Chapter 118

The iron door opened. Light from outside illuminated Ye Zheng’s face once again.

As soon as Annabella entered, she closed the door behind her. The old woman’s slightly cloudy gray eyes looked toward the girl sitting upright on the cold bench.

“Lu Qi has already come to see you?”

“So her name is Lu Qi? Such a cute name. I’ve already shown her the way out.”

Annabella looked at Ye Zheng with a trace of apology. “I’m truly sorry. My control over this base is limited. Lu Qi should never have appeared here.”

Ye Zheng shook her head. “No woman should appear here at all.”

A quiet silence flowed between them. Annabella turned her head and gave a brief laugh.

“Until that child came to find me, I didn’t know that Kieran had already arrived at the base. Do you know what I was doing at that moment?”

Ye Zheng tilted her head slightly.

“I was delivering a baby.”

Those brief words fell coldly inside the confinement cell.

Ye Zheng felt her throat grow dry. She asked, “So… did it succeed?”

“She died. The day before yesterday we were still celebrating her birthday. With her swollen belly, she blew out the candles and wished that she could give birth to a god-child. She had been the most stable ‘Blessed Reliquary’ this past year, the one with the greatest hope.”

“What about the fetus in her belly?” Ye Zheng didn’t know how to refer to the thing parasitizing the woman’s womb.

“The sign of success is that the life implanted in the Blessed Reliquary is born as a human. This time it failed as well.”

“But fortunately, she left this world satisfied.”

Just like an ordinary childbirth, the fetus’s head appeared first. When everyone saw that wrinkled and wet baby face, the room erupted into cheers. It had been far too long since they had seen a child born normally!

Amid the cheers, the exhausted woman held on with her last breath and gave birth. Pain showed between her brows, but her lips curved into a satisfied smile. Then she stopped breathing.

In her final moment, she believed that she had completed an incomparably great mission and brought a wonderful new life into the world. She left this world in satisfied happiness.

So she never knew that when everyone saw the infant’s complete body beneath her, the room suddenly fell into a strange and eerie silence.

“It was disposed of. Both legs were fused together, and the belly was transparent enough that the internal organs could be clearly seen. This wasn’t the hope they wanted or the god-child they longed for.”

Annabella’s tone remained calm. It was calm to the point of numbness, as if she had witnessed and delivered countless tragedies like this.

Ye Zheng listened quietly without showing any expression. One hand unconsciously gripped the edge of the table, faint veins rising on the back of her hand.

The old nun slowly closed her eyes.

“All these years, I believed I was helping those girls as much as possible. They were girls destined for tragedy. I gave them better treatment within the base. I treated every one of them like my own daughter, caring for them and loving them, only to send them to their deaths afterward.”

“Until you arrived, I finally understood that I had only been using this as an excuse to escape and preserve myself. There was clearly much more I could have done.”

Ye Zheng watched as the old woman suddenly smiled. Those kind gray eyes contained murky and complicated emotions. She reached out her rough hand and gently touched the young girl’s face.

“I woke up too late. I’m too old now and have lost my strength. Fortunately, you are still so young, clever, and strong.”

Suddenly, chaotic footsteps sounded outside the door, followed by the guards’ harsh shouts. A young woman’s voice came through in broken fragments. Then all the sounds vanished instantly.

Ye Zheng seemed to realize something. She stood up, lowered her eyes, and looked toward the bottom of the iron door.

Soon after, blood flowed in.

The iron door opened again. A strange young woman appeared at the entrance. Her panicked face was streaked with blood, looking like a rabbit chased by a ferocious beast, bewildered and terrified.

Behind her lay four burly men with their bodies torn apart.

The young woman in white robes rushed in frantically. Under Ye Zheng’s surprised gaze, she threw herself into Annabella’s arms. The old nun patted her back repeatedly, soothing her like a child.

“I found her outside the base. This child has mental issues. Her intellect is stuck at a child’s level, and her only family member has passed away.”

“A girl like her might suffer even crueler torment if she were left outside… so I brought her back.”

“She appears to be of Eastern descent. I named her Zhu Weilai.”

Ye Zheng looked at the young woman clinging tightly to the old nun, then at the gruesome state of the four corpses outside. She parted her lips slightly in astonishment.

Given Kieran’s wariness toward her, the guards at the door wouldn’t have been weak. Yet this young woman had taken them down all at once.

“She was originally an ordinary person. The base implanted dragon bone in her, and she unexpectedly gained an ability. If it weren’t for her intellectual impairment, the base would have arranged the next phase of experiments on her long ago.”

Annabella explained. With some force, she pried the girl away from her embrace. Her face turned stern.

“Listen, Weilai. From now on, follow this sister. Obey her instructions and release your ability when she tells you to.”

Zhu Weilai’s eyes were red as she nodded dazedly, her hands still clutching the nun’s collar. The elderly nun firmly pried her fingers open and then looked at Ye Zheng.

“Let this child go with you. Do what you need to do.”

Ye Zheng tilted her head. Her brows furrowed in thought at first, then quickly smoothed out.

“No need. Let Weilai stay with you. You and the other girls in the base will need her. She needs you too.”

Kieran would soon learn about the disturbance here and send more people to control them. Annabella and the other girls in the base might be in danger. But now that she knew these girls weren’t weak, Ye Zheng felt more at ease about taking action.

Ye Zheng walked to the doorway and scanned the corpses sprawled on the ground. She didn’t lower her guard. Her ears twitched slightly as she listened for any other faint sounds, confirming that no one else was nearby.

“Don’t worry about me. I have my own comrades to fight alongside.”

Ye Zheng turned back to look at the worried Annabella and curved a reassuring smile.

She had given Lu Qi a note to take to Zhou Yun. On it, she had written her request.

Before entering the Western District, she had arranged for Wende to lead the Order of Sacred Conduct along another route. She had also written a letter to Sela.

If nothing went wrong, they were now wandering somewhere in the Western District without any leads. She urgently needed them by her side.

Even if she killed the person in charge, Kieran, the base still held so many disgusting existences that wouldn’t vanish with him. She needed more power, not the seemingly just alliance of Pei Xi and Sykes. Even if they temporarily walked the same path, their futures were destined to diverge.

“Lady Annabella, there is one last thing I need your help with.”

“Tell me the location of the dragon bone.”

Annabella’s expression froze.

“If you mean the dragon bone stored in the underground laboratory, most of it was taken by Zhou Yun.”

“I searched the underground lab and only found some fragments. But I suspect this base, which has existed for over four hundred years, must have buried a massive amount somewhere. There could even be a complete section of the aberrant dragon’s remains… Please think again.”

To every person in the empire, it was common knowledge that aberrant dragon bones could deter monsters from other aberrant realms. The upper district held most of the dragon bones and remained untouched by aberrant realms, while the lower district buried only a small portion, which led to frequent invasions.

But Ye Zheng had long discarded this “common knowledge.” She suspected the lower district was where the vast majority of dragon bones were actually buried.

Then this experimental base, centered around dragon bone, likely possessed a large portion of the aberrant dragon’s remains. It might even contain something like the skull she had seen in the Blood Flower aberrant realm.

“I’ve been in this base for so many years. They always said the dragon bone fragments were transported from the upper district for experiments. I never doubted it.”

Annabella’s gray eyes narrowed. Her cloudy gaze sharpened.

“But there is one place in the base that only each successive Western District overseer can enter. I think that might be what you’re looking for.”

Standing at the bloody doorway, the girl faced away from the light and looked toward the elderly nun in the confinement cell. Ye Zheng blinked. Her large, dark eyes flashed with cunning and cold brilliance.

She wasn’t actually looking for dragon bone. She only wanted to lure Kieran to a certain place, a place he would never allow others to enter, where only she and he would confront each other.

✧✧✧✧✧

Inside the shadowy church filled with moving figures, the white-robed bishop stood beneath the half-worn statue.

Guards and knights hurried past him. Some looked panicked, others grim-faced. Only he maintained a calm demeanor as he watched the youths carrying hope depart. His hands were clasped in prayer before his chest, overlapping with the statue behind him.

It would end soon, Kieran thought.

Those two great children would seize this opportunity to rescue five hundred thousand people and become the empire’s undisputed sons of hope. His soul and thoughts, carrying Yuan Yuan and the others’ great will, would be deeply imprinted on them. Together they would achieve immortal feats in the empire’s history.

Suddenly, someone rushed to his side in panic, shattering the man’s calm and elegant posture.

“My lord! The old nun released Saintess Ye Zheng! And she killed the guards!”

Kieran slowly blinked. His expression remained calm, as if unsurprised.

“Send people to find her. Also assign some to protect the women in the base. They are the base’s treasures and must not be threatened.”

“Oh, right. Annabella asked me to pass on a message. ‘She is waiting for you in the Bone Burial Ground.’”

A crack appeared on the handsome and gentle face of the white-robed bishop.

“…Bone Burial Ground?”

“She” was only a pronoun, but Kieran immediately understood that it referred to Ye Zheng, the seemingly obedient yet utterly unruly girl. Whose bones did she want to bury? His?

The girl’s provocation made Kieran laugh.

Fine. Let her wait.

At the very least, he would remain here and await the triumphant return of those two children. He would personally witness the climax, the most exhilarating moment, of the cause he had devoted his life to.

Then Kieran suddenly restrained his expression. His pupils contracted.

No.

The “Bone Burial Ground” she mentioned… could it actually be literal? A place where bones were buried?

That was the most core location of the Hope Project!

The base could disappear. He himself could disappear. But that place could not.

It contained the incomparably precious demonic dragon spine. Even without experiments, it held an utterly vital role.

Kieran pushed aside the man reporting to him and silenced his attempt to follow. Alone, he ran against the flow of people toward the depths of the base.

┳⁠━━━━⁠━⁠⁠━⁠━⁠━━━⁠┳  

Authors Note  

┻━⁠━━━━⁠━━⁠━━━⁠┻  

Zheng: “I miss you so much in the Bone Burial Ground”

If nothing unexpected happens, this person will be offline next chapter. These two days have been too busy, so I could only squeeze out a small update…