After the Evil God Pretends to Be a Player [Infinite] - Chapter 20

The Student Council President was losing his mind: “Who are you?! Who are you people! How did you get in here?!”

Li Zhu realized that, though he didn’t know how Lale had accomplished it, he was now also visible to the NPCs.

It was as if a higher-level rule had, in a single instant, overwritten the original laws of this world. This proved that a second power existed which far surpassed the original one.

Li Zhu narrowed his eyes as he watched Lale’s silhouette.

With the descent of these new rules, everything in this memory world began to shrink and collapse.

The Student Council President trembled like a frightened quail. “The dagger… the dagger… Ah, I forgot! It’s just an ordinary dagger!”

Lale’s hand slowly tightened around his neck. He was in so much pain that he was on the verge of tears. His former elegance and poise vanished completely as he finally blurted out: “It’s my family’s heirloom! It was bought from a famous antique dealer! He said… he said it contained the power of an ancient Evil God…”

Lale interrupted him mercilessly: “Mhm. And what did you do with it?”

“By using this dagger to flay the sacrifice’s face and offering it to the Evil God, I could ensure my family’s continued prosperity…”

Seeing that he had nothing more to say, Lale released his throat as if throwing away a piece of trash.

The Student Council President coughed violently, slumped on the ground like a tattered plastic bag. He thought he was saved, until the next second—

A massive cloud of black mist suddenly erupted from the sleeping Yingzi. The mist spread, gradually flooding the entire laboratory.

Hidden within the dense black fog were countless eyes peeping from the dark. Li Zhu even thought he heard the howling of wild beasts. The moment the President’s body touched the mist, he began to struggle in uncontrollable agony. He screamed and resisted, but he could not stop the black fog from seeping into his body, tearing him apart… and devouring him.

Simultaneously, the clash between the two powers finally rendered this world unsustainable.

The ceiling lamp fell, crashing into the expensive laboratory equipment the school had purchased. The walls cracked, the floor tiles subsided, and the laboratory became precarious.

Amidst the chaos, Li Zhu saw Lale tuck the dagger into her waist and take a step, preparing to leave the laboratory without looking back.

Li Zhu: “?”

Li Zhu ran forward a few paces, not even noticing the shattered glass from the lamp piercing his feet. “Wait! Wait! What about me?”

Lale turned her head.

Immediately after, Li Zhu’s breath hitched. He saw expressions of pity and regret on her face.

Even as the surroundings collapsed and the sound of breaking objects was deafening, and even as the dust created a blurred glow over everything, Li Zhu could still clearly see the faint, mocking smile on Lale’s face. He could still hear the words falling from her cold, thin lips:

“You asked me before why I loathed you so much. Now, I can give you an answer.”

“I despise a certain person; I wish I could eat his flesh, drink his blood, and pluck his bones.”

“And you,” Lale seemed to have returned to her initial icy demeanor, making no attempt to hide her disgust and aversion toward him, “you share certain traits that are very similar to his.”

For a moment, the air seemed to stand still.

Li Zhu held his breath. He opened his mouth to say something, but he was interrupted before he could make a sound.

“Of course, you may not be the same person. However, given that he always appears before me in different identities, when I cannot be certain, choosing to ‘kill the wrong person rather than let the right one go’ is my only choice.”

Lale smiled slightly a smile like melting snow, exceptionally beautiful. “In your next life, be born into a better family. Don’t cross paths with me again.”

She nimbly closed the laboratory door without a hint of lingering attachment or apology. Like a member of a higher race facing a lowly ant, casting a single glance was already the highest level of courtesy and respect.

All her previous friendly interactions with humans were merely a disguise; this was her true face.

Li Zhu immediately tried to push the door open, only to find that she had locked it from the outside. Entering the code was useless.

Li Zhu: “…Truly cold-blooded and heartless.”

The laboratory was on the verge of collapse. Even the ceiling had a massive hole smashed through it by heavy objects falling from the floor above. This meant that not just the lab, but the entire teaching building was going down!

Or rather, this memory world was finally losing its support!

As Li Zhu dodged the falling debris, his peripheral vision caught Yingzi on the bed.

She was no longer spreading black mist, but her body was still undergoing a massive transformation. Her face became a blur of blood and flesh, with dark, hollow pits for eyes. Her limbs swelled and grew to a giant size, sprouting numerous tentacles encrusted with compound eyes.

This was the process of her turning into an Evil God. Even if Lale had interrupted the President’s attempt to flay her, the historical facts would not change.

Li Zhu gritted his teeth and pinched himself. Under the immense dizziness caused by staring directly at the unformed Evil God, he managed to pull a thin sheet of paper from his pocket and decisively stuck it over his eyes.

Although his family didn’t believe in gods or buddhas, those who ran companies cared about Feng Shui to some degree and would purchase “good luck” charms. This thin paper was bought at a high price; it was said to prevent one from seeing things that shouldn’t be seen.

Once the paper was on his eyes, the effect was immediate!

Yingzi and the unmentionable mess around her were instantly “pixelated” as if blurred by a mosaic. Li Zhu’s mental state stabilized immediately.

He walked toward Yingzi step by step, his mind racing:

When the Evil God sent them in, He said the purpose was to test them. However, Lale was the one who said that; currently, its credibility is less than ten percent.

But even if the Evil God didn’t actively send them here, as the master of this memory world, He should have the power to send him out.

Li Zhu stood before the transformed Yingzi and asked, “Do you want to know the real culprit who caused your death?”

As soon as he finished speaking, Yingzi opened her blood-red eyes sinister and terrifying, like the pupils of a beast.

A sluggish, gloomy voice came from her mouth the very same voice they had heard at the Masquerade Ball: “It was beauty… If I didn’t have a face like this, they wouldn’t have…”

Li Zhu realized the truth. He said softly, “So you created the ‘Pretty High School’ dungeon. You believe everyone hungers for beauty, so you gave it as a reward to your believers. But you yourself died because of beauty, so beauty brings disaster to the players.”

“Beauty is your obsession… but you are wrong.”

“He used drugs to make you unconscious, so you would never know that the person who truly flayed your face and killed you was the person you thought loved you most.”

“And his reason had nothing to do with beauty.”

A single tear suddenly welled up in Yingzi’s blood-red eye. She stared blankly at Li Zhu. “Is beauty not a sin?”

Li Zhu shook his head. Looking at this girl who could have had a bright future, he said firmly, “Beauty is innocent. The one who is guilty is the person who harmed you.”

The moment his words fell, the collapse of the world stopped.

Everything before Li Zhu’s eyes turned pitch black again. Yingzi vanished, and all sound ceased. He had entered the space between dimensions once more.

When he opened his eyes again, he was back in the assembly hall where the ball was held. Unlike that night, although the banquet decorations remained, the room was empty.

The banquet had likely ended.

Li Zhu looked around and let out a long breath. Only then did he remove the thin paper from his eyelids.

He walked out of the hall. It was night, but when his gaze accidentally brushed against a corner of the sky, his pupils contracted—

He saw that on the top floor of a building, a raging fire was visible through the windows.

They were all familiar with that building; it was the School History Museum.

And the burning top floor was the third floor of the museum the one they hadn’t explored yet!

Li Zhu took off running!

At the same time, at the entrance of the School History Museum.

Meng Luo narrowed her eyes, looking at the burning building, and asked Lale, “Sister Lale, will this really resolve the Evil God’s obsession and let us leave the dungeon?”

She, Wang Kai, and Zhou Wen actually knew nothing. They had fainted when the Evil God became enraged and subsequently sank into a series of recursive dreams. In those dreams, they were chased by people in masks, dreamt they had lost their own faces, or saw the faces of others in the mirror.

Those dreams were obscure, complex, and dark—like a call from the devil, trying to drive them mad before casting them into the next level of hell.

It wasn’t until Lale woke them up that they found themselves lying in the center of the hall’s dance floor. The Evil God was nowhere to be found.

Lale told them about the Evil God’s past experiences. This time, when they returned to the third floor of the School History Museum, the door was unlocked.

Throughout the third floor, photographs of girls were hanging everywhere.

Yingzi had the most—there were photos of her innocent look when she first started school, her look during her student organization election speech, and… a photo of her carrying a backpack, walking cautiously toward a car parked at the school gate.

There was even a photo of her lying in the center of the laboratory on a white bed, holding a bouquet of vivid red roses, with petals scattered across the bed and her eyes closed in peaceful repose.

Before her, there were photos of over a dozen other girls. Their Ba-Zi all shared some connection with Yingzi’s.

Their names were lost to time, but their young lives were all sacrificed in this wicked school, lost to the bloody desires of those who cared only for fame and fortune.

There was no discernible expression in Lale’s eyes. She said flatly, “Burn it all.”

And so, there was this fire that consumed everything.

The firelight illuminated Lale’s pale face, adding a touch of color to her cheeks. Meng Luo heard Lale answer her: “She always wanted to prove that her beauty was not a sin, but because she didn’t know who the real culprit was, she couldn’t find the way.”

Her eyelashes drooped, and no one could see the look in her eyes. “These evil things… it’s cleaner to burn them.”

At that moment, a pair of sneakers suddenly entered her peripheral vision.

A man wearing a tight school uniform jacket walked toward her step by step, hands in his pockets, carrying the scent of the night’s frost and dew.

When he reached her, a faint, mocking smile appeared on his handsome face. He cast a fleeting, light glance at her.

Then, he brushed past her.