Wei Yang was just about to mock him when Qiao Jiajin’s words made him pause slightly.
“Isn’t this your body…? Because of Qian Wu…?” He quickly caught the key point from Qiao Jiajin’s gaze. “No wonder your movements are so strange… Do you really think attacks like this can hit me?”
Qiao Jiajin, however, grinned without a care.
“Hey, farmer, don’t you read minds?” Qiao Jiajin flexed his wrist. “Why don’t you take a look at what I’m thinking right now?”
Wei Yang studied those clear eyes carefully and found that his mind was still focused on how to attack him.
Except the images in his mind were growing more and more vivid.
“You’re getting used to this body?” Wei Yang asked with a smirk.
“What else?” Qiao Jiajin clenched his fist and grinned. “I’ll have to fight with this body for the next few days—gotta get used to it sooner rather than later.”
Hearing this, Wei Yang slowly walked to the side, picked up an old pitchfork from the ground covered in filth and decay, and gave it a shake before turning back to Qiao Jiajin.
“Kid, if you take those two ambitious bastards and scram, I’ll pretend nothing happened. Otherwise, I’ll skewer each of you one by one.” Wei Yang held the pitchfork in one hand while wiping bloodstains off his body with the other. “I just want to stay here, farm, grow flowers, and enjoy my own little paradise.”
“Paradise…?” Qiao Jiajin’s expression darkened as he looked at the crucified natives scattered across the field, anger simmering inside. “How insane do you have to be to call this hellscape a paradise?”
“Heh…” Wei Yang chuckled. “You know what? These are all carefully selected scarecrows…”
“Carefully selected?”
“To you, every ‘native’ just meaninglessly repeats whatever they’re doing. But only I know… these natives all have the same thought echoing endlessly in their minds. Since they’ve lost their sanity, their thoughts don’t wander far. They just keep repeating the same thing over and over in their hearts.”
“So?”
“So… I handpicked the ones whose minds are filled with ‘music’…”
Wei Yang walked to the side, his face twisted with madness, and drove his pitchfork straight into a native’s calf.
Instantly, a hole was torn open, thick black blood oozing out. Yet the native didn’t utter a sound, still muttering under his breath.
Wei Yang placed his watering can beneath the native, carefully collecting the dripping black blood, then closed his eyes as if listening to something.
“Do you hear it?!” Wei Yang suddenly opened his eyes, ecstatic. “They don’t care about injuries! They don’t die easily, and they don’t feel pain! Even riddled with holes, they’re still humming tunes in their hearts!”
At this point, not just Qiao Jiajin, even Qi Xia and Chen Junnan in the distance had their expressions shift.
“Old Qi… You see what kind of freak he is now, right?” Chen Junnan muttered. “Is this guy really worth recruiting?”
Qi Xia frowned but didn’t answer. He’d dealt with plenty of lunatics before—Wei Yang was just one of many.
No matter how crazy he was, Qi Xia still had questions that needed answers.
Like “The Con Man.”
Like “Wei Yang.”
“Listen!!” Wei Yang shouted at the top of his lungs. “This isn’t just some farm—it’s a paradise filled with beautiful melodies! Why the hell would you drag me away to join your stupid plan?! Huh? Are you out of your minds?!”
He walked up to one of the natives, listened intently, then grinned wildly. “Qiao Jiajin, come listen! An old ’80s hit!! You’ve heard this one, right?!”
Then he closed his eyes and waved his hands in the air as if conducting a grand symphony, though all around was silence, save for the occasional breeze.
Before anyone could react, Wei Yang dashed to another shriveled woman, closing his eyes beside her before breaking into a grin. “And this one! Holy shit! A futuristic banger! Doesn’t it sound amazing?!”
“This one!”
“And this one!! Listen!!”
“And…”
When he reached an old man who seemed motionless, Wei Yang leaned in to listen, then stabbed him viciously with the pitchfork. Several ghastly wounds bloomed on the old man’s abdomen, but no blood even flowed out.
“Damn… dead?” Wei Yang checked the old man’s breath, frowning. “Too old to eat… Might as well plant him in the ground…”
Then, as if struck by inspiration, he turned and shouted at the three of them: “Oh, right! Did you know? You reap what you sow! If I plant limbs here, all kinds of people will sprout from the earth… Can you imagine the harvest I’ll have?! This place will soon echo with the most beautiful music in all of ‘Terminal Land’—my very own ‘Farm Choir’!”
“All I hear is screaming,” Qiao Jiajin said darkly. “Every single one of them is bound here, wailing. Where’s the beautiful music?”
He looked at the restrained natives—their arms, stiff from prolonged bondage, had mostly necrotized, their skin cracked and withered from dehydration and exposure, barely distinguishable from corpses.
“That’s why you’re the real madmen…” Wei Yang laughed. “If you can’t escape, why not enjoy life here? If we can’t change the world, we have to accept it!”
“We’re the mad ones…?” Qiao Jiajin let out a cold laugh. “If we’re insane, then what you’re doing makes perfect sense.”
“What…?” Wei Yang cocked his head as if listening. “How absurd. Are you seriously feeling indignant for these walking corpses? You want to teach me a lesson on their behalf? Kid… even ‘heroism’ needs a reason. What reward do you expect for standing up for a bunch of ‘natives’?”
Qiao Jiajin didn’t answer, only took a step back.
“No reward…?” Wei Yang muttered to himself, still grinning manically. “How interesting. A real-life ‘knight-errant’ from the books? You’re fighting for the people’s fate?”
“Farmer, I was only going to punch you once to teach you a lesson—to stop setting up traps that could kill anyone at any moment.” Qiao Jiajin slowly crouched into a fighting stance. “But now I’m genuinely pissed.”
“Oh?” Wei Yang held the pitchfork horizontally in front of him, his smile not reaching his eyes. “You barge into my farm… disrupt my life… and now you’re mad at me? Where’s the logic in that?”
Qiao Jiajin stayed silent, but a voice roared relentlessly in his mind—
“Three steps forward, then an uppercut to send you flying.”
“What…?” Wei Yang raised his pitchfork, blocking the space between them. “You just won’t give up…”
Qiao Jiajin’s lips curled as the deafening thought erupted from his clear, determined eyes:
“Three steps forward, then a solid uppercut to send you flying.”
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