The torches lining the corridor guttered in their sconces, their flames stretched thin by the draft that always slithered through Slaughter City's veins. The sound of the crowd above was still echoing faintly — roars, chants, curses — but down here the noise had thinned, replaced by a silence that was somehow louder than any cheer.
Gu Kuangren walked slowly.
His height forced his head close to the uneven ceiling, shadows sliding across his long black hair as he passed each torch. His boots struck the stone floor with deliberate weight, each step leaving behind a dark print. The prints gleamed faintly red, though his victims' blood had begun to congeal.
Most fighters rushed out of the arena the moment the gates creaked open. The Killing Fields left a stink on the skin that most couldn't bear — the stink of death, of fear, of blood clinging to clothes and hair.
But Kuangren lingered.
He moved with the ease of a man returning home from a long day's labor, not someone who had carved through half a dozen bodies just minutes before. His hand still flexed as though gripping the sword, though the blade itself had already dissolved into nothing. His crimson eyes flickered faintly in the torchlight, as if each ember longed to escape and set the corridor ablaze.
He let his mind drift. Not to tactics or spirit power expenditure — those calculations were automatic, hardly worth conscious thought — but to the sensations.
The memory of a throat giving way beneath his strike. The sudden warmth of arterial blood spraying across his skin. The way fear twisted a man's face into something grotesque just before the light left his eyes.
His lips parted, his tongue brushing over his teeth, as if savoring a flavor that lingered long after the meal had ended.
Killing was not duty. Not necessity. Not even sport.
It was pleasure.
He stopped walking, leaning one broad hand against the cold wall. The stone felt slick — damp with water, or perhaps with blood that had seeped down over the years. His crimson eyes slid shut. For a moment, his mind replayed the last kill in slow motion: the sound of the man's scream choking off as Kuangren's blade pierced his lung, the desperate scrabble of fingers against stone as the body collapsed.
A shudder went through him. His chest rose, his breath sharp.
"Mad," they called him.
And maybe they were right.
But if madness was simply admitting what every soul here secretly felt, then Gu Kuangren would embrace the word gladly. The crowd craved the same thing he did. They weren't horrified by blood; they paid to see it spilled. They didn't flinch at death; they howled for it.
The only difference was honesty. He did not hide behind masks of survival or excuses of circumstance. He killed because he enjoyed killing. Because the act itself sang to something inside him that had no name.
A low chuckle escaped his throat, echoing in the empty corridor.
"You don't even try to hide it."
The voice cut through the silence like a thin blade.
Kuangren's crimson eyes snapped open, his head turning fractionally toward the sound.
There, half-shrouded in shadow where the torchlight died, stood a girl.
She leaned lightly against the wall, arms crossed, her body held in a posture that was somehow both casual and coiled tight. Her long black hair was tied at her back, a few loose strands catching the faint light. Her golden eyes glowed faintly — not with warmth, but with something cold, watchful, precise.
Kuangren didn't move. He simply let his gaze settle on her, crimson against gold.
"Enjoying the view?" he asked, his voice low, rough, but carrying an edge of amusement.
The girl didn't flinch. "I wanted to see if it was an act."
"An act?" Kuangren's lips curled, baring sharp white teeth.
"The way you fight," she said. Her tone was flat, but her words landed with precision. "You don't fight like the others. They're desperate. They're afraid. You aren't. You…" Her gaze narrowed slightly, golden light flashing. "…you enjoy it."
The corridor grew quieter, though it was already silent. Kuangren tilted his head, watching her the way a predator might watch another predator — curious, but dangerous.
"And?" he asked at last, his grin widening. "Am I guilty as charged?"
She didn't answer immediately. Instead, her golden eyes studied him, searching for something beneath the blood, the madness.
Finally, she said softly, "Yes."
Kuangren chuckled. The sound was not light, not joyful, but deep, vibrating in his chest like the growl of some great beast.
"Finally," he murmured. "Someone who speaks the truth."
He stepped forward, the corridor suddenly shrinking around his towering frame. Each step echoed, deliberate, until the torchlight stretched his shadow across her figure.
She didn't move.
Most would have backed away, pressed themselves against the wall, anything to avoid the pressure of his presence. But she simply lifted her chin slightly, her golden eyes unwavering even as his crimson ones bore down on her.
That amused him. That intrigued him.
"What's your name, girl?" he asked, voice low.
Her lips pressed into a thin line for a heartbeat before she answered. "…Zhu Zhuqing."
Kuangren repeated it softly, rolling it across his tongue like a new taste. Then his grin sharpened. "Zhu Zhuqing, huh? A pretty name. Too clean for this cesspit."
She didn't reply, her gaze steady.
"And you?" she asked after a pause.
"Gu Kuangren." His voice hardened, his crimson eyes glowing like embers fanned by wind. He leaned in slightly, close enough that his breath stirred the loose strands of her hair. "Remember it. You'll hear it again when the world drowns in blood."
For the first time, a flicker crossed her golden eyes — not fear, but something colder, harder to place. A recognition.
Kuangren straightened, stepping back, his long black hair shifting like a dark curtain.
He turned toward the exit, his voice drifting back like the scrape of steel against stone.
"You want to observe me, Zhu Zhuqing? Then stay close. But know this—my path is paved with corpses. Walk it, and you'll never be clean again."
He walked on, boots echoing, until his shadow dissolved into the torchlight's end.
Zhu Zhuqing remained in the corridor, her golden eyes still fixed on the space where crimson had burned a moment before.
She didn't move.
Not yet.