The Monsters All Covet Him - Chapter 28

Shan’s skin was scorched and festering from the flame-entwined blade in Lin Yang’s hand. It let out a wretched scream, shrieking at the hunters, “Quickly, kill Lin Yang! Save me!”

The hunters were tense. They surrounded Lin Yang, swallowing hard; the pale, beautiful youth before them was a monster who could not be killed, just like the Evil God’s true body. He was far more terrifying than the Evil God’s clones.

Lin Yang’s dark hair was thick, and his eyelashes were stained with blood. His gaze did not linger on the approaching hunters for a single moment. He half-bent over, his murder-filled black eyes looking down at Shan as he spoke gently, “Tell me… Little Sprout, Linlin, those pregnant women… how exactly did they die?”

“It was the Evil God! Aaargh!”

One of Shan’s fingers was severed. Lin Yang’s blade was swift and decisive, but if one looked closely, one would see his fingertips were trembling. Pain pressed down on him like a mountain, crushing his internal organs. Affected by his emotions, his stomach churned; he suppressed the nausea in his throat. “My patience is running thin. Do you want your head crushed? I wonder if you Silver Jiao can grow a second head.”

Shan continued to howl, its mouth opening and closing without producing sound. “Tsk,” Lin Yang lost his patience. “Just go and die then. Someone will eventually tell me what happened.”

Before the blade fell, Shan’s tears flowed out along with a yellow liquid. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk! It was them! The Silver Jiao among the hunters couldn’t stand you and wanted to cause trouble to eliminate you! So, so they captured Little Sprout and those pregnant women and pressed them against the feather-raiment, causing their deaths!”

“Yes, that’s how it was! And Linlin was also smashed and killed by them! I was deceived by them, a momentary lapse in judgment it has nothing to do with me! Truly! Lin Yang, let me go, let me go, okay? I can’t die; Zhuo holds me in high regard and said he wanted to choose me as the next King. I can’t die!”

“I spit on that! Shan, you’re too shameless! You’re the one who ordered us to do these things; we didn’t expose you, yet you turn around and push the blame on us! It doesn’t matter if I die today or not, but you must die! I have a Water Mirror; everything that happened tonight was recorded in it!”

An enraged Silver Jiao stepped forward. Its hands rotated, and a Water Mirror formed from its ability floated in the air. Little Sprout’s face appeared in the mirror; she was humming a song as she walked toward home. From the Silver Jiao’s perspective, they were waiting for Little Sprout to walk into their trap. Behind them were a group of bound pregnant women.

Lin Yang’s heart exploded with a sharp pain. He moved forward neurotically, reaching out toward Little Sprout, pleading, “Don’t go, Little Sprout, come back.”

He couldn’t stop the Little Sprout of the past. Little Sprout was captured. Shan appeared in the image, looking down at her. “Actually, even if you didn’t die, those pregnant women would be enough for us to find trouble with Lin Yang. But you are so close to him; if he knew he caused your death, the expression he’d show would surely be wonderful. So, you must die.”

The pregnant women and the little girl had no way to fight back before a group of Silver Jiao. Their eyes showed the terror of death as they were desperately forced toward the feather-raiment. Those shrill screams did not sound human; they sounded like mutated monsters.

At the moment of contact, feathered arrows pierced their bodies. Among the pregnant women, there were even Silver Jiao; they had escaped the Evil God’s disasters, only to be forced to death by their own kind’s ridiculous jealousy. Little Sprout didn’t even have time to let out a scream before her breath was gone.

Immediately following, they began to shout that the garments had killed people. Uninformed humans were drawn over; they rushed toward Lin Yang’s residence in a fury, demanding he come out. Linlin explained in a childish voice, “Master Lin Yang is not that kind of person; he wouldn’t harm us!”

Shan didn’t listen to the explanation at all. “This Giant Stone Monster has long been in league with the Evil God; naturally, it speaks for him. Let’s smash it!”

“Good!”

The hunters swarmed forward. The palm-sized 00 flew up to block them. “You cannot harm Linlin! Linlin is my best friend! I won’t allow you to harm Linlin! Ah!”

00 was slapped away, then pinned firmly under Shan’s foot. After a few vicious stomps, Shan picked up 00. “Ah, there’s even a strange thing like you beside Lin Yang.” In the next instant, it rawly tore half of 00’s wing from the connecting flesh. “How rare; I’ll keep you as a pet from now on.” Shan closed its palm, and 00 was gone.

“Smash it, move faster!”

A Giant Stone Monster’s stones were no different from its flesh; Linlin feared pain most. Its flesh was cruelly sliced and crushed, the pain reaching a point where it could no longer make any sound.

This group of hunters burst into Lin Yang’s exposed room, smashed his flowerpots, killed his roses and seeds, and roughly pushed out the evil creature’s corpse he had carefully nurtured.

The Water Mirror image came to an abrupt halt. Lin Yang stood frozen in place; a deathly silence hung over the ruins, and no one dared to make a sound. Lin Yang stood there for dozens of seconds. Then, he asked very, very softly, “Is killing me more important than the lives of your own kind?”

“Are you truly Silver Jiao and humans?! Or are you monsters a thousand, ten thousand times more terrifying than the Evil God?!”

Lin Yang roared. The blade he held turned pitch black, and the color of the flames shifted from a brilliant orange-red to a desperate, depraved black. An intense aura of death swept through the land, its horror no less than the curse the Evil God had sent down many years ago. Living beings within a hundred miles felt this pressure and prostrated themselves on the ground, unable even to raise their heads.

In the White Tower, Fubai and Zhuo both sensed this ominous aura. Fubai’s mind wandered as he sensed it; the sacrificial offerings in his hands scattered across the floor. “A new Evil God is being born.”

Lin Yang walked toward Shan with his blade. Shan tried to flee, but it couldn’t move a muscle before that terrifying black power. “Lin Yang, you can’t kill me! I was wrong, I truly know I was wrong! Those dead people you’ve known them for less than a year; you can’t kill me for them! I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die…”

“When they begged you for mercy, did you let them go?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Lin Yang gazed at the Shan, who was like a pile of mud on the ground. “Give 00 back to me.”

Shan couldn’t even manage to bargain; it frantically dragged 00 out of confinement, fearing that if it were a second late, Lin Yang’s blade would fall. 00 fell to the ground. Its palm-sized body had no uninjured skin left; only one of its white wings remained. Its golden eyes were full of tears as it hugged Lin Yang’s foot and wailed, “Lin Yang, Linlin is gone, Little Sprout is gone! It’s all the fault of these bad things!”

Lin Yang knelt down, his fingers stroking 00’s head. “I’m sorry, it’s my fault. I didn’t protect Linlin well, didn’t protect Little Sprout well… didn’t protect you well, causing you all so much pain.”

00 shed tears. “It’s not Lin Yang’s fault. Lin Yang, your hand is so cold, not like a human’s hand…” 00 realized something and looked up abruptly. Endless black mist was entwining Lin Yang. It was stunned. “Lin Yang, you are in so much pain.”

This pain was about to swallow Lin Yang completely, making him a new Evil God. 00 didn’t know what would happen if two Evil Gods existed in one world, nor did it care. It struggled to flap its broken half-wing. A monster’s cold little hand cupped Lin Yang’s cheek, and its face nuzzled Lin Yang’s blood-stained face. “Lin Yang, don’t become an Evil God. 00 doesn’t want Lin Yang to be in pain.”

“Will becoming an Evil God always be painful?”

00 nodded heavily. “In the Ice Crystal Palace, the Lord Evil God is in pain every single day; he often screams in agony from the pain.”

Lin Yang spoke to 00, his voice becoming gentle again. He looked at the tattered little feathered snake and smiled faintly. “To make an existence like Lin scream in pain is indeed very painful.”

“But 00, why is it that even as a human, I want to go mad, scream, and tear everything apart every moment of every day?”

“Because… because…” 00 couldn’t answer. Its golden eyes wept continuously, its voice choked. “Because there are many bad things.”

Lin Yang nodded. “Then let’s kill them all. Every single one.”

Lin Yang stood up. 00 shook its head. “No, Lin Yang! They indeed deserve to die, but you cannot kill them with this power! Once the blade falls, you can never return to your identity as a human! 00 knows Lin Yang loves humans most; 00 doesn’t want Lin Yang to lose what he treasures! Lin Yang!”

00 could not stop Lin Yang. It had been raised by the Evil God in the Ice Crystal Palace since birth; other monsters feared it because it was the Evil God’s pet. It didn’t need to struggle or kill to get the best of everything. Thus, it was lazy and never practiced seriously; though it stayed beside the most powerful god, it couldn’t even kill the lowest-level monster. Therefore, it was going to lose Linlin and Lin Yang. It loathed its own lack of effort, but it was too late.

“Lin Yang,” a pitch-black tentacle wrapped around Lin Yang’s ankle. Lin Yang looked down as the tentacle climbed upward. “Don’t go over.”

It was Lin’s voice. It could not leave the temple, so its divine consciousness had entered these tentacles. Dense tentacles wound around, forming a human shape that tenderly embraced Lin Yang. It repeated in a low voice, “Don’t go over; I don’t want you to be in pain.”

“Lin.” “I’m here.” “They killed Little Sprout. They killed the pregnant women. They killed Linlin. They hurt 00. They hurt you.”

The tentacles slowly rubbed Lin Yang’s back. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“They also killed my rose.”

Lin Yang’s calm eyes showed a hint of vacant grievance as he spoke. The tentacles held him tighter, as if wanting to hide him inside their body, taking him away from all this filth.

“I know, Lin Yang. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

Lin apologized over and over. If only I hadn’t existed, then none of this would have happened.

“It’s not your fault,” Lin Yang said. “They are fully responsible for tonight. I want them to die.”

Lin Yang’s face became calm and cold again. He moved forward, but the tentacles blocked his path. A soft tentacle simulated a finger and kneaded Lin Yang’s earlobe with a soothing intent. “Alright, I won’t let any of them go either. But Little Sprout and the others died because of the feathered arrows; if you cut them down with one blade, they die too easily, don’t they?”

Lin Yang stopped and thought seriously. He nodded. 00 noticed the black mist entwining Lin Yang had faded significantly.

A tentacle lightly touched Lin Yang’s lips, as if dropping a gentle kiss. “So, leave them to me. I won’t let a single one go; I will return the pain those victims suffered many times over.”

Lin Yang was silent.

The tentacles continued to coax him. “00’s injuries are very heavy. Bring it to the temple; I will help heal it. You don’t want to watch 00 die, do you?”