Suffering Exists in Every Present Moment

Just as the nun finished speaking, Wu Wang's vision went black and he fell unconscious.

It wasn't physical pain that took him down, but some kind of special power.

Now that he was awake, he pieced together what the nun had told him. He was all but certain he was in Aiguyi Town from a hundred years ago, on the verge of being destroyed by the descent of a mysterious power.

"Abyss God, what do you think?" Wu Wang glanced at his wrist.

The Red Vertical Pupil stared back at him.

It blinked a few times, its expression one of pure disdain.

"Oh, you want me to use my eyes to look?" Wu Wang muttered to himself. "Never mind, then."

Seeing him awake, the nun pulled away from her clingy position and extended a hand to help him to his feet. She walked silently toward the heavy church doors and pushed them open.

Her voice, when she spoke, was no longer tinged with its usual twisted affection. Instead, it held a strange, sorrowful quality.

"Please, come with me."

Wu Wang pinched his arm. All the injuries he had just suffered were gone. The nun must have healed him.

This wasn't his resurrection ability. If he had died, he would have woken up instantly, not remained unconscious for so long.

He strode to catch up with her, and together they left the church, returning to Aiguyi Town.

BOOM!

The instant he stepped into the town, a massive crash echoed from above.

Looking up, he saw a bloated, several-meter-long fish-headed creature bite through a roof and lunge at him with a roar. Roof tiles shattered and flew everywhere as the stench of decay assaulted his nostrils.

"I'm a goner!" a trace of helplessness flashed through Wu Wang's mind.

He was sure he wasn't mistaken. It really was a fish, except it had a pair of stout, scaly human legs.

A mermaid with a human head and a fish's body might appeal to someone's fetish. But a fish's head on a human's body was just enough to make you lose your sanity.

The crucial thing was, in his current state, he had no way to deal with this thing.

The Abyss God hadn't just given him the ability to see into people's hearts this time. Even under the rules of the Spirit Calamity Game, it had allowed him to forcibly retain the use of one piece of equipment.

He had chosen the 【Fake Smile Mask】.

This was why Zhuge Yue had been able to recognize him. He had been using that ridiculously handsome face from the beach since the game started. He couldn't risk anyone discovering his real appearance, or he'd never be able to live in Mingyang City again.

Just as the Merfolk was about to bite down on his head, a sorrowful voice rang out from a ruined house.

"O great Lord of Suffering! I beg you, grant my lost family member peace!"

The next second, the roaring Merfolk in mid-air began to shriek in pain. The sound was ear-piercingly shrill, making one feel agitated and uneasy.

It fell heavily to the ground, flopping around like a fish stranded on the shore, slowly dehydrating.

Wu Wang turned his head and was stunned to see a woman walk out of the house, weeping in utter grief. She had pale skin, a high-bridged nose, and Western features.

A hole the size of a fist gaped in her abdomen, blood seeping out continuously. Her face was a mess of snot and tears, making it impossible to tell if she was crying from pain or sorrow.

The woman trembled as she walked to the Merfolk's side. Ignoring her own grievous wound, she opened her arms and embraced its massive fish head.

Pressing her forehead against its slimy scales, she cried out to the nun.

"Please... let him go!"

The nun sighed.

"As you wish."

Swish!

The moment she spoke, the Merfolk's entire head fell off, as if lopped off by a sharp weapon in a clean severing.

As the woman continued to sob uncontrollably, the nun turned to Wu Wang.

"That was her husband, Matthews."

"They were the most loving couple in town, blessed with both a son and a daughter. The wife believes in 【Suffering】; the husband had no faith."

"A few years ago, the wife contracted a serious illness. The town's physician deemed it incurable. When all medical treatments failed, the husband came to me at the church in the freezing cold."

"I told him that Suffering could bring miracles, provided his faith was devout enough. And so, inside the church, he cut off his own tongue and the entire skin of his face."

As she spoke, the nun's eyes filled with a helpless sorrow, as if she was recalling the scene. She gave a bitter smile.

"But I could feel that deep down, the husband didn't believe in the existence of gods at all. To him, Suffering was not a faith. He did not believe in gods, but he loved his wife."

"In the end, My Lord still responded to his prayer. The Miracle of Suffering descended. The wife made a full recovery, and the husband became a faceless mute."

"The price was that he would be ridiculed by the entire town. Anyone who saw him would unconsciously spew the most vicious curses. Even so, every day when her husband went out to work, the wife would kiss him in front of everyone, bringing him comfort."

So what was going on now? Why would a perfectly fine person turn into such a monster?

As if sensing Wu Wang's confusion, the nun shook her head and pointed at the sky.

"Everything that is happening now is because of His power descending."

"A being no less powerful than My Lord has brought down His Divine Miracle here. All living things began to twist and mutate. The first to change were those without the protection of faith."

With that, she took a deep breath. She walked over to the Merfolk and the weeping woman, clasped her hands together, and began to recite words of deliverance.

"Why! My Lord! Why did you let this happen to us?" the woman cried out in anguish. "I killed my own children... my husband... Why won't you show mercy to Aiguyi Town?"

Wu Wang realized her children must have also undergone a twisted mutation. To save the other townsfolk, and to prevent her loved ones from living forever as monsters, she had killed everyone she held dear with her own hands.

It was hard to imagine the sorrow and despair that must entail.

Perhaps it would have been better if the two hadn't been so in love, or if they didn't have children. And yet, they were lovers who would give everything for each other.

The nun finished her rites and walked back over.

"Ironically, because His power has descended and filled the town with all kinds of Suffering, offerings to My Lord are now more likely to be rewarded with miracles."

He understood. The nun was referring to the woman's prayer. Her own profound suffering had fueled a miracle, inflicting that same agony on the Merfolk and causing it to die. They called this a 【Miracle of Suffering】.

The nun turned to leave, her indifference seeming almost heartless.

"Let's go. She still has to bury her husband... next to her children's graves."

Wu Wang hurried to keep up. He glanced back and saw the woman, just as the nun had said, tearfully dragging the Merfolk's corpse away.

"What about her?" Wu Wang asked, confused. "After she buries him? Where will she go?"

The nun seemed to be intimately familiar with everything here. Even when the Merfolk had burst out, he had seen her pause in advance to avoid the flying tiles.

Was this really the Aiguyi of the past?

No. Wu Wang was quite sure it wasn't. If the nun truly had the power to return to the past, the Day of Extinction would never have happened. He just wanted to figure out where exactly this place was. An illusion? Or something else?

The nun sighed.

"She will go to the town center in her despair. She will help the other townsfolk who have also fallen into Suffering, until the moment she dies."

"She doesn't want what happened to her to happen to anyone else. This was the Aiguyi Town of the past. A town filled with love and peace."

Wu Wang was stunned.

The town was completely different from what the players had imagined. The care these people had for one another was so much better than this shitty reality.

Or rather, the town as it once was.