Chapter 924 - 741: Our Squad Is Like Family, So We Must...

Chapter 924: Chapter 741: Our Squad Is Like Family, So We Must...

Fortress felt he had to be insane.

And not just your everyday kind of insane—how far gone do you have to be to feel that someone who’s about to beat you to death has "affinity," right?

It wasn’t until this moment, when Fortress crashed hard onto the ground, that the remaining half of the other man’s sentence finally reached his ears clearly—

"...Then remember to wipe your own tears and blood later, okay?"

The voice carried a gentle, caring warmth, yet it chilled more than any vicious threat.

"Bang!"

Fortress slammed into the ground, the impact between his body and the floor dull and solid, kicking up a small puff of dust.

What he saw in front of him was like an old TV with a bad connection—first a burst of brilliant golden sparks, then swaths of darkness creeping in, his vision blacking out in waves, rapidly tunneling.

He tried to struggle, the animal instinct to survive driving neural signals to his limbs and bones, but all that came back was bone-deep agony.

In that brief instant when his mind cleared a little, he understood his situation completely.

It wasn’t just that his arm was twisted and broken—his limbs, his ribs, his spine, all had fractures or outright breaks to varying degrees.

In other words, he was paralyzed.

His hard exoskeleton armor was like glass, covered in cobweb-like cracks, the structure totally scrapped. It still clung to his limp body only thanks to residual material toughness and a few joints, hanging there like broken lotus roots, serving purely as dead weight.

Despair, like cold silt from the deep sea, began at the tips of his fingers and toes, slowly spreading upward.

He was unwilling to accept it.

He’d clearly run so far already, he’d kept his eyes forward the entire time, and there really had been nobody behind him. So how the hell...

Fortress let out a raspy "huh... huh..." from his throat, straining to lift his blood-and-dirt-smeared head.

Feng Mu walked over unhurriedly. Seeing that Fortress couldn’t stand up, he thoughtfully crouched halfway down.

Then Feng Mu extended his left hand and, with utterly natural movements, felt around Fortress’s body and fished out a pack of tissues.

The packaging was intact, the tissues inside white and soft.

Fortress stared, his mind a complete mess, thinking the guy was actually going to kindly wipe the blood off his face.

He was wrong.

Feng Mu held the tissues in his left hand—those little symbols of "civilization" and "cleanliness"—but didn’t seem to have any intention of using them.

His right hand lifted slowly, fingers pressed together, the edge of his palm gleaming with an inhuman steel-like hardness under the dim light.

Then, following the widest crack across Fortress’s chest plate, he slipped his hand in without the slightest effort, penetrating straight into Fortress’s burning hot chest cavity.

"Uh... y-you... what are you doing?!"

Fortress’s pupils shrank to needle points, endless terror washing over him like ice water at minus a hundred degrees, drenching him all at once. Even the searing pain froze solid in that moment.

He could clearly feel those fingers, cold enough to not belong to anything living, pushing through skin and muscle, sliding between ribs, and coming to rest on his own heart, thrumming madly beneath them.

Cold fingertips on a warm, pounding heart—this absolute contrast of sensation triggered an absolute physiological reaction.

Let’s make this crystal clear—Fortress was not gay. This unprecedented heart-fluttering right now... was definitely not the signal of falling in love.

Feng Mu tilted his head slightly. There was no cruelty or excitement on his face, only something close to pure "honesty."

He answered:

"Your several friends all gave me their hearts."

He paused, as if recalling certain attacks, then continued in a tone like he was negotiating, almost expectant:

"You should learn from them and give me your heart too, right?"

Fortress: "???"

Learn?

Learn from those teammates who’d already turned into cold corpses?

To "give" his own heart... away?

Fortress really wanted to shout no. He’d never been the type to study diligently. But his clever brain made him swallow that "no" back down.

Back then, their captain also liked to "discuss" things with them in that same tone, and Fortress really didn’t want to recall what happened to anyone who refused.

Let’s just say the outcome was a nightmare more terrifying than death itself, something normal people couldn’t even begin to imagine.

He was probably going to die now; he didn’t need to spend his last moments remembering things that made him unhappy.

Seeing Fortress stay silent, Feng Mu’s face lit up with a satisfied smile:

"Since you’re not saying anything, I’ll take that as a yes. As expected, you and your teammates are all the same—so generous, such good people."

The corner of Fortress’s eye twitched. He was starting to understand why he’d felt this guy had "affinity."

Not only was the man unbelievably good-looking, he also spoke in a way that sounded fucking great.

He was clearly here to take Fortress’s life and dig out his heart, yet between the lines he never forgot to compliment him, creating this warm atmosphere like he wanted Fortress to die with a smile on his face.

Not at all like their own squad, who, before killing anyone, would use every method to torture them, savoring their breakdown sobs and desperate screams, sucking twisted pleasure out of it.

Put side by side, Feng Mu’s way of "gently taking a life" really did have a kind of perverse friendliness to it.

Fortress exhaled a breath flecked with blood foam, his lungs wheezing like a broken bellows.

He knew he didn’t have much time left, but some questions gnawed at the tatters of his consciousness like venomous insects. He had to ask.

"When did you start following me? Why couldn’t I see you just now?"

As he spoke, Fortress used stubborn willpower to control the parts of his neck and head that could still move a little.

He turned his face to the side and rammed his temple against the ground, again and again, each heavy impact thudding dully—thunk, thunk.