Chapter 53: Offering Death for Destiny (A Combined Chapter)

Unnamed, dilapidated residential complex, Building 11, Apartment 404.

The doors and windows were tightly shut, thick curtains blocking out the light.

Inside, seven members of the Ruthless faction sat or leaned against the sofa. The television was on, broadcasting the current affairs news of District Nine.

[Recently, our district’s departments have collaborated closely, engaging in friendly negotiations with District Eight to increase trade exchanges…]
[Following the new guidelines issued by the Upper City Council, we have refined the division of responsibilities among departments…]
[In recent years, our district’s GDP has steadily risen, with ongoing in-depth exploration of the Hidden Gate, playing a vital role in the integrated human supply cycle system…]
[We resolutely implement the integrated human cycle program, unwavering for 200 years, strictly enforcing all policies of the Upper City Council, never faltering, steadfastly following the pace of the Upper City, never falling behind.]
[Order is stable, life is prosperous; everyone should contribute their value to the integrated human cycle system.]
[We firmly believe that in the near future, humanity’s footsteps will tread every corner within the Hidden Gate, and the lost world will surely return to humanity’s embrace.]

Snap—

A large hand smashed the TV screen, the cracked display darkening halfway, the anchor’s refined face and the subtitles shattered into a twisted mess.

“Every day it’s the same old clichés—I’m about to throw up from hearing it,” Hong Hu muttered irritably, shaking off the shards in his hand.

A woman with a scar stitched across half her face frowned and asked, “Are you nervous? Afraid?”

The other five members instinctively straightened as she spoke.

Hong Hu shook his head. “I’m not scared.”

The woman’s tone was indifferent. “It’s alright. Fear and anxiety before death are natural physiological reactions; there’s no need to hide or run from them. But after we die, our bodies will pave the stairway to the sky.”

Hong Hu exchanged a glance with several Ruthless members; fervor gleamed in their eyes. They stood simultaneously, placing their right fists over their hearts: “For fate, we offer death!”

The woman turned toward the curtains, a fierce glint flickering in her eyes as she said coldly, “To ensure the handoff goes smoothly, before we die, we must drag along some more sacrificial lambs.”

The Ruthless members nodded silently in agreement, each drawing their weapons to make final preparations.

Suddenly, Hong Hu’s curiosity overcame him. “Boss, since we’re all going to die anyway, can you at least tell me who the contact is? And what’s the cargo?”

The boss fixed him with a burning gaze, noting the lingering naivety on his face.

She cracked a sinister smile; the necrotic muscle around her mouth twitched, the scar writhing like a centipede, grotesque and terrifying.

Hong Hu nervously scratched his head. “Boss, I’m sorry, I won’t ask.”

But she did not scold him. Instead, she spoke gently, “It’s precisely because we’re all going to die that we don’t need to know.”

Silence fell over the room; the hourglass of death hovered above each of them.

“It’s here!”

A member by the window pulled aside a corner of the curtain, peering at the complex’s entrance.

A large contingent of Survey Corps soldiers in dark blue uniforms appeared, quickly dispersing to seal every exit. The nearby snack street was cleared and placed under lockdown.

Four peculiar devices were positioned symmetrically around the complex, forming a square.

In the next moment, jet-black lasers shot out, aiming straight at the base of the Upper City.

The massive pedestal of the Upper City received the beams; among the multicolored lights, four flickered twice before turning pitch black.

Then, black beams descended vertically, expanding midair into a square frame—an infinitely tall black box, falling from the Upper City, destined to envelop the dilapidated complex precisely.

The boss lowered her head to her phone, sending a prewritten message to an unmarked number.

—Fate Squad 117, requesting shutdown!

No reply came. The infinite black box, moving at light speed, sealed the complex, cloaking it in darkness, cutting off all surveillance and signal transmission—a death zone.

The boss stared at the phone’s signal bars, now showing an X, expression unmoved. She pulled out the SIM card and crushed it into fragments between her fingers.

The old complex’s soundproofing was poor.

Soon, shouts erupted from upstairs and downstairs, then residents opened windows, calling out.

“What’s going on?”

“Did the Upper City lights go out so early today?”

“Why’s there no signal?”

“Look! Our complex is covered by some black box! What’s happening? Can anyone explain? This is scary.”

“We can’t see outside the box. Wait, someone’s coming in—it looks like the Survey Corps, and they’re all armed.”

Two minutes later.

Some impatient residents rushed out of the building, gathering in groups in the courtyard, bravely using their phone flashlights to approach the complex’s entrances.

Most windows were pushed open; heads poked out to look, all eyes fixed in the same direction.

Click.

The synchronized sound of rifles being cocked.

Not a single word of communication followed; instead, a torrential hail of bullets poured forth, turning the ground into a pockmarked sea of blood.

Phones dropped to the floor, their screens illuminating the mutilated bodies in ghastly crimson hues.

Without control, the phones soon went dark, and the darkness swallowed the corpses.

The gunfire erupted and ceased suddenly; the entire complex seemed to have been muted, countless throats choked, voices lost.

Then the silence broke, volume exploding into waves of screams so piercing they seemed capable of collapsing the buildings.

But what they didn’t realize was that no matter how loud they shouted, no sound could escape to disrupt the peace outside.

Thanks to the wisdom of the Upper City Council and the power of technological advancement, order and tranquility were preserved for the majority with utmost ease.

Captain Zhou Jian of the District Nine Survey Corps Second Battalion surveyed the carnage with a face devoid of emotion, as if looking at nothing more than a pile of withered leaves.

“Anyone in this complex could be a hidden Ruthless member, posing a grave threat.”

“By order of our superiors, this sweep will leave no survivors; no one must escape.”

“Teams Two and Three, maintain perimeter security; Team One’s target is Building 11, Apartment 404.”

Zhou Jian took the megaphone handed to him by his deputy; his cold voice echoed within the black box.

With the order given, a squad removed their helmets, donned night-vision goggles, and hurried toward Building 11.

Hong Hu twitched his face in frustration. “They call us Ruthless—who exactly are the Ruthless ones?”

No one from Squad 117 answered; their eyes were ice-cold, clearly accustomed to such scenes.

“The sickles reaping the grass were drawn in by us. So, in a sense, they all died because of us. Calling us Ruthless isn’t entirely wrong.”

The boss pulled a two-meter-long greatsword from behind the sofa, stomped the floor, smashed through the window, and plunged four meters from the building, creating a massive crater.

“Then let them see the terror of the Ruthless!”

Before she even landed, her ferocious roar—like a tigress’s battle cry—drowned out the responses from the megaphone.

Several soldiers who couldn’t dodge were crushed to pulp; blood and flesh splattered wildly as the greatsword sliced through the air with a deadly shriek.

“Fire!”

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—the dense hail of bullets formed a metallic storm, but the greatsword cut resolutely forward against the barrage.

“For fate, we offer death!”

Amid the mad laughter, more human-shaped explosives fell from the upper floors.

Inside Building 14.

A special agent pulled aside a curtain, looking down with a calm voice: “If the patrol doesn’t act soon, the Survey Corps will steal all the credit.”

Wang Yilin waved his hand.

Behind him, the patrol captain was fully armed and charged downstairs.

The sound of hurried footsteps startled residents into hiding behind their peepholes.

“It’s not the Survey Corps.”

“It’s the patrol.”

“Help us! The Survey Corps are crazy—they want to kill us all!”

A young man flung open his door, ignoring the woman’s pull behind him, treating the suddenly appeared captain as a lifeline.

The descending footsteps halted; the captains exchanged glances, their breaths heavy and tense.

Feng Ju, having returned to the ranks after delivering his badge, stood in the second row.

He watched the approaching man, took a deep breath, roughly pushed aside the captain in front, and with a step forward, slashed out with the patrol’s standard long knife.

A ring of blood bloomed around the man’s neck; his head rolled down the stairs.

Feng Ju looked down at the headless corpse, releasing his clenched jaw with a breath: “Don’t blame me. You were all going to die tonight anyway. Better to let the patrol have the credit than the Survey Corps.”

He turned to the captains and said gravely, “Brothers, there are only a few heads of Ruthless members, but these others number in the thousands. We can’t just pick the small heads and leave the big ones to the Survey Corps.”

Without waiting for their reactions, Feng Ju strode toward the woman collapsed on the floor, brandishing his knife.

Having witnessed the coldness of the Upper City special agents and the ruthlessness of the Survey Corps, Feng Ju’s values had been refined and hardened.

For those from the Lower City who wanted to rise, sacrifice and resource maximization were essential.

He had once abandoned his son to devote all resources to his daughter—this was the same principle.

Now, discarding pointless mercy for their own kind, he exchanged the worthless heads of others for his own merits and his superiors' favor.

All in the name of maximizing benefit.

Slash!

The blade cut through the woman’s neck, splattering Feng Ju’s face with blood.

His eyes glowed red, murmuring like a man possessed: “I’m not wrong. In the Lower City, to live with dignity, you must abandon all unnecessary things, seize every resource and hope, and gamble on that sliver of reward and future.”

“This is the survival law of the Lower City. I’m not wrong; I’m merely following and enforcing this rule.”

Some captains shrank back in disgust at Feng Ju’s bloodied face, while others, awakened, tightened their grip on their knives and followed him.

The patrol split into two groups: one rushed to the building base, charging desperately into the bloody battlefield; the other went door to door, preparing to carpet sweep every building.

The special agent listened to the rising and falling screams echoing through the stairwells, his face flushed with a strange excitement.

“Seems like there are still some smart people under Director Wang who understand my meaning—good.”

Wang Yilin nodded with a forced smile.

The agent patted him on the shoulder warmly. “Don’t feel guilty. Those who die tonight bear all the sins on [Fate]’s head.”

“[Fate] moved into this complex and brought death and slaughter. Any rational blank citizens should understand—it’s [Fate] who doomed them.”

“Even if they go to hell, that debt belongs only to [Fate], not us.”

Wang Yilin twitched his lips, knowing the agent’s logic was twisted, but given the agent’s noble rank, he dared not argue and smiled in agreement.

“The agent is right. The blame has a head and the debt a master. These blank citizens’ deaths are all [Fate]’s doing.”

“And we even avenged them. They should be grateful and pray for us at the gates of the underworld.”

…..

Outside the black-boxed dilapidated complex, many looked up at the beam shooting from the Upper City pedestal to the ground, their eyes shining with curiosity.

“That’s around the west side of the city.”

Many guessed the location; some bored or overly curious tried to approach the “black pillar,” hoping to peek inside and see what was happening.

But the closest they could get was the outer end of the snack street, where heavily armed Survey Corps blocked the reckless.

At the same time, everyone’s phones received an emergency SMS from the District Nine government:

—An organization named [Fate] has infiltrated the west city. The Survey Corps and patrol are sealing off and capturing them. Please avoid west city xxxx street and surrounding areas unless necessary to prevent danger.

—Members of this organization are Ruthless extremists, extremely dangerous and deranged. Survey Corps and patrol will capture all, leaving no one alive. Please remain calm.

Among the crowd outside the snack street stood a man wearing a hat. He lowered his head and coldly deleted two spam messages.

Then, another previously received message appeared:

—Fate Squad 117, requesting shutdown!

His finger hovered briefly, then he hit delete. Along with it vanished a failed reply message: Approved. Wish you not to walk alone.

“Not to walk alone” held two meanings: a wish for Squad 117 to stay intact with no one left behind; also a hope they would take down a few enemies before dying, so it wouldn’t be too lonely on the other side.

Sadly, none of these well-wishes ever sent successfully.

The man chuckled bitterly. He didn’t even know their names or faces—the only image he had was the number [117].

He pocketed his phone, glanced once more toward the “black pillar,” and silently echoed, “For fate, we offer death!”

Then he turned and strode away.

All preparations complete. It was time to meet the contact and collect the cargo…