The Creatures That We Are-Chapter 1231: Woof

Everyone was stunned into inaction, their brain stuttering to a halt.

One Stone was the first to recover. “Nainai, bring Little Hong and me there first.”

“Okay!” Nainai sent One Stone and Hong Xiaoxiao to Gao Yang with a wave of her hand.

One Stone took three doses of medicine from her medical kit, injecting Gao Yang in order. A few seconds later, Gao Yang let out a muffled groan.

“Gao Yang!” Wang Zikai cried out in joy. He turned to One Ston and stammered, “Will he-he-he be alright...?”

“I-I-I’m not sure...” One Stone couldn’t stop shaking. She was even more nervous than Wang Zikai was. This was Pride, the head of the death monsters, who could render her into ashes with a twitch of his finger.

One Stone glanced at the injury on Gao Yang’s chest and mustered the courage to ask, “Pride, are you...”

“Pride what?! Pride’s dead!” Wang Zikai shouted. “I’m Wang Zikai!”

“Sorry!” One Stone almost blacked out from the fear. “Wang Zikai...will you, will you extract your stings?”

Wang Zikai hesitated. “Then...I’ll do it? It’s not gonna kill him, is it...?”

“I don’t know, but if you don’t extract the stings, he will die.” One Stone said the truth.

One Stone had considered having Hong Xiaoxiao reset Gao Yang. However, Pride did mixed damage with an authority that interfered with natural law. She wasn’t sure if Time Reset would go wrong.

So One Stone decided to provide first aid first. If Gao Yang didn’t get better in five minutes, she would have Hong Xiaoxiao try the reset.

Hong Xiaoxiao’s pale face was frozen in a look of grim determination. She didn’t even dare to breathe a little harder. She was ready to save Gao Yang and ready to face death.

Wang Zikai clenched his teeth and extracted his bone stings. He panicked when blood gushed out. “Ah! Blood! So much blood! Stop the bleeding!” frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

Adept Horse arrived with a jump and more or less knocked Wang Zikai out of the way. He put both hands on Gao Yang’s chest. Bright green light spread from his chest to the rest of his body.

One minute in, and Adept Horse was drenched in sweat, his face pale. Panting, he pulled his hands back. The injuries on Gao Yang had all been mended, and his arms were back with accelerated regeneration.

“Fat Jun!” Wang Zikai shouted urgently. “How is he?!”

“Should be...alright...”

Adept Horse faltered and collapsed. Wang Zikai quickly caught him.

The moment Adept Horse confirmed that Wang Zikai was no longer an enemy, he had rotated his ring to give himself a triple buff so that he could use up all his power to heal Gao Yang.

“You’re the man, Fat Jun!” Wang Zikai almost burst into tears.

“Wang Zikai, don’t just leave Captain dangling here,” One Stone said.

“Oh, right!”

Wang Zikai tossed Adept Horse to Hong Xiaoxiao, who hurriedly grabbed him.

With a punch, Wang Zikai shattered the golden pillar into a downpour of energy shards. As soon as he caught Gao Yang, he vanished and reappeared on the ground, gingerly lowering Gao Yang.

Wang Zikai wanted to do something, anything, but there was nothing he could do. He seemed unsure where to even put his hands, like a golden retriever who had broken something.

The others came over, but maintaining a distance, steeped in their complicated thoughts. Even Zhang Wei and Old Seven were silently staring at Gao Yang with impassive expressions.

They were all waiting for Gao Yang to wake up. Nothing else mattered until then.

A minute later, Gao Yang slowly opened his eyes.

“Bro, you’re awake!” Wang Zikai shouted and leaned in to help him up. “Great! Great! Don’t worry, Gao Yang. I’ve fucked up and killed that fucker Pride! We won!”

Gao Yang stared at Wang Zikai with no emotion on his face. His rebooting brain churned. Am I dead? In hell? If this is hell, why is Wang Zikai here?

Gao Yang wouldn’t know that as soon as Pride awakened, Wang Zikai’s personhood had been fighting Pride’s monsterhood nonstop, with no moment of reprieve. The Pride Gao Yang and his companions faced wasn’t just Pride, but a conflicted being in a dual state.

The conflict peaked when Pride saw Zhang Wei at Gao Xin’s home.

“Were you God, you would be omnipotent! You should be able to do whatever you want and refuse whatever you don’t want to do!”

“You’re God! You’re not ruled by another. You don’t have to carry out whatever bullshit duty you’re laden with!”

Wang Zikai, in the abyss of Pride’s consciousness, heard the words. A ridiculous yet natural conclusion surfaced.

Pride wants to kill the Divine Scion. I, Wang Zikai, don’t.

Then Pride will go after the Divine Scion, and I will go after Pride.

The only solution Wang Zikai could think of was to submit to Pride first. Then Pride would be able to concentrate all his power on killing Gao Yang.

To the world, it was when Pride was most powerful; to Wang Zikai, however, it was when Pride was weakest. That was the moment Wang Zikai would stab him in the back.

Wang Zikai needed seven seconds of freedom to do that, which was an opening only Gao Yang could create for him.

That was the truth of the seven-second bet.

In the end, Pride lost to his own pride and surpassed that pride at the same time.

God’s will, monster’s calling, humanity’s determination—none of that matters.

I, Wang Zikai, will do whatever I want to do and become whoever I want to become.

I’m Gao Yang’s best friend and brother for life, and that’s what I’m going to be.

“Bro, are you...alright?”

Wang Zikai could tell that something was wrong with Gao Yang. While he had come back to life, he seemed to have lost his soul.

All this time, they had been through so much and lost so much to reach this terrible and absurd victory. Wang Zikai would take joy, sorrow, rage, and even a breakdown from Gao Yang, but he wouldn’t accept an ending where Gao Yang had turned into a cold, numb machine.

He waved his hand in front of Gao Yang. His eyes wouldn’t focus.

“Bro...are you braindead now?”

“Don’t scare me, bro. Say something, anything. Please...don’t stay like this... I’m begging you...”

There was no reaction in Gao Yang’s calm eyes. They looked like dead water in a closed-off lake.

Guilt and pain overwhelmed Wang Zikai. He hurled the most viscous curses at himself and Pride.

In desperation, he barked out like a dog.

“Woof!”

Gao Yang didn’t respond.

Wang Zikai leaned in and barked out twice.

Gao Yang didn’t react.

Then Wang Zikai got on all four and started barking incessantly.

The others gaped and exchanged confused glances. They had been hesitating if they should intervene, then Wang Zikai seemed to have lost his mind.

Was this the side effect of his personhood killing his monsterhood? Had the most powerful death monster become a simple-minded wanderer?

Before they could recover from their shock, their sanity faced another blow: Gao Yang responded.

“Woof!” Gao Yang barked.

Wang Zikai burst into tears from the joy. He crawled toward Gao Yang while shaking his head like a real dog, barking.

And Gao Yang barked in response.

“Woof! Woof, woof, woof, hahaha...”

“Woof, woof! Woof, woof, hahaha...”

“Hahahaha...”

“Hahahaha...”

Under the white moon and upon the wasteland, a young man sat on the ground while the other young man crawled around like a dog. They were beside themselves with so much joy that it seemed to have brewed all the sorrow in the world into nectar; they got drunk on it. They barked and laughed as if it were the most entertaining thing in their life.

Unfortunately, the price of Equivalent Exchange came knocking despite a delay. Gao Yang stopped laughing. His head drooped as he fell into a deep coma.

Wang Zikai had exhausted himself from laughing, too. He sat down and rubbed his nose, looking at his friend with a sorrowful guilt and a tired softness.

He extended his bloodied hand to brush the loose strand of hair on Gao Yang’s head. Finally, it joined the rest of the fringe instead of sticking left or right.

Wang Zikai let out a exhale of relief, as if he had finally finished the most important assignment in his life.

His head lowered, and he closed his eyes.