Translator: CinderTL
"Rare," Gong Zhe remarked after taking another drag, then flicked the cigarette away. "To have such keen perception right after acquiring the Gate."
"But this might not necessarily be a good thing for you," Gong Zhe continued. "You need to learn to restrain your desires, not to be controlled by what lies beyond the Gate."
"Otherwise... that containment facility will be your final destination. Of course, if you're slightly luckier, you might be directly killed by your former companions."
"Is this the benefit of entering the Nightmare?" An Xuan pulled up his sleeve, revealing the increasingly eerie Gate on his hand.
He even felt as if his blood was boiling in the presence of Gong Zhe.
His eyes gradually turned red, and a strange voice whispered incessantly in his ears, like a seduction, impossible to resist.
An unusual craving surged within him—he wanted to cut open the body of the middle-aged man before him and extract the Gate inside.
Then claim it for himself.
But slowly, his remaining rationality took over, and An Xuan's expression gradually returned to normal. He gasped for breath, as if he had just narrowly escaped death.
Though his description wasn't entirely wrong.
If he were to lose control, Gong Zhe would indeed snap his neck without hesitation.
After all, once completely out of control, restraining him would be unrealistic and unnecessary. Even if sent to the containment facility, they would be deemed extremely dangerous.
And would be secretly executed immediately.
Execution by injection.
The pain of such a death would be more real and intense.
An Xuan thought that even if he were to choose, he wouldn't want to end up there.
"What exactly is the Gate?"
"It's a contract," Gong Zhe emphasized. "A blood contract."
"A blood contract?"
Gong Zhe smiled, the scar under his twitching lips moving with it, making him look particularly unfriendly. "Do you remember how you came to possess this Gate?"
An Xuan frowned. There seemed to be a vague memory in his mind, but it wasn't clear.
It felt like finding a thread in a tangled ball of yarn.
"It was..." A light flashed in An Xuan's eyes. "It was a Lifeline Note. Someone made us cut our left hand and press it onto the note."
"That Lifeline Note was alive! It sucked up the blood, and then..." An Xuan clutched his head as fragmented images began to appear in his mind, sometimes clear, sometimes broken.
"No, no, it was all a dream," An Xuan closed his eyes tightly, his expression pained. "It was all a dream, just a dream. I never experienced those things."
Gong Zhe didn't rush him.
The young man before him was quite a decent fellow, similar to someone he had encountered before.
But this young man was clearly more orthodox, after all, he was from the Night Watchers, unlike the other one, whose moral boundaries were questionable and who was quite cunning.
He believed that this young man named An Xuan could figure it out on his own.
Some truths, though harsh, must be learned to accept.
Since they were preparing to cooperate, he hoped his partner would be smarter and have a deeper understanding of the true nature of this world.
After a while, An Xuan gradually calmed down. He leaned on the back of the front seat, his face covered with ferocious blood vessels. "It was brainwashing..."
"The images in my mind are traces left by incomplete brainwashing. They used our bodies to do something unspeakable," he said through gritted teeth. "It was those guys from the Execution Department."
"That Lifeline Note... it's the blood contract you mentioned!"
Gong Zhe didn't answer directly. The question had become meaningless, as he believed the young man behind him had already figured most of it out.
"Each Lifeline Note is a contract, a pact between you and the Gate it represents—or more precisely, the entity behind that Gate."
"Once the contract is established, it cannot be altered. You gain the power of the entity behind the Gate, but in return, you must bear the curse it imposes on you."
"The curse deepens over time or with increased use of the power. It cannot be lifted, but there are ways to delay its eruption."
An Xuan raised his head, his eyes filled with countless blood vessels. "By absorbing someone else's Gate, right?"
"That's the idea," Gong Zhe said approvingly. "But we don't usually call it 'absorbing.' We call it 'seizing.' And those who control Gates are generally referred to as Gatekeepers."
"Gatekeepers?" An Xuan's pupils contracted sharply upon hearing the term. "Crimson?"
The people within Crimson were accustomed to calling themselves Gatekeepers.
"Correct," Gong Zhe nodded. "All of them possess Gates, which is why the Night Watcher Execution Department had to modify you."
"To fight devils, you must first become a devil yourself."
"I don't know if there are gods in this world, but please believe me, even if there are, they can't deal with what lies behind the Gates."
"Because behind the Gates, there are not only Ghosts but also... entities you can't even begin to comprehend. You can call them anomalies."
"Only mutated Gates can produce anomalies. Similarly, anomalies are far more unpredictable than Ghosts. Ghosts are formed from the dead, but anomalies are not. Their origins are bizarre and varied."
"I'd prefer if you understood them as a kind of... will, a will born from Nightmares."
"Will cannot be comprehended or resisted by human effort. The only thing that can oppose a will is another, greater and stronger will."
"Moreover, will cannot be destroyed, only erased—what Gatekeepers refer to as inheritance," Gong Zhe explained in one breath.
"Only mutated Gates can produce anomalies, and anomalies can be inherited?" An Xuan's expression turned peculiar. "By inheriting the Gate?"
"Smart."
"So how does a Gate mutate?" Gong Zhe's words had opened up a new world for An Xuan, who was eager to uncover all the information he could about Gates.
"There are two ways," Gong Zhe seemed equally interested. "The first is more direct: seize it from a Gatekeeper who possesses a mutated Gate."
"But that's difficult. The power controlled by Gatekeepers with ordinary Gates is hardly a match for those with mutated Gates, though it's not entirely impossible."
"The power of Ghosts can't match that of anomalies," An Xuan nodded. "Can I understand it that way?"
"Not entirely accurate, but it sounds straightforward," Gong Zhe commented.
"And the second way?" An Xuan pressed.
"The second point is much more troublesome. It requires you to enter an aberrant Gate and then decipher it," Gong Zhe said. "By doing so, you will essentially gain the recognition of this aberrant Gate."
"Become the new master of this aberrant Gate?"
"No," Gong Zhe's expression suddenly turned serious. "It seems you still don't understand the situation we're facing."
"No one can truly control a Gate, not even the most ordinary one," Gong Zhe turned around, his calm gaze making An Xuan shudder with fear.
"We are all slaves to the Gates, prisoners of the Nightmare."
(End of the Chapter)
---
📖Read (NS) on Pa.treon@CinderTL - c596. [+4]
🔑Early Access at $1.
✍Translated (5) Series, (2.8K+) Chapters, (3.9M+) Words.