A Novelist’s Guide for Side Characters to Survive

Chapter 17: “Molten Gold Fire Rain Scattered Across the Pitch-Black Sky.”

Lower District 13.

The standoff continued.

“Even though Dai Xi’an has washed her hands of it now, she’s actually a terrifyingly professional intelligence dealer.”

Tang Qi smiled, the movement of his muscles pulling at his wound, causing a sharp pain.

“When I asked her to buy your information, she sent me a compressed file so fast it was shocking. I’m guessing she either has a crush on you or wants to kill you on the spot.”

Chu Zu’s mind wavered for a moment.

Tang Qi continued, “Pain is a rapid response mechanism to potential bodily harm, helping people understand the boundaries and structure of their body. But you don’t understand pain. You don’t know what harm is.”

“You didn’t understand why the child you lived with clung to your pant leg, crying in pain, yet you felt relieved when they went quiet one morning. Dai Xi’an said that when you saw them covered in bugs but still silent, it was the first time in your life you felt at ease.

“You’ve lacked the individual perception of your body and environment since childhood—people in District 18 called you a walking corpse.”

The painless condition was the devil Mephisto’s gift.

He allowed humans to take it as their strength, but once they grew accustomed to it, Mephisto held their life and death in his hands.

Even if it turned you into a deformed monster unlike any human, it became more valuable than you yourself, and you couldn’t leave it because it was all you had.

Chu Zu: “You’re talking nonsense.”

“You’ve started to tire of it.”

“That day of the train accident, you were supposed to burn to death in the Lower District, but you escaped the fire. In the flames, you saw the sun showering down from the sky, so you climbed up the pit.”

“You gave everything you salvaged from the fire to the people on the roadside. You even wanted to give them ‘money,’ but the Lower District had been burned to ashes—it was just stacks of useless paper. They didn’t want it and said you were courting death. You said they were right.”

Two wounded men locked eyes, the lightly injured patient far less frail than the gravely wounded one.

“But you didn’t want to die anymore,” Tang Qi said softly. “I know why. At that moment, you and I saw the same sun. I also know what you were thinking—”

“Surviving wasn’t a miracle; the sun was. Right?”

Chu Zu’s lips turned purple, and he was unsteady on his feet.

Tang Qi tried to steady him, but his hand was slapped away.

The man stumbled back two steps, hunching against the wall like a cornered, enraged beast, glaring coldly at him.

“I don’t need your pity, Tang Qi. What are you, anyway?”

The man’s temperament was far less sharp than Luciano Esposito’s.

He was a vast, silent sea, and pain was the gift that violently altered the trajectory of his life, carrying a quiet, overwhelming force.

The moment Mephisto withdrew his gift, the dark tide began to surge, uncontrollable even by the man himself, driven only by raw, immense, untamed instinct crashing wildly.

“They never saw you as anything. A bunch of brainless rioters, just cheering when someone better off than them falls from a high tower. If you really understood the Lower District, you wouldn’t dream they’d follow you to achieve anything. What are you deluding yourself about?”

“Tang Qi, did you hear who they were shouting for? Your name? Their frenzy is for violence. Whether they shout Tang Qi or Luci, it’s all the same. What can you do by dragging them upward?”

“Slaves don’t see themselves as slaves; they think they’re the masters of their prison. They don’t love their chains, but they believe they’ll have nothing without them.”

“They don’t understand you’re reclaiming power, confidently and ambitiously ushering in a new era. Tang Qi, what do you have to talk to Luci about, and what are you going to say to him?”

His words had never burned so fiercely, like the blood still flowing from his chest, ignoring shallow human desires, rising into a raging torrent in the foul air.

Chu Zu sneered, “‘Please lift your foot from our throats?’”

Tang Qi could have responded, but he felt nothing he said would matter now.

Chu Zu wouldn’t listen and didn’t want to.

He regretted it a little.

There was no need to provoke Chu Zu from the start.

What difference was there between this man, who could overpower several people in an instant and seemed invincible, and the frail Ace who had lingered on a hospital bed?

Ace kept muttering his name without much meaning, hardly even a plea for help—just a dying man wanting to make his voice heard.

Chu Zu hadn’t moved in a long time, every sensation amplified into a gnawing anxiety twisting inside him.

Suddenly, his lips trembled, and he threw his head back, slamming it against the wall before collapsing to the ground, his body convulsing.

He clawed at his head, letting out a low, beastly growl, his suppressed voice filled with nothing but pain.

Tang Qi was stunned, quickly crouching to stop him from tearing at his scalp.

Even with expectations, Tang Qi had underestimated Chu Zu’s strength.

When he struck others, it was always clean and lethal, aiming for a single killing blow.

But against himself, it was more primal, more cruel.

Tang Qi realized in horror that he couldn’t hold him back, only watching as the man slammed his head against the wall again and again with unreasonable force, as if he wanted to shatter his own skull.

Pain, at this moment, became the least significant thing.

Even the toughest human had limits.

Seeing the bloodstains on the wall, Tang Qi snapped out of it, roaring, “Are you insane, Luciano Esposito? You activated the ‘Mitoli’? Chu Zu’s been working for you since he was twelve!!!”

This body, feared by countless people, became battered and broken in less than half a minute.

Tang Qi had always believed he could change everything, but he could only watch the nightmare unfold before him.

An unprecedented sense of powerlessness enveloped him.

What eased Chu Zu wasn’t someone’s mercy but his own weakness.

He slumped against the wall, drenched in sweat, his eyelids half-raised as he stared at Tang Qi.

“Don’t… don’t act all fake. You know he’s been listening… You and him… are the same…”

The man’s vocal cords were stretched taut, each word like a string about to snap.

He tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Choose one… Why should I choose… you?”

No one knew who Chu Zu was speaking to. Even tormented by pain and nerve shocks, the man still displayed a terrifyingly formidable physical condition.

When he grabbed the white phosphorus metal gun from the ground first, his face was expressionless again.

Chu Zu seemed to have no suitable expression left.

He’d been angry, mocked, suffered, and now nothing remained.

“Don’t do this, Chu Zu. This isn’t what you want…”

The man’s uncontrollable ferocity was vivid in Tang Qi’s mind.

Having witnessed the power of ‘Mitoli,’ a thousand possible outcomes flashed through his head.

He clenched his teeth, his face paler than before, his heart pounding in his throat.

A Chu Zu driven to complete madness?

What a joke—that wouldn’t just be a monster tempted by the devil.

It would be the devil himself!

As soon as the words left his mouth, Chu Zu pulled the trigger.

He didn’t even need to aim; the white phosphorus metal bullet grazed the tattered bedsheet pinned under the metal bed.

Flames erupted.

Then he leveled his arm, this time aiming at Tang Qi.

“What… is my intent?”

“…”

“No matter what my intent is… I accepted it… just like I chose it…” Chu Zu’s speech slowed, his muscles still tensed.

His bangs were soaked with sweat, revealing more of his eyes.

When they focused, they glowed an unnervingly vivid red, a gaze so piercing it made hair stand on end.

But in the end, he relaxed, as if he’d decided something.

The gun barrel, originally aimed at Tang Qi, turned toward his own temple.

Chu Zu rasped, “I’m nothing like you, Tang Qi. Look, I’ve never had a miracle.”

Tang Qi was nearly driven to chaos by Chu Zu’s erratic behavior, unable to distinguish what was prompted by provocation and what was Chu Zu’s own thoughts.

But he knew one thing.

“Stop! You’ll be blown to pieces!!!”

The Lower District people arrived late, rushing into the room.

Seeing the scene, they didn’t hesitate, four or five of them grabbing Tang Qi’s limbs and dragging him out of the fire.

In that instant, time stretched, every frame frozen in place.

Chu Zu slid down the wall to the ground, exhausted, his gaze vaguely fixed on the air, as if looking up at something.

Even this action was laborious for him, every casual movement a form of torture.

But Chu Zu didn’t care.

He sat in the firelight, flames licking at his clothes, his hair rising and falling in the surging wind.

Like throwing ice into a fire, the layers would melt, seeping inward, then evaporate into nothingness.

Tang Qi’s pupils dilated suddenly, and for a moment, he saw Chu Zu wandering in District 8 again.

Drenched in rain, the biochemical-laced rainwater washed his eyes strikingly clean, reflecting the entire Lower District he saw.

The man’s eyes were red, so they could only reflect a dim red world.

He was searching for something in that world.

Searching for what?

Tang Qi didn’t know.

But it was the first time Tang Qi didn’t associate Chu Zu’s eyes with blood, despite their deep, vivid red.

As he was forcibly dragged out of the room, Tang Qi heard Chu Zu’s cold, calm voice amid his own screams, as if the pain no longer existed.

“Actually, I don’t know… what I saw that day, the sun or something brilliant and golden…”

“But he…”

Tang Qi couldn’t hear the rest. The gunshot rang out, followed by an explosion, the shockwave blasting those outside the door several meters away.

Dizzy and disoriented, Tang Qi scrambled up from the gravel, his ears still ringing from the blast.

He couldn’t speak a word, the heatwave scorching everything clean, leaving him gasping for air.

When his hearing partially returned, he first heard the anxious shouts of his companions.

Then, from a distance, a child’s excited voice: “Come look! Isn’t this the sun Tang Qi talked about!”

Tang Qi looked up blankly, seeing only the molten gold fire rain, scattered across the pitch-black sky, formed from metallic bone fragments.