloved man grew silent.
After a while, he sighed softly.
“For a better world, there are many things which we can’t do anything about.” He pulled out a gun from his pocket and aimed it at the teen’s face. “I’m sorry. Your sacrifice is something of far greater value.”
He pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The bullet bounced off him.
He was covered in a faint film of light.
Red Glove was stunned.
“Blessed Barrier?” He stared at the faint glow that shrouded the teenager’s body, stunned. “That woman gave you her life-saving charm? Are you an old friend of hers?”
It was emergency protection given to every supervisor by the Astronomical Association, a literal life-saving charm. When the person encountered a fatal attack, the charm would be activated automatically to save the user’s life under the worst situations, allowing the user time to wait for help…
Unless it was forcefully hit by a fourth stage Stigmata attack within the first three minutes, it would be borderline impossible to penetrate the barrier.
“Forget it.”
He kept his gun and cast a mocking glance at Huai Shi’s chest. Even if he could not take his life right then, this guy would still eventually bleed to death.
The time now was precious, he was just one step away. He did not have any more time to waste on this guy.
He turned and left the assembly hall.
The plan had succeeded well beyond his expectations.
Even though he had considered taking actions against the Church of Salvation in a short amount of time after he saw the box, it had all been planned carefully. To avoid alerting and being detected by the group of Lords behind Wang Hai, he had to start with regular civilians using his soul’s power – the Sneering Fish Tank, to create chaos from within. He would then pose as Lao Yang and arrange for Huai Shi to unwittingly carry out the last step of the transfer. However, he did not expect that Huai Shi would turn out to secretly be an Ascender in his Developing Stage and would have resistance toward the parasitic third-generation fish fry. This led to the failure of the parasitism and it derailed his plans.
Fortunately, he had successfully stayed under the radar, and under the tremendous amount of pressure of the Astronomical Association, the group of Puritans behind Wang Hai did not smell anything fishy. That group of people who had nothing but the Savior on their minds, which was driving them completely insane and clouding their judgment.
However, since he could not complete his plan in secrecy, he had to make an adjustment to his plans.
To him, as long as the final result remained the same, it did not matter if the process changed. Since he had already attracted the attention of the Astronomical Association, then… perhaps it would not hurt to create a bigger ruckus!
He kicked the door open and fired two shots without hesitation, killing an old man who was waiting to ambush him. He walked through the chaotic, screaming crowd and walked up to the podium.
The front and back doors had already been locked.
He did not know how much time had passed, but it was enough to complete the final birth.
However…
“Making drugs with the Cauldron of Reincarnation? That group of Puritans, have their subordinates’ brains been devoured by their God as well?”
He glanced down at the box before him and could not help but sneer at it.
This container-shaped relic was dug up from the seventh depth of the ruins of Hell. Even though it was the best elementium container and could be easily lifted even after converting the religious fanatics’ exuberant elementium into matter. Though, he was afraid that even if this box was handed to Wang Hai himself that he would not know what it was.
Those who were used as the sacrificial offering were not just the believers which he had deceived, but him as well. If there was enough elementium, it would be enough to summon the ancient spirit into the embryo of the interior!
Once the rancher’s messenger had descended through it, every living thing its eyes fell upon would serve as his next meal.
What he had to do was not great.
“I’ll just use it as waste.”
He swept his eyes across the believers that had been continuously harvested as a source of elementium, opened the box, and pulled out a test tube from his arms.
Basked in the dim lighting of the church, he looked at the flesh and blood within its walls.
“Let’s begin.”
He whispered, “Setting up a trivial part in our great cause.”