Chapter 496 - 437: Chaisi: The Truth He Discovered and Luck That Wasn’t Good Enough

Chapter 496: Chapter 437: Chaisi: The Truth He Discovered and Luck That Wasn’t Good Enough

He was fine—he was okay.

Just as the world’s curtain was torn away and death revealed its pitch-black face to him, someone opened fire.

Even though his rational mind knew he was safe, adrenaline made his heart pound hard enough to burst, and his blood felt like it was about to rip his veins apart inch by inch. For a moment, all Chaisi could hear was the thunderous roar in his ears.

He had thought the residents he’d fought before were powerful—and they were, enough to make the average Hunter suffer a major loss—but compared to Damian, those residents were like kindergarteners.

In that instant, it was as if half the world had twisted and coiled itself into a charging bull, its horns about to smash his frail body to pieces.

It was almost unbelievable that a resident of Damian’s level could be stopped by bullets.

Who had saved him?

"Chaisi... Run!"

Uncle Kai’s shout jolted Chaisi back to his senses, pulling him from the lingering fear.

Damian was frozen in place, his neck bent at a ninety-degree angle to his body, utterly motionless.

Chaisi leaped to his feet and quickly glanced back in the direction the shots had come from.

Behind him, a stretch of dark buildings was shrouded in the half-dead silence of the night. Not a single light pierced the black stillness, making it seem completely disconnected from the city that never slept, Blackmoor City.

In the gloom, Chaisi vaguely made out what looked like a small balcony across the street, a place someone could hide.

’Could it be Sha Xue and the others? Did they circle back?’

No, the weapon was wrong.

Sha Xue’s group only had pistols. The shots just now came from a light machine gun at the very least. They had only just left; there wasn’t enough time for them to go back to the Family Faction and get new weapons.

But now wasn’t the time to look for the shooter.

"Uncle Kai, if we’re going, we go together,"

Chaisi shouted, his eyes glued to Damian’s ninety-degree-bent form. "You go get Aunt Hai—"

He was only halfway through his sentence when a figure suddenly rushed past him, stirring up a gust of wind. Haiper lunged toward Damian in just a few steps, crying out in a hoarse voice, "You’ve been shot? Damian, are you hurt?"

Chaisi reached out to grab her but missed, watching helplessly as she threw herself forward, grabbed Damian’s arm, and even reached out a trembling hand as if to straighten his folded-down head.

Of course, she knew residents couldn’t die.

But now, neither Chaisi nor Kai Luonan dared to call out to her, afraid that if she answered instinctively, she would break the rules and suffer the consequences.

Uncle Kai exchanged a look with Chaisi and, clutching his own chest, walked step by step until he was behind Haiper.

’Is Uncle Kai hurt? Damian must not have used his full strength when he swatted him aside earlier. Otherwise... otherwise, the consequences would have been unthinkable.’

Kai Luonan gently placed a hand on Haiper’s shoulder.

"Don’t respond to me. Don’t forget the rule from before," Uncle Kai said in a raspy voice. "You need to leave. Go find a car and get out of here. He’s a resident. He’ll be fine."

Haiper’s face immediately flushed with anger, and for a moment it looked like she was about to turn and scold her husband. But then, as if remembering something, her fury suddenly evaporated, replaced by a look of desolate panic.

She glanced at Damian and finally let go of his arm.

Damian began to slowly straighten his neck, bit by bit, like a mechanical joint turning, his head tracing an arc through the air. Only then did Chaisi realize that after being hit by the bullets, Damian’s neck seemed to have stretched.

No one who saw this could ever mistake Damian for a human.

"Damian?" Haiper watched him, taking step after step backward, yet still managing to say in a soft voice, "As long as you’re okay..."

Kai Luonan gave her a push and said gravely, "Go."

Facing Damian, Chaisi no longer knew what he could do—but he still stepped forward, shielding Haiper and Kai Luonan behind him.

Damian finally raised his head completely.

He first glanced at the dark building behind the open lot.

Thoughtfully, Damian retracted his gaze and slowly swept it across the three people before him.

His eyes lingered on Kai Luonan for a moment, flickered past Haiper as if she were insignificant, and finally locked onto Chaisi’s face, unmoving.

No, he wasn’t unmoving; his neck was inching forward, bit by bit.

It didn’t extend far, still within the normal range of human movement, but it was incredibly slow, as if his neck were made of countless joints that could unfold inch by inch.

Those eyes...

Chaisi wanted to vomit.

He could count on one hand the number of times in his life he’d felt like throwing up. Not even on the rare occasions he’d gotten blackout drunk had he felt like this, drenched in a cold sweat, muscles trembling and tight, fighting just to keep his stomach from emptying itself.

Damian’s pitch-black eyes seemed to be slowly bulging out toward him—was it a hallucination?—as if they wanted to peel back Chaisi’s skin and see what was hidden between his flesh and his skull.

if there was nothing but flesh blood nerves fascia, then it would be happy, happy happy enough to squeeze in because there are so many they can cover the cheekbones, fill the eye sockets, gleaming black, swollen with fluid, like countless bloated sacs cinched by invisible threads, packed densely together... those are Damian’s eyes, ready to split into so many more at any moment, now his eyes have peeled back chaisi’s skin they’re inside they’re inside

"Chaisi!" Kai Luonan’s sharp cry instantly snapped Chaisi out of it. "Get back. Let him deal with me."

Chaisi blinked hard and realized that Damian’s neck and eyes were still where they had been, no closer to him at all.

Damian was just staring at him motionlessly, scrutinizing him, as if every single hair on his face was the most disgusting and repulsive thing Damian had ever seen.

"...Grateful?" Damian asked in a hoarse voice.

Chaisi’s step back was purely instinctive.

He had just realized he couldn’t let Uncle Kai face Damian alone. Hearing the question, he froze and looked up at Damian.

"I saw everything."

Damian said, almost calmly, "So disgusting. So stupid. So utterly lacking in self-awareness. Like a lab fly in a box, worshiping the feeding tube. Seeing that look on your face, I can barely maintain this human skin."

’What look?’ ℴℴ𝘮

If Chaisi were the type of person who wore his heart on his sleeve, many Hunters in Blackmoor City wouldn’t pale at the mere mention of his name. Did this mean Damian could see past the subtle tells on his face, straight into his emotions?

Chaisi was still reeling from this when Damian continued.

"It’s too disgusting, too pathetic, too laughable. That stupid look on your face... How could I not smash it? How could I not smash that foolishness of yours?"

Damian’s voice suddenly changed, becoming pinched and high-pitched as he mimicked, "’Oh, I can’t let Uncle Kai face him alone.’ ’Even if I die, I have to let them get away.’ ’He doesn’t want to see me get hurt.’ ’Uncle Kai’s kindness to me grows deeper every day, I can never repay him’... Rather than let you keep indulging in these self-righteous fantasies, it would have been better to just let me die a quick death seventeen years ago."

He stopped speaking, his eyes still fixed on Chaisi.

Slowly, as if having made a decision, Damian turned his eyes away and glanced at Kai Luonan.

In that instant, Chaisi was struck by a bizarre, impossible feeling—it was as if Damian were about to cry like a small child.

"If I don’t destroy that self-righteous soul of yours... If I don’t make you writhe on the ground in agony, then these seventeen years... these seventeen years..."

"Chaisi."

At some point, Kai Luonan had walked up beside Chaisi and called his name.

He turned his head and saw that Haiper was already far away—perhaps on Kai Luonan’s orders. She hadn’t stopped this time.

Kai Luonan’s face was pale, one hand still unconsciously clutching his chest.

His slightly clouded eyes were fixed on Damian, a lock of hair having fallen across his brow.

The head of the Family Faction, who was normally so unflappable, had been forced tonight to reveal a hint of his own distress, unease, and anxiety.

"Uncle Kai,"

Chaisi looked at him, his chest swelling with some unidentifiable emotion. Was it guilt? Gratitude? Or something else that Damian could see, but he himself could not name?

He had wanted to offer everything he could obtain in this world to Uncle Kai and the Kai Family.

His goal was not yet achieved, and yet he was about to disappear tonight.

Regretful, but not sorry.

"Uncle Kai, you were injured just now. You shouldn’t stay here. Go with Aunt Hai. I have my own way to deal with—"

He didn’t get to finish.

Because at that moment, Kai Luonan patted Chaisi’s shoulder, seemingly full of gratitude.

Looking back, this seemed to be the first time Kai Luonan had touched him since he’d woken up from the effects of the healing bullet.

Chaisi’s luck was truly too good.

"I’m fine. Did you arrange for someone to be in the building up there?" Kai Luonan gestured toward the building behind the open lot. It looked like a department store.

Chaisi stood in a void of white.

It was as if someone had pressed a button, turning the world into a frozen, silent, snow-white vacuum.

Perhaps one of those bullets had actually hit him.

No, he truly wished one of those bullets had hit him. That would have been better.

He wished his life had ended a few minutes ago.

As if crushed by a thick, boundless fog, his mind struggled, gasping for air, trying to grasp the faint slivers of color, the faint slivers of truth, drifting in the swirling mist.

’Who... who can save me? Who can tell me this is all fake?’

In his daze, Chaisi was still aware that his head was turned toward Uncle Kai, so Damian couldn’t see his expression.

If Damian couldn’t see his expression, then he couldn’t see Chaisi’s true emotions, either.

’He must not be able to see, or else he would have reacted.’

"Chaisi?" Kai Luonan raised his eyebrows, studying him. "What’s wrong?"

"No... it’s nothing."

His vocal cords were like dry branches in the dead of winter, scraping out Chaisi’s parched, hoarse voice. "Yes... yes. I had people waiting. I told Sha Xue... to set up an ambush nearby. So, let me handle him. You should go."

The last part was almost a plea.

...His luck still wasn’t good enough.

If Chaisi had been truly lucky, he would have crawled into his mother’s arms on that night when he was five years old and closed his eyes with her.

And never woken up again.