Infinity: Kill your way through the movie world.

In Allen's perception, pedestrians trampling on the soil would cause him pain from crushed bone cells, insects gnawing on grass and trees would transmit pain from punctures and cuts, flowing water washing away particles would cause continuous pain from corrosion, and micro-tremors of the earth's crust and compression of the root system would add new suffering.

The pain was like layers of paper stacked on top of each other, getting thicker and thicker, pressing down on the core of his senses. It was so heavy that it could not be ignored, but it could never break him.

He had no sleep, no numbness, no emotional buffer; a thousand years of suffering piled up, yet he remained calmly managing global industries and iterating death research solutions.

The pain persisted like background noise; he couldn't turn it off, but he learned to keep it in the background so it wouldn't interfere with his judgment and decision-making.

Occasionally, desperate people seeking death would find this mountain forest that permeated their very being. They would kneel on the soil, lie by the water, and shout out their prayers in hoarse voices.

They didn't know who they were praying to, but they vaguely sensed something in the forest, an aura that didn't belong to grass, trees, soil, or any living creature they had ever seen.

Allen sensed the approach and lingering of those people, and felt the friction of their knees against the mud as they knelt on the damp ground.

He used the earth itself as a medium, and the cell fragments scattered in the mountains and forests as the starting point for his voice, to emit a kind of resonant signal. These signals would not be presented in a clear sound form, but could be received by the consciousness of those seeking death as a vague idea, a continuous cognition.

He conveyed only the truth in those thoughts:

He told them he had tried every method he could think of, all of which had failed; he told them the resources of this land could not provide any relief. At the same time, he used his resource management capabilities to restrain their extreme self-harming behavior, preventing them from making meaningless attempts by adjusting the supply of materials and having the settlement administrators send people to monitor them.

He didn't want them to suffer in vain.

For nine hundred years, he possessed the world's wealth, industry, resources, and order, making him the true mastermind behind the entire corrupt civilization.

He had walked every path to death, crafted every tool that could dismantle self-awareness, and repeatedly tested every technology that could shatter the soul, yet that destination remained shrouded in mystery.

He could easily obtain the wealth, security, and resources that everyone in the world craved, but the simplest thing, 'complete death,' was something he could not obtain even after thousands of years and the exhaustion of global production capacity.

In the first week after the chasm between heaven and earth collapsed, the trillions of cellular fragments of Alan Thorne lying dormant on the earth trembled simultaneously.

That wasn't an earthquake, not a tectonic movement; it was a deeper tremor originating from the core of consciousness.

He sensed something new—an aura never before seen on this continent, cold, empty, and completely different from the warm vitality of the native world.

The aura surged in from the giant hole in the sky, enveloped in a dark mist of souls, and pierced through the earth's surface.

In that chilling aura, Allen sensed a completely unfamiliar hope: a loosely structured entity with limited capacity, unable to actively refuse the infusion of massive amounts of life force, and capable of being quickly filled, cracked, and burst by the overly vigorous vitality of the native land.

The moment he perceived those codes, he received all the painful memories he had accumulated over a long thousand years. Those memories, like countless tributaries flowing into the main trunk, surged in his core consciousness for a moment before receding.

Allen didn't rush to do anything. He waited a few days to observe the trajectory and speed at which the soul mist spread across the continent, and to observe the differences in their behavior patterns under different terrain and climate conditions.

He noticed that the soul mist spread more slowly in dry, hard soil areas and more quickly in moist, humus-rich areas; he noticed that it would instinctively gather in the direction of abundant life force, like a compass needle pointing to a magnetic pole, which was neither resistable nor able to stop on its own.

Those observations filled in some gaps in his perceptual network, but also gave rise to countless new questions.

He began to utilize his vast network of resources and laboratory systems, issuing new instructions to underground laboratories scattered around the world.

The instructions were unprecedented: to analyze the demon's physical structure, devouring threshold, energy limit, and expansion limit.

Thousands of laboratories were reactivated from hibernation or low-power operation.

Researchers and craftsmen were assigned to new research directions, and equipment that had been stored away for many years was restarted to purify reagents and calibrate instruments.

They didn't know where the instructions came from, but the tasks themselves were clear enough to keep them from getting confused. Some were responsible for cutting and processing the demonic soul mist samples collected from various places, some were responsible for recording the performance data of the soul mist in a controlled environment, and some were responsible for observing the extreme points of the soul mist structure in deformation and compression experiments.

Allen himself was simultaneously analyzing those samples at a deeper level.

It is itself a highly precise and wide-coverage sensing instrument. The cell fragments scattered in the earth are like countless miniature probes, simultaneously monitoring the signal changes at every experimental site, reading the structural information within them, and comparing it with the vast records in the database.

The newly added soul mist was like a ray of light through a crack, allowing him to glimpse the outline of another path in the darkness.

After numerous batches of comparative tests, a clear judgment gradually emerged in his mind:

The original rules of death have an upper limit, but the accumulation concentration and sustained intensity of local vitality are enough to repeatedly overload and collapse this death carrier with limited capacity.

In other words, if death itself can be suffocated, then the real question is how to make death big enough.

He began to understand that the main difference between low-level and high-level demons lay in their carrying capacity and transmission efficiency.

Low-level demons are easily overwhelmed because their souls are narrow and will rapidly expand and shatter when stuffed with too much life force.

Higher-ranking demons can accommodate more, but there are still limits. When a massive amount of life force is continuously poured in, they will also be forced to digest, become sluggish, and eventually stagnate.

Their common weakness is that they cannot actively refuse or expand their capacity on their own.

If he could find a way to make the death carrier actively increase in size and continuously expand, he could introduce a continuous stream of life force into an abyss that is deep enough, wide enough, and can never be filled.

Once this idea took root in his mind, he never let it go.

He began to adjust the research direction of the global laboratories, shifting most of the resources from research on bodily decay to the direction of death expansion and carrier improvement. Instructions were issued in batches, and experimental records flooded back to the main control database like a tide.

During this time, his sensory network continued to operate, never ceasing to monitor the activities of people on the ground. He could sense that those queuing to die were anxiously waiting, and that they were becoming increasingly restless.

He sensed that the number of demons on the ground was being overwhelmed by the massive influx of life force. They were being suffocated faster and faster, the intervals between the disintegration of their souls were getting shorter and shorter, and the empty areas on the ground were expanding.

Those in line began to panic as they noticed that the demons were disappearing faster than new demons were being born. Those who had been queuing for days, weeks, or even months began to reassess their fate.

Some people in the queue murmured complaints, saying they might never reach the end; some drew lots only to find there were no demons to devour; some walked towards the giant void, only to see those ahead of them jump down at incredible speed, yet the void seemed impossible to fill. Allen sensed the chaos on the ground, the panic and despair of those people, while continuing to analyze the information extracted from the demon samples.

He fully understood the nature of this inferno: those in line didn't know they would never reach the end; those in the lottery didn't know their chances of winning were almost zero; and those waiting to be devoured by the demons didn't know the demons' devouring speed could never keep up with the growth of the queue.

They thought they were making the right choice, but they were just repeating what others had done before.

He spent a great deal of time sorting through all the information he knew:
The structural defects of the original demon, the continuous infusion of native life force, the interconnected state of the entire domain after the collapse of the barrier between heaven and earth, and the enormous scale that he, as a diffuse consciousness, can mobilize.

He repeatedly rearranged and verified the relationships between those pieces of information in the perceptual network, like repeatedly trying out the edges of a jigsaw puzzle, until he was sure that the picture was complete enough.

It was at this time that he saw many scenes from all over the world.

In this moment filled with hope, the joy of death, and the prospect of endings, he also witnessed riots, chaos, and injustice.

“This shouldn’t be happening, I have to do something,” Allen murmured.

On the south side of the station, Eric finally couldn't hold on any longer, his legs buckled, and he knelt down on the ground.

He braced himself on the ground, panting heavily. His festering wounds were pressed against the hard soil, and new cracks were being created by the pebbles.

Someone nearby tried to help him up, but Eric just waved his hand and said, "No need, let me catch my breath."

The man didn't persist and retreated. Eric knelt for a long time, so long that his knees were completely embedded in the ground, so long that he thought he would never stand up again.

Then he heard a shout from ahead, a shrill voice filled with extreme anger and grievance: "I've been waiting for fifteen days! Fifteen days! People in front of me are cutting in line! They're all spending money to get a number! And what about us? Why should we keep waiting?"

The shout pierced the stifling air of the post station, like a needle piercing a cloth bag, tearing through its thin outer layer.

All eyes turned to the source of the sound—a young woman was pushing her way out of the line, one side of her face severely ulcerated, revealing yellowed cheekbones and jawbone, while the other side of her face was flushed red with anger.

She was thin and frail, and her left arm was missing below the elbow, with a dirty strip of cloth wrapped around the cut.

But she raised her only intact right arm, pointing towards the platform: "They should have gotten my turn long ago! I've been waiting for half a month! Every time I watch others go first! I have nothing to exchange for, so all I can do is wait, wait for what? Wait until I die and still not get it!"

Several other people, also dressed in tattered clothes, stepped forward from behind her.

A woman replied hoarsely, "My son waited in line for twelve days. Half of his body was rotting, and he couldn't even stand up anymore, but it still wasn't his turn."

Another person whispered, "Those people above them are all getting priority... That guy surnamed Lei keeps letting those who have something cut in line, while those of us who don't have anything, we won't get a turn even if we wait until next year."

Another voice rang out: "We can't wait any longer! Why should they be at the front of the line? Why should they die first?"

The sounds grew denser, like the rustling of dry grass before it was set ablaze.

The thugs began to walk towards the sound, their grip on the iron pipes and broken knives shifting from laziness to alertness, and their pace quickening considerably.

The leader of the thugs was a tall man with a deep scar on his face that stretched from the corner of his eye to his jaw.

He raised the broken knife in his hand and shouted at the group, "Get back! Anyone who cuts in line or causes trouble has no number!"

His voice was loud and clear, carrying a sense of suppression, as if he wanted to solidify that thin layer of ice even more.

But the young woman was not forced back. She stared straight at the thugs, her split lips revealing half of her blackened teeth: "I have nothing left to exchange, and I will not back down anymore. Either you let me die, or I will vent my anger today."

She neither moved forward nor backward; she simply stood there, like a stone nailed to the middle of the road.

The people behind her began to slowly and spontaneously gather in her direction.

At first, it was just a few steps, as if they were afraid of being singled out. But then more and more people came, and even those who were just standing by and watching began to move closer.

The thugs raised their iron pipes even higher, and the tall leader stepped forward, holding his broken knife horizontally in front of his chest, and growled at the gathering crowd: "Back off! If you don't back off, don't blame us for being impolite!"

No one backed down.

A group of eyes, like burning embers, glowed densely under the torch.

The teams on the north and south sides of the post station began to disintegrate, breaking off piece by piece from the edges like melting ice.

Some people stepped out of the line, some stood still and hesitated, and some had already begun to move towards the platform, their pace quickening.

The thin layer of ice shattered completely.

Among the people who had been queuing for days on the north side, an old man with a limp suddenly threw down his wooden cane and limped toward the platform. His voice was hoarse, as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper: "I've been waiting for three years! I'm not waiting anymore!"

Several people behind him also rushed out.

Someone shouted, "Don't push! Don't block the way!" Someone fell down and was stepped on by the people behind them.

Someone tried to grab the person in front, but was shaken off.

The scene was like a pot of thick porridge being stirred up, with more and more people pouring out of the queue and rushing toward the high platform, toward the gathering place of demons, toward every direction they once thought would lead to death.

The thugs began swinging their iron pipes, the pipes striking people's shoulders, backs, and waists with dull thuds. (End of Chapter)