Chapter 237: The Game Pool

Armand awoke with a start from his sleep, sitting sweating on the edge of his bed, his head bowed for a moment to catch his breath from the nightmare.

Or rather, a reprieve from the nightmarish reality.

Armand shook his cold, sweaty hand, and the last image he had in his sleep was of a bleeding Mu Sicheng with his head on the ground and his pupils dilated.

The other man's blood spread across the floor, merging with the pool of blood beneath him.

Armand sat dumbly on the edge of the bed and thought back to the dream he had just had, or rather his past life.

His older brother, Georgia, is the head captain of the Heretic Authority's Zone 3 and has been extremely busy for as long as Armand can remember, because Georgia's job is a dangerous one, so he is very protective of Armand - Georgia has a strict plan for Armand's every move. He is very protective of Armand - Georgia has a strict plan for his every move.

For example, Georgia strictly prohibits Armand from entering the Heresy Directorate and performing any work related to heresy.

But Armand wasn't convinced, and the more Georgia refused to allow it, the more he wanted to enter, and the job at the Bureau of Heresy appealed to him - it was his fantasy job of saving the world!

As a child, Armand admired his older brother Georgia and became more and more attracted to the Heretic's Council, and as an adolescent, he rebelliously went straight to the Heretic's training camp.

This led to Armand and Georgia's first argument, and Armand made a fuss and eventually got what he wanted.

And Georgia said to him coldly, "Armand, you are a cowardly and soft-hearted man, you are not capable of being cruel to your enemies, and if so, you will be severely punished by fate.

Now that I think about it, Georgia is right, Georgia is always right.

At that time Armand had not been severely punished by fate, and he had always had some unrealistic and naive illusions about the mercy of fate.

He entered the Heresy Authority with naivety, and was then placed by Georgia in charge of paperwork in the safest of the heresy control departments.

A depressed Armand boredly counted the various heretics, trying to get to the most dangerous line at any opportunity, but each time Georgia was sharp enough to spot them and keep them more tightly contained within the Zone 3 headquarters.

Armand feels an unspeakable sense of empty solitude.

From the time he was growing up, he was surrounded by the high protective wall that Georgia had built to protect him from heretics; there was nothing inside the wall but himself, and even Georgia stayed discreetly outside the wall, even eating through a plastic cover to prevent contaminating him.

And he ended up growing up, still staying in this walled building, without even a person to talk to.

And soon this person appeared.

Georgia's supervisor, Zone 3, is a storage area for high-risk heretics, storing the most dangerous and valuable heretics, and Zone 3's strongholds are usually in very secret locations that few can explore, but all of this is exceptional for Zone 3's natural enemy, Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng is District Three's worst enemy, and the arrogant thief makes such a fuss every time he visits the district that the District Three players practically cut their heads to study the sneaky thief's weaknesses in an attempt to catch each other.

And the research has gone on and on, and it's just a little bit of skin.

Armand rolled his eyes as he stuffed his mouth with bread and heard the team members next to him mention Mu Sicheng's background for the thousandth time.

" Mu Sicheng ...... best friend died ...... now has no way to work with anyone and is particularly withdrawn and solitary ...... "

"He seems to mind this a lot and gets violently out of control when he hears it ...... can use this ......"

Armand interjected with a slurred voice, holding his bread in his mouth, "How can a dead friend be considered a weakness?"

He playfully patted himself on the back: "Unless you make him a living friend, that would be a weakness, and I think I would be good enough to help you as a spy as this thief's friend."

Knowing that Armand was the captain's brother, the team laughed and teased him, "Do you know how this thief's friend died?"

Armand shakes his head honestly.

The team scares him: "Mu Sicheng himself killed him! If you had been friends with him, you might have been killed by him too!"

Armand froze, choking on the bread he had swallowed.

That night, a red alert went off in Zone 3.

Armand woke up from his sleep in a daze to Georgia's solemn voice over the radio: "All districts on alert! Mu Sicheng has been shot in the waist by me after stealing three heavy Level 2 Red Heretics and is now incapacitated and on the run from within the Authority! All team members search the area!"

"- and shot on sight if necessary!"

The team searched room by room for the bullet-ridden thief, their faces in a state of glee, a joy so great that Armand, who had sneaked into the search party, was found by the team and turned a blind eye.

Armand excitedly followed the search, but after two searches he was spotted by Georgia, and Armand slumped and was reprimanded by Georgia before rolling back to his room in shame.

But when Armand returned to his room, he instantly sensed that something was wrong, that something had infiltrated his room.

Armand left the dormitory unlocked, and although the visitor was discreet and the room looked as if nothing had been touched, the smell could not be disguised - Armand caught a strong whiff of blood.

His heart thudded nervously.

Armand, aware of his inability to stop him, pretended not to notice anything and turned to leave to inform the others.

But the moment he turned his head, he was hooked by a sharp claw around his throat, and there was a tall man breathing heavily on him, laughing maliciously, "Very keen, your nose is as good as mine, you smell my blood, don't you?"

Armand's heart leapt out of his throat as he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, and before he could speak, the man on his shoulder slid down on his own.

Armand turns around in a trance.

He saw a young man about his age lying weakly in a pool of blood with monkey headphones on his head, breathing heavily and gasping for breath.

The man was about to go into shock from the blood loss, Armand realised immediately, staring at Mu Sicheng in a pool of blood, his mind reverberating with all the background information he had heard about the murderous thief.

[......No friends...... alone...... seems to be lonely...... only with a follower behind him Conversation]

[Every time I steal something, anything I do is to please that person behind the curtain and get their approval ......]

[It seems that this person behind the smuggling line is expanding recently, that's why Mu Sicheng is visiting District 3 more and more frequently ......]

Armand thought that the other party would be a terrible old man in his 40s or 50s, but he didn't expect ...... to be so young.

Blood spread in pools from beneath Mu Sicheng's body as he crumpled with his eyes lost in thought, not bothering to cover his wounds, but instead using his wounded abdomen to protect the three heretical boxes he had stolen from within.

Armand's lips pursed into a straight line as he gripped the pistol at the back of his waist, then gritted his teeth and drew it at Mu Sicheng's head.

But no matter how much he pushed himself, Armand couldn't do it - and his brother was right.

There was no way he could shoot such a living man, even knowing him to be a bad, evil man, but he could see in the eyes of the dying Mu Sicheng the same longing as he did - a longing for life, for that meagre hold on being understood and approved.

At this time, there was a knock on the door of his room.

Startled, Armand subconsciously propped Mu Sicheng up and hid it under the bed, then stripped the floor clean, sprayed a lot of air freshener in a panic and lay down on the bed pretending he was asleep.

He asked Armand, "Have you seen any suspicious characters?"

Armand, in bed, replied quickly and heartily, "No! The air freshener is because I just took a lot of really smelly shit so I sprayed a lot!"

The visitor: "...... doesn't have to tell me about such things."

Luckily, no one suspected Armand, the captain's brother, so the visitor pinched his nose and walked away amidst the choking smell of air sobriety.

Armand slumped on the bed and, after a long hesitation, placed a bottle of potent healing agent and a roll of bandages at the bottom of the bed.

It may have been a long, long time before a pair of monkey paws reached out from under the bed and "swished" these away.

Armand hugged his knees and half-crouched on the bed, his eyes lost in concentration as he pondered why on earth he was doing this.

But before he could think of a result, a rejuvenated, slightly tugged voice came from under the bed, "Hey, what's your name?"

Armand answered honestly, " Armand."

Under the bed snorted, "Hard to hear, you look exactly like the guy who shot me, who is he?"

"...... brother." Speaking of which, Armand got even more depressed.

Why on earth did he save the enemy that his brother had shot and wounded?

There was a long, long silence under the bed before the same question was asked that Armand had in mind, "Why did you ...... save me?"

Armand let out a long, melancholy sigh, "I don't know, I couldn't help but save it."

A series of extremely mocking laughs and choking coughs came from under the bed for some reason, and then a low laughing curse, "Stupid."

Armand: "......"

Although I think it's pretty silly too, isn't it wrong for you to say that?

When Armand woke up early the next morning, Mu Sicheng was gone. Armand was relieved, but at the same time wondered if he had gone crazy trying to make a success of himself and that's why he had this dream of catching Mu Sicheng.

But why did my dream self save him and then let him go?

Armand was puzzled and gave up.

But soon afterwards, the notorious thief visited the Heretic's Authority again, but this time the Mu Sicheng took nothing with him, instead leaving one thing behind.

Like every arrogant over-the-top eccentric thief in history, he actually sent an early teaser letter naming the three districts this time.

[- Come on Wednesday and steal something, steal what you don't know yet, watch and take it, and tell your captain's brother, the who's who with the ugly name, to wash up and wait for me at the door!

Georgia lifted his eyes as he flung the teaser in front of a dazed Armand: "Explain why Mu Sicheng has started targeting you?"

"...... I don't know ...... either" Armand was in tears, he really regretted it.

Georgia took a deep breath as he stared at Armand for a long time before finally passing judgement, "Whatever happened to you and Mu Sicheng, Armand, you need to remember that this man is a demon and he will get you in the end."

"But if you really need a chance to recognise that reality, I'll give it to you."

Georgia examines the faint-hearted Armand: "Take a gun and join us in the siege on Wednesday."

On Wednesday, Armand, armed with a gun, stood warily at the front, and soon the thief arrived.

This was Armand's first sighting of Mu Sicheng, who was running and stealing.

Mu Sicheng, as fast as the wind and as free as the wind, laughs with a speed invisible to the naked eye and brushes past Armand, who has not yet recovered, before grabbing Armand's wrist and pulling the dazed Armand with him as he runs.

Amidst scenes of gunfire and the screaming of all the members of the Heresy Handling Bureau, the rival thief and Armand scampered off like two children caught red-handed in a prank.

Confused, Armand jerked his hand to get away, but by this time Mu Sicheng raised his eyebrows mischievously and looked back at him in the wind, "Fun to see they can't catch us, isn't it?"

Stunned, Armand turned his head back to the team chasing them hysterically behind him, the grim facial expressions of the running team members looking a little funny against the extreme speed of Mu Sicheng - funny indeed, Armand couldn't help but laugh.

Mu Sicheng was running fast, as was Armand, who was holding his hand.

These dangerous heresies, measured and organised by Armand, are weighed in Mu Sicheng's hands as if they were not heresies, but Mu Sicheng's toys, and this is not a theft crime against the world, but a game of whimsy for the thief.

Mu Sicheng tossed a heretic to Armand and smiled: "Do you know what this is for?"

"Number 8035 ......" Armand racked his brain to remember the stats he had done, "This one seems to be ...... in the wind ......" ...... butterflies.

He remembers being able to blow a hurricane.

Mu Sicheng interrupted Armand impatiently and reached out to open it straight away: "Just open it, will you?"

Multicoloured swarms of exotic butterflies fluttered out of the box, the wind fanning out from under their spotted tails, the fierce wind swaying back and forth in the enclosed chamber, blowing so hard that one's hairline could be flattened back a centimetre.

Armand was caught off guard and was blown straight up.

Mu Sicheng grabbed Armand's ankle to prevent Armand from being blown away and he couldn't help but laugh and scoff, "You've been guarding this place for so long, your brother hasn't even let you play with this, has he?"

"Is this a game?!" Armand shouted in a broken voice, "Stop it, it's causing violent climate change!"

"No." Mu Sicheng caught balancing his body in the wind as he floated shallowly directly above Armand, steadying Armand's shoulders before explaining with a low chuckle, "That's silly, your brother didn't know what to teach you, watch, every heretic has a weakness- "

Mu Sicheng took control of Armand's fingers to grab the tail of a butterfly fluttering in the wind and attached himself to Armand's side and whispered, "- this heretic is your toy, once you control its weakness."

Armand watched in disbelief as the butterfly in his hand stopped flapping and rested obediently at his fingertips.

Mu Sicheng grunted triumphantly, "Right?"

The next moment, however, Mu Sicheng maliciously released his grip on the butterfly's fingers and flicked its tail feathers with his index finger, causing a fierce wind to blow.

Mu Sicheng grabs the panicked Armand by the back of the neck and hurries backwards in the hurricane caused by the butterfly, laughing maniacally in the wind at the team members coming after them, gesticulating with two fingers for goodbye.

"I'll steal your captain's brother for fun!"

They disappeared without a trace in the sudden oncoming wind.

The wind didn't actually carry the two men for very long before Mu Sicheng came to a halt.

He didn't know who he had received the call from, and his originally jubilant expression instantly calmed down, and his tone changed from jumpy to calm: "...... know, I'll bring the stuff back, no problem with security on this side of the smuggling line."

When the call was over, Mu Sicheng turned around to see Armand and burst into laughter.

Armand has a face that looks ninety-nine percent like Georgia's, and right now, having never experienced such excitement, Armand's brown hair is now windblown into a chicken nest of grass clippings and his expression is one of retarded bewilderment.

He is now on all fours - not that he doesn't want to get up, but Armand is a bit wind-sick having never been in a hurricane before.

Mu Sicheng half-crouches in front of Armand, who is on the ground, and smiles, "I thought the big kook's brother would be a little kook, but I didn't think he'd be a little retard."

Armand gave Mu Sicheng a sly look, "You curse again."

Mu Sicheng smiled as he stood up with his pockets in his hand, pulling a few heresy boxes out of his pocket and tossing them all to Armand: "Well, I've had my fun for today, I'll see you later, bye."

With that, he turned around in style and walked away.

Armand looked back at the boxes in front of him and was suddenly struck -

--The boxes were not only taken by Mu Sicheng today, but the three boxes he had saved from Mu Sicheng's last injury were also returned to him.

"Mu Sicheng -" on second thought, Armand called out to Mu Sicheng, "you gave me back what you stole last time too."

Mu Sicheng raised his eyebrows and turned on one foot, "What, it's not good enough to give it back to you?"

Armand replied honestly, "You're supposed to be here for fun today, the ones you took were all light tier 1 red heretics, but these three are all heavy tier 3 red and should be your targets, it's certainly nice of you to give them back to me, but I'm mostly afraid you'll come back and steal them next time."

"Indeed it was my target." Mu Sicheng curled his lips in a smile, "but the last time I was caught by you, the theft naturally failed, and it did not belong to my booty."

Mu Sicheng waved his hand and left without looking back, a smile in his voice: "Of course I'll steal again, try to catch me if you don't want to lose, Armand."

Armand looked at the three boxes and was silent for a long time.

Armand, who managed to bring back the stolen box, finally qualified for the first line.

After that, Mu Sicheng would send Armand teaser letters from time to time, and Armand grew up overnight, becoming more composed and pursuing Mu Sicheng with all his might.

Whenever Mu Sicheng came, Armand was the fastest man, almost as fast as Mu Sicheng, but he never shot Mu Sicheng.

Gradually, Armand became the most successful person in the department in recovering stolen goods from Mu Sicheng.

Armand grew up as he chased Mu Sicheng, becoming more stable, more responsible and more capable, becoming Georgia's second-in-command, or vice-captain.

When Armand returned to the dorm one day after dinner to register his heresy, he found a teaser letter next to his bed that read - [Lieutenant, no more chase games, want a drink?

Armand gave a slight curl of his mouth and slipped out the back door of the Heretical Authority after carefully checking his brother's absence.

Armand came to the clearing where he had been swept up in a gust of wind by Mu Sicheng - they would occasionally come here to get together, and although it was not clear why the two guys on opposing sides were doing this, it had just unknowingly started and turned into a sort of unspoken agreement between the two men.

The clearing is quite barren on the ground, but when you look up you can see a very bright night sky, and when Armand arrived Mu Sicheng was sitting on a small hill looking up at the stars.

"Here you go." Mu Sicheng greeted Armand lazily, throwing him a bottle of wine.

Armand took it steadily, as he was used to doing, then looked up and gave a lurch.

He sensed that Mu Sicheng, tonight, was not in the right mood.

"What's wrong?" Armand asked, sitting next to Mu Sicheng.

Mu Sicheng tilted his head back to take a sip of his own wine and exhaled a foul breath, "That one has assigned me full authority over the smuggling line, no more stealing."

He said there was a moment's silence, then continued as if nothing had happened, "I'll see you later, we'll both be shooting, so replace that pretend empty shell gun of yours."

When Mu Sicheng finished, Armand also fell silent.

-- If it was just theft, it could be a game, but when it rises to the level of smuggling that can endanger everyone, it's no longer a game between them.

Rather, it is the life and death of countless people.

Armand rarely drank, but at that moment he took a long, hard swig, wiped his mouth and said, "I will."

"I've played many, many games, gruesome, horrific and one ......" Mu Sicheng murmured as he looked up at the stars, "- -that I will never forget."

"But it was the most fun I've had in a long time." Mu Sicheng lowered his head, he didn't look at Armand but held out his hand to him, "Thanks, both for sparing me and for keeping me company."

Armand shook Mu Sicheng's hand and said seriously, "It's okay, we're friends."

Mu Sicheng paused, he was silent for a long moment, then snorted, "You know how my last friend died?"

"Killed by your own hand." Armand clutched Mu Sicheng's hand, his dark brown eyes held an unshakable emotion of determination, "But I believe you will not kill me, or rather, I will try to become much stronger than you and do what I can to not be killed by you, or to not kill you!"

Armand shook his fist and said, "I'll be strong enough to stop what you're about to do!"

Mu Sicheng drew back his hand and looked away squirmingly, but with a little stifled smile on his face, "...... Stinky brat, don't think you're so smug because you've caught me so many times."

But perhaps neither Armand nor Mu Sicheng could have imagined that this would be the last time they would ever look at each other and smile.

Three months later, when Bai six arrived to deliver a shipment, Mu Sicheng was spotted by George on patrol during the handover.

After Georgia had determined that this was a high-risk shipment of smuggled heretics with serious consequences if it reached the market, he wasted no time in launching an onslaught that Mu Sicheng, who had been left behind, was struggling to cope with, but Bai six, who had left after handing over the cargo, made a comeback and returned to the port.

With the assistance of Bai six, Mu Sicheng captured the famous captain of Zone 3 on the spot.

Mu Sicheng's pupils fluttered when he saw that the person who had come was Georgia.

Bai six, sitting in his seat, did not miss this slight change in Mu Sicheng's expression as he looked over at Georgia, who was half-kneeling in front of his knees with no expression on her face, and raised the end of his eyebrow slightly.

"You know this captain?"

Mu Sicheng replied with difficulty, "I used to go to his supervisory area three to steal heretics ......"

Bai six turned his face sideways as he looked blandly at Mu Sicheng: "I don't like it when people lie to me, and you know I'm talking about knowing more than just the level of having met him - you have feelings for him?"

"No!" Mu Sicheng denied very quickly.

Bai six turned thoughtfully to Georgia: "But your reaction when you saw this face was unmistakable, and surprisingly it wasn't him, it was someone who looked a lot like him."

He leaned over and lifted Georgia's head, examining the face with downcast eyes, "You should be able to tell from the shape of a female's immediate family if it's the same person, so this would be a male, and a male of a similar age, otherwise you wouldn't be able to tell the difference in appearance at first glance."

Mu Sicheng's breathing stopped and his hands clenched into fists.

"-is his brother, isn't he?" Bai six announced the answer calmly, "Being close to your age and perhaps a degree of similar experience, this relationship built on such opposing positions-"

Bai six lifted his eyes to Mu Sicheng who was silent and folded his hands in front of him, "- Was it fun?"

Mu Sicheng's eyes were red and he let out a long breath. Without defending himself with a single word, he bowed his head and bent his knees.

"Please ...... let Georgia go." He said in one word, "I overplayed my hand, next time I will control myself, killing him now will cause Zone 3 to change administrators and change the layout to make it inconvenient for us to investigate ......"

Mu Sicheng was about to go on, but he seemed to be directly convinced of the absurdity of Georgia's release, so after receiving no reply from Bai six, Mu Sicheng fell silent and knelt motionless in front of Bai six.

Bai six lowered his eyes, "As a sign of respect for you and the seriousness of this time of work, I can let him go."

Mu Sicheng looked up in dismay.

"Not next time." Bai six gave Georgia a shallow sweep, "But before that, there is one thing that needs to be shown to this Captain of Sector 3 in order to prevent him from remembering our smuggling routes."

Mu Sicheng breathes a sigh of relief: "- is it a memory erasing prop?"

"No." Bai six said softly, "I'm going to let him try out a new prop I just got my hands on, [Future]."

After taking one look at the object, Georgia was as immobile as if his soul had been drained from him, and he was left by Bai six on a piece of wasteland - the same secret wasteland where Mu Sicheng and Armand occasionally drank.

Mu Sicheng secretly informed Armand to come and collect his brother.

Armand came and carried Georgia back, who was lying dazed on the ground, in a panic.

--That was the beginning of all the nightmares.

After a month of Georgia being silent and ready to kill himself, a desperate Armand exploded and logged into the game.

After struggling to crawl through the game, a dying Armand sees a different side of the thief named Mu Sicheng on the big screen for the first time.

This man laughs with abandon, slaughtering at will, human life as carelessly as a toy in his hands, as he follows another man, transformed from a thief into a murderous weapon of unparalleled sharpness that strikes for blood.

Armand stood dumbfounded in the crowd cheering for Mu Sicheng's neck snap, looking up at the friend on the screen who seemed so strange to him, his mind going blank.

So this is what Mu Sicheng said about the game ......

Is this ......?

Having won yet another match, Mu Sicheng casually lifted his shirt to wipe the sweat and blood dripping from his jaw and waved impatiently at the cheering crowd as he prepared to leave the field.

As if on a whim, Bai six turned to him and asked, "Which is more fun, this game or the game of friends between you and that third district lieutenant?"

His pupils constricted slightly in excitement as his spirit level dropped and his desire to kill and steal was unleashed, and he gave a malevolent grin, his sharp teeth showing at the corners of his mouth, like a demon who has stretched his nature after bathing in blood: "That goes without saying."

"- the games in here, of course."

Armand stood like a wooden statue in the crowd, the giant screen glowing white behind him as the Bai six led a procession past Armand, cheered on by the crowd.

The game's biggest contributor, Mu Sicheng, who had the most kills, was walking behind Bai six, walking past Armand and taking the weakened Armand down with his impetuous stride.

Mu Sicheng didn't care which woebegone player he had knocked over.

Mu Sicheng, who was in some kind of mood, just gave a condescending glance back at the player who, after being hit by himself, only stared up at him with his face covered in mud, snorted contemptuously at the foolishness, and walked away without looking back.

Sitting on the floor, Armand looked up in a trance as he saw Bai six in front of him turn around, meet him from a distance and then hook a smile as if he had taken pity on him.

He saw Bai six smiling and mouthing to him, "It's just a game."

-- All of it, it's just a game.

A blurred Armand forgot how he had logged out of the game and stumbled back to his dormitory at the Bureau of Heresy, where he retrieved the teaser letters he still had from Mu Sicheng and frantically tore them to pieces, burning them in a fire.

Replace all those drinks Mu Sicheng drank with him, all the heresies he played with, sneakily with bullets from empty guns, throw away what you can, spit out what you can, forget what you can.

Armand was lying in bed for a long, long time, and he closed his eyes as if he could smell the blood wafting out from under the bed, hear the guy laughing softly and calling him a fool, and see the borderless starry sky of freedom in the wasteland.

But by the time he opened his eyes, Armand's brown eyes were empty of anything.

He got up like a puppet, replaced the blanks in his pistol with live ammunition and contacted Mu Sicheng - he didn't know if Mu Sicheng would come and could only hope that he would have the patience to play this game of friends to the end.

And Armand is there for the taking.

Mu Sicheng is here.

So Armand put an end to this game of friends, and with tears streaming down his face and gritting his teeth, he fired his first shot at the bad guy who was full of lies and who caught a big hole in his throat.

Moments before Mu Sicheng fell to the ground, he looked at Armand with disbelieving eyes, as if he could not believe that Armand had done this to him.

After falling to the ground, Mu Sicheng's face grimaced with pain as he struggled to transform into a monkey's paw and crawl towards Armand.

Armand, thinking he was about to attack, used his last ounce of strength and fired another shot at him.

The shot hit the temple and Mu Sicheng snapped Armand's hand with his monkey paw and hissed, "--caught your brother, I'm sorry--"

Mu Sicheng's hand was over Armand's, as if he wanted to shake it, and his lax eyes looked at Armand, the bright eyes that had always had a bad smile on them filled with gloom.

The guy was clearly shot by him, but the last words spoken to him were sorry for capturing your brother.

Armand's eyes gradually welled up with tears.

He tried to speak to the dead bad guy but couldn't get a single syllable out, Armand realised that his throat had been scratched so hard by Mu Sicheng's monkey claws that his vocal cords were mostly gone and he couldn't speak now.

Armand felt his body grow cold and his heartbeat slow.

The last thing he saw before him was a pair of leather shoes that were coming towards him, and a black whip that dragged to the ground.

Armand saw the man drop to one knee, turn the head of Mu Sicheng, whom he had shot dead, over and cradle it gently in his arms, then solemnly close Mu Sicheng's still-open eyelids with his gloved hands.

Armand heard the man come down possessed and whisper gently to the already dead Mu Sicheng in his arms, "- if this is your game of choice, then this is your [end]."

"But death is but a long sleep for you, and your soul is my never-failing possession, and we shall be reunited again when we wake up."

"Go to sleep."

The tone was light and airy, as if a patient father who was tucking his child who wouldn't go to sleep was telling a beautiful fairy tale about death.

Armand tried desperately to look up and see who had come to collect the bones of Mu Sicheng.

But no matter how hard Armand tried to open his eyes to see the man's face, his eyelids grew heavier and his breathing fainter at the sound of the man's strange, coaxing words.

Before Armand closed his eyes for good, he thought that if his brother were here, he would have criticized him for attacking so insolently and would have made him write a 3,000-word review of his illicit relationship with Mu Sicheng, his enemy, to be submitted by tomorrow ......

A tear crossed the corner of Armand's eye as his soul, fluttering like a butterfly in the wind, finally fell into the long sleep called death.

The hurricane within the enclosure has finally ceased.