Simon raised the sword in his hand and swung it wildly, forcing the person beside him away.
"He's a rookie," the man in the long robe smiled. The stench of the garbage dump blew, lifting a corner of his robe and revealing a pair of sexy, hairy legs.
Skerry said, "He's no rookie! He's... uh, if he wanted to, you'd be dead by now!"
The hairy-legged man raised an eyebrow and punched Simon on the forehead. The impact of metal on skull vibrated with a buzzing sound.
Simon felt a moment of dizziness. When he came to his senses, the world was a pure white.
Bone white, stark white, silver white, cloud white, pearl white, metallic white, porcelain white... layer upon layer, wisps intertwining, floating alternately, as if immersed in an endless white river.
In the white, all other colors were blurred and dissolved. Simon felt his outer clothes, dark hair, yellow skin, muscles, and blood vessels gradually fade away.
This pure white world was the greatest malice itself, not only eroding the body but also solidifying all thought. His gaze remained forever on the white waves, and in the crevices of these waves, colorful memories emerged, distorted like hallucinations, faint like a clear dream.
Simon had to escape before he drowned.
...
In reality, Skerry saw the hairy-legged man punch his friend Hales' head to pieces. Fury immediately consumed him. He spread his arms, and his sleeve blades sprang out!
"Hah!" He swung his left hand, which was blocked by an upright palm, sparks flying.
His right hand lightly thrust out from under his ribs, like a spring swallow skimming the water, passing through the air without a ripple. Before reaching the opponent's abdomen, a cold star revealed its subtle fangs.
The hairy-legged man's sturdy body retreated slightly, his slippers kicking up a small breeze, like an agile bullfrog.
Skerry pursued relentlessly, his hands crossed, blades hidden between his palms, like a venomous snake flicking its tongue. His crossed palms, shaped like scissors, aimed at the hairy-legged man's throat.
An iron palm stood before the blades, more insurmountable than a ten-thousand-foot city wall.
Skerry drove his knee forward. The opponent's other palm struck his knee, making a crisp sound of bone breaking.
"Ah—!" Skerry fell to the ground.
The hairy-legged man raised his right foot, seemingly intending to finish him off.
The next instant, he flashed backward, and the stone bricks on the ground exploded.
"Dong—" The long, resonant sound of a bullet firing, like a bell in an empty valley, came from afar, echoing slightly in the alley, like the rustling of curtains.
The hairy-legged man looked at the tall building in the distance. At the top of the cold city building, in the howling wind, a black-robed assassin holding a sniper rifle revealed a brilliant smile.
"Listen to the sound of iron and fire!"
A bullet was chambered.
In the scope, the hairy-legged man showed a cold, sharp smile and raised his index finger at him.
A sense of crisis surged. The black-robed assassin abandoned his gun and jumped over the railing.
Leap of Faith!
He tumbled in mid-air, glimpsing his sniper position completely destroyed.
A missile struck the top floor.
Flames erupted, shockwaves rippled, and architectural debris scattered like arrows.
"How ruthless!" He gave the top floor the middle finger.
As the building was bombed, the onlookers on the street booed in disappointment.
A certain mech-man, munching on ice cream, grumbled to the orc next to him, "It must be someone from Temple Corporation again! So arrogant!"
Everyone chimed in.
"These guys are really something, huh!"
"How can they be so uncivilized? Brother, it makes things difficult for us."
"Let's find a way to blast them!"
The black-robed assassin jumped out of a trash can, brushed off the packaging bags from his body, and flicked off half a banana peel from his hood. Just as he was about to catch his breath, he suddenly rolled to the ground. A scorching laser beam melted a small hole in the ground, instantly vaporizing the liquid crystal material and destroying a surrounding area of dazzling neon lights.
The people around complained loudly, looking up.
In mid-air, a young man in a white robe stood leisurely on a gray manta ray-shaped flying vehicle, holding a long laser rifle, its muzzle aimed at the black-robed assassin.
Under his hood, the assassin revealed a wide smile.
"Interesting!"
...
In the pure white world, Simon's skeleton was exposed, his internal organs gradually dissolving. His eyeballs were long gone, and a layer of silvery-white fuzz grew on the surface of his brain, emerging from his eye sockets like drifting water plants.
He no longer had any senses, but his consciousness was extremely clear.
Torrential hallucinations, like a deep-sea labyrinth, light and shadow intertwined chaotically, vibrating slightly. Colors twisted into faces, tearing, shattering, with bizarre expressions.
Simon felt a strong sense of weightlessness. In the chaotic, hazy currents of illusion, a deep silhouette walked alone.
When it appeared, all the tumultuous delusions ceased.
Only that silhouette moved, its outline like water ripples, its form indistinct, yet its entire framework was filled with a wealth of details.
The texture of clothing, the glint of weapons, turning book pages, words moving like ants, fibrous roots extending like a net.
These details did not help Simon understand the silhouette's existence; they only made him more confused, more pained.
He let out a silent wail.
The silhouette slightly turned its head, a corner of its mouth curving upwards.
The hallucination collapsed, and Simon's consciousness returned to the pure white world.
His melted body restored to its original state. In this terrifying world, Simon meticulously observed with his reconstructed eyeballs. A persistent, irreducible green light had appeared here.
Like a glowing leaf suspended in a sea of clouds.
Simon instinctively felt this was the key to escape.
He moved his limbs, floating and swimming towards it. His fingertips touched the brilliant green light, and the world shattered with a roar!
A dashing swordsman stood on a mountaintop, the clear wind blowing his long, cloud-like hair.
"If for kindness and righteousness, neither glory, nor life, nor death, can be spared!"
"Wield my sharp sword—"
"Divide the River!"
With a single utterance, layers of clouds parted like waves!
...
Groups of soldiers surrounded the alley. They wore medieval armor and carried rifles, eerily like resurrected totems.
A light rain began to fall.
Skerry, with broken limbs, lay on the ground, spouting nonsensical remarks.
"The Assassin Master once said there are many things worth cherishing. I believed him too, until he was kicked out of his house by his wife."
"I think there are still many beautiful things in life to enjoy. My big sister downstairs told me this. She always leaves early and comes home late. Whenever I'm about to fall asleep, I can hear the sound of her high heels."
"The mattress seller downstairs said that what truly limits your dreams isn't the alarm clock, but poverty."
A soldier walked behind the hairy-legged man, a muffled electronic synthesized voice coming from under his helmet, "Mr. Incinerator, the sniper is escaping. Lord Guillotine has gone after him."
The hairy-legged man, nicknamed Incinerator, said indifferently, "This one is yours. You deal with the corpse yourselves."
"No problem, Eden will record your merit." The electronic synthesized voice carried an unsettling tone, like the ghostly murmurings of a technological era.
The hairy-legged man frowned, "I'm leaving now."
Skerry on the ground chuckled strangely, "Who said you could leave?"
"If I want to leave, can you stop me?"
"He can't, but I can."
Incinerator suddenly turned around, and a blue light, like a river plunging into a deep valley, engulfed his vision!
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Thank you for following the story this far.
If you want to read the later chapters in advance, I've uploaded more chapters to Patreon.
You can find them here: [patreon.com/Greyhounds]