True Apocalypse Game

The paper was slightly yellowed with frayed edges. Drawn on it was, shockingly, an image of Shen Feng himself!

He was depicted wearing a mask and a white lab coat. His face, altered by the conforming Nanomechanical Cluster, was now extremely broad with a square jaw, transforming his once-oval face into a square one.

Only his eyes were visible, deep and cold.

After finding portraits of himself several times before, Shen Feng was hardly surprised anymore.

But the mystery surrounding them had never lessened.

Previously, in an effort to understand how the Purification Society kept finding him, Shen Feng had even gouged out Faulkner’s eyeball for study.

In the end, it had yielded nothing.

The idea that a person’s eyes retain the last image they saw before death was, in itself, utter nonsense.

The retina doesn’t store information; it’s like a camera’s sensor, responsible only for transmitting data. The brain is what stores the images.

Furthermore, organs undergo autolysis after death. About six hours post-mortem, the conjunctiva and lens dissolve into a cloudy white substance, leaving nothing behind.

However, the strange mutation of Ivanovic’s pineal gland just now gave Shen Feng an idea.

’Perhaps the answer lies within his brain!’

’He hadn’t thought of this before. Otherwise, dissecting Faulkner’s brain back then would have likely yielded more clues.’

After another glance at the sketch in his hand, Shen Feng put the paper away. He then sat down on a nearby sofa and, with a calm expression, controlled the Gray Tide to alter the room’s layout as he quietly awaited Ivanovic’s awakening.

Now that he had a living captive—one on whom he had already performed brain surgery—everything would be much simpler...

Inside the room, swarms of the Nanomechanical Cluster gradually assembled into the Gray Tide, spreading out to devour everything, including the furniture and the floor.

Soon, the Gray Tide had covered everything. The doors and windows were sealed, and the entire room transformed into a metal box composed of the Gray Tide.

The surface of this metal box was perfectly smooth, like a series of mirrors.

The Nanomechanical Cluster emitted a faint glow, providing visible light inside the perfectly sealed metal box.

By now, the Gray Tide had consumed the instrument stand and all the medical equipment. Only the solitary operating bed remained, propped upright, with Ivanovic restrained upon it. On his head was a glass jar filled with culture medium.

Shen Feng sat on the sofa, resting with his eyes closed. He held a hotel ballpoint pen, rhythmically clicking it.

An hour wasn’t long, but it wasn’t short either. Soon, Jingwei had finished its global database image search and reported to Shen Feng:

"The search is done. There are... a lot of people who look like that face! Hundreds of millions! Remember that composite ’average face’ I made before? This one is probably another average of human features... It’s just too blurry."

Shen Feng nodded in understanding.

He hadn’t expected to find anything from a single blurry portrait anyway. Everything depended on the man right in front of him: Ivanovic.

Nourished by the culture medium, Ivanovic’s skull had already mostly healed. The wound on his scalp was now barely visible.

’This culture medium for growing biological tissue works wonders.’

Shen Feng nodded to Jingwei. "Begin."

The moment he spoke, Jingwei moved forward and injected Ivanovic with the Awakening Potion. Then, its entire body dissolved, merging back into the Gray Tide.

Immediately, the light from the surrounding walls vanished.

The metal cage was plunged into pitch-black darkness, with no light penetrating from the outside.

This was true darkness.

"Nghh..." Ivanovic slowly regained consciousness. He opened his eyes but could see nothing.

It was as if he had gone blind.

Moreover, there wasn’t a single sound, as if he were floating in the dead silence of outer space.

’Where am I?’

Panic began to set in. He called out tentatively.

"Hello? Is anyone there?"

There was still no response.

He felt dizzy, his head throbbing as if he were waking up from a severe hangover.

Suddenly, Ivanovic remembered the moments before he had passed out.

’The Antichrist!’

’He had just seen the Antichrist!’

’He was still in the Antichrist’s clutches!’

’But where on earth was this place!?’

"Antichrist?" Ivanovic shouted, panicked. "Where am I? Who’s there? Is anyone there?"

Just then, a low sob echoed from the surrounding darkness, followed by a sinister laugh. It seemed to be accompanied by the sound of gnawing on bones and tearing at flesh.

It was a horrifying sound.

Ivanovic couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel goosebumps prickle his skin. He yelled again, "Who’s there? Who!? Show yourself!"

But then the sounds around him changed again, replaced by a strange, giggling voice:

"Hee hee... Your flesh... it smells so good..."

A blood-curdling scream followed.

Then came more strange laughter, more screams, and the sound of flesh being torn and devoured. The sounds multiplied, growing more and more bizarre, layering over one another—running footsteps, explosions, and blood-curdling cries all jumbled together.

The cries were in languages from all over the world, but they all shared the same frenzied, repressed, and miserable tone. They sounded like voices from Hell.

"Stone! I’m turning to stone! God! My skin... my skin!"

"Nukes, they launched the damn nukes! Oh God, people are being burned to ash! I don’t want to die, AHHHH—I don’t want to die!"

"This world is over. There’s nothing left but the Gray Tide. Everyone’s been consumed by it... Sister... My sister’s become a metal statue..."

"Mama," a sob, "Mama, please talk to me... You... how did you turn to stone..."

"That’s the nuclear flash—get down! We could be burned to death! Pray... pray the shockwave is weaker by the time it reaches us..."

"Don’t eat me! Don’t eat me! AHH—"

All manner of miserable screams and desperate cries blended into one, growing louder and more cacophonous, drilling into Ivanovic’s ears.

In the absolute darkness, every sound was unnervingly clear.

As a high-ranking member of the Purification Society, he understood that these were the sounds of great disasters, perhaps even the apocalypse itself!

The sounds made him want to vomit. His mind was in turmoil, and he couldn’t stop himself from screaming, "Who is it!? Stop! Damn it, come out and face me!"

Just then, the room was abruptly flooded with light, forcing Ivanovic to squint against the glare.

He then realized he was in a sealed room whose walls were made entirely of smooth, mirrored surfaces. In front of him was a single sofa.

The Antichrist was sitting there.

Shen Feng watched Ivanovic, his face devoid of expression. He didn’t rush to speak. Instead, he snapped his fingers.

On the smooth, mirrored surfaces formed by the Nanomechanical Cluster, an image instantly appeared: the fragmented stone statue of a human, its face frozen in despair.

The image changed again, this time to a human body, charred and mangled by a nuclear blast.

Then it changed again, showing the bizarre, twisted corpse of a human half-consumed by the gray matter.

The images filling the room continued to change:

Living people being torn apart by their own kind; bodies grotesquely deformed by radiation; people clawing off their own skin as they petrified... and so on.

The cacophonous and miserable background noise never ceased, a tragedy-filled score that could have been the soundtrack to Hell itself.

Ivanovic tried to close his eyes, but two clamps appeared and forced his eyelids open, holding them firmly in place. He couldn’t blink.

He could only stare with his stinging, watering eyes at the horrific scenes, listening to the desperate wails and screams!

Eventually, the images began to flash faster and faster. He started to feel as if he were the person in each picture, that these tragic scenes were happening to him, as if he were being subjected to death by a thousand cuts, over and over again.

The man on the sofa continued to click his pen at an unhurried pace. The sound was minuscule, yet it cut through the cacophony with unbearable clarity, pushing Ivanovic to the brink of madness.

His sanity felt as though it were being rapidly siphoned away; he was on the verge of a complete breakdown.

And all the while, he was bound so tightly he couldn’t move a muscle.

A sense of furious, helpless collapse grew inside him, swelling rapidly, threatening to consume him entirely in the next instant.

"Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop clicking that damn pen! Turn it off! Turn off the images! Please! I’m begging you! Quiet! Just make it quiet! *sob* Please, I’m begging you!"

Shen Feng stared at the completely broken man before him. He continued clicking the pen and asked in a voice devoid of any emotion:

"Who are you? Where is Cthulhu? What is the goal of the Purification Society? And the Whisperer... who is that?"