"Alright, fine."
Shen Zuo finally said, after a long stretch of silence spent watching them with half-hearted interest:
"Why are you all even here, actually... isn't this my mission? What business do you have with it? And why are you all acting like such clowns about it?"
Bai Ren looked at him, sighed as though even he'd grown tired of the mockery, then shrugged coldly:
"We came to see you... one last time, since you're most likely about to die."
Shen Zuo raised his middle finger without even turning around, saying coldly:
"Try a new joke, your comedy game is falling apart. How about taking a class from grandpa Ling Li? Clearly he's an old clown too, and you've learned well from him."
Ling Li spoke mockingly, waving his hand as though Shen Zuo's presence wasn't even worth the effort:
"I would've hit you if I didn't know you were a masochist... now even hitting you feels like a waste."
Shen Zuo turned his back slightly, then answered in a tone of total surrender:
"Fine, fine... just leave. I want to get ready to die in peace."
Then he added, with biting sarcasm, without turning around:
"And please, remember at my funeral... I'd like to be treated with respect after death, since I never got any in life."
Zhou Ji said, closing his notebook with a hint of irritation:
"Alright, we've wasted enough time on this nonsense... the readers are going to start saying this chapter's dragging on. Let's move on to what actually matters."
Then he raised his eyes toward Shen Zuo with unusual seriousness:
"We came to tell you... that you can withdraw from the mission. Things have gone off script."
Shen Zuo gasped and stepped forward, stunned:
"What?! You mean I can just quit?! How?"
Zhou Ji answered coldly, as though stating something obvious:
"Just like you heard. Did you actually think we'd send you off to die? As sarcastic as we are... we're not complete monsters, not all the time, at least."
Shen Zuo shouted furiously, staring at their faces:
"No... impossible! After all this? Why the sudden change of heart? Do you think I'm scared? Or are you just trying to scare me even more by dangling the option to withdraw?"
Silence settled for a moment, before Bai Ren stepped forward this time, speaking in a cold, controlled tone:
"Alright, you've got one last option..."
Then he smiled a sidelong smile and added:
"You can ask us for anything. Yes, anything within our power... and we'll grant it to you, on one condition: it has to be something we actually need for you to succeed at the mission."
Shen Zuo exchanged glances with them, then whispered:
"This doesn't sound like a free offer... what's the catch?"
Bai Ren said lightly, continuing as though dropping a bomb:
"Don't worry, I gave up on the idea of sending in the Kar Mutant. You're lucky today."
Shen Zuo took a step back, crossed his arms, and said coldly:
"Alright... I refuse."
The old men exchanged glances for a moment, but he continued without giving them time to respond:
"Did you come all this way just to turn back around? I don't need offers dripping with pity, or a paper life vest."
A brief silence settled over them, as though they'd been waiting for exactly this answer.
Ling Li spoke in a mocking tone, mixed with a gradual fading presence:
"Good answer... very good. If you'd taken the withdrawal, I would've slapped your ass to death. And if you'd taken the help... we weren't going to give you anything anyway."
His voice faded away bit by bit, as though his presence had never been real to begin with.
And there was no one left in the area except Shen Zuo, alone.
"Could you please stop bothering me too?"
Shen Zuo said, staring into empty space like an idiot, as usual.
The next day...
Shen Zuo was inside the tunnel, sitting in an awkward position, trying to train just to make the day pass.
But strangely... he never heard the sound he'd been waiting for.
No roars from beasts, no echoes of their footsteps.
Not a single pit ever collapsed, even though he'd been expecting it.
There was nothing but the sound of whistling wind...
though it sounded muffled from inside the tunnel.
After a long stretch of waiting, he decided to step out and see what was happening outside.
He crawled slowly through the dirt passage, until he finally poked his head out of one of the openings, and whispered to himself:
"Oh... no?"
Above him... the sky was completely blocked out,
by flying beasts of every size and terrifying shape,
fighting each other violently in the air, as though paving the way for some disaster to fall.
And the disaster didn't take long to arrive.
A booming crash slammed into the ground.
A massive bird corpse fell from the sky, shaking the ground above the tunnel.
Then a swarm of small, strangely shaped birds descended,
tearing greedily into the giant bird's flesh.
But nothing happened to Shen Zuo...
he'd already pulled his head back into the tunnel a moment before, driven purely by fear.
Then it happened again...
armored birds of different shapes crashing down.
Their bodies hitting the ground felt like an earthquake.
The tunnel began shaking violently, as though it were about to collapse right on top of Shen Zuo and bury him alive.
The pits he'd planned to use as escape routes started sealing shut one after another,
until one of the giant birds landed directly over one of the openings... burying it completely.
The air grew heavier.
And the dirt around him kept falling, as if warning of the end.
Shen Zuo started breathing very slowly and carefully.
Then he activated the Rock Mutation Phantom in his hands...
the same hands that were bracing against the tunnel ceiling.
His fists gradually turned to stone.
Then he began pumping more energy into them, little by little...
and started trying to push that energy up into the ceiling itself.
And slowly... the ceiling began turning to stone too.
He used the energy-drawing technique, trying to compensate for the rapid drain caused by the petrification,
working to keep his body as intact as possible inside the tunnel.
He made sure his body's position still allowed for a small margin of movement...
so that even if the tunnel collapsed completely, he wouldn't be buried alive without any chance to fight back.
Shen Zuo thought, trying to calm himself down:
"Alright... it's still holding up so far..."
He kept a close eye on the trembling dirt above him.
The good news was, the wooden supports he'd installed earlier were still holding against the pressure;
without them, the ceiling would have already caved in from the start.
But suddenly...
an unnatural sound boomed from outside, as though coming from right beside him, uncomfortably close.
A familiar voice... but dripping with heavy mockery, saying:
"Ahh, ahh... my sweet little one died here... how foolish, burying himself with his own two hands."
Shen Zuo's body stiffened instantly.
Was that Bai Ren's voice?
"Ahh, ahh... my poor little grandson died here... how foolish, burying himself with his own two hands."
Shen Zuo's body stiffened instantly.
Was that Bai Ren's voice?
Or was it just a hallucination?
No. The voice was clear, close, as if the old man were digging directly into his ear.
"Screw you, even in this situation you're still mocking me... I swear, if I survive today, I'm burying you myself!"
Shen Zuo growled through gritted teeth, trying to suppress the trembling in his right hand, still bracing against the petrified ceiling.
But the voice returned, with that same infuriating level of calm:
"You really shouldn't have whipped him so much on the head, Ling Li... look at him, he didn't even try to fight, just buried himself instead. What a shame, he was an idiot from the very start."
Shen Zuo answered, his voice trembling with rage and frustration:
"How exactly was I supposed to fight those flying things?! Even that giant bird that died, the one those other birds started tearing apart, I couldn't even tell what level it was! For the love of everything unholy!"
A brief silence... but the fury kept building.
The dirt above him began shaking again.
"Alright... the bird wave's come and gone... now it's time for the ground beasts."
Bai Ren's voice said, with a cold, mocking echo, as though commenting on a play he was just watching from the sidelines.
Shen Zuo's expression froze for a moment.
As if the air itself had been cut off.
His pulse raced, and everything around him went still except for the sound of dirt lightly trickling down through the gaps in the ceiling.
"What?!"
He muttered it without even realizing...
If the bird
wave alone had been enough to make him bury himself out of sheer terror,
then what was the ground beast wave going to do to him?
His ears began picking up a distant tremor... heavy footsteps... slow... but getting closer.