World's Apocalypse Online Chapter 175

On the arena, the tiles where people weren't standing all flipped around, revealing numerous items on the ground.

They were all sorts of armor and weapons.

Daggers, long swords, short swords, sabers, scimitars, great swords, halberds, spears, sledge hammers, war axes, iron poles, throwing knives, helmets, armor, visors, armguards, war boots…

The items littered the entire giant arena.

A few quickly picked up what they could, and others began to imitate them.

More and more people were picking up the items.

A few were simply picking them up to imitate others and have something to use, others were specifically looking for things that they can use.

A Professionist first picked up a shield, then reached for a cold-looking Blade.

He was originally a Blade user, so he was able to tell that this Blade was quite a good weapon.

But when he reached out, it was already taken by another person.

Looking up, the Professionist noticed it was only a fat old man.

With a kick, the Professionist knocked the old man down and stole the Blade.

He was about to leave, but then remembered something

“The only King…” he muttered.

Then he drew the Blade and slashed.

The old man was only able to raise a scream before dying.

This action sparked a chain reaction, as everyone here stopped their hands and silently stared at him.

Being stared at so many people, the Professionist nervously stepped back.

But the old announcer voice was suddenly heard again, praising him.

『 The first point of our entire arena, scored by Professionist Chen Qi. Let us see what reward shall he receive! 』

He got a reward for that?

Everyone was stunned, staring at the Professionist called Chen Qi.

Chen Qi's expression was cold, but you could almost tell he was also a bit excited standing there.

Suddenly, a flame rose from his Blade.

It was like the flame had bounded itself onto the Blade itself, not dissipating no matter what.

The old voice spoke again: 『 Congratulations! Due to him being the very first challenger to score, his weapon has received the blessing of fire --------he's now in the lead! 』

Chen Qi swung the Blade, the flame on it spreads out.

A middle-aged man who was standing too close to him got caught in the fire, screaming.

The middle-aged man had to drop down and roll for a while for the fire to be put out.

But at that point, his arm had already been burned off while he himself was already close to death, not able to do anything but lie on the ground breathing his last.

“Ahahaha, such a powerful Blade!” Chen Qi's face showed madness.

He stepped forward and slashed towards the middle-aged man.

Another scream, blood splattered everywhere.

『 The second point! 』 the old voice was heard again, 『 Chen Qi had scored the second point! 』
『 Let us see what reward he shall receive again! 』

Chen Qi's shield that he picked up before suddenly sprouted sharp spikes emitting intense cold.

『 What a surprise! It can attack, it can defend, the unstoppable shield! 』the old voice announced with a gloating tone.

Chen Qi excitedly laughed, then suddenly raised his shield and attacked another person beside him.

The person was pierced by the spikes and immediately lost their lives.

The old voice couldn't wait to speak again.

『 Chen Qi! What a true warrior! He's getting closer and closer to becoming our King of the Arena! 』
『 Take a guess, what equipment shall he received this time? 』

But at this moment, no one could sit still to watch anymore.

There could only be one survivor in this challenge.

And Chen Qi is becoming stronger by the second.

Occasional screams were raised from all corners of the arena.

A few Professionists were quickly moving around killing people, as if they were tigers being whipped and provoked by someone.

A young girl was crying, begging: “Please don't kill me! I don't want to die, I thought this was only a game!”

Rip!

A flame rose up, the girl's body was bisected with a single slash, dropped to the ground and died.

Chen Qi held his flaming Blade, passing her corpse and went towards the next frightened middle-aged man.

The screams of terror and pain were getting louder, spreading around the entire place.

Corpses littered all over the arena and blood soaked the ground red.

“Bastard!” Zhang Ying Hao opened his eyes.

“What kind of fucking game is that, even the art of killing is being turned into nothing but a pointless slaughter!” he cursed it loudly.

“This thing, if the final reward truly is eternal life, then it will certainly make everyone go mad without a doubt” very rarely, Liao Xing was being serious.

“That's right, there would always be some people who are at the end of their ropes, some who thinks they're more special than anyone else, they want to use this shortcut to make themselves eternal” Gu Qing Shan replied.
“The stronger someone gets, the bigger their desire is to become more powerful, not to mention the ultimate lure as eternal life”

He sighed, dejectedly shaking his head: “This is irresistible, you can never remove the people's desires to receive eternal life”
“This arena is also untraceable, unless you specifically sign up to join it, you can't even enter it no matter what you do --------there is no method to destroy it”

Gu Qing Shan's mood was becoming worse.

The Game of Eternal can eat people's souls to make itself stronger.

Even though that's the case, because it had to cross worlds to get here, the game cannot interfere with the world's Laws so quickly, it can't directly harvest the power of souls from this world yet. (1)

But when the arena extends invitations to everyone before, those invitations are actually Contracts in disguise.

To accept entering the arena is the same as signing a contract with your soul, if you win, you get to leave with your rewards, if you lose, you lose your soul.

In the arena, the souls of every single person who died in battle were eaten by the game.

Then as the game became stronger and stronger, it will gradually change its rules, to make the maximum amount of participants grow larger and larger, the killing and deaths in the arena become more and more gruesome, until the end, when it turns the planet itself into a giant arena.

Fighting and killing will break out everywhere.

And the “eternal life” that it promised ---------is a simple play of the word.

If a human is slowly turned into some sort of demon, their lifespan will naturally increase, a few of them actually has almost infinite lifespan.

But demons are a war-mongering species, this is a nature that's already carved deep into their souls. What demon is able to keep its life long enough to live an eternal life in all that warring?

In the past life, so many people went mad for that fake eternal life because the people who received the gifts of eternal life really did stop aging, a few of them even became visibly younger.

Within 3 years, the demonic seeds had already silently changed everyone who carried them without anyone knowing.

For the first 3 years, all winners of the Game of Eternal felt no change and no difference.

Everyone country poured all the resources they had into verifying that. Even after using the Holy Church's God's Chosen Skills, they found no anomalies.

It was then that everyone was sure that this was eternal life in the truest sense.

And in those 3 years of madness, countless people went into the game, only to get killed by people stronger than they were, and their souls eaten by the game.

Not only Professionists but even normal people, all the politicians and aristocrats, everyone thought of countless methods just to get their hands on an “Eternal pills”.

In the face of eternal life, nothing else matters, even their country is only second in priority!

Three years later, when the winners of the Game of Eternal started to demonize, when the truth was finally known, the world population had decreased to be a mere 1/3rd of what it used to be.

This was partially due to Worlds Apocalypse Online already existing in those 3 years, so people were able to travel to the other world and gain a steady method of becoming more powerful. A few people saw hope in that, so they stayed calm, limiting the amount of people who entered the Game of Eternal.

But right now, Worlds Apocalypse Online is still nowhere to be seen, only the Game of Eternal had shown itself.

Does he have no choice but to wait half a year for Worlds Apocalypse Online to launch?
But that's too late, once the Game of Eternal life had eaten enough human souls, it will start to evolve again and again.
At that time, it will come up with innumerable ways to tickle human desires, so that more and more people are lured to and die on the arena.
Human civilization will collapse under the lure of eternal life.
Is this world finished?

Gu Qing Shan stayed silent.

“Hack, the fuck is you thinking about, just look at yourself!”

Liao Xing looked at him and scoffed.

“Hm? What?” Gu Qing Shan didn't raise his head and only replied.

“Look at yourself, what kind of a man are you supposed to be?” Liao Xing scoffed again.

“What a dog shit mouth, if you've got nothing better -------“ Zhang Ying Hao couldn't help but want to shut him up.

“Let him speak” Gu Qing Shan raised his head and stared at Liao Xing.

Liao Xing then stood up, walking in front of Gu Qing Shan and looked down on him.

“He called me dog shit” Liao Xing glared, “but I feel like you're more dog shit than I am”

Ye Fei Li frowned, stood up and asked: “So you're looking to die huh?”

“No, just let him speak, I want to hear what he has to say” Gu Qing Shan stopped Ye Fei Li by raising his hand.

“You dog shit, I don't know what you want to do, but as soon as a problem occurred, you instantly became so dejected and disappointed ---------what part of you is a man?” Liao Xing kept going.

He grabbed Gu Qing Shan collar and lifted him up.

“I escaped from the coldness of space to return here and look for a place to sponge off, but you instead showed me this damn funeral of a façade?”
“Looking at you, if I didn't know better, I would've thought you've already went through countless apocalypses or something! What a joke!”
“So what if the apocalypse is here, we're all men, if we die then we die, what use does showing that wet rag of an appearance does?”
“I!” Liao Xing slapped his chest, “I fought again an entire nation by myself, lived in the coldness of space for over 30 years, but I'm still here, living happily, but what about you!”

Gu Qing Shan grabbed and pushed his hand away, smiling wryly: “Mr. Liao, we're different”

“What do you mean different!?”

“You escaped for 30 years, but I've not been able to escape for even a single day”

Gu Qing Shan kept smiling, but seems to have regained his spirit.

He put his hand on his shoulder and said: “But anyways, thank you”

“Peh” Liao Xing scoffed, “if my wives and kids weren't dependent on your Merits to live, I wouldn't even bother with your sorry ass”

He spat, then went back to lie on the sofa.

Gu Qing Shan still insisted: “Mr. Liao, thank you very much”

Liao Xing waved his hand impatiently, saying: “If there's a problem then think of a solution, if you need my help and say it, don't just show that damn funeral face. If everything goes wrong, then we can only die once anyways, what is there to fear!”

“Well said” Gu Qing Shan agreed, then quickly left the room.

Zhang Ying Hao and Ye Fei Li exchanged looks, then also left.

Gu Qing Shan didn't stop, walking all the way until the top of the mountain outside the mansion.

The rain has stopped falling for a while.

The night sky was filled with stars, similar to a vast and ever-extending river of fate within the darkness.

Looking downwards, the light of the capital city was shining, as the entire place emits a warmth of vitality.

In the dead of night, the wind was blowing through the leaves, the sound of waves crashing into shore, occasionally there was even a sound of flying vehicles passing through the sky, but they were all heard very clearly.

Gu Qing Shan just stood silently atop the mountain.

Zhang Ying Hao approached and threw a bottle of wine over.

“That thing is already over 30 years old, I feel like you need it right now” Zhang Ying Hao said.

“Thanks” Gu Qing Shan opened the bottle and took a big gulp.

Then he gave it to Ye Fei Li.

Taking a sip, Ye Fei Li frowned: “I still like juice better”

“If you're not drinking then give it” Zhang Ying Hao took back the bottle and took a big gulp himself, glaring: “This is very precious, this bottle here costs over 100,000 Confederate Credits”

“Ah? That expensive?” Ye Fei Li lifted his eyebrows in surprise, “give it, I'll take another sip”

Zhang Ying Hao mumbled while he passed the bottle over and turned to look at Gu Qing Shan.

“Back to business, this unknown son of a bitch that successfully lured people's desires --------the 18,000-ish people in there right now are definitely dead, but I don't believe in what it's saying, because paying for your own eternal life by sacrificing others, that doesn't make sense” Zhang Ying Hao said.

“This is eternal life we're talking about here and you can still stay that calm?” Ye Fei Li was a bit shocked.

“When facing life and death, a hitman must stay absolutely calm, not to mention the hidden boss behind all those hitmen” Zhang Ying Hao puffed his chest.

Ye Fei Li thought about it, then spoke: “If that's the case, we can just ignore it and watch things play out”

“We can't” Gu Qing Shan smiled wryly, “once the world's civilization collapses, more and more cracks will form in the minds of people, and when that happens, it'll be too late to stand up again, the world can only fall into the abyss”

“But it's such a strange thing, we can't even touch it, let alone fight it, how do we deal with something like that?” Zhang Ying Hao said.
“Not to mention, eternal life is the ultimate goal and desire for everybody, you can stop 1 person, but how do you stop everyone?”

“That's exactly why I felt helpless” Gu Qing Shan felt his head hurt so took the bottle and drank another gulp.

Ye Fei Li was still not used to the taste, puckering his lips as he spoke: “Don't feel down, you seemed to deal with the Man Killer Fiends well enough”

“And how exactly did I deal with Man Killer Fiends?” Gu Qing Shan casually asked.

“You used a Man Killer Fiend to deal with Man Killer Fiends” Ye Fei Li pointed at himself and laughed.

Gu Qing Shan was stunned.

“What… did you say? Can you repeat it again?” He slowly turned and looked at Ye Fei Li.

His eyes look like it saw some sort of rare treasure, but also like he was looking at some benevolent god.

Ye Fei Li was a bit scared by the look in his eyes, so he unconsciously took a step back: “I said, you dealt with the Man Killer Fiend, quite well”

“Not that”

“Ah, I said you used a Man Killer Fiend to deal with Man Killer Fiends”

Gu Qing Shan silently nodded.

Then he kept nodding, his eyes lighting up.

He bit harshly at his lip, as if thinking about something extremely important.

Both Ye Fei Li and Zhang Ying Hao just stared at each other, a bit unsure of what's happening.

Suddenly they heard Gu Qing Shan slowly muttering to himself.

“Right… it can be done…”
“If the game isn't here to do that, then I will stand against it myself”

He raised the bottle of wine, raised his head and drank it all down in one breath.

Seeing him like that, Ye Fei Li and Zhang Ying Hao both loosened a bit.

When Gu Qing Shan put the bottle down, they can still hear him mumbling.

“That's right… we can't let it grow… we have to stunt its growth”
“I have to do this, otherwise humanity will all die”

After saying so, Gu Qing Shan's air seemed to change.

He seems to have gotten an indescribable fighting spirit.

Just like how he was in the cultivation world, taking a sword in hand, ready to wrestle for his life with the unknown.

“Impartial Goddess, where is the S.W. Divine Temple?” he asked.

[Currently above capital airspace] the Holo-Brain lit up as Impartial Goddess answered.

“Very well, bring me up there”

[Sir, do you have something to do?]

“No, YOU have something to do”

[What are your orders?]

Gu Qing Shan spoke: “Follow my lead, let the two of us create a new era”

(1)Laws: as in common laws of the universe, things like “fire is hot” or “the speed of light is constant”

Chapter end