Discussing The Correct Posture To Enjoy Dog Food

Chapter 159 - Banana Flavored Boss Gong (19)

Translated by Hua Li ^_~

And the last chapter to this Arc!

I thought to give a double update week to celebrate the finish of this arc!

A one-on-one fight between a level-three and a level-four was nothing short of throwing an egg at a rock.

When Gou Liang saw Bao Zi being the first to break through the earthen wall Jia Nanzhu had set up and rush in to block his escape, he frowned.

“What is it?”

Shi Buyu scanned the surroundings warily.

“There’s a level-three fire ability user fighting Jia Nanzhu.”

The only level-three fire user stationed at Jiuzhou was Bao Zi. Hearing this, Shi Buyu quickened his pace.

Sure enough, as soon as Bao Zi clashed with Jia Nanzhu, he was immediately put at a disadvantage.

“Overestimating yourself!”

Jia Nanzhu sneered, not taking Bao Zi’s attacks seriously at all. He raised an earthen wall to block the flames, then—face hardening—caused long, sharp spikes to grow from it, hurling them straight at Bao Zi.

The wall smashed violently against the beast core vault’s structure. Without bothering to check whether Bao Zi was dead or alive, Jia Nanzhu seized the opportunity to drag Ju Bei away. But Ju Bei suddenly grabbed his hand. “Take him with us!”

Jia Nanzhu, focused only on escaping after achieving his goal, barely registered Ju Bei’s words. But this time Ju Bei was unusually insistent. “Brother Zhu, listen to me—take him!”

Jia Nanzhu glanced at him. Though he couldn’t read his motives, he didn’t want to waste time arguing now, so he knocked the already badly injured Bao Zi unconscious and hauled him along.

Moments later, he was immensely glad he hadn’t refused.

Bolts of lightning struck the ground around them, forcing Jia Nanzhu to scurry like a rat with no way up or down. Chunks of earth shattered into dust, every strike landing precisely close enough to graze him. When he finally felt the pressure of a high-level ability bearing down, he realized how stupid his earlier assumption had been—how could all those level-four beast cores Jiuzhou had captured have been paid for only with the lives of level-three users?

The base now had a level-four who could rival him—and it was the very person he least wanted to see: Shi Buyu!

Knowing there was no escape this time, Jia Nanzhu dragged Bao Zi up as a hostage and emerged from the ground with Ju Bei.

Faced with the circle of Jiuzhou ability users surrounding them, Jia Nanzhu’s face changed. He shoved Bao Zi in front of him and shouted, “Let us go, or I’ll kill him!”

His fingers turned into sharp earthen spikes, the force of his grip piercing Bao Zi’s skin.

He had no regard for the man’s life. The sharp pain brought Bao Zi back to consciousness. He started to curse, but Jia Nanzhu’s tightening grip made him cry out instead.

Seeing the surrounding ability users hesitate to act, Bao Zi quickly realized what was happening.

Damn Jia Nanzhu!

Intent on taking him down with him, Bao Zi shouted, “Don’t worry about—”

But before he could finish, and just as his fire ability flared, his voice froze in his throat. The surroundings went still for a moment. Gou Liang kicked Jia Nanzhu away, snatching Bao Zi back.

“Xiao Keng’er!”

From the monitors, he saw that Ju Bei wasn’t affected by the space-stopping ability at all—he’d pulled out a gun and aimed it at him. Gou Liang was shocked—the space stop didn’t work on him?!

He twisted aside to dodge the bullet. Shi Buyu had already rushed over, pulling him into his arms with one hand and swinging the Wentian Sword with the other, striking at Ju Bei without hesitation.

“Aahhh!!”

Ju Bei screamed, clutching his head.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

Though Gou Liang said so, Shi Buyu still checked him over carefully before relaxing.

Taking the bloodied Bao Zi from him, Shi Buyu put Gou Liang behind him and glared darkly at Ju Bei.

Furious, he unleashed a level-six lightning strike—enough to turn Ju Bei to ash. But something strange happened: the devastating lightning passed straight through Ju Bei as if he didn’t exist, striking the ground behind him and charring it black.

Although the strike hadn’t actually harmed him, Ju Bei still collapsed to the ground, legs weak, pelted by debris and looking utterly disheveled.

Frowning, Shi Buyu struck again, this time targeting Ju Bei’s gun hand with a thicker bolt. Ju Bei cried out in terror, “Don’t kill me!!” but couldn’t even move to dodge.

This time, Gou Liang clearly saw the soul power within the lightning completely ignore Ju Bei.

His soul had been ignored by the world’s main god’s laws.

Gou Liang’s eyes widened slightly in realization—so from the very beginning, the main god laws of this world had never considered Ju Bei’s outsider soul as part of its domain. He’d never been qualified to participate in the Transition Game. He couldn’t absorb soul power or gain abilities, and abilities couldn’t affect him—but at the same time, any ordinary native human could snap his neck with a little force.

Gou Liang himself still carried the original host’s soul, so he hadn’t encountered the same issue.

The terrified Ju Bei watched as the gun he’d thrown away was blasted into pieces by lightning right before his eyes, exploding in front of him. Instead of feeling relief at surviving, he was petrified—having never truly faced the apocalypse’s brutality or the power of ability users, he was utterly broken.

This was the kind of man who could only live out his “main character” fantasies in his head.

Thinking this, Gou Liang released the space stop.

“—me!”

Bao Zi’s words burst from his throat only for him to realize he was already safe, though the fire ability he’d released couldn’t be recalled.

Fortunately, with Shi Buyu—now a level-six—carrying him, the attack had no effect. Seeing Bao Zi rein in his power, Shi Buyu tossed him toward Jiuzhou’s healing ability users.

Meanwhile, Jia Nanzhu, thrown to the ground, realized the tide had turned and tried to flee. The terrified Ju Bei lunged to grab his leg. “Brother Zhu, don’t leave me!”

Jia Nanzhu kicked him away and frantically dove into the earth.

He didn’t even care about the beast cores in Ju Bei’s space anymore—channeling his level-four earth ability to the limit, he focused solely on escaping with his life.

The loosened soil collapsed behind him as he tunneled at breakneck speed toward the outskirts of Jiuzhou Base.

Shi Buyu glanced in the direction of the fugitive and connected to Jiang Ren. “Let him run a bit farther. Get ready for the mouse trap.”

“Roger!”

Jiang Ren waited with interest for Jia Nanzhu to walk right into the snare.

Shi Buyu turned his gaze to Ju Bei, who was begging nonstop after being caught. Thinking of how the man had just pulled a gun on Gou Liang, his eyes still blazed with killing intent. Major General Yao patted his shoulder, signaling for him to endure a moment longer—no matter how heinous the crimes, it wouldn’t do to attack a “weak” man in public.

Shi Buyu nodded to show he understood.

The crimes committed by Ju Bei and Jia Nanzhu were too serious. They needed to be handled officially by the base; if it were taken as a personal vendetta, the implications would be completely different.

Jia Nanzhu kept sprinting, not daring to slow even after leaving the boundaries of Jiuzhou Base, heading northwest at top speed.

He thought hope for escape was within reach, but didn’t realize Shi Buyu simply hadn’t wanted to fight inside the base and damage its facilities. As soon as he ran beyond the base’s safety perimeter, the loosened ground around him collapsed into nothing under a barrage of lightning, exposing Jia Nanzhu—crawling on all fours through the earth—before everyone’s eyes.

He was still in the posture of clawing forward with both hands and kicking back with his feet for leverage when he suddenly dropped out of the void.

With a terrified shout, Jia Nanzhu frantically lunged for the soil that could give him a sense of safety. Unfortunately for him, before he could touch it, Jiang Ren had already hooked him with an iron chain and yanked him up.

He refused to submit, repeatedly launching earth-ability attacks at Jiang Ren after being captured. Only after exhausting himself did he realize his efforts were nothing but clown tricks to Shi Buyu’s group—pathetic and meaningless.

He watched in despair as he was dragged to the execution platform, listening to Yao Sanjun broadcast his crimes to the entire base: murdering fifteen fellow ability users from transport teams, hijacking four transport aircraft, stealing from the base’s beast core vault, and severely injuring ability users while attempting to flee.

Any one of these charges was enough to make him the target of universal condemnation and warrant his death, let alone all of them together.

Major General Yao’s voice was grave: “The base values every survivor. The future of the base will be built by you all. But those who bully the weak, even to the point of losing all humanity and harming their own kind—no matter what level ability user they are—will never be tolerated! The apocalypse is far from over, humanity’s hope has only just begun to sprout. Anything that goes against that—whether it’s a mutant beast or an ability user like Jia Nanzhu—the base has only one way to deal with it: kill without mercy!”

Jia Nanzhu listened numbly to the sentence being read out, feeling the scorn and hatred from all around. Even in his final moments, his thoughts were: It shouldn’t be like this! I, Jia Nanzhu, should be the strongest ability user. I should be indispensable to this world—not humiliated like this, dying without having achieved anything…

From start to finish, it never occurred to him that he had never once used his abilities to benefit anyone.

Whether when he first became a level-one earth user or later advanced to level two, or even when he obtained his level-four abilities through trickery, he had never relied on beast cores he’d hunted himself.

Someone who treated others’ sacrifices as a given while magnifying his own “contributions” and “favors” to others—how could such a person be worthy of anyone’s trust or respect?

Ju Bei’s fate was no better.

After Jiuzhou tested every type of ability attack and found that, apart from the five elemental abilities capable of causing actual physical harm, nothing worked on him, the research lab wasted no time applying to turn him into a test subject.

Human experimentation was one of the most tightly controlled types of trials in Jiuzhou. Apart from ability users on the brink of death, Yao Sanjun never allowed such tests.

But as Jia Nanzhu’s accomplice, Ju Bei had not only concealed what he knew but also felt no remorse for the dead ability users. Within the base, he was already considered as good as executed.

If he could still be of use, no one would object.

Soon, the secret of Ju Bei’s “space ability” without any energy was exposed and vanished along with the confiscation of his belongings. The ring ended up in Gou Liang’s possession.

The research head said, “We’ve found that this is actually a very practical space storage technology, and it’s not impossible to replicate. We’ve already formed a dedicated team to develop a similar space compression device.”

If successful, it would greatly improve the safety of ability users going out to hunt.

The white-haired head sincerely invited Gou Liang to lead the team. Gou Liang was very interested, but declined the title since he couldn’t stay at Jiuzhou permanently, agreeing only to participate as an ordinary member.

After official matters were settled, the old man mentioned another thing: “That Ju Bei keeps demanding to see Teacher Tang, saying he knows your greatest secret. If you refuse, he’ll reveal it. We didn’t take him seriously, but thought you might be curious, so I’m passing it along.”

“My secret?”

“I hear we have a mental ability user here who can read thoughts—perhaps we could ask him to communicate with Mr. Ju on your behalf.” Gou Liang smiled slightly. “I’m curious myself what secret I supposedly don’t know.”

Soon, the mental ability user completed a one-sided exchange with Ju Bei.

When he emerged from the cell, his face was full of exasperation.

After describing Ju Bei’s mental state, he sneered: “He actually thinks this world is a novel. All the effort we put in to survive—he thinks it’s not worth mentioning… He’s seriously ill.”

Yu Lin and Zhou Gao were floored by Ju Bei’s “true love” theory about Jia Nanzhu.

Having observed A City’s upper circles for years, they were well aware that Jia Nanzhu was a womanizer with countless lovers.

Ju Bei had only been one of his “transactions” two months before the apocalypse, yet he’d mistaken a simple exchange for love. It was laughable.

As for anything he said, no one was willing to believe it.

Because, in the apocalypse, they knew better than anyone: the suffering they endured, the hope they bore, all the sacrifices and the protection they gave—that was their life.

Their existence was not to fulfill someone’s delusional fantasy.

They were all the main characters of their own lives.

The betrayal by Jia Nanzhu and Ju Bei didn’t dampen Jiuzhou’s spirits for long. The very next day, the joyous news of Shi Buyu and Gou Liang’s wedding had the whole base buzzing.

On the wedding day, even the usually lifeless research lab came alive.

When Ju Bei was kindly told the news, his expression twisted completely.

He couldn’t understand—why was it that, though they were both outsiders, their fates were worlds apart? Why hadn’t the world collapsed when the “main character” had died? Why didn’t anyone believe him when he said Gou Liang was a strange monster? Why was the one who had “ruined” his world not punished, but instead rewarded with happiness…

He had too many doubts, but no one would answer them—and no one cared.

On their wedding night, after finishing an intense “battle,” Shi Buyu held the sweat-drenched Gou Liang in his arms, gently stroking him. Suddenly, he said, “I don’t know why, but I keep feeling like this isn’t the first time we’ve gotten married. It’s like…” He turned his head, kissed the ring on Gou Liang’s finger pressed to his own cheek, and smiled. “Like I’ve already trapped you with this ring many, many times.”

“I get it.” Gou Liang kissed him with a smile. “We’re an old married couple now.”

Shi Buyu sighed dramatically. “Xiao Keng’er, are you telling me you’ve already lost the thrill of being with me? That’s not allowed!”

He poured his passion into him with even greater force, making sure their married life was anything but stale—Shi Buyu treasured his Xiao Keng’er like nothing else.

Panting, Gou Liang said, “It’s fine. My freshness guarantee lasts for… mm… a lifetime.”

“Good boy.”

Shi Buyu kissed him. “I’ll be loyal to you for life, my commander.”

Gou Liang felt his heart grow warm, but said bluntly, “You call Major General Yao ‘commander’ too… ah—gentler, I was wrong…”

Shi Buyu quickly shook Yao’s leathery face out of his mind and forcefully shoved every unrelated man out of Gou Liang’s thoughts as well.

After a month-long honeymoon, Shi Buyu brought Gou Liang back to the southern coast, while Yu Lin and the others remained in the Death Zone, tasked with training Jiuzhou’s survivors.

A sea full of delicacies made the perfect seasoning for their private paradise.

Thirty years later, Major General Yao passed away peacefully.

Shi Buyu had long since become the spiritual leader of Jiuzhou Base, and he took over without any obstacles.

Just before taking command, Shi Buyu had slain the world’s only king-level mutant beast—a level-nine dragon—and in doing so forced all mutant beasts back into the Death Zone.

The apocalypse was declared over, ushering in a new era of coexistence and competition between ability users and mutant beasts.

A new age had begun.

Watching the people celebrating wildly, Gou Liang was filled with emotion.

With his level-nine visual ability, he could see the main god’s law power flowing in the sky. It had become unusually gentle, no longer brimming with oppressive despair.

A long, long time ago, he had imagined countless times the scene of humanity’s great victory. But in the end, that fading belief had been destroyed along with his origin world.

Shi Buyu embraced Gou Liang, smiling as he talked about how, once the new Huaxia nation was built, he would step down so they could live freely together. Seeing Gou Liang’s distant gaze, he followed his eyes to the sky imbued with the main god’s law—only to see a completely different scene from Gou Liang’s.

A blood-soaked Gou Liang, panicked crowds, and a world slowly being devoured by the void…

He heard Gou Liang shout, “You thieving heavens, if you want my life, I’ll defy you to the end!”

Gou Liang’s eyes were firm, full of stubborn defiance, but no matter how he resisted, the world still headed toward destruction.

Shi Buyu watched helplessly as Gou Liang’s body was swallowed by the void, turning into empty nothingness—

His heart clenched violently, and he pulled Gou Liang into a crushing embrace.

Shi Buyu had no doubt that what he saw was exactly what Gou Liang had once experienced. That unwilling, despairing march toward death—he swore he would never let Gou Liang endure it again.

【Ding!! Level-One Warning!!!】

【Target has identified the executor as a non-native soul of the current world. Main god law in effect. The Executor will be expelled in three seconds! Executor must immediately push the final 1% mission progress!!】

What?!

Gou Liang turned to Shi Buyu in shock.

Shi Buyu’s eyes were red, his gaze sorrowful yet gentle. He said, “Xiao Keng’er, no matter what you’ve been through, I will never let you suffer again.”

Gou Liang reached for his tear-reddened eyes, urgently saying, “Shi Buyu, you’d better cry for me…”

Shi Buyu shook his head with a smile, kissed Gou Liang’s palm, and said, “I’m not crying. I know you don’t like to see me cry.”

“Cry for me!!!”

The roaring Gou Liang’s soul was forcibly yanked back into his sea of consciousness by the main system!

The main god’s law descended immediately. Shi Buyu’s eyes widened as he shielded Gou Liang’s now lifeless body beneath him—

After a flash of lightning, both of them vanished from the spot.

The celebrating crowd was frozen mid-motion, time and space halting for an instant. At the same moment, the world regressed from a B-rank world back to a transition world, it was annihilated into the void.

In the sea of consciousness—

Gou Liang stared blankly at the blood-red, bolded words: 【Current mission progress: 99%】【Mission Failed】, and could only say one thing: Lord god, I… f***!!!!

And I’ve decided to stockpile chapters of the next arc and release it in one go. So plz wait for me patiently~ (´▽`ʃ♡ƪ)