Right on Target (TARGET)
A colossal shadow swept across the dense clouds, its presence overwhelming, accompanied by a cacophony of heavy, chaotic noises, as if thousands were locked in battle. Yet the clouds were too thick, and even Su Heting’s enhanced eyes couldn’t discern what it was.
Xiao Gu braced against the wind with his arms: “Is that eunuch really not settling a personal grudge here?!”
“This is endless…” Su Heting’s hood flapped violently in the gale, tightening around his neck as if someone were yanking it. He raised his voice: “Why isn’t that damn eunuch dead yet?!”
“It respawns,” Yu Cheng hurriedly adjusted his glasses. “It can’t die!”
The fierce wind howled everywhere, like hyenas in the night, tearing at everything in its path.
The Mechanical Eunuch gazed down at the darkened city, reveling in its borrowed authority. It longed to avenge the headshot of this damn Inspector had dealt it, but bound by the Main God System’s protocols, it couldn’t act on its own.
Tonight’s death quota had already been met—the red light had to come on. Daylight was the forbidden hunting hour for gods and demons, and the Mechanical Eunuch had to issue the ban before sunrise.
Perhaps the colossal shadow had lingered too long in the clouds, drawing Inspector’s suspicion. He slipped his pen back into his pocket, not sparing the Mechanical Eunuch so much as a glance.
The eunuch seethed at Inspector’s calm indifference, but the red light on its mask had already lit up, signaling the end of the night.
With a disdainful snort, the eunuch waited until the red fully covered its face before haughtily raising a hand and declaring, “Halt—!”
Bathed in crimson light, it resembled a flashing control tower atop a building. The storm and wind seemed to have been waiting for this command. As the word “halt” echoed across the district, the tempest abruptly weakened, retreating into the darkness along with the eerie, lifeless atmosphere, leaving only wreckage in its wake.
“It’ll take a while for dawn to break,” Dong Fang said, noticing Su Heting still staring at the sky, assuming he was waiting for sunrise. “The red light means it’s over. We can rest now.”
“Hmm…” Su Heting withdrew his gaze from the shadow and pointed upward. “You guys fight aerial battles too?”
“Not often. The appearance of gods is rare, and our team…” Dong Fang trailed off mid-sentence, then began deflecting. “I’ll tell you about it if we ever run into one.”
If?
Su Heting gave him a strange look. “You’re that sure I’ll come back?”
The Punishment Zone was like a slaughter game the Main God System had cooked up on a whim. Su Heting was a survivor who had already escaped the Light Rail District—there was no reason for him to keep risking his life here. He could just log off and run. Whether he’d actually succeed was another question, but Dong Fang’s trust in him seemed overly optimistic.
Unlike the flustered Yu Cheng, Dong Fang grabbed his own hair and laughed with easy familiarity. “Xingtian’s taken a liking to you—it won’t let you go that easily. Anyway, come back a few more times, hang out with us, and we’ll all get to know each other… Right, Boss?”
The Boss was busy yanking the heads off Yanguang’s corpse. Each head still had hair, strung along Yanguang’s chains like a macabre necklace.
At the sound of “Boss”, the heads wailed mournfully in unison: “Boss! Boss!”
"These heads are called Flying Head Fiends," Yu Cheng finished his earlier explanation, gesturing toward Su Heting with his chin. "They have no bodies, just heads that fly around like drones every day. Their night vision is excellent, and they know everything. Yanguang often catches them and hangs them on his chest like radios."
Yanguang loved light but was prone to melancholy when walking at night. Perhaps to prevent them from growing uncontrollably and running wild, the Flying Head Fiends existed. These creatures flitted about all day, spying and eavesdropping, recording others' secrets and whispering them in the dead of night. They shared a collective memory, spreading information among themselves with no secrets kept.
—A detestable thing.
"The car's totaled," Xiao Gu squatted nearby, lamenting. "We'll have to steal another one. Cat, wanna come with me?"
Su Heting wasn't easily persuaded: "You paying?"
"Don't be so cold," Xiao Gu clasped his hands together, putting on a pitiful expression, leveraging his eight- or nine-year-old appearance to act shamelessly. "Please, big brother, without a car, we can't go anywhere."
Su Heting said, "Don't you have a cannon? What's there to fear?"
Xiao Gu blinked: "My legs are too short to reach the gas pedal."
Su Heting: "..."
By the time Su Heting followed Xiao Gu away, the sky was already tinged with the first light of dawn, and the crisp scent of a post-rain morning filled the air.
Inspector threw a thick chain to the ground and stepped on one of the Flying Head Fiends.
The fiend didn't dare to struggle, crying and pleading, "Don't kill me, don't kill me!"
Inspector said nothing, merely pressing the fiend's face firmly into place.
The fiend's bulging eyes were bloodshot and its scalp prickling under Inspector's gaze. It knew who Inspector was—precisely why it was so terrified. Its lips turned pale and blue, no longer daring to babble, only parting slightly with each sob.
Inspector leaned down, his shadow engulfing the fiend, his voice devoid of warmth in the morning silence: "You followed 016?"
The fiend winced in pain under the foot, its face flushing red and brows furrowed tightly as eyes kept darting wildly. It wailed, "We didn't dare! We weren't following him—we just happened to run into that team investigating Zhurong. The leader called himself 016, said he was a squad captain under the Commander. We were just curious—how could mere mortals dare investigate the Fire God—"
Its breathing grew ragged.
Inspector remained silent, but the weight of that silence pressed down until the fiend was nearly incoherent: "We didn't mean to see it..."
Inspector asked, "See what?"
Sweat beaded on the fiend's temples: "We saw fire... spreading across that area. 016 was hit by Zhurong's tracking cannon, screaming for help in the rain... but the comms were dead. Zhurong's war chariot rolled over him, crushing his chest..."
Yu Cheng took off his glasses, wiping the moisture from his face, unwilling to listen further.
"And then he died," the fiend sobbed uncontrollably. "That's all we saw, Commander!"
By now, the sky was fully bright.
The fiend continued to wail, "We never spread rumors—"
BANG!
The fiend's voice cut off abruptly. The surrounding heads fell into an eerie silence as blood and brain matter splattered onto the ground.
Inspector holstered his gun: "Dispose of it."
Su Heting scanned the towering skyscrapers bathed in sunlight, his gaze sharp and vigilant.
The Punishment Zone in daylight had a desolation laid bare before the eyes. Among these steel jungles, there was no greenery, nor any people. The tallest skyscrapers reached over three hundred meters and densely packed like tombstones, devoid of any design.
"Buildings refresh," Xiao Gu put on his child-sized sunglasses. "Basically, everything here refreshes except for people."
"The prisoners in the Light Rail District aren’t just you few," Su Heting said. "Where are the others?"
"Everywhere," Xiao Gu stomped the ground, signaling Su Heting to look down. "People hide like rats in the underground pipes."
Su Heting glanced down, feeling the road scorch his feet.
"The underground pipes are safe, but there’s no food. We organize scavenging teams regularly to come up and search for supplies. But there are too many people, and often, some sneak up when they’re starving," Xiao Gu said. "The funny thing is, even though this is a virtual world, we still get hungry."
Su Heting asked, "Does food refresh too?"
"It does, but not at fixed locations or times. You have to search for it. That’s why our team stays active above ground," Xiao Gu looked up at the sun again, sighing wistfully. "Ah, getting older. Who knows how much longer I’ll last? Might drop dead any day now. Might as well walk around for exercise."
Su Heting reminded him, "You’re only 36."
Prime of life.
"My body... spent six years soaking in a nutrient tank at the farm. Probably all my limbs have atrophied by now," Xiao Gu waved Su Heting over to follow him, chatting idly. "That’s why I look like a kid now. There are lots of old folks and kids here for the same reason—our real bodies are deteriorating. Not many of us can fight anymore."
Su Heting recalled the crowd forced out by the beak-cannon during the fight with Bifang—many of them were elderly. He stepped over a manhole cover: "So you were already here when I was locked in the Punishment Zone before?"
"Let me think..." Xiao Gu had a good memory but knew what to say and what to keep to himself. "Records say you escaped during the Great Explosion in '04. I wasn’t doing this back then."
Su Heting’s interest piqued. "So this group of five is newly formed?"
"Not exactly new. Been around for two years," Xiao Gu stopped there and changed the subject. "What’s the anti-system survival zone like?"
"Older than here," Su Heting had no fondness for any place. After comparing the high-rises on either side, he added, "And more run-down."
"Here’s not much better," Xiao Gu walked ahead before raising a hand to point. "See over there? That’s Divine Demon Territory."
Divine Demon Territory?
Su Heting looked over, but his view was blocked by the skyscrapers.
"Full of flashy mechanical deities," Xiao Gu said. "They sleep during the day."
"What," Su Heting narrowed his eyes. "They come out at night to party with the Mechanical Eunuchs?"
Xiao Gu laughed. "They roam the edges of the city, killing anyone who crosses the boundary. Rumor has it that beyond the Divine Demon Territory, at the end of the night, are countless hundred-meter-tall giant Buddha statues. We call that place ‘The End’—it’s the wall of this world."
This virtual world is just that small. Even when wandering in spirit, people haven't found freedom. Day and night exist at the whim of the Main God System, and food is obtained through respawns. The steel jungle has forged a cage for consciousness—a distorted microcosm of society.
Su Heting thought.
The Anti-Survival Zone is no different. The entire new world is rotten to the core.
"Who's been there?" He stared into the distance. "That endpoint."
Xiao Gu replied, "The Commander."
"You're a five-man team," Su Heting withdrew his gaze and shoving his hands into his pockets, his tone odd. "Why call him 'Commander'?"
"Who said we're just a five-man team? There are many of us," Xiao Gu adjusted his child-sized sunglasses, looking at Su Heting. "At our peak, we had 300 squads!"
"Oh," Su Heting didn't understand the look in Xiao Gu's eyes and asked bluntly, "Where are the others?"
The morning sun was unnervingly hot, the surroundings eerily silent.
Xiao Gu said, "They're all dead."
Author's Note:
① Flying Head Fiends: Heads with varying appearances, visible at night, adept at flying, often captured for surveillance purposes, and greatly favored by Yanguang's. Typically chatterboxes, fond of singing, and enjoy prying into others' privacy. — "Precision Sniper Chronicles"
①-1 Inspiration for the setting comes from "Youyang Zazu": In the streams and valleys of Lingnan, there were often people whose heads could fly, called Flying Head Fiends. The day before the head flew away, a mark would appear on the neck, like a red thread encircling it. Wings would grow on the head, allowing it to search for crabs, earthworms, and other things to eat in the mud along the riverbanks.
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