novelraw Chapter 74 : Shibuya Rhapsody
Chapter 74 : Shibuya Rhapsody
Chapter 74: Shibuya Rhapsody
Neon Metropolis, Shibuya.
This was the busiest crossroads in the entire Neon Metropolis, hailed as “the world’s most crowded street crossing”.
Whenever the traffic light turned from red to green, more than three thousand people crossed the road at the same time.
Gigantic LED screens played brilliantly colored advertisements day and night without rest. Shrill pop music, the roar of car engines, and the chatter of countless people merged into an enormous wave of sound, unceasing day and night.
Tonight, the rain had just stopped, and the damp asphalt reflected neon lights of every color.
A man wearing an ill-fitting gray hoodie stood in front of the famous Hachiko Statue, staring blankly at the sea of people before him.
His name was Heimu Jue. Just three hours earlier, he had still been “Patient No. 7” in the intensive care unit of the Kanto No. 1 Psychiatric Sanatorium.
The doctors said he suffered from severe schizophrenia and delusional disorder, that the world he saw was twisted and unreal.
But now, Heimu Jue lowered his head and looked at the words emerging in his mind.
【Welcome to ‘Game of Gods’】
【Matching player identity and faction】
【Player: Ma Yuanzhang】
【Identity: Mad King】
【Faction: Shadow】
【When the world falls into madness, the madman becomes the only king】
“Heh… hehe…”
Two dry laughs were squeezed out of Heimu Jue’s throat.
To him, games, players, victory or defeat—none of it mattered.
He raised his head. In those turbid, bloodshot eyes was reflected the scene of the most prosperous city in this world.
In his vision, those well-dressed office workers were melting, turning into puddles of walking rotten flesh;
From those glamorous billboards flowed thick, sticky black asphalt;
The rising and falling car horns sounded like the wailing of countless wronged souls in purgatory.
“So… it turns out the doctors were the real lunatics.”
Heimu Jue extended his pale, withered hand and made a grasping motion in the empty air.
“This… is the truth of the world.”
At that moment, the pedestrian signal turned green.
“Beep—beep—beep—”
Accompanied by urgent electronic prompts, several thousand people surged into the intersection from four directions like floodwaters released from a dam.
Heimu Jue blended into the crowd and staggered to the very center of the crossroads.
The people around him hurried on their way. Someone bumped into him and avoided him with a look of disgust; someone was livestreaming on their phone, and the camera inadvertently swept over his neurotic face.
No one knew that standing beside them was a “king” who had just been crowned by the gods.
Heimu Jue stopped and slowly spread his arms.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was a mixture of exhaust fumes, perfume, sweat, and… the scent of fear about to erupt.
Ability, activated.
“The performance… begins.”
……
The first abnormality began with vision.
A couple waiting for the traffic light stood nearby. The girl was holding up her phone, wanting to take a selfie.
On the screen, she smiled like a flower, with the brilliantly lit Shibuya 109 building behind her.
However, at the instant she pressed the shutter, the phone screen flickered.
In that single frame, she discovered in horror that the iconic cylindrical building behind her had turned into a gigantic, ghastly white bone.
Every window of the building had become an eye streaming with bloody tears.
“Ah!!!”
The girl screamed and threw away the phone, collapsing limply to the ground.
“What’s wrong? Yui?” Her boyfriend was startled and hurried to help her up.
But the moment he reached out, he discovered that dense black bristles had grown on the back of his hand, and his fingernails had become sharp and curved, like a beast’s claws.
“Th-this… what is this?!”
He stared at his hands in terror, frantically trying to pull out the hair, clawing himself until he was covered in blood.
Panic instantly exploded across the intersection.
Within the domain of the 【Mad King】, human cognition was forcibly twisted.
Pedestrians discovered in utter horror that the once-familiar world had changed.
On the gigantic electronic screen overhead, the once-smiling popular female star suddenly had her facial features shift and rotate, finally turning into a faceless lump of flesh. The sound she emitted was no longer a sweet song, but the shrill screech of fingernails scraping a blackboard.
“Zi—zi—zi—”
The surrounding skyscrapers seemed to come alive.
They bent at the waist, steel frames turning into ghastly white bones, glass curtain walls becoming rotting flesh.
Streetlights turned into gallows of hanged ghosts, with corpses swaying in the wind—and the faces of those corpses were shockingly their own!
“Ghosts! There are ghosts!!”
“Help! Help!!”
“Don’t come over! Get away!!”
The once orderly crowd instantly boiled over.
Several thousand people, trapped within this enclosed intersection, fell into complete madness.
People screamed and fled in all directions, but under the interference of hallucinations, they could not tell directions at all.
Some mistook police officers running toward them for ferocious, fanged demons, swinging their handbags and attacking wildly;
Some mistook speeding cars for gigantic beasts with gaping, blood-filled maws, collapsing in fright and then being mercilessly crushed under the wheels;
More people shoved and trampled each other in extreme terror.
“Ah! My leg!”
“Don’t step on me! I beg you!”
The sounds of bones breaking and despairing cries intertwined over Shibuya, forming a hellish symphony.
And at the center of this chaotic vortex—
Heimu Jue still stood there.
His eyes were closed, his face flushed with intoxication. His body swayed gently to the rising and falling screams, like an elegant conductor directing a grand symphony.
Countless streams of black energy rose from above the terrified crowds, surging into his body like rivers returning to the sea.
That was pure fear.
That was the taste of despair.
To the 【Mad King】, this was the most exquisite delicacy in the world, the most powerful source of strength.
His body began to change.
His originally frail, hunched frame, after devouring the fear of several thousand people, began to stretch upward in a bizarre way.
His shadow spread wildly beneath his feet, no longer human-shaped, but transforming into countless writhing, clawing tentacles dancing in the darkness.
“Delicious… truly too delicious…”
Heimu Jue opened his eyes.
At this moment, his pupils had completely vanished, replaced by two bottomless black vortices.
He looked at the humans around him who had gone mad in their hallucinations. The corners of his mouth split all the way to his ears, revealing two rows of ghastly white teeth.
“Join my carnival.”
He suddenly swung his arm.
Boom!
The ground shook.
In the eyes of the survivors, the asphalt ground of the intersection cracked open.
Countless pale arms stretched out from underground, grabbing the ankles of passing pedestrians.
What had originally been mere visual hallucinations, with the growth of Heimu Jue’s power, began to gradually interfere with reality.
An out-of-control bus crashed into the crowd, but in everyone’s eyes, it was an “Oboroguruma” pieced together from bones and human skin ghostly green flames burning on its wheels, its windows packed with wailing spirits.
“Roar——!!!”
A colossal roar resounded through the sky.
In everyone’s eyes, black mist gathered atop several of Shibuya’s landmark buildings, forming legendary yokai—Ōtengu, Shuten Dōji, Ibaraki Dōji……
The Night Parade of a Hundred Demons!
Mythology Revived!