Superman Termination Manual - Chapter 239

Chapter 239: Chapter 163: Two Similar People, the Cycle of Fate

When Qing Ya discovered Che Zhengchen’s figure, the location was inside an abandoned factory in the Hongdeng Business District. He had come here following the clues left by the Dice Monster.

Qing Ya stood at the entrance of the abandoned factory, nodded slightly, and took a deep breath.

He was not unfamiliar with this abandoned factory, after all, it was here that Timekeeper had started a live stream, showing how he tortured and killed the widely admired rising star superhero–“Grey Dove.”

He still vaguely remembered that scene, the pitiful screams begging for mercy, that face drenched in blood and despair, the severed head gruesomely hanging from the work platform…

The memories surged into his mind like a tide, unconsciously tightening his fist.

A glint of uncontrollable violence fleeted across his eyes beneath the mask.

After a while, Qing Ya raised his head, his beak sharp as a blade extending forward, his gaze coldly piercing through the mask and straight ahead.

There, Che Zhengchen was slumped against a pillar on the ground, body hunched, head lolling to one side, arms spread out touching the floor. He looked to have long lost consciousness.

Beyond that, Che Zhengchen’s suit was filled with graffiti of a peculiar sense of humor.

The designs were childlike, featuring characters like Peppa Pig, Black Cat Sheriff, Mickey Mouse; one might think some little kid had run amok doodling all over him.

And next to Che Zhengchen, there lay a rusty steel plate. Someone had scrawled a few lines of cute handwriting on the surface of the steel plate with a pink chalk, as if done by a young elementary school girl.

Qing Ya slowly focused his eyes, looking at the words on the steel plate.

…

To Mr. Owl or Comrade Crow:

“Actually, I was just playing a prank, with no hard feelings. Please take our upright and kind-hearted Commander Che back, Blue Owl, sir. Oh, P.S.: If it happens to be Qing Ya who comes here, please cross out ‘Blue Owl, sir’ and change it to ‘Qing Ya, sir.’”

“By the way, don’t forget to pair him with a new pair of glasses. Not wire-rimmed, please. I hate wire-rimmed glasses; they give off the impression of a nouveau riche trying too hard to appear serious, with that smell of copper. ”

“I really don’t like them at all. Maybe the whole point of kidnapping him was to remind him to get a pair of glasses that suit him better, like rimless or at the very least black-rimmed glasses. Anything is better than wire-rimmed.”

“Well, actually, I’ve already picked out glasses for him. Remember to tell him no need to thank me when he wakes up; it was just me doing a good deed on a whim.”

–Your good friend and fashion adviser, Dice Monster (strange thing)

…

Qing Ya was silent for a long time, quietly staring at the words on the steel plate, feeling a sense of deja vu that involuntarily reminded him of someone.

Timekeeper.

More than two decades ago, he and Timekeeper, who was then just an ordinary person, met in college. He simply treated the other as a normal friend, his only friend, and they often hung out together.

However, after his identity as a vigilante was accidentally revealed to the other, everything quietly changed.

“Should I call you Ke Youqing, or… Qing Ya?”

In his memory, it was pouring rain at the time, and the young man stood alone on the streets, whispering to him without a voice.

“Qing Ya, he killed my family, made me feel what it’s like to have nothing;

“Ke Youqing, you were my best friend, you made me feel like I wasn’t completely worthless, and maybe no matter how painful life was, as long as I endured, things would slowly get better.”

“And now you tell me… you’re Qing Ya?”

At that time, Ke Youqing didn’t understand the cause of the situation, just stared at him, and slowly began to ask.

“What on earth are you talking about?”

The young man stood still in the rain, his gaze lifting from his soaked brow towards him, his face changing, his mouth slowly curving into a smile that mixed anger and sorrow.

After a moment, he bent down, slowly taking out many crow specimens from his backpack, carefully placing them one by one on the ground.

Most of them were torn and ragged, too painful to look upon, sporting sharp cuts as if someone had unleashed their fury upon them.

“We’ll meet again, in a different way…”

“As friends, as well as enemies.”

After dropping that sentence, the young man tilted his head and lifted a watch he held in his right hand.

His index finger slowly pressed a button on the watch, then, with a series of clicking sounds, his figure suddenly disappeared into the rain.

As if a second had been stolen from the heavens, or as if he had been devoured by the torrential downpour.

From that day on, Ke Youqing never saw that friend again.

But soon after, with the broadcast of the young man’s disappearance throughout the city, a figure calling himself “Timekeeper” began to emerge in Huanjing, hunting down superheroes within the Superhero Association.

In just a week, dozens of superheroes were dead…

In the following two decades, they entangled each other from opposite sides, at times like old friends reunited, at other times like enemies filled with mutual hatred.

Qing Ya had once wondered whether it was his doing that had turned the lamblike, gentle youth from his memories into the future Timekeeper, but he could only wear away those thoughts full of pain and guilt time and again in his mind, trying his best to make amends in reality for those mistakes.

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