Especially for those around the place where the event happened. They could even feel a significant shaking. Those that are nearby have suffered losses.
Hopkin’s expression is frozen. It is a scene seen through the camera, of course, without audio. Yet a sound that is like the reaper’s horn, sickening, deafening, is echoing next to him, as if it was right in front of him.
He is shocked so much that the world in front of him is swivelling and his ears are ringing. He is dizzy and spinning. All his organs are hurting.
He has seen Bright walk in with his own eyes; he has seen flames and black smoke burst out of the windows all the way from the top floors to the bottom floors with his own eyes; he has seen the whole building collapse, turning into rubble with his own eyes.
He has clearly been able to comprehend what has happened, but he is repeatedly questioning his own perception.
No, it’s impossible!
Perhaps Bright did not walk in, and only a man with a similar silhouette did.
Perhaps the video feedback is not live. Someone has hacked in and has been playing a fake video, deceiving his eyes.
Perhaps Bright has already noticed something strange, successfully escaped and is not buried under the pile of rubble…
And yet, repeatedly checking the screen that shows everything is normal, the messages of consolation flowing in one by one, and the sympathetic and regretful expressions of those around him are all reminders to him –
This is real.
Hopkin is going mad.
He is holding onto his last straw of hope, hurrying his way to the scene of the explosion. The rubble appears larger than it did under the camera, and more terrifying. From the large, dispersed stonework and concrete, to snapped rebar, the force of the explosion is evident.
The scene is being urgently cleaned up. The related personnel are all working on their posts. There are those fighting the fires, those measuring radiation and toxin levels, those organising search and rescue operations, those overseeing evacuation procedures, those preventing unrelated persons from intruding…
Hopkin never thought organised responses would have made him so angry. The man’s situation is unknown, yet they are only treating it as a mission, as a job, coldly responding to it, utterly indifferent. Not a single shred of hurry or empathy in their actions. It is no different from them finishing a business proposal or selling a crate of drinks.
They are only working diligently under the pressure of the Inner City aristocrats. Even if they knew their work was meaningless, they had to put in all their effort so that they could respond positively to their upper management.
Nobody believes someone could live under that kind of explosion.
The rescue operation has sent out sniffing rats, rescue dogs and deployed various equipment, searching about the building’s ruins. The device makes a ding ding ding sound, and they are energised and start digging immediately. They report to their supervisors that an incomplete body has been found. More accurately, it’s not a corpse, but pieces of human flesh.
“It’s not him.” Hopkin is pale as he uses a device to identify the genetic material of the broken body that was excavated.
For over 10 hours, Hopkin’s emotions have been through an endless amount of both dying and rejuvenating.
He’s anxious there’s no news, he’s more anxious there’s news. Every time a broken piece of flesh is dug up, his chest goes tight, as if being fried raw on top of oil, hurting, painful.
He identifies them piece by piece, and is relieved time and time again.
Good, it is not him…
Sometimes more complete corpses are recovered from the ruins. Autopsies reveal their deaths long before the explosion, having been through intense fighting before their deaths.
This is an ominous signal. When the explosion occurred Bright is deep behind enemy lines, fighting with them. Could he have discovered the abnormalities and escaped in time?
People are soothing and counselling him directly or indirectly, “it’s just a slave. There’s no need for you to harm yourself for him. We have his DNA anyway, so let’s just copy one.” “Number 199 is certainly valuable. The show is planning to publish a special issue for him…” “However much you’re worried, there’s no need for you to stay here yourself. Just let those under you watch it.”
No, he only wants the Bright that would love him, that would hate him, that would cherish him, that would punish him. They’ve only just confirmed each other’s wishes, how could they separate like that? And it’s the cruelest, the death that does them apart forever and ever.
The noisy surroundings have made him feel detached from reality. Those people without faces seem to be spinning around him really quickly, as if laughing, as if screaming and wailing. Hopkin is dazed, his body is quivering. He injects himself with a shot, and the shadows scarper. He barely focuses his attention, setting his smart chip to block all news, and stays behind at the scene in solitude.
Hopkin does not fear death, nor does he believe in the existence of a deity.
No matter who it is, the most important thing in the world to them would only be enjoyment. All the other things are more or less unimportant.
Enjoyment, both physical, and mental. He has consumed the most elegantly prepared food, taken a sip from the most exquisite wine, witnessed the most captivating scenery, and acquired the best romantic partner for himself. This enjoyment makes him feel alive, and meaningfully alive.
Whether something like God exists or not is unimportant.
People live for themselves, for their own enjoyment. All language discussing a deity are falsehoods. They are self-validating deceptions proposed by the weak; they are tools used by the strong to rule over the world.
Sometimes all the things in the world seem to be in a dismal state. People are disgusted at each other, and they hate each other. When they fall into suffering, they will seek enjoyment to blind themselves. They smoke, they drink, they do drugs, they go on romantic pursuits. Like that, the suffering leaves them behind, and they won’t have to think about them.
And when even enjoyment can’t help them, they will recall their deities. They cry, they beg, they convert, they pray, they hope there will be an omnipotent and benevolent deity that would extend Their helping hand to them and save them from their suffering.
And so, beginning from this terrifying day, he starts believing in God.
He did not believe in God originally, nor kindness in man for that matter. And he thinks that nobody actually believes it either, even if there were those that would talk about them all the time. They only do so to both deceive themselves and deceive others.
Yet from this day on, he will become the most devout believer in the existence of God. He will debase himself to pray in the most subservient way for God’s mercy, to save him, to return his lover to him.
In the dark, Bright’s eyes are shut tight.
The moment he heard the ominous tick and tock, he starts running outside directly. Fortunately for him, he ran towards the direction where the structural beam is. The robust structure withstood the most severe of the impact, and did not end up reduced into pieces or dust. It formed a hive-like void in the collapse. As the explosion took out the foundations underground, the floor has sunk deep and he is buried at the very bottom. Normally, survivors could live inside empty pockets in a collapsed building for more than two weeks. If the rescue operation commences in time, it is completely possible that they will be rescued.
Bright can hear voices working about a dozen metres above him. He estimates the time and it will be about two hours before he is discovered. He sighs, and closes his eyes to rest. He is actually not anxious at all. He hasn’t been hurt. It’s just that his head hurts, and he needs time alone to lay out his thoughts.
Under the force of the impact, his brain has suffered a blow. He fainted for a while due to that, and when he woke up, he realised something about his brain is off. His life took a turn about 108 thousand miles apart, far enough for him to have finished retrieving the mantras and returned to Mount Huaguo .
He fucked his mortal enemy.
He fucked his mortal enemy many times.
He fell in love with his mortal enemy.
Bright is in quite the predicament.
After feeling shock, speechlessness, suspicion, self-suspicion and repeated self-suspicion, Bright decides to temporarily put the issue of his emotions aside, because it is like a virus-afflicted folder that you can’t delete nor ignore. None of the anti-virus software is useful. The moment you run the computer it crashes. The moment it crashes it restarts. Bright could only lock it up for now, and isolate it, pretend it’s not there, and carefully consider other affairs instead.
Deducing from clues present, Bright has basically worked out how the events transpired. It was probably after his first doing it with Hopkin, his brain was modified by Hopkin and he treated the aristocrat as his lover. The two then spent an amount of decadent time together.
He is angry, and he rightly should, when his free will is twisted like that, with his body intentionally modified like that (even if it were less extreme than the more ambitious versions), but this has definitely transgressed his borderlines. Like the reverse scale of a dragon, touching it is lethal.
Besides anger, there are other emotions as well, and possibly because of their existence, his anger is not so obvious, as if diluted. It’s like a bitter cup of tea being compared to one as bitter but that also has sourness, stickiness or even sweetness, when the bitterness of the first cup would clearly be highlighted. While the latter one would taste awkward, the bitterness would not be so obvious.
On the other hand, Bright is glad that there is a silver lining in him continuing to pursue his plan of escape without delay while in love with Hopkin. Despite some differences with his original plan, Bright can still see a positive development out of all this.
Without Hopkin having intervened, he would have taken his little guy Hope to run away while being in the dark about his five senses being connected. He would probably have been caught by the people in the City and executed before even having left the City proper. This is a blessing in disguise. Bright is lamenting how fascinating fate can be.
Bright then locks all his emotions back inside. Right now the most important thing is to make his goals clear, and make a new plan.
In helping the werewolves, the underground waterways can no longer be used. He must come up with another way. Currently, the most effective method is to take Hopkin hostage to knock the door of the damn City open.
Before that, he must have his revenge.
Those who have blown him up, those who have lied to him, those who have modified him… He will have his revenge one by one!
His goals are clear, and yet…
Above, he can faintly hear people talking, “signs of life detected… a miracle… report to the higher-ups…”
Bright is agitated, never before has he been so conflicted.
——It’s time for your acting ability examination! Pretend you love him! It’s simple, just recall how you treated him before…
——NOOOOOOOO! But I’m not ready! I really can’t do this! It’s beyond the testing criteria and I don’t know how to do this!!
Bright’s control over his expression is loosening.
He is yelling madly inside – how do I face the Shithead! That Shithead who has told me “I love you” while moaning quietly and squirming about under me! I want to beat him up and kill him but now I also want to fuck him a bit! Will I have to rape him before killing him? Or take his heart and body for myself and then torture him physically and mentally before killing him? But then, I would have been no better myself either! I want to strangle myself who just thought that.
That trojan virus has started to invade other folders again, and is infecting his normal data and programmes.
Author’s notes: The Hopkin’s disguise exposed part you wanted.