Monster - Chapter 133
Chapter 133: Star City - Face to Face
But even if Tree knew from the beginning about Little Fool's connection to Pie, he couldn't have known so many specific details about me, then used them to build a false identity for Zhao Anfu and mislead Lou.
Lin Sandie turned her head, looking at her own reflection in the rear window. Her face was still expressionless, but compared to before, her gaze was much gentler as she looked at this face, identical to Little Fool's.
Sitting in the car on the way to Thriller Paradise, Lin Sandie clasped her hands in her lap and continued her train of thought.
Considering what Pie had said, Lin Sandie deduced that Lou must have had contact with Tree impersonating Pie in Leviathan. It was an act of opportunism. Lou's mental state was inevitably weakened from her long search for Little Rabbit, and Tree had invaded her mind.
Pie had said that Tree has an ability called "Backtracking." He can trace a target's past habits. The more familiar he is with the target, the more accurate the tracing becomes. Tree can become anyone—not just in appearance or speech, but his personality and habits can be replicated so perfectly they're indistinguishable from the real thing.
And Tree had been Pie's student for a very long time. He knew some of Pie's speech patterns, and he possessed a portion of Pie's divine authority. Based on things Lou had said, he learned that Little Rabbit was the most important person to her, so he designed a hunt.
...I still wasn't vigilant enough. Lin Sandie bit the knuckles of her hand. This hunt targeting Lou had begun the moment they entered Disorder Land. Tree found a suitable candidate in Carlo, who had a grandmother sacrificing herself to earn points in Thriller Paradise. Carlo would mention this to Lou from time to time, leaving her with the impression of a tragic family and an old woman who had suffered greatly.
Zhao Anfu was a woman from southern Leviathan. Her surname, Zhao, was chosen to correspond with the name I gave Little Fool, Zhao Jinyu. She was an elementary school teacher, patient and loving with children... A woman like that wouldn't be hard to find. But the sleep disorder and the girl she met in her dreams—what method was used to tamper with those?
From the moment they left Silver Stone City, Tree had been covertly attacking Lou's mental state. He knew a Sentinel's weaknesses. Besides all this groundwork, the attack in the castle at Thriller Paradise was another trap he set for Lou. Tree wanted to crush not only Lou's spirit but also her body. Fortunately, the attack in the castle wasn't entirely successful; the Universal Game Machine allowed Lou to recover.
But even so, Lou's mental state had still uncontrollably deteriorated.
Tree had scattered clues everywhere because he trusted that Lou's sharp senses would allow her to connect them herself. When Lou learned that the Little Rabbit who was so important to her had lived a tragic life, and that she had even unconsciously killed Little Rabbit with her own hands, no one could withstand such a heavy blow...
Without realizing it, Lin Sandie had bitten the skin on her knuckles. Although some details were still unclear, she had a general idea of what had happened. After blaming herself for not paying closer attention to Lou's condition, she quickly pulled her focus back to the present.
Putting herself in Tree's shoes, Lin Sandie realized that something even more terrible could happen next.
Tree was exiled after becoming Pie's successor. Now that Pie's next successor had appeared before him, he would do everything in his power to destroy Lou. Beyond the physical and mental attacks, his ultimate goal was to make Lou fall.
Tree would make Lou fall, just like him, and then be abandoned and exiled by Pie.
Lin Sandie also held a deep resentment for Pie. Although a part of her felt it wouldn't be so bad if Lou were abandoned and exiled by Pie—since being favored by Her was nothing but a set of shackles—that didn't mean she wanted to see Lou fall.
Lou studied the skeleton she had arranged on a hospital bed. The missing bones had all been found and put back in place, but many teeth were gone. They had been lost while she was alive, and Lou had no way of finding them now.
She had spent considerable time and effort to recover all of Zhao Anfu's remains. During this period, she was no longer as gentle as before; anyone who refused to cooperate was eliminated.
Most of Zhao Anfu's remains were found near this abandoned mental hospital, which had been converted into a horror attraction for Thriller Paradise. She decided to use it as a temporary base.
The skeleton lying on the bed before her didn't look particularly special, aside from signs of osteoporosis and some deformed joints. Lou examined it carefully for a while, then reached out and took hold of the hand bone, trying to use the unique bond between a Sentinel and a Guide to determine if these remains truly belonged to Little Rabbit.
She didn't feel anything special. The hand bone felt strange and rough to the touch—it was just a bone.
Is it because I broke my bond with Little Rabbit that I can't feel anything?
Lou gently set the hand bone down and began to think of another way to prove this was Little Rabbit. But after a long time, she realized she had no way of doing so. The Little Rabbit she had been with had always been in a state of Spirit Separation. In her world, Little Rabbit was just a cloth doll. She had never seen Little Rabbit's true form.
"Mom, are you there?" Lou didn't know how many times she had asked this, but she desperately needed some guidance.
Still, there was no response.
Lou sighed and gently lay down beside the skeleton, turning on her side to continue gazing at it. She couldn't feel any trace of Little Rabbit, but the Little Rabbit here was real, in the real world where she had grown up and lived.
"Thinking back now, Little Rabbit, were you planning to leave me from the very beginning?" Lou asked softly. A Little Rabbit as smart as her would have surely thought about practical matters if she had wanted to stay with her for the long term. She would have made some preparations, or at least told her something about her real self.
But Little Rabbit hadn't. She did have a reason she had to leave, but she had never explained it.
"Right, I was just a little brat back then, completely unreliable." Lou crossed her hands over her stomach and stared at the mold-covered ceiling of the hospital room.
In fact, she also thought her behavior back then had been very unreliable. Impatient, irritable, and unwilling to listen to anyone.
After breaking her binding with Little Rabbit, the latter never appeared again. Her romance with Miss Tudor also ended quickly due to the judgment of society. Afterward, she bid farewell to Zhao Tai and his sister and traveled to China alone. Along the way, she was brought into the Main World and truly became a Sentinel.
Those experiences with Little Rabbit had shaped Lou. During her solo travels, she found herself missing Little Rabbit more and more, until her bedeviled state deepened.
"I'm so sorry, Little Rabbit." Lou got off the bed and began to pull at the edge of the sheet, intending to wrap up Zhao Anfu's remains.
...
"The woman is in the room up ahead," Parni said softly, making several hand signals to his partner, Nina.
The two of them were bounty hunters who had hunted many targets together. The one they were tracking now was a woman named Lou. The bounty on her from the Rose Society had reached 120,000 points. If they could just cut off her head and bring it back, the two of them would be set for life in Disorder Land.
If we exchange the points for money and leave, we could buy a nice house and never have to work again.
Parni's mind wandered for a moment, imagining a wonderful life with Nina.
But high rewards also meant high risks. He looked at the corridor before them, covered in blood and corpses. It was like a meat grinder. Every bounty hunter who had tried to approach the room at the end of the third floor had been killed without exception. Their bodies were piled up on both sides of the hall, rotting and crawling with maggots, swarmed by flies. Even for someone who had seen a lot, the hellish scene in front of him made him want to vomit.
Parni lowered his head and put on his mask, his gray eyes fixed on the room at the end of the corridor. The room's iron door and walls were riddled with bullet holes.
Just then, Parni saw the door ahead of them suddenly crack open.
"Fire!!!" Parni's voice was filled with a terror he himself couldn't comprehend.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!" Several high-powered rifles erupted with a terrifying roar, their muzzles aimed at the already battered door.
Countless thin lines shot out from the room, dodging the bullets. Some were like arrows, others like ropes, surging forward like a torrent to pierce Parni's group as they tried to approach.
But these strange lines were soon blocked by an invisible barrier. Parni, who was at the front, felt a hand press down on the back of his neck, while another powerful hand gripped his wrist, forcing him to drop his rifle. He saw a pair of dusty black leather boots. His perspective shifted, and he saw a middle-aged woman in a black suit grab Nina from behind, locking an arm around her neck. Her gun also fell to the ground.
In that fleeting glance, Parni saw a young woman with pink hair standing at the end of the corridor. She stood expressionlessly amidst the pile of dead bodies, watching the scene unfold.
Parni's wrist was twisted, and his rifle clattered to the floor. But at the same time, the hand on the back of his neck suddenly released him, allowing him to stand up straight. To his horror, he saw the tall, dark-skinned man holding him being pierced by the lines emerging from the door and lifted into the air. The ends of the lines were dripping with blood. As the man was lifted and shaken by the lines, his blood splattered everywhere. The scene was like a beast devouring its prey.
"Leave this place," the middle-aged woman said to Parni and Nina in a cold voice as she drew the long blade from her waist. She then swung her blade at the lines.
She didn't need to tell them twice. What had happened in less than a minute was enough for experienced bounty hunters like Parni and Nina to realize that the woman named Lou was not someone they could handle—at least, not with their current preparations.
Decisiveness was a necessary trait for any competent bounty hunter. So, having made this judgment, Parni and Nina immediately turned and bolted for the stairs, fleeing the corridor that would likely haunt their nightmares for years to come.
As he passed the young woman with pink hair, Parni assumed she was another bounty hunter here to kill Lou. "Thanks," he said gratefully. "Hope you succeed where we failed."
Lin Sandie watched him and his partner leave in silence. If she had arrived a moment later, Lou would have broken the bottom line she had set for herself. She had said she wouldn't kill people.
But those two bounty hunters hadn't mutated into monsters. They were still human.
Lin Sandie's expression darkened.
In the distance, the lines that had pierced Mike were severed by Wei's blade. The door at the other end of the corridor opened completely, and Lou's figure appeared in Lin Sandie's sight. The two identical-looking women stood face to face, separated by a floor of corpses.
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