Chapter 111.1
“Prisoner number 3771’s mental state has returned to normal, and the energy is stabilizing.”
A strange beeping sound filled the surroundings, the frequency of the sound was very regular, as if it were emitted from some kind of instrument. But in contrast to the life-affirming sound of a heart monitor in a hospital, this sound was mechanically cold and indifferent, a mere emotionless data broadcaster.
The man sitting in the corner struggled to open his eyes and found himself sitting in a familiar four-square space. Apart from the prison-like gate in front of him where he could see people and objects moving around outside, the rest of the room was covered in smooth, cold walls, the same material and color as the faintly white glowing floor.
Anyone who looked at it would immediately recognize it as a prison.
Outside the gate and to the left was a square-shaped object, which must be the console responsible for monitoring all the data and switches in the prison.
Standing in front of the console was a svelte man in a white coat with rimless glasses on the bridge of his nose. When he heard a movement from inside the prison cell, he only raised his eyes to look at him and then went back to what he was doing.
He didn’t know what the svelte man did, but he felt as if the air in the cell had become slightly different, it was more comfortable.
What was this place? Why was he being held here?
…… And who was he?
The thoughts in his head were as white as the shimmering light on the floor, so empty that he instantly felt uneasy. Everything was out of his control, and the unknown frightened him so much. He couldn’t even remember his own name.
There was a sound of unhurried footsteps approaching his cell door from a distance, sounding like the crunch of leather boots on a smooth, hard floor, and they echoed in the silence.
The svelte man at the console immediately stopped what he was doing, turned toward the other side of the corridor that was out of his sight, and saluted solemnly, “Commander Gu.”
Immediately afterward, a man in a dark blue uniform with silver trim stepped into his line of sight. The man’s figure was tall, and his silver-white belt outlined his slim waist. His eyes, hidden by a few strands of black hair, looked at the uniformed man through the gap in the cell gate.
The newcomer’s eyes were distinctive, one of them a beautiful inky blue, the other white.
The man patted off the invisible dust on the hat in his hand and put it on his head before raising his chin slightly and saying to him, “Wen Xinghan, you had a seizure again, didn’t you?” The slightly lazy tone of his voice trailed off at the end of his words.
The man was meticulously dressed; the collar was high around his neck, and even the light smile in his eyes looked so cool and ascetic.
Wen Xinghan? So that was his name. But why couldn’t he remember? And who is this man? Why did his heart feel so uncomfortable when he saw him?
Wen Xinghan stood up from the floor. Although he was a prisoner, there were no shackles on his hands and feet. His hair fell behind him as he rose, making his prison uniform look even whiter.
Compared to his daze, the other man scanned him habitually before glancing at the console, “This time, the recovery time is a few minutes shorter than the previous one, quite un ……”
Before the commander in blue could finish his words, his wrist was suddenly grabbed by the man in the cell.
Wen Xinghan’s eyes were a little bloodshot: “Who are you? Why have you locked me in here?”
The man outside the cell frowned slightly, and although he was facing him, he asked the svelte man in the white coat in a cold voice: “Are you sure that 3771’s mind has returned to normal?”
However, Wen Xinghan was in a daze. The moment their eyes met, he felt his heart ache even more.
The other party’s attitude seemed very flat, but his tone was not as cold as expected: “If you don’t want to be beaten, you’d better let go of my hand.”
However, he subconsciously gripped the hand tighter, and his heart inexplicably flushed with panic.
This place, this scene…… and this person, he should be very familiar with them but why couldn’t he remember anything? He felt like something bad was going to happen here, and it felt like there was a bundle of intertwined twine sealing his thought process.
He opened his mouth to continue his questioning when there was a sudden, loud bang in the area outside the prison cell. The sound was like a thunderclap falling into his head, shattering the seal and releasing what he had forgotten in an instant.
His head throbbed like a hand was tugging at his brain, and his face went white as he remembered something, and he called out a name before the man in his grasp could walk away, “Gu Xiyu!”
The man’s movements gave a slight pause, and he turned to look at him again.
With red eyes, Wen Xinghan spoke to the man who was separated from him by a gate, “Don’t go, I beg you.”
He remembered everything, he remembered what had happened to him before he went crazy and went to the other levels of the space-time realm, and he also remembered how his soul was split and the reason why it was split. He had become muddled and confused. He was confused at the moment, and although he didn’t understand why this scenario was being repeated in front of him, he didn’t want to experience the same despair again.
It seemed like a long, long time ago that the two of them had faced each other through these gates like this.
The handsome man in his neat military uniform stared at him with a calm expression on his face, before finally raising his other hand and pushing away the hand clutching his wrist.
Just like that day in his memory, the other party said in a calm tone, “I am in charge of this fortress, and it is my duty.”
The svelte man who had been standing at the console had gone ahead to check out the situation outside. The explosions were still going on, and even the sound of many people talking noisily and weapons being unleashed could be heard from afar.
Wen Xinghan watched as Gu Xiyu walked over to the console, and after calmly tapping it a few times, the distracting mechanical beeping sound disappeared. He tightened his grip on the prison gate and asked in a deep, angry voice before the other man left, “The fortress is your duty, what about me?”
“Gu Xiyu, what am I to you?!”
The scene around him became blurred with the increasing bombardments, and the exit Gu Xiyu was facing turned into a blinding light with an unseen end.
“You?”
After a long time, the man standing with his back to him finally let out a chuckle and spoke, but never looked back at him.
“Perhaps an uncontrollable accident in my duty.”
This reply gradually blurred with the images in his memory, and Wen Xinghan’s inky eyes reflected a light that became more and more intense. Mist filled his reddened eyes as he yelled hysterically: “Then let me out, at least let me go with you!”
This answer overlapped with the memory that was gradually becoming clearer, and the light that was becoming more and more intense was reflected in Wen Xinghan’s cold, inky eyes. Mist filled his reddened eyes, and his voice was hysterical: “Then let me out, at least let me go out with you!”
The anguished plea blended into his broken voice, but the indifferent man with the stubborn attitude coldly left him alone in this place.
The chaotic images flooded Wen Xinghan’s mind, causing him to fall to his knees with a headache, and he could only close his eyes and groan in pain.
When he opened his eyes again, he found himself waking up from a bed and panting.
Standing at the end of the bed was a female doctor with wavy blonde hair. His sudden, violent movement had probably startled her, and she held the clipboard in her hand and stared at him in horror. She took several steps back, and after a few seconds of silence, she opened the translucent door of the ward in a panic and hurried out while yelling in a panic.
“Help! The great demon is awake, I’m scared!!!”
Wen Xinghan: “……”
He habitually tried to raise his hand to rub his brow when he realized that his hands and feet were chained to the hospital bed and he could not move freely. He didn’t rush to break free – though he probably couldn’t – and just sat quietly on the bed, gathering his thoughts.
His real name was Wen Xinghan, and he was the ‘Great Demon’ as the Time and Space Bureau staff called him. It was no wonder they had given him such a terrible name, he had indeed become a lunatic by the time he came to this level of the space realm. He was unable to think like a normal person at that time, unable to find what he was looking for, and he was so out of control that all he wanted was to hurt people.
The Time Space Bureau occupied many levels of the space realm, and he was not sure which level his word was classified to. He was born in the Chaos continent, which was very similar to the cultivation world where Bu Tianhan was from, where people can cultivate, have special spiritual powers, and are likewise divided into orthodox and demonic paths. His experience was also very similar to that of Bu Tianhan, as he was also oppressed by his family; the only difference was that his life was many times worse than Bu Tianhan’s. He experienced a lot of hardship and betrayal on his way to becoming a complete demon and destroying that continent.
The battle on the Chaos Continent was even more brutal, as many people had great power, and betrayed and fought each other for all sorts of things. Compared to Bu Tianhan, he didn’t have something like a demon seed to help him survive death and had to survive several near-death battles on his own. The injustice in life slowly made him bow to his destiny and go onto the demonic path. He slowly learned how to defeat others to protect himself, and that the only way to keep himself safe was to be powerful.
Darkness filled his heart, and once he reached a higher level of cultivation and stood at the top, his power integrated with that of heaven and earth, and he suddenly felt bored. He was bored and disgusted by the ugly hearts and faces, was tired of the rivalries and false masks, and felt that there was no point in existing in such a world. He had tried to find goodness in that place, but it was all in vain.
Such a state of mind was probably the ultimate realm of the demonic dao. He almost destroyed all the beings on that continent before he broke through to a higher cultivation realm that no one had ever reached before, and with this ability, he broke away from the limits of that world’s laws and began to wander through countless chaotic realms and spaces.
It was only after he reached the seventh level of the realm, where Gu Xiyu was, that he was finally captured.
Although he was not sure what level the world he was born into was in their eyes, it was definitely higher than the seventh level because there was no one or any prop in the seventh level that was a match for him.
He gave the various management bureaus and guards of the fortress a headache, and he started to believe that the place where he was born was most likely the most powerful ‘first level’, as they put it.
The only reason they managed to capture him was that the commander of the seventh-level fortress came up with a ‘prison’ specially designed to deal with him.
“You are strong, and there is nothing on this level that can limit you.” He vaguely remembered the day he was captured. He was standing in that ‘cage’ and looking at the calm and confident tall, slender man in the dark blue uniform as he said, “Since you are so strong, are you able to defeat yourself?”
Because he had a way to break through whatever prison they had, the commander developed a prison that could bounce back the attacker’s power. The stronger the attack he sent against the prison, the harder the prison struck back at him.
He never expected that the person who would eventually restrain him at the seventh level would be himself.
So he was taken back to the huge fortress with the special prison. The fortress was said to hold many rebellious prisoners like him that could not be killed outright, as well as some who had gone in because they had made mistakes. Anyway, from time to time, he could see the seemingly cold leader, known as Commander Gu, walking around the confines of the prison and overseeing the movements of the prisoners. He always wore a rolled-up whip around his waist, and it was said that anyone who disobeyed him would be punished.
Fortunately, he was never punished.
Later, he learned that this commander was called Gu Xiyu. Probably because his defeat was at the hands of this commander, who was clearly less powerful than him in a real fight, he felt a little resentful and always made a few provocative remarks that could provoke the average man’s anger whenever the other man passed by in the long corridor outside his prison.
But he failed, Gu Xiyu was calmer than he expected, or, more to the point, he didn’t care about anything.
Even though he deliberately and blatantly made disgusting flirtatious remarks to him, “Commander’s body looks seductive, and his ass is quite shapely, I wonder if …… it would feel good if I got in.”
Gu Xiyu didn’t even give him a look. He stood by that console, where only he had master control, and calmly gave him back a response, “Thanks, you’re not the first to compliment me like that.”
Later on, Wen Xinghan would feel so angry whenever he recalled this remark, and he would feel so jealous at the thought that other people dared to covet Gu Xiyu.
For quite a long time, his relationship with Gu Xiyu was nothing more than that of a cold working robot and one of the prisoners under its care. It wasn’t until later that the power inside him started acting up because it had been restrained for too long. Whenever it flared up again, he would become delirious again and would even have a very mad, tyrannical mind, looking for a fight or a way to unleash his power.
The first seizure caused Gu Xiyu quite a lot of concern, as the prison where he was being held was special and he couldn’t get out. The attacks he launched inside would only end up rebounding on himself, and over time, this might actually result in getting himself killed.
The Space-Time Fortress didn’t want to kill the prisoners, and naturally, this wasn’t an outcome Gu Xiyu wanted to see, so he had to find a way around it.
So, they gradually met more often, and while looking for a solution, Gu Xiyu needed to make several rounds to check the defenses of the fortress, as well as pay attention to him. Gu Xiyu would take the initiative to ask him questions, and over time, he would throw in a few questions to make small talk in the process.
More often than not, Gu Xiyu avoided answering them and instead would answer those that were so boring that it was better not to have answered.
For example –
“I like black, black is fine.”
“I had steak for lunch yesterday, are you envious?”
“Today’s underpants? White.”
Wen Xinghan: “……” Perhaps they had different backgrounds, so he always ended in defeat.
He also gradually discovered that this commander named Gu Xiyu had quite a personality, and that, deep down, he was not necessarily as cold and uncaring as he appeared to be.
Later on, Gu Xiyu seemed to have found a way to help ease his pain because, when he came to his senses after his next seizure, his body did not hurt or suffer as much as it had before. Unfortunately, he had no memory of the time when he was mentally unbalanced, so he was not sure what methods Gu Xiyu used, and he was even more evasive about such crucial questions.
It was by chance that he suddenly came to his senses after one seizure. When Gu Xiyu was talking to the svelte man in charge of monitoring his condition, he did not notice that he had awakened a little earlier than usual. He quickly noticed some bruises at the corners of Gu Xiyu’s mouth, and although the man felt his gaze, and looked over, he didn’t say anything and only gave him a cold, hard look before leaving.