Chapter 223 Art!

This place was already a "purgatory," but now, there was an added touch of authenticity.

Like imitation products from major international brands, the difference in quality is often minimal, sometimes even surpassing the genuine article. However, consumers perceive a unique atmosphere and authenticity in the real thing.

Now,

a true demon had descended.

All were equal.

Before Hell,

collectively,

trembling!

The equipment in the various laboratories vibrated, as if sensing a magnetic field and a call. The instruments of death and tools seemed to possess their own consciousness.

They cheered, they stirred, eager for the demon's next feast.

There was the friction of chains, the clatter of scalpels and forceps, the creaking of gurneys, the rustling of doors and windows, even from the cremation workshop where bodies were incinerated,

ashes

flew wildly.

The sounds, high and low, ordered and chaotic, merged into a stirring rhythm, like Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, slowly rising to a crescendo.

It was an aura, a rendering. A true, sinister horror, like candlelight on a table, adding nothing to the taste of the food,

but this formality,

was indispensable.

Zhou Ze, missing half an arm, walked slowly through the research institute.

Watching his eighty-year-old self carry out his judgment, his slaughter,

for the first time,

Zhou Ze truly realized,

death,

was indeed an art.

With its own rhythm,

containing its unique flavor,

like a fine wine aged for many years, intoxicating even before the first sip. Now, slowly savoring each mouthful, the aroma entered the mouth, traveled to the nose, and finally settled in the stomach, the fiery sensation spreading throughout the body.

So comfortable and satisfying, it was almost impossible to suppress a moan!

The white coats scurried through the research institute like headless flies, screaming, crying, and roaring. When the roles of demon and maruta (logs) were reversed, it proved that no one was inherently superior. In the same position and circumstances, everyone was the same.

Before, when faced with the struggles and cries of the prisoners in the testing ground, they could laugh and chat, discussing which comfort woman in the nearby comfort station was more enthusiastic.

Then, they were outside, and others were inside. Now, they were inside, and the leisure of being outside was gone.

They encountered the most terrifying "ghost wall," knowing they had to run but unable to escape.

Like lab rats kept in containers, their fate was sealed.

Because of Zhou Ze's specific instructions,

the ensuing scenes of death lacked the decisiveness of the beginning. Before, it was the blooming of a昙花 (tánhuā, night-blooming cereus); now, it was the journey from bud to full bloom to withering.

Every stage was necessary, every link essential,

from cultivating fear to initial repression, to mid-stage details, to the late-stage extension of pain. The flower of life, so delicate, was slowly roasted in countless ways.

Death would not come easily or simply, every ounce of fear squeezed out, every last bit of pain released, even the soul would not be spared.

Do not think the end of the flesh is liberation,

true agony only begins after the body is gone.

Know that the soul is more sensitive than the flesh, and most of Hell's punishments are aimed at the soul.

The art of slaughter,

the vortex of death,

constantly clamoring, constantly lingering, constantly intertwined.

Zhou Ze lowered his head.

He saw the blood on the ground, seeming to come alive, like a landscape master wielding ink, constantly changing its form.

Sinister, mysterious, like ghost writing, like stars adorning the night sky, with an undisguised mockery and sarcasm.

Pools of blood stretched out, transforming into blood-colored lotus flowers at Zhou Ze's feet. Each petal bore a tortured face, the souls of the newly deceased white coats, their imprisonment, their terrifying feast.

Like watching an old black-and-white television, lines and blank spaces, the lines chaotic, the white not so white, a dizzying, nauseating, sickening transformation.

Zhou Ze bent down,

covering his chest with his remaining hand,

feeling a little sick.

Not sympathy, not pity, just a sense of surprise,

his eighty-year-old self,

compared to his current self,

seemed even more ruthless.

That broken body continued to walk,

slowly admiring his masterpiece,

appearing before a still-living white coat, treating him as a side dish, throwing him into the stirring symphony as a note, or squeezing his blood to replenish the romantic, bloody watercolor.

He did not grin,

and, apart from opening his eyes to look at Zhou Ze at the very beginning, he kept his eyes closed.

He seemed nonchalant,

but he was like a meticulous artist, a conductor, dutifully doing everything to the best of his ability, satisfying the audience...

No,

satisfying himself.

A dream that bridged eighty years,

with each at opposite ends of time,

what was the dream,

what was the false part that the dream could change,

Zhou Ze didn't know, didn't understand.

But perhaps,

his eighty-year-old self had awakened here, beginning the slaughter, beginning to purify himself. This should be the truth.

As for whether he saw his eighty-year-later self, whether he accepted his commission and made this simple slaughter more complex, more exhausting, more prolonged, more enjoyable,

that remained to be seen.

If he wanted to know the truth,

he could only wait to unearth the underground secrets,

leave this dream,

and in reality,

look for the traces left behind eighty years ago.

That was the only way to gain the most accurate judgment.

However,

suddenly,

everything seemed to speed up.

Zhou Ze was shocked to see the blood on the ground, which had been changing patterns, begin to boil.

The white coats and military police, who had been waiting to be thrown into the feast one by one, were now being tossed into the laboratories en masse. The experiments resumed, the tools and equipment operating on their own, all kinds of experiments restarting, even the recording books and pens flying and making their own records.

However, the raw materials were no longer the maruta they had spoken of, but themselves.

This change in melody filled Zhou Ze with trepidation. When he looked again at the broken figure, he found that it was standing right in front of him.

He clutched his half a head,

seeming to be in great pain,

his body swaying,

as if he could no longer control himself.

Everything around him was his handiwork, his art of death. Everything was changing according to his state of mind, and as he descended into madness, into loss of control, everything began to extend toward a cruel, violent aesthetic.

Screams,

wails,

from the living,

from the dead,

suffering even more.

Suddenly,

the broken figure opened his eyes, his pupils blood-red, leaving Zhou Ze momentarily stunned.

He was shouting something at him,

telling him something,

but damn it,

why couldn't he hear a single word!

"I can't hear you! What are you saying!"

Zhou Ze shouted. He knew that what the other was saying must be important, perhaps even a message left by his eighty-year-old self.

Through...

the form of a dream.

But he couldn't hear anything, really couldn't hear anything. And because the other was shouting in a near-hysterical roar, even if Zhou Ze understood lip-reading, he wouldn't be able to analyze what he was saying.

"Boom!"

"Boom!"

A series of explosions rang out,

the sound of several exits being destroyed.

The Japanese above no longer dared to go down, intending to seal the place off.

At this moment,

the broken figure seemed to grow even more insane,

the blood on the ground rising higher, slowly covering everything. At first, it only reached Zhou Ze's ankles, then his knees, and finally, it passed his waist.

Zhou Ze wanted to call out to the figure again, he wanted to know what he had said, but Zhou Ze had no time to ask, no time to do anything, because the blood had already submerged him.

"Glug..."

His body,

as if falling into the depths of the ocean,

surrounded

by a despairing loneliness,

and below,

a broken figure,

seeming to look up, but the distance between them was visibly increasing.

The buoyancy increased, Zhou Ze's ascent quickened, and the feeling of suffocating horror intensified.

"Pfft..."

When Zhou Ze surfaced,

he sat up straight on the sofa.

"Huff...huff...huff..."

Zhou Ze was drenched in sweat, his clothes soaked through.

Bai Yingying beside him was still asleep, but her hair had returned to the black of a young girl, and even her skin had become tighter and more elastic, as if you could pinch it and water would come out.

Like a fresh flower bud, well-nourished by the morning dew.

Zhou Ze reached up and covered his forehead.

He hadn't yet come back to himself.

The previous scenes had been too insane, too shocking, especially the sense of art embodied in the slaughter, making him feel as if he was standing in the center of an orchestra,

no, the center of a tsunami!

At that moment,

Zhou Ze's phone rang.

He glanced at the screen,

it was Zhang Yanfeng.

He answered the phone, weakly saying, "Hello."

Zhang Yanfeng on the other end sounded excited, with the loud roar of machinery nearby. He shouted:

"Hey, the higher-ups have agreed to it, they're going to start digging, they're going to start digging..."

Start digging?

Zhou Ze was still confused.

Digging what?

But soon,

Zhou Ze suddenly woke up,

immediately putting the phone to his mouth and roaring:

"Don't dig! Don't dig now!

Don't dig it out!!!"

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