The Person in the Painting

That female voice echoed in his mind.

Chen Guan did not respond.

He even built a barrier directly in his consciousness, shutting the voice out.

Right now, he had no time to deal with these uninvited guests.

Relying on the system exchange, he had directly purchased a ready-made ritual array. Now, everything was ready except for the final step.

Chen Guan strode forward. This was the penthouse suite of the Queen's Casino.

The Baroque-style decor was extremely luxurious. Golden reliefs and velvet curtains exuded an air of extravagance in the dim light.

Outside the massive floor-to-ceiling windows, the lines of a blood-red magic array covered the entire night sky.

The entire Jiang City had been turned into a gigantic altar.

In the center of the room, a man in a blood-red robe was spreading his arms.

He was the cult leader of the Embrace of Flesh and Blood, Blood Butcher.

Endless blood-red threads surged in from the window, converging onto his body.

The floor beneath his feet had melted into a thick pool of blood.

The air was filled with a sweet, metallic stench, a mixture of rust and despair. Every breath felt like inhaling coagulated blood.

Blood Butcher sensed the arrival of the uninvited guest.

He slowly opened his eyes.

They were pupil-less eyes, completely occupied by a pure scarlet hue.

He looked at Chen Guan standing in the shadows by the door. He wasn't angry; he just looked at him like a fly that had crashed a banquet.

"A mere ant dares to covet my feast?"

His voice echoed in the spacious suite, carrying the oppressive aura of a Tier 8 powerhouse, enough to rupture the internal organs of low-tier espers.

[Here it comes, the final boss!]

[Watch out, Brother Coffin! This guy looks like bad news.]

[Why do I feel like this boss's oppressive aura is even stronger than White Tiger's?]

[Wrong, how can some small fry compare to White Tiger? Did you take it seriously when we usually joke about Bro Tiger?]

Chen Guan ignored the oppressive aura and ignored the comments.

He didn't say a single word.

The next moment, he raised his right hand, and a faint cluster of dark red flame ignited at his fingertips.

Baal's Wrathflame.

However, he did not summon its world-incinerating power.

He didn't attack Blood Butcher. Instead, he flicked his finger.

He only had one chance to attack, so he had to prioritize snatching the core of the ritual.

The flame followed a preset trajectory, shooting towards an inconspicuous sculpture in the corner of the room.

That was a node of the entire sacrificial array inside the casino.

The contemptuous look on Blood Butcher's face remained.

He couldn't even be bothered to raise his hand. With a mere thought.

A blood-red barrier expanded in front of the sculpture, easily swallowing the flame.

But the moment the flame was extinguished, Blood Butcher's expression changed.

He felt it.

The essence of that flame's power was incredibly high, carrying the aura of an ancient demon god.

More importantly, the instant he blocked the attack, a tiny gap appeared in the energy torrent of the entire ritual.

A stream of negative emotions was siphoned away.

The rate of loss accelerated.

An absurd thought flashed through Blood Butcher's mind like lightning.

This Tier 3 kid wasn't here to destroy the ritual.

He was here to steal!

"You're courting death!"

Blood Butcher was enraged.

Having an ant steal food from his plate right in front of his face was the ultimate humiliation for a Tier 8 powerhouse like him.

He no longer maintained his posture. He raised his hand and clenched it in the air.

Bang!

The power of Tier 8 erupted without reservation.

The space around Chen Guan was instantly compressed, twisted, and then disintegrated.

There were no screams, no resistance. Everything happened in the blink of an eye.

The comments in the livestream fell into a dead silence at this moment.

A second later, a tsunami of comments flooded the screen.

[?????]

[Gone? He's just gone like that?]

[Brother Coffin!!!!]

[I don't believe it! I don't believe it! How could this happen! Author, you have no heart!]

Amidst the wailing, Chen Guan's figure appeared once again.

He looked exactly the same; even the wrinkles on his clothes were identical to before he was crushed.

The suite was dead silent.

For the first time, astonishment appeared in Blood Butcher's scarlet eyes.

The next second, the astonishment lingered in his eyes for less than a second before being swallowed by a deeper rage.

"Interesting." His voice was ice-cold as he raised his hand again. "I'd like to see how many times you can resurrect!"

Blood-red spiritual energy transformed into dozens of sharp spears.

They pierced through Chen Guan's body from all directions, pinning him in mid-air.

Then they detonated inside his body, blowing him up into a rain of blood.

[Holy crap! He resurrected!]

[Scared me to death! I knew Brother Coffin couldn't die so easily!]

[What kind of esper ability is this? Infinite resurrection? That's too broken!]

Three seconds later, Chen Guan's figure stepped into the room again.

"Again." Blood Butcher was expressionless, his arm transforming into a giant blood-red blade that swept across.

Chen Guan was sliced in half at the waist.

Five seconds later, he fell from the sky.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Next, the entire penthouse suite turned into Chen Guan's personal death show.

He was burned to a crisp by blood flames, torn to shreds, and sliced into countless pieces by sharp blades.

Every death was incomparably tragic.

Every resurrection was as calm as the beginning.

He was like a silent actor.

Using his own body, he crashed again and again into the impenetrable iron wall known as Tier 8.

Using the most tragic method, he bought time for his main body hidden in the water tank of the building opposite.

The live comments went completely crazy.

At first, it was shock and ecstasy.

But as Chen Guan died time and time again, the atmosphere of the comments changed.

[This is the tenth time... He's already died ten times...]

[He's using his life to stall for time! There must be a price for every resurrection!]

[I was wrong, I was really wrong. I even said he was acting before. I'm just a clown. Bro Coffin, stop fighting, leave it to the authorities.]

[Yeah, where are the authorities? Are they just sitting around doing nothing?]

Sorrowful emotions were fermenting and erupting.

Deep within Chen Guan's consciousness, the popularity points on his system panel were jumping wildly at an unprecedented speed.

Blood Butcher finally lost his patience.

He stopped attacking, his scarlet gaze locking onto the once-again resurrected Chen Guan.

"An interesting little trick, but it ends here."

He was no longer fixated on simple physical destruction.

He raised his hands.

The power gathered by the entire ritual began converging into his palms.

It was the despair of millions of people across the entire city.

An energy spear wrapped in black and red lightning slowly took shape in his hands.

This spear was interwoven from a massive amount of negative emotions.

The aura it emitted made space itself tremble.

It wasn't locked onto Chen Guan's physical body, but his very existence.

"Resurrecting a hundred times is useless." Blood Butcher's voice carried a tone of judgment. "This time, I will erase your soul and the very concept of your existence altogether!"

The black-red spear of light shot from his hand.

And in the blink of an eye, it arrived right in front of Chen Guan.

The instant the spear of light was about to touch Chen Guan's forehead, his heart was completely indifferent.

He indeed couldn't block it right now, but he didn't need to block it either. He would just resurrect again, although having to run all the way here from the respawn point every time was a bit troublesome.

Just then, a scroll flew out automatically and slowly unfurled in mid-air.

It was a painted scroll, and on the painting, there was only a back profile.

A figure similarly carrying a black coffin on their back and holding a scythe.

The moment the scroll unfurled, the entire room seemed to come to a momentary standstill.

The next instant, the figure in the painting moved.

He turned around, revealing a face identical to that of Chen Guan.

However, those eyes held not a single trace of human emotion, possessing only a deathly, apathetic silence.

With a single step, he walked right out of the painting.

A silhouette now stood protectively in front of Chen Guan.

He was an exact copy of Chen Guan, yet his aura was so overwhelmingly powerful that it made even Blood Butcher feel a sense of dread.

The Chen Guan from the painting raised the scythe in his hand, a weapon forged entirely of condensed ink.

Facing the black and red spear of light capable of obliterating souls, he casually slashed downward.

A pitch-black rift silently tore open through space, swallowing the spear of light along with the power of the laws it contained.

For the very first time, sheer horror surfaced in Blood Butcher's scarlet eyes.

Having done all this, the Chen Guan from the painting turned his indifferent gaze toward him.