Chapter 15 – The Scene of the Forgery

The “Gate” was a concept from the dark ancient civilization, representing madness, bloodshed, and ignorance.

This was a form of large-scale sacrificial ritual. During the Great Dark Age, sacrifices were categorized in countless ways. Some nations used corpses as road markers across vast stretches of land, while others would slaughter everyone important to them—the more brutal, the better—in hopes of generating some form of intense, agonizing energy to resonate with the deeper darkness. They went to extreme lengths of insanity.

What they sought was to construct a “Gate” that could lead to “another world.”

By modern scientific understanding, the ancient civilization was once an immensely powerful nation that, for unknown reasons, collapsed into the depths of subspace.

No one knew what exactly happened back then, but it must have been a terrifying and monumental event that led to destruction on a horrifying scale.

To this day, the territory of that ancient empire has become like a rotting corpse beneath the surface of reality—a ghostly presence the size of an entire nation, submerged beneath the fabric of space.

Superhumans could sense its existence to a certain degree and even harness some of its power.

Ancient large-scale rituals could also summon it in some way—a result of humanity drawing too close to its shadow of annihilation, the culmination of millennia of desperate, fanatical belief in the darkness.

The “Gate” was one such method, capable of opening a passage to that realm.

In ancient times, such acts were conducted on a national scale. It was hard to fathom the madness of those people, who believed that within the ruins of the vast cities deep in subspace lay the true secrets of the gods.

The two mercenaries escorted Wei An and Gui Ling through the hall.

Wei An stared at the scene before him. The Flâneur Hotel was a place he frequented—its interiors were always expensive and elegant. Yet now, it had been transformed into a slaughterhouse-style sacrificial site as dark as the inhuman rituals of the ancient civilization.

In the bushes nearby, these people had set up something like a large chopping board, where several men were hacking apart corpses.

They weren’t using sharp blades—perhaps aiming for a crudely classical effect—so each bone required multiple strikes. The sound was enough to make one’s blood run cold.

The mercenary in black leather called out to the man who looked like a flaying artist: “Caught two, alive! You can have fun with them!”

The man glanced up at Wei An and Gui Ling, flashing a smile that couldn’t even be called particularly deranged.

“Good. I’ll entertain them soon,” he said before lowering his head to continue his work on the corpse.

Wei An took in the blood-soaked scene—the massacre of civilians—and felt his entire body go cold, his hands trembling slightly.

Perhaps it was the sheer insanity of it all… Wei An wasn’t unfamiliar with bloody scenes. He had lived in Taoyuan for so long, surrounded by its pristine gardens, yet none of it had ever felt as starkly real as this grotesque carnage.

Everything always ended up feeling this real, like a curse—degenerating into some primitive, gore-drenched state, still orderly in its own way, yet fundamentally insane.

“Scared stiff?” the mercenary in black leather sneered.

He studied Wei An’s expression. This was the kind of man who took pleasure in others’ vulnerability. Wei An didn’t think there was anything in him worth seeing, but the man seemed satisfied with whatever he found.

“See that, Mr. Wei An? We’re building a ‘Gate,'” he said, gesturing toward the tree gate with an almost considerate tone.

“We need some people to place at the top of the gate,” he explained. “This is a method described in the ancient texts of Wusen—one of the oldest and most traditional. We use a specific adhesive to fuse living human skin with the tree, arrange them in a certain pose, then peel off half the skin. The process requires you to be alive, trying to escape—”

He went on to describe how the bloodied, flayed bodies would form a gate, the details unbearably grotesque.

Much of what he said was actually wrong—distorted rumors mixed with his own fantasies—but that didn’t stop him from speaking with vivid enthusiasm.

The “Wusen” he mentioned was the name of an ancient kingdom, a remote asteroid in Qingshi Province. But in the horrific history of ancient civilizations, it was infamous, spawning countless terrifying legends. Even now, many visited its ruins.

Back then, many kingdoms were trapped in millennia of bloody infighting, giving rise to horrifying events, figures, and societal structures. Reading such histories, one couldn’t help but be shocked at how deeply humans could sink into their obsession with power, the supernatural, and the desire to become gods—twisting themselves to such monstrous extremes.

The mercenaries pushed Wei An and Gui Ling toward the pile of corpses.

The bodies were stacked haphazardly. At the top was a young man—likely one of the casualties from the earlier gunfight. If he was with Dexin Ming’s group, he must have been from some department in the Core Sector, with a bright future ahead.

The mercenary in black leather shoved Wei An, nearly sending him tumbling onto the corpses. Wei An steadied himself in the sea of blood and said nothing.

The man didn’t leave immediately. Instead, he pointed out where Wei An would die later, how painful it would be, his expression feverish—likely hoping to make Wei An understand his place under violence, to see him break down in tears, filled with regret.

He also kept glancing at Gui Ling, seemingly satisfied with his reaction. Since arriving, Gui Ling had kept his head lowered, showing no overt fear but also refusing to look at the corpses on the trees.

Before he could continue his intimidation, a burst of static came from a communicator in the hall.

It was a walkie-talkie. The voice on the other end—probably a patrolling mercenary—said, “Boss, the Counter-insurgency Corps still has people around here! A squad found two from C-Team dead near the secondary hall!”

They were talking about the two men Wei An had killed earlier. Wei An turned his head toward the source of the voice.

The walkie-talkie was in the hands of the man referred to as “Boss”—likely the highest-ranking officer in charge of this private militia operation at Tongyun Square.

The man was tall, standing by the window, his hair shaved short, revealing faint tattoos on his scalp that looked like writhing beasts. His expression was grim, as if he were mired in some troublesome but unavoidable task, eager to finish it quickly.

He issued orders into the communicator.

“All teams, be alert. There are still Federal Military infiltrators near the hotel. They killed two of ours in the secondary hall of Forest Hound. Step up patrols—shoot on sight,” he said.

After giving the command, he turned to the man with the butcher’s knife and said, “Don’t worry, we’ll catch more live ones for you.”

“You’d better hurry,” the other man replied without looking up. “Mr. Tao is downstairs. He’ll be here soon.”

The leader’s expression darkened. He turned and strode out.

With something happening on the perimeter, the two mercenaries who had brought Wei An here threw a few more threats his way before rushing off to join the patrol.

Wei An hadn’t been paying much attention to them. His gaze was fixed on the equipment the “Boss” had been standing near earlier, glaring at with hostility.

It was a set of devices that looked like interlinked insects—likely a terminal assembly for storing ancient data. Its “head” was pointed toward the square.

Five technicians bustled around the equipment, their movements practiced, expressions serious. The programs of the ancient civilization were never just programs—they were entangled with something far more complex.

Wei An then looked at the men mass-processing corpses. Someone was cultivating petals of Rapid-spawn Hellflowers—these frail things couldn’t bloom on their own, so they required special materials to be painted into existence.

He overheard someone mention that seeds had also been planted in the buildings around the square and would sprout at a specific time.

Another report came in: the police responsible for security at the Prayer Assembly had noticed traces of these things, and some guests had called to inquire—but “higher-ups are suppressing it for now.”

They would wrap everything up within the next half hour.

Wei An and Gui Ling stood by the corpse pile, largely ignored.

To these people, they were no different from the dead bodies—no one even bothered to guard them specifically, leaving it to the hall’s general security.

The corpse of the man from the Core Sector lay nearby. The description of him being “reduced to pulp” wasn’t an exaggeration—his torso was a mangled mess, horrifying to behold.

Men like him were people small-time mercenaries wouldn’t dare touch under normal circumstances. Yet here he lay, dead in such a brutal manner. This faction didn’t care—they had bigger plans.

Wei An took a couple of steps closer to the body. If this man had come from certain high-level departments, he might have an implanted visual recording device in his body.

This was a technology derived from the ancient civilization—specifically, from the slave control methods of the dark ancient kingdoms before the Federation’s founding.

Such things were, of course, banned now. But the Federation had developed a relatively milder surveillance technology from it called “Eyes of the Dead.”

The device was linked to the eyes and contained a storage chip, implanted when they were hired. After death, it could retrieve roughly a day’s worth of visual and auditory data.

As an immature biotech, its usefulness was limited. If not extracted within three hours of the victim’s death, the stored data would begin to degrade, eroded by the body’s decay.

The Federation maintained its use mainly because its core technology could exert some degree of emotional control over agents. However, such control didn’t comply with standard protocols, so the official explanation was that the higher-ups deeply valued their personnel’s safety and would employ any technology that aided investigations.

Nearby, a technician shouted that the data was off—one parameter’s adhesion was too strong and kept fluctuating. They needed to stabilize it quickly.

His voice was tense. Everyone in the hall turned to look.

Wei An’s fingers probed the tattered flesh of the corpse’s chest, then found the thin metal chip near the heart.

He carefully extracted it and slipped it into his pocket.

He didn’t think today’s events would conclude peacefully. But if time permitted, before the chip was buried in decayed emptiness, he might be able to see what was stored inside.

In the meantime, tension was mounting around the insect-like device.

“What’s going on?” someone demanded.

“No idea,” another researcher replied. “The ‘Gate’ and its connections are nearly complete, but one parameter’s off—the adhesion is too high, and it’s causing fluctuations in the surrounding data. This has happened before, but never this intense…”

“Hurry up! We have less than half an hour left!”

“Stabilization value increased to 300%.”

“Will it detach?”

“Look how far the numbers have overshot! Detachment isn’t even a concern now—if subspace adhesion actually occurs—”

The speaker cut off abruptly, but the fear in his voice was palpable. Silence fell. Three seconds later, the technicians scrambled to adjust the data.

Wei An watched for a while, a deep sense of foreboding settling in.

His knowledge of the ancient civilization wasn’t extensive, but something terrible was clearly happening…

A dull pain flared in the left side of his skull. Wei An cursed under his breath, fishing a pill bottle from his pocket and swallowing a handful without looking.

After all these years, this had become one of his body’s most instinctive actions.

But human technology was slow and inefficient against this kind of pain. The pills wouldn’t take effect immediately—the throbbing sharpened into something piercing.

It wasn’t just pain. The thing embedded in the side of his skull had suddenly stirred, convulsing, the agony overwhelming everything, accompanied by distant, sinister scratching and clamoring—

Wei An couldn’t even stay standing. He dropped to one knee, clutching his forehead.

He knew that if the pain worsened, he wouldn’t even be able to kneel—he’d collapse into a fetal position.

It would be undignified, but in the face of this kind of suffering, dignity was irrelevant.

Chaos still reigned by the window. Wei An could hear it distantly. He’d seen enough of these people arrogantly toying with the forces of the ancient civilization and triggering disasters.

But of course, the ones who paid the price were always civilians or researchers—while the perpetrators reaped unimaginable rewards.

He felt dazed. In those brief yet interminable minutes, it was as if he’d been dragged into hell, becoming one of the eternally tormented corpses in the ancient legends. But slowly, the medication began to take effect.

For years, Wei An had been taking this experimental drug obtained from the Ministry of Science. It forcibly numbed him, allowing him to maintain a facade of normalcy.

Yet no matter how much he tried to ignore it, in moments like this, some part of his consciousness always became aware—that deep within his skull, through the violent, fatal throbbing, lay something indistinct, terrifying, and utterly incomprehensible…

Gui Ling stood nearby, watching.

He had been silent most of the time. Now, after observing Wei An for a few seconds, he spoke: “A Ministry of Science test subject?”

Wei An clenched his teeth and didn’t answer. He never discussed this with anyone—when it came up, he simply ignored it.

When it happened, Wei An had been just a child. He barely remembered anything, only that it was a project the Ministry of Science had conducted “outside regulations.”

This world’s obsession with supernatural power had reached extreme levels, and one of its greatest desires was the creation of superhumans.

As a child, he must have harbored some yearning for justice—if you were treated unfairly, you had to fight for redress. To be precise, when he was younger, if all the documents he’d gathered on that department were printed out, they could fill an entire room.

But it was useless. This was the Ministry of Science—a cornerstone of humanity’s framework for the ancient civilization’s fundamental rules, a massive occult institution of the interstellar age, where researchers were priests of the God of Chaos.

Society’s systems were interlocking, governed by countless rules. As an important member of the government, Wei An belonged to a faction and a family. Once placed in a specific position, adherence to that allegiance became an unbreakable demand—betrayal was intolerable.

So he tried to forget it all. Some things, once you were entangled, there was no way out.

Gui Ling knelt beside him on one knee.

In his blurred vision, Wei An realized the other man was looking at him. Unconsciously, he raised his head, and their eyes met at close range.

In this moment of profound darkness—one Wei An occasionally fell into in his life—he felt he saw something deep within Gui Ling’s gaze.

A manufactured monster, its position eternally pinned in place by an unyielding blade, its very essence corrupted by endless despair.

Beneath the deepest layers of malice and terror lay a bewildered revulsion—uncertain why it was here yet unable to escape.

What it had endured was too horrific, too prolonged—countless deaths, fears, and desires surrounded it, burying an entire vast, dead world in those eyes. Within it, individual will flickered like specters, merging with bloody darkness.

In that moment of direct eye contact, Wei An thought: No wonder the Ministry of Science is so paranoid about him. It wasn’t just about power, obsession, or eternity. This creature was submerged in the deepest, bloodiest depths of humanity’s madness for the ancient civilization, chained at the bottom of a deranged abyss. Your grip on that chain had to be absolute—let it slip, and who knows what would happen?

And now, this monster was so close to Wei An, their posture intimate, their voices soft as if exchanging sweet nothings.

“Should we clean this up now, Mr. Wei An?” Gui Ling murmured.

Wei An parted his lips, taking a moment before he could speak.

“Wait a bit longer. I want to see how this plays out… It’s bigger than I thought,” he said.

Gui Ling watched him silently, then slowly leaned back slightly. He was breathtakingly handsome. With his hair cut short, his eyes were fully visible—a barren wasteland of death…

Just then, a clamor of voices and footsteps erupted from outside.

Wei An faintly caught curses about someone escaping, followed by another person rapidly reporting on their work.

The voices grew closer, clearer. He heard the reporter say, “This is the main gate. Seventy percent complete. The petals in other areas are already set up. We’re adjusting one parameter—it’s unstable for some reason—”

Wei An turned his head—then heard another voice.

“Don’t worry, it’s just data. As long as we push it through, we can lift the lock quickly,” a man’s voice replied.

“Actually, this helps obscure things. In situations like this, it’s best if it feels like everyone just shared one big nightmare,” the man receiving the report added. “Finish it fast—we might still make it to dinner.”

His tone was almost lighthearted. A few others chimed in with agreement, even forced laughter.

The scene in the hall was horrific, yet these voices carried an awkward workplace vibe—the kind of “work-hard-play-hard” atmosphere currently in vogue.

Wei An stared in that direction, thinking: I know that voice.

An old acquaintance.

An old enemy, to be precise.