Lu Mingfei, become the king of gambling in dungeons!

Ten minutes or so passed.

The boy and girl sat facing each other in a pool of blood.

The battle is over.

Their battle seemed extremely fierce, with broken and burning rails and sparking debris everywhere, and streaks of sparks streaming down from the sky.

"Hmm." Xia Mi's golden eyes were no longer cold. She raised her bladed claws high and pierced through Chu Zihang's body. "Have you asked all your questions?"

"The last one... Are you really Xia Miyao now?" Chu Zihang raised his eyes, his dark eyes dim, as if all the blood in his body had been burned away.

"Just treat her as me, what's the difference?"

"It feels like a long nightmare," Chu Zihang whispered as he fell into a deep sleep.

"The nightmare is over. From now on, you won't dream anymore once you become Deadpool," Jormungandr said softly, pulling him into his arms.

A discordant voice pierced the atmosphere once again.

"Junior sister, have you finished talking with Senior Brother Chu?"

Someone strolled closer and stopped about thirty meters away from the boy and girl.

It was Lu Mingfei who had run from the direction of Apple Orchard Station after taking a long detour. After more than ten minutes, he finished Fenrir's potato chips and successfully shook off Fenrir's pursuit.

This is not surprising. After all, a subway station is not an open space, and Fenrir's mind is not very sharp. His real brain has just finished a love-hate relationship with a human.

Jormungandr stood up without surprise, setting down the blood-drained Chu Zihang in his arms, and quietly gazed at Lu Mingfei. "Did you deliberately create time for us to part ways, Odin?"

"I thought things might take a turn for the better," Lu Mingfei shrugged. "From the moment I saw you, I felt you were a 'little heroine' possessed by Chi You, and the moment I saw through your disguise, I was even more convinced that you were. So I was willing to give you a chance."

Have you achieved the hidden ending in the game "Heaven and Earth Tribulation"? The "Little Heroine" was ultimately rescued.

Jormungandr shook his head: "The Outcasts and the world will never reconcile, how naive... Are you really Odin? I've never been a net addict in human society."

"It's a ghost." Lu Mingfei chuckled and denied it. "If I were a dragon, I would be a cowardly one. I was afraid and terrified before I even entered your Nibelungen, but I didn't even fully understand what I was specifically afraid of."

He is often not suited to thinking about overly profound philosophical questions.

Lu Mingfei found a place to squat down. The stone benches and steel structures nearby had all been melted and crushed by the aftershocks of the battle. "Junior sister, after chatting with you for a few minutes ago, I think I know what I've been afraid of all along. So thank you. To be honest."

"I think I'm afraid of having a way out, and I'm afraid of missing out on something if I don't dare to reveal my hand."

"Junior sister, have you noticed? Compared to the me you remember, I've made some progress now, haven't I?"

"I can see through it, but I can't tell you're disguised." Jormungandr didn't make a move; she was waiting for Fenrir to come over. She didn't stand much of a chance against Odin on her own.

Judging from the amplitude of the ground vibrations, Fenrir is almost back.

Lu Mingfei said, "Every stage of life has its own enemies. My biggest enemy right now is the happiness that I think I can have. I'm not only here to save Chu Zihang, but also to save myself."

"Pursuing happiness isn't difficult for you, is it? I often hear people say that different choices lead to different kinds of happiness," Jormungandr asked thoughtfully.

"It's difficult... I used to think that taking a step back meant happiness could be stored away. But why should I beg others for happiness? Can I even get it? Is happiness something that others can give?"

The boy spoke softly, but there was a suppressed, bitter anger emanating from him.

"When I feel overwhelmed by trouble and pressure, I want to get angry and fight back with everything... Behind this unrealistic idea is my inner unease. I always feel that some kind of mountain of mistakes will one day destroy my life."

"I don't really understand. It sounds like a ridiculous fantasy from high school. I never thought you would have such foolish ideas." Jormungandr hit the nail on the head; she could already hear Fenrir's roar.

"You're very good at observing people," Lu Mingfei nodded. "Because I have nowhere left to retreat."

Jormungandr spread its dark blue dragon wings and began to approach: "Are you telling me this as a final message before you fight to the death?"

She suddenly realized that the person in front of her couldn't possibly be Odin.

The dragon king's tail, with its chilling scales, resembled a resurrected giant python, slithering across the ground.

"If you don't say some nonsense before you fight to the death, how will the enemy know that you're about to fight to the death? Please forgive me, junior sister." Lu Mingfei spoke the truth. "I'm telling you this to let you know that I'm using you as my whetstone. It would be too pathetic for a whetstone not to know that it's being sharpened."

He had previously considered holding back some trump cards and having some reserves, such as "Chu Zihang is important, but he may not be the most important person," "How much you sacrifice for your friends in the dungeon, they won't notice in reality," and "What's wrong with running it a few more times and making a strategy guide? You've already seen your friends die hundreds of times."

These thoughts are not inherently problematic; they are rational, useful, and applicable to the vast majority of people who cautiously yearn for happiness. Human happiness requires having a backup plan to deal with challenges.

Not long ago, he also hesitated to back down. He thought that his life needed love to make up for it, to nourish it, and to enrich it. He believed that his partner's love would make him no longer sad.

He will meet a girl who makes his heart race and his cheeks flush. He will fight and bleed for her, and grow into a powerful and valiant man for her. If he were to use up all his resources and risk his life for a friend now, it would be too unfair to the girl he will meet in the future.

"Vows of eternal love are always just words" is an ancient Chinese literary phrase that deeply resonates with Lu Mingfei. When you love someone, you often feel indebted to them; in his youth, he had countless moments of solitude filled with such sentimental fantasies.

Because I love you, I don't want you to suffer, so I want to write down all the beautiful things I owe you in my diary. I've had moments of sadness, sorrow, inner turmoil, and vulnerability. Sometimes I've hit walls everywhere, crying and unable to find the entrance to happiness. But I love you, and selfishly hope that you can see this vulnerable side of me, and that you can overcome all obstacles to rescue me from my whirlpool.

If one day you get caught in your own whirlpool, I will sharpen the knife I've been preparing for a long time and bring the debt log to find you and save you. At that time, no one can stop me.

Such fantasies are wonderful, but he is already trapped in the vortex of a vast world. In reality, he is under severe surveillance and used as a tool; there will be a series of troubles to come; the difficulty of the remaining dungeons is unknown; the cold reality shows that this is no longer the time for him to live a life with his friends and lover.

The difficulty for him to obtain happiness is a thousand times greater than for others, and the knife he needs to sharpen is a thousand times sharper than others.

In this situation, retreating further or clinging to wishful thinking will not save anyone.

Lu Mingfei patted his trench coat and stood up, holding the ancient dragon serum he had already taken out, the dark, viscous blood inside writhing.

He wondered if he should say something like, "Damn you, King of the Earth and Mountains, for the world, for my justice, for my manhood, I'm going to destroy you!" But he didn't have that much of a grudge. He had a premonition that the so-called Ancient Dragon Serum might just be a trigger, and more importantly, it was about unleashing the demon within him.

"...Let's just say 'first-round exit'."

Just before his body was pierced by the dragon's tail, Lu Mingfei looked up at Jormungandr, tilted his head, and plunged all the ancient dragon serum into his neck.

"See you later," he said.

Crimson lotuses bloom.

A magnificent, violent heartbeat resounded, the first beat, then the second, the third, the fourth… faster and faster, like the tolling of bells and the sound of war drums in the new century.

A huge, invisible shadow suddenly loomed over Jormungandr's heart.

The roar of the ocean began to echo all around, rain and water flowed in all directions, and surging black tides converged into towering whirlpools, mixed with hoarse, angry echoes, and the sound of bronze chimes drowned out Fenrir's roar.

Suddenly, a subway train roared past, its body as black as ink... This was a dead end, station number zero, but the train stirred up a whirlwind and waves before moving forward unimpeded.

In the shadows behind the subway, someone dressed in a formal suit scattered white roses; they were the leaders of ghosts and demons, wandering about, banging drums and gongs, their wings a charred, burning shell, their bones half-rotten and covered in thorns. They hummed in unison the cold, ancient war song that had propelled warhorses forward through blood that reached their bridles a thousand years ago.

"Holy, holy, King of Hosts!"

"In remembrance of the blazing day when my king entered the city, after which will be the twilight of the kings."

Jormungandr was horrified.

"The days of numerous kingdoms are gone forever; God will take away the kingdoms of the four corners of the earth."