Steve Chapter 900: River of Shi— (Patreon)

In a world where time had stopped.

Fang Mo carried out another round of meticulous research on the new mod.

After running a battery of tests, he finally reached a conclusion: this new mod really was worth looking forward to.

Evidently, his instinctive craving for Schrödinger hadn’t lied to him. This so‑called “Dummy” mod all but rewrote the very concept of his own existence, so in every sense it pushed him even farther down the road of “being something other than human.”

Of course, that was unavoidable.

The mod just offered too many fancy ways to play with it.

Just like you bunch of perverts, the first thing that occurred to Fang Mo was to use it for lewd purposes.

People keep saying that “refining copper”¹ is wrong—but if Fang Mo refines himself, well, nobody can really blame him, right?

Although the combo of Dummy + Custom Steve lets Fang Mo transform a thousand different ways, the player entity is still Fang Mo himself, so all those kinky maneuvers amount to nothing more than self‑gratification: indecent, yes, but in the strictest sense no one can punish him for it.

And there are plenty of other tricks that follow the same logic.

As a textbook Scorpio and a notorious “wife‑guarding devil,” Fang Mo immediately thought of his hapless little partner.

How could he leave her out of something this fun?

No way was he going to not harass her. Just picturing Xiaoyao’s utterly dumbfounded expression made him laugh—made both of his “brothers” stand up in solidarity.

Ah, the pure‑love, age‑gap route…

That really was a path he’d never considered before.

Mentioning his partner suddenly reminded Fang Mo of a few other things.

Although both of them were players, he’d long ago realized that her permissions weren’t as high as his—she was basically an ordinary player, while he was the server owner.

Like the ability to unlock new mods, for example.

His partner couldn’t do it.

Back in the One‑Punch‑Man instance, Xiaoyao had cobbled together a few chests out of metal plates, hoping to unlock more storage, but the system chimed, “Research failed. Player xiaoyao does not have permission to add mods to the server.”

In the end,

Fang Mo had to unlock the mod himself.

He didn’t think much of it at the time, but looking back now, something about it felt off.

He’d mentioned this before:

His partner found it hard to operate on two lines at once—she couldn’t control both her real body and Steve simultaneously the way he could.

Normally, if she wanted to control Steve—er, Alex—to work in the game world, build machines, lay out production lines, and so on, then her real body had to lose consciousness, falling into a deep‑coma‑like state in which she wouldn’t wake no matter how she was toyed with.

At first Fang Mo chalked it up to individual differences.

But that bizarre, glitch‑like sensation when he’d just unlocked the new mod had let him brush, however faintly, against his true self.

It wasn’t a misperception.

On the contrary—it was a way for Fang Mo to recognize his genuine self.

Only, right now,

he wasn’t ready to face that truth so soon.

His humanity was too tiny—like a speck of dust before his real self. If he dug too deep, he could easily be devoured by that self, lose himself beyond the multiverse, and become a chaos‑ridden demon‑lord like Azathoth, transcending all things—

only to end up blind and idiotic,

surrounded by Outer Gods like Nyarlathotep pounding great drums.

Even so, without delving into it, Fang Mo had already formed some rough guesses about his existence.

He even suspected that unlocking mods, materialization, stand‑ins—and even Minecraft itself—were all forms of self‑protection mechanisms.

His partner could operate on only one thread.

But somehow he could multitask…

Controlling his real body and the stand‑in Steve could be written off as a talent, but now, being able to control other player entities—how was that supposed to be explained? No matter how you sliced it, something felt wrong.

He was already operating on four threads,

and in theory there was no upper limit to player entities.

As time passed, the number he could control would only grow. He could roam different worlds simultaneously, experiencing different lives—just like the endless avatars of the Lovecraftian Outer Gods.

And every one of those avatars was piloted by Fang Mo alone.

According to his whims, those entities would act differently in every world: benevolent where he liked, catastrophic where he despised.

Those worlds would, in turn, give distinct names to Fang Mo’s avatars:

a benevolent Divine Emperor Xier,

or the malicious Ise Nie filled with terrifying malice.

To use a metaphor, the natives were like ants in an anthill.

They saw Fang Mo’s foot as the embodiment of evil—one stomp could squash a swarm—yet the foot itself didn’t care. His hand, meanwhile, was the embodiment of goodness, sometimes dropping sugar cubes or moving them elsewhere without killing them.

But actually, whether foot or hand,

every avatar was steered by Fang Mo’s single will.

“Avatar,” “clone”—they were merely adjectives the ants invented because they couldn’t grasp Fang Mo’s existence… close to the mark, but never quite accurate.

If there was a single exception,

it would probably be his little partner.

She had a player entity yet still retained her own mind and memories.

That was a fruit of Fang Mo’s unflagging effort, the blessing of several Outer Gods, a miracle wrought by layer upon layer of Wish‑Machines.

In fact, only now did Fang Mo suddenly recall what Nyarlathotep had said upon meeting Xiaoyao all those years ago… it was obvious the Crawling Chaos had mistaken her for a part of Fang Mo.

Which was fine by him.

Like he’d said, as an old Scorpio his possessiveness ran deep; if she was literally a part of him… he rather liked that idea.

They adored each other,

as if embracing their own missing half.

“Whew, done…”

Once Fang Mo had completely dissected the mod, he finally exhaled in relief. Controlling another player entity, he typed “/home,” then lifted the time‑stop from the Divine Tree Blade. “Okay—let time flow.”

At his words,

the drained, motionless world suddenly came back to life.

The pendulum atop the tower resumed its swing; the battlefield around him burst into noise again. From afar he could faintly hear Walter and Andersen shouting.

“Looks like… this can still be saved?”

Seeing Schrödinger ground into meat in front of him, Fang Mo hesitated only a moment before drawing the meme scythe. “Whatever—let’s try.”

With that,

he started using the blade to scoop and flip the mince on the ground.

Abstract as it looked, the healing effect was surprisingly good—like watching a video of a cooked horse head play in reverse. As Fang Mo stirred the paste, Schrödinger’s body really reassembled bit by bit until, in the end, he came back to life.

The moment he revived,

Schrödinger’s face changed when he saw Fang Mo; the fur on his ears bristled. “You—!”

“Relax, it’s fine now.” Fang Mo was in a great mood and smiled. “I’m in post‑nut clarity—lost interest in you. Just find a corner and wait for Alucard.”

“…”

Schrödinger said nothing, only retreated two steps in fright.

Fang Mo couldn’t be bothered with him, turning instead toward the battle—only to find Alucard nowhere in sight.

What replaced him

was a rapidly spreading shadow.

At first it turned into a dense black‑red mist, like a boiling cauldron of hell, constantly churning—one could glimpse countless severed limbs writhing inside.

But soon

the mist began to riot.

It throbbed and boiled, then a flood of blood spray burst forth like a wall. It was as though the gates of hell had opened; the viscous blood surged not like a fountain but a tsunami.

Along with the blood came swarms of eyeballs—scarlet orbs that seemed self‑aware, spinning, scrutinizing everything, drifting with the tide. And then, from the sea of blood, innumerable corpses surfaced.

As if each eyeball represented a cadaver.

These corpses weren’t dead; they began to move as though alive.

They were all enemies Alucard had once drained—South American special‑forces soldiers, vampires like Tubalcain, even legions of victims from the Middle Ages.

Ottoman troops, Wallachian soldiers—and countless peasants as far as the eye could see—now welled up from the blood‑sea, not as intact bodies but fused and entangled with it, inseparable.

And so,

a tide of death made of living corpses and blood tsunamis began to devour everything.

The bloodwaves rose tens of meters high, packed with remains, mowing down all around them.

The Crusaders from the Vatican still tried to hold their defense line,

their firearms spewing powder without cease.

Yet even that dense fire only shredded the first ranks of corpses into mush—

which the blood‑sea instantly swept up, hurling it back at hundreds of kilometers per hour, a titanic wall of meat and gore rolling over them. Any resistance was doomed to fail.

In barely the blink of an eye,

the Crusaders vanished, not even time to scream.

The same fate befell the vampire army from Millennium. Whether they fought or fled, the ending was already written:

to become part of the surging blood‑sea.

Even the helicopters sent by the Vatican above were no exception.

Remember, Alucard’s “River of Death” didn’t hold only cannon fodder; it held adversaries like Tubal Cain.

Cards whistled through the air, slicing it; in a flash they punctured the choppers, blooming into fireballs mid‑sky. Even the higher‑flying zeppelins took hits—sparks flickered on their hulls, clearly about to crash.

“What is that monster!?”

On this side, Father Andersen finally cried out.

Faced with an endless sea of the dead, even he could do nothing; all he could do was leap from rooftop to rooftop.

“This guy…”

Walter, likewise shaken, swung along his wires between buildings. Gazing at the horror below, his stern face twisted. “He really has eaten that many people? No wonder he can’t be killed…”

“But looked at another way—”

Andersen had heard him, and instantly caught on. “If he can’t be killed under normal circumstances, isn’t now our chance?”

“Hmm?”

Walter shot him a glance, frowning. “Alucard is my enemy. Only I can kill him!”

“I don’t care—I’m killing him!”

Andersen paid no mind to Walter’s hostility; he drew two gunblades and charged. “Amen!”

“Stop right there!”

Walter lunged after him.

But just as he kicked off, he seemed to hear a voice.

“Laozi is my name; go squat over there and—”

The tone was jocular yet carried an indescribable blasphemy, like some taboo whisper. Having eaten a Golden Apple, Walter’s combat intuition was razor‑sharp; a dire premonition flooded him.

He looked back on instinct—

and saw a figure standing atop London’s highest building not far away.

“Is that… Wang Jiangchen?”

Eyes narrowed, Walter spotted Fang Mo standing there, a huge brown sword in hand, and—before him—a golden… toilet?

“Wait, what is that lunatic—”

Seeing Fang Mo raise the giant sword slowly, Walter suddenly realized something. “Damn!!!”

It was a reflex bordering on panic.

Without thinking, he turned and shot toward Fang Mo, wires lashing out, doing everything he could to stop him.

Too late.

The very next second, Fang Mo rammed the sword straight into the golden toilet.

“Style Zero—River of Sh—”