Chapter 112

According to the map Annabella had given her, the entire base was divided into the front courtyard church and sanctuary, the central courtyard nursery and school, the rear courtyard clergy residences, recreation area, back garden, and a vast underground experimental facility.

When Ye Zheng had first been transported here, she had encountered Annabella in the front courtyard church. Now, she was likely within the residential quarters of the rear courtyard.

Which location should she infiltrate first?

Her fingertips traced slowly across the map. Ye Zheng suddenly recalled that before being brought to this room, she had followed Annabella to a stretch of green lawn. Judging by the symbols on the map, that must have been the recreation area, adjacent to the back garden.

“She mentioned the back garden.”

Ye Zheng remembered that when Zhou Yun had been mentioned, Annabella had clenched her teeth and said, “It was her who opened the back garden.”

Warm sunlight streamed through the window, yet Ye Zheng felt no warmth whatsoever. Guards remained stationed outside her door. As abbess, Annabella did not wield absolute authority here. From this point onward, she would have to act in secrecy.

Ye Zheng stood by the window and reached her hand into the sunlight. Dust motes danced within her palm. Slowly, she curled her fingers into a fist.

Waiting until nightfall would be the safest course, yet she could not afford to wait any longer.

She glanced downward from the windowsill. The base appeared to be under assault. Taking advantage of the chaos to investigate might prove to be a valuable opportunity.

Planting her palms upon the sill, she leapt down from the third floor.

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Pei Xi lost sight of Ye Zheng within the dense fog. He watched helplessly as she rushed out of the church. When he chased after her, aside from the white-robed knights in the distance and the massive dragon-bodied humanoid creature, he did not see that familiar slender figure.

The monster’s roars and the screams of people echoed in his ears. Reason told him he should step forward and prevent the creature from advancing. Yet when he raised his gaze and met the emotionless pitch-black eyes of the woman fused to the black dragon’s body, his heart convulsed.

Sorrow, fear, fury… countless emotions churned within him. To his own shame, he turned and fled back into the church.

Inside, the enraged Sykes slammed the white-robed man violently onto the ground. One hand clutched Kieran’s hair. The surrounding priests and nuns did not dare approach. They huddled together in terror, watching the scene unfold.

“Sykes!”

Pei Xi seized Sykes’s wrist just in time, preventing him from going further. The youth had even removed his right glove. He had truly intended to kill Kieran.

“Don’t act yet. Aren’t you curious what exactly he’s hiding?”

Sykes slowly released Kieran and rose to his feet. He pulled his glove back on.

With a savage kick, he struck Kieran. “That laboratory below, what exactly is it!”

The white-robed man coughed violently. He staggered as he pushed himself up from the floor. His soft blue hair and pristine white robe were now coated in dust. Even so, Kieran maintained a composed smile.

“I didn’t expect you to escape so quickly. I underestimated you. But I still feel proud of you…”

Before he could finish, Sykes impatiently seized him. Following the route the three of them had taken earlier, Sykes dragged Kieran back down into the underground laboratory. Pei Xi followed in silence.

Sykes flung Kieran mercilessly onto the laboratory floor. Fury burned within his gaze, as though he wished to tear the man apart. Yet soon, his slightly trembling golden eyes shifted uncontrollably toward the transparent tanks lining the laboratory.

“Very familiar, isn’t it? You once lived inside one of those, observed by countless expectant eyes. In the end, you didn’t disappoint them. You became the strongest child, the one most qualified to be born from the empress’s womb…”

The man’s fractured, twisted words pierced into Sykes’s mind like shards of glass. Fragmented memories erupted and overlapped before his eyes. His golden pupils flushed bloodshot. His gloved right hand suddenly shot out and seized Kieran by the throat.

He wanted to silence the demonic cacophony before him, yet his hand couldn’t summon any strength under the crushing agony in his brain. The web between his thumb and forefinger trembled violently.

He couldn’t think anymore. Sykes’s mind instinctively began rejecting those drifting fragments of memory. The pain didn’t lessen in the slightest. In a haze, someone pried his fingers apart, and his body toppled backward as though all strength had been drained from it.

“Sykes, stop!”

The black-haired, blue-eyed youth once again restrained the Crown Prince who had lost all reason.

“Kieran, me, Sykes, Ye Zheng... are we all connected to those grotesque experiments of yours? Sykes was born from those tanks. Am I the same?”

Pei Xi shoved aside Sykes, who had been trying to strangle Kieran. He stepped forward and seized Kieran by the collar. His trembling voice nearly fractured.

At the mention of a certain name, Sykes, who had been slumped against the wall, abruptly steadied his powerless body. The glass-shard-like memories vanished in an instant. Before his eyes emerged a fair and gentle face.

His body suddenly remembered that enveloping, healing power. Just as every time Ye Zheng had helped him recover lost memories, the pain had been soothed in this very way.

Sykes, now fully conscious, widened his pupils. He pressed a hand to his forehead in disbelief.

“Pei Xi, you weren’t cultivated in a nursery tank. You’re the sole precious child who naturally descended from a blessed reliquary. The Western District chief director at the time raised you as his own. The only flaw was that you occasionally couldn’t control your ability, so he had no choice but to confine you in that small room when you lost control.”

Pei Xi stiffly turned his head and stared at the black chamber they had smashed their way out of.

“That was a room specially constructed for you by the chief director. He couldn’t bear to imprison you in the base. He wanted to teach you personally and arranged for a nun to care for you one-on-one. However, that nun betrayed his trust and allowed you to fall into the hands of commoners.”

“Even so, true gold can’t be buried. When you began to shine in the lower district, I noticed you.”

Pei Xi’s lips twitched. Veins throbbed along his neck. At that moment, a violent urge surged within him to strangle the man standing before him.

As Kieran continued speaking, fragmented memories drifted through his mind. Pei Xi felt as though he were watching the first four years of a wretched child’s life from the sidelines.

A small body was observed by figures in a pale laboratory. White demons constantly surrounded him. In the distance, black monsters roared. A kind-faced middle-aged man carried him away. After a fleeting glimpse of bustling crowds, endless darkness swallowed him whole.

That wretched child was none other than himself thirteen years ago.

Pei Xi released the man’s collar weakly. Seeing this, Kieran smiled. He rose to his feet, straightened his clothes, and once again appeared as a graceful and handsome man.

“Zhou Yun hates the Hope Project for taking her child, so she wants to destroy everything connected to it, including you precious children.”

“Stay in this secure underground room. Zhou Yun’s power, activated through dragon bone, won’t endure for long. She’ll soon be completely devoured by the dragon bone in retaliation. This dense fog is destined to dissipate. Once everything’s over, you can return to your original path.”

Kieran’s gaze carried intimate warmth as it swept across the faces of the two youths. Pei Xi sat on the ground in a daze, seemingly still absorbing the devastating memories. Meanwhile, Sykes beside him had already straightened. His golden eyes regained their cold sharpness.

He asked, “Then what about Ye Zheng? Is she also one of your experimental subjects?”

At this, Kieran’s brows knit slightly. For the first time, uncertainty entered his voice. “If nothing unforeseen occurs, she should be a... blessed reliquary personally transformed by Wen Jian using dragon bone.”

“Blessed reliquary?”

Pei Xi barely steadied himself. He looked at Kieran in confusion.

“Ah, blessed reliquaries are sacred roles that only great women can assume.”

Kieran closed his eyes and spread his arms. He drew in a deep breath. After a long moment, he opened his eyes and regarded the two still-confused boys. Then he abruptly shifted the topic.

“Has the Ye family not yet announced Ye Zheng’s marriage?”

Pei Xi revealed an expression of astonishment and confusion, while Sykes’s golden eyes dimmed slightly.

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“Don’t make a sound.”

A short man was suddenly seized from behind by a pair of ice-cold hands clamping around his neck. Instinctively, he tried to shout, but only a strangled rasp escaped, as though he were on the verge of suffocation. His feet, lifted off the ground, kicked wildly in terror.

“Tell me, what’s this back garden for?”

Ye Zheng had slipped all the way from the residential building to the back garden Annabella had mentioned.

A transparent, glass-like hemisphere covered a vast stretch of untamed land. Within it grew uneven clusters of mingled flowers and weeds, tall trees rising freely, and a gently flowing stream. Ye Zheng glanced back. The passage she’d used earlier was flanked by towering, prison-like enclosures bound with thick iron chains.

This wasn’t a church’s back garden. It resembled an abandoned enclosure for imprisoning wild beasts.

As she advanced, she noticed shed scales, molted skins, massive footprints pressed into the soil, and deep claw marks gouged into tree trunks.

Ye Zheng quickly understood. The inhabitants here were likely the dragon-bodied humanoids she’d seen outside the Western District church.

What she couldn’t understand was why such beings existed.

Her hand suddenly released him. The short man collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath. When his eyes met the youth’s icy gaze, he forgot even to breathe. With a heavy tongue, he stammered incoherently.

“This is, is where the fallen ones live. Originally they all stayed here, but, but two weeks ago the dome suddenly opened. They all flew away!”

“Fallen ones?”

“The, the women who failed the trial of demonic dragon power. Their bodies couldn’t purify the evil power of the dragon bone, so they degenerated into monstrous forms. Even so, we didn’t abandon them. We raised them specially...”

The trial of demonic dragon power?

Ye Zheng abruptly recalled the dragon bone fragment in Zhuo Ya’s body, now buried in her own palm. The so-called trial of demonic dragon power was likely the implantation of dragon bone into the body.

Up to now, Ye Zheng had only dared implant a tiny fragment of dragon bone in her palm. If not for her own ability possessing a healing effect, she might not have been able to control even that sliver.

The creeping sense of losing control brought by that fragment still made her cautious whenever she manipulated the dragon bone in her hand.

So if she lost control, would she become one of those dragon-bodied beings? One of the fallen ones this man described?

The corners of the girl’s mouth curved into a mocking smile. “Then what about the women who passed the trial of the demonic dragon’s evil power?”

“They’re precious blessed reliquaries, bearers of hope!”

When speaking of blessed reliquaries, the man who had just escaped death suddenly spoke fluently, as though he’d recited it countless times and repeated it to others countless times. “Blessed reliquaries are carefully tended by us. The sacred reproductive power within their bodies purifies the dragon’s demonic energy. They give birth to extraordinary children, and those children are our future!”

Ye Zheng regarded him with a strange expression. She slowly crouched, leaning closer to scrutinize his twitching face, as though judging whether he was lying.

“I’ve always wondered. Why do you believe evil dragon bone can produce the next God of Hope?”

The man’s face twitched. He seemed to have entirely forgotten the shadow of death. Madness flickered in his eyes.

“This is a secret only we know, ahhh!”

Bang!

Ye Zheng shot through his shoulder, restoring his sense of peril.

“You, you, I’ll speak, I’ll speak!”

The man clutched his bleeding shoulder in agony.

“The first Pope left behind records. All power originates from the same source, whether monsters from aberrant realms, demonic dragons, humans with abilities, or the God of Hope.”

“This power erupted massively when it first descended. Most of the first group who awakened abilities lost control, just like monsters in aberrant realms. The disaster the empire faced was catastrophic, until the God of Hope appeared.”

“After the God of Hope vanished, the empire fell into panic again. Although the first Pope, the Saintess, and other stable ability users emerged, most people remained unstable. The empire’s outlook turned pessimistic. They believed that without the God of Hope, humanity would either be consumed by aberrant realms or assimilated into monsters by their power.”

“However, this wave of ability outbursts stabilized rapidly within thirty years.”

The man paused, as though attempting to heighten suspense. Then he heard a cool voice above him say slowly, “Because second-generation ability users born through human women remain stable?”

“The probability of ordinary human women giving birth to ability users is very low, and they’re usually low-grade.”

“Women with abilities have a high probability of bearing children with abilities, at the cost of their own powers declining.”

“But regardless, the children born from them are stable ability users.”

Ye Zheng’s gaze turned utterly cold. She stared at the man’s horrified face. Her voice grew lighter, like the stillness before a storm.

“The demonic dragon’s power was closest to that of the God of Hope. Since both originated from the same source, you coveted power comparable to the God of Hope.”

“You used women as vessels to purify and stabilize dragon bone power.”

Ye Zheng closed her eyes. She recalled Sykes’s body filled with dragon bone, the strange biological corpses suspended in transparent tanks, the Pope’s Mother of All Things ability, and the women known as blessed reliquaries.

All the clues aligned at this moment. They used the Mother of All Things ability to animate dragon bone. To allow dragon bone life to be born as stable human ability users, they cultivated blessed reliquaries.

Women capable of implanting dragon bone fragments and withstanding its power became blessed reliquaries. Then dragon bone life was implanted into them, enabling dragon bone to be born as humans, such as Sykes.

The former empress had been one of the blessed reliquaries they spoke of.

Ye Zheng looked at her own palm. By their standards, she too was a so-called blessed reliquary. For a moment, the empty space sank into absolute silence.

Confronted with the girl’s faintly mocking tone, the man’s already bulging eyes protruded even further. He panted heavily. After a long while, he finally gathered the courage to retort with ferocity. “Do you think we sacrificed so many people merely for power?”

A surge of suppressed fury flickered through Ye Zheng’s dark eyes. She slowly lifted her gun. Yet the man’s next words caused her eyes to widen in astonishment.

“You know nothing! The widely circulated prophecy that in five hundred years an SSS-Class aberrant realm will descend, and that the heir chosen by the God of Hope will reverse the tide… only the first half is true!”

Ye Zheng’s lips parted slightly in shock. For a moment, she couldn’t utter a single word.

“The true prophecy left behind by the first Pope states that in five hundred years, the empire will be utterly destroyed upon the arrival of an SSS-Class aberrant realm. There is no mention whatsoever of any heir. The latter half was fabricated solely to pacify the populace…”

The short man, who had been slumped on the ground, suddenly erupted with astonishing strength. He shoved aside Ye Zheng, who had been crouching before him and scrutinizing him closely. Rising to his feet, he stood tall and looked down upon the ignorant girl.

“If hope doesn’t exist, we’ll create hope. We’ll never bow to a predestined annihilation. That is the ultimate purpose of the Hope Project!”

“The God of Hope will no longer save us, so we’ll create our own god. That is humanity’s greatness! That is the greatness of the Hope Project!”

“It isn’t only women who’ve been sacrificed. Every single one of us has lived in obscurity and devoted our entire lives to this cause!”

Ye Zheng remained crouched in place, her head lowered in silence, as though digesting the immense flood of information.

Then the girl slowly rose from the ground. The instant she straightened, the man’s impassioned momentum diminished before her height. Ye Zheng couldn’t help tilting her head and letting out a soft laugh.

“The humanity you speak of, the future you speak of… does it include us women?” Ye Zheng paused midway, then continued.

The man, who stood less than one meter seventy, had to tilt his head back to look at the tall girl. The corners of his mouth drew into a rigid arc as he struggled to maintain an unyielding expression.

“Every single one, every woman was willing. Some took the initiative to join this project. Others arrived here by accident. Those women and girls who came by accident might not have understood the project at first, but after they learned about us, every single one willingly accepted the experiment. We never coerced anyone.”

“They are great. History will remember their noble choice!”

“What a noble choice!”

Ye Zheng smiled. She casually tossed the gun in her hand onto the ground and began clapping. The crisp sound of applause echoed through the desolate space, unbearably jarring.

The man stared at her as though he’d seen a ghost.

“Now I’ll give you a choice as well. Either be slain by the sword at my side, or be shot by my gun, or…”

The short man in white robes didn’t wait for Ye Zheng to finish. He hurled himself at her and frantically dashed toward the wild expanse opposite.

The path back indoors was blocked by Ye Zheng, yet he was intimately familiar with this place. There were other exits.

Damn it! Who exactly was this girl? Her features seemed vaguely familiar, but the present circumstances allowed him no time to think.

Bang, bang. Gunshots rang out in rapid succession behind him, accompanied by the girl’s approaching footsteps. His heart pounded in his throat as he fled for his life, not daring to look back, secretly rejoicing.

What a fool. If she hadn’t thrown the gun to the ground earlier, she might’ve shot him already. Now she might not be able to catch up. As long as he crossed the stream ahead and escaped through that staff-only side door, he could find people to rescue him.

The man fixed his gaze on the small door not far away, his heart swelling with hope. One foot stepped unconsciously into the stream, splashing water.

“Mm—”

His vision spun abruptly. His entire body plunged into the stream.

The stream wasn’t deep. The man thrashed wildly, struggling to rise. Yet he discovered that the shallow, clear water pressed down upon him like an immense boulder. Soon the water engulfed all his senses. His perception faded gradually. Even his vision darkened.

In the final moment, only blurred hearing remained.

“To your noble choice.”

The light, casual voice passed through the water’s surface, stirring one final ripple. The next instant, the surface returned to perfect stillness.

Not long after, a pallid corpse floated up from the shallow stream. Ye Zheng searched the body briefly and withdrew a metal card from the upper pocket of his shirt.

“Henry Jones… ah, a member of the Jones family. No wonder he attained the position of nursery supervisor and knew so much.”

Ye Zheng stared at the words “Nursery Supervisor” engraved on the metal identification card. She decided that her next destination would be the nursery marked on the map.

At the same time.

“Roy, Kyle, let’s head to Lan Xia County. Lu Qi’s hometown is there. The place where I was born is there as well…”

“Ryan, gather everyone who can still move.”

“It seems I can’t stop you. How about this, let me accompany you.”

Inside the grand church of the Western District, the two youths exchanged glances, then turned together toward Kieran, who was smiling gently.

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Authors Note

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If those two don’t hurry, Zheng will’ve slaughtered the entire base.