Infinite Nightmares

"Why is everyone trying to stop me?! Whoever stands in my way—die!"

Zhang Wenda became a blur as he charged. He swung his sharp scythe, smashing it down on the giant shield formed by the Black Cats. The impact produced a muffled thud, like the sound of vibrating leather.

As the scythe rebounded, it gouged a long, white mark across the Black Cat Shield. Blood began to seep from the wound beneath it.

But this attack was only the beginning. Zhang Wenda vanished on the spot, splintering into dozens of red afterimages that launched a frenzied assault on Song Jianguo.

Even though the Black Cats quickly formed shields to defend, constantly rotating their positions, they couldn’t withstand such an onslaught. As the number of wounds grew, it was clear they couldn’t hold out for long.

Hu Maomao, who had removed her head covering, was about to raise her hands to use the Tissue Entanglement Technique, but she couldn’t even see where Zhang Wenda was. All she could see were red afterimages.

"I’ll do it." Wang Xiaohua’s all-black eye opened. At that moment, her vision was washed in gray, and everyone seemed to be trapped inside an old, black-and-white movie.

As she widened her eye slightly, the "movie" before her began to rapidly rewind, flickering with static.

Then, as if his scythe were casting a healing spell, the Black Cats’ bleeding wounds rapidly sealed themselves in reverse as the sharp blade passed back over them.

Just as everything was about to be reversed, a strange scene unfolded. Zhang Wenda’s left pinky finger suddenly stretched out like rubber, becoming incredibly long. Like a snake, it shot through the black-and-white world, speeding toward Wang Xiaohua’s eye.

"Watch out! Zhang Wenda ate a Wai Mushroom!" 2826, who was casting the Spectral Technique with a flashing flashlight, started to shout a warning, but it was too late.

To avoid having her head split open by the incoming spike, Wang Xiaohua could only jerk her head to the left. In that moment of dodging, her line of sight blurred, and Zhang Wenda seized the opportunity.

In the next second, blood flew. A pained grunt escaped Wang Xiaohua as a bloody gash sliced her all-black eyeball in two from top to bottom.

The gash was incredibly deep; any deeper and it would have split Wang Xiaohua’s head open.

Zhang Wenda appeared instantly before Wang Xiaohua. He raised his right hand, poised to strike the girl clutching her eye, but just as he brought it down, the recovered Black Cats swarmed over him from behind like a tidal wave.

"Why is everyone so damn annoying! Why won’t you let me kill anyone! Why is killing someone so much trouble?!"

With a clench of Zhang Wenda’s fists, the red essence within the Black Cats was instantly siphoned away. The tidal wave of cats disintegrated as quickly as it had formed.

He didn’t chase the rapidly retreating Wang Xiaohua. Instead, he spun around and plunged into the dense swarm of Black Cats behind him. What little sense he had left told him that these cats were the bigger threat.

As Zhang Wenda continued to absorb the red essence from within the Black Cats, the flames engulfing his body grew more intense, fanning the fire of rage in his heart until it burned even brighter.

The murderous thoughts in his mind became almost tangible, radiating from him in a translucent wave of heat that scorched the air.

It was as if he now possessed his own personal tide of thought—a tide of pure red.

"Where is she? Where?!" Zhang Wenda rampaged through the cats, leaving a bloody storm in his wake.

Suddenly, a flash of white amid the blackness caught Zhang Wenda’s eye. He immediately charged toward it, heedless of anything else.

Song Jianguo tried to turn back into a Black Cat, but as her red essence was drained away, she was soon forced back into her original form.

The Black Cats were clearly panicked. They scrambled to knit themselves back together, attempting to block Zhang Wenda’s approach.

But without their red essence, the swarm of cats was useless. Zhang Wenda ripped the black wall in two, and he finally saw Song Jianguo, spear in hand, hissing at him.

Zhang Wenda charged, a streak of red. With a shower of sparks, the spear was knocked from her hands.

It was too late for Song Jianguo to run. Just as Hu Maomao’s Mind Control yanked her sharply to the left, the scythe pierced her light-brown skin. The blade, sharp enough to cut through iron like clay, sliced through white bone and effortlessly severed her entire arm.

"Die!!"

Just as three sharp scythe-slashes reached Song Jianguo’s cheek, about to slice her head into three pieces, Zhang Wenda’s attack forcibly stopped. Song Jianguo was crying.

Song Jianguo—the eternal optimist, always carefree—was crying. Biting her lip, her eyes held no fear of death, only a deep, profound sense of being wronged.

’It was a look I’d seen before, a look I recognized from the mirror.’

’It was the look I used to give my parents when I was little—the look you get only when the person closest to you hurts you for no reason at all.’

Zhang Wenda saw the emotion in those cat-like pupils, and he also saw his own reflection within them.

’I looked so hideous now. My height nearly reached the ceiling, my body was covered in flames and barbs... I had unknowingly become a monster more terrifying than they ever were.’

Looking at his hands, covered in the blood of his own comrades, the red haze that had burned away Zhang Wenda’s sanity finally began to clear. "I... what have I done?"

Zhang Wenda looked at Wang Xiaohua with her ruined eye, at Song Jianguo with her severed arm, and he saw the complicated emotions in their eyes as they stared back at him.

"No, this shouldn’t be happening! It shouldn’t be like this!" Panicked, Zhang Wenda couldn’t think about anything else. He became a red afterimage, bursting out the door and fleeing blindly.

He rampaged through the city, sending the people pointing at cars tumbling in chaos.

He didn’t know where he was going or where he could flee, but Zhang Wenda understood that he could not harm the people he cared about again.

With his reason burned away, he didn’t know what to do. He could only act on his old instincts.

’Whenever he was upset, he just had to find a quiet place and wait for everything to pass.’

Zhang Wenda struggled to run out of the city, but the city was massive; there was no getting out anytime soon.

Gradually, people began to appear behind Zhang Wenda—people with the three digits "507" on their chests. They were all emerging from the city’s various Xinhua Bookstores.

As their numbers grew, they began to form an encircling perimeter around him.

"Don’t follow me! Get lost!" Zhang Wenda roared at the people surrounding him, his breathing growing ragged once more.

’He really didn’t want to kill anyone. If a fight really broke out, many, many people would die.’

What nobody noticed was that a new red point of light had appeared in the sky, waiting for Zhang Wenda to make a choice.