Chapter 120

When the word “trash” drifted lightly into Kieran’s buzzing ears, he let out a painful, indistinct howl. It was impossible to tell whether it came from his body being corroded by the concentrated acid or from his lifelong beliefs and pursuits being brutally trampled underfoot by the person standing before him.

“No… no! They’ll… they’ll kill you! You… ah!”

His flesh began to melt beneath the black viscous creature’s envelopment. Through his blurred vision, Kieran recognized what it was. It was one of last month’s failed experiments. It had been implanted in a Blessed Reliquary but failed to be born as a human. The dying scene of that Blessed Reliquary still haunted him, and now it was his turn!

Amid the man’s heart-rending screams mixed with the monster’s whimpering cries, Ye Zheng looked down at the ridiculous scene. She shifted the sword tip pressed against Kieran’s throat slightly forward, stopping the monster from swallowing further upward.

She needed to keep the head intact. She wanted everyone to see this ugly face clearly.

“Kieran, your end won’t be perishing in flames alongside the Hope Project for spiritual immortality. Your head will become the symbol of the Hope Project’s complete failure, the trophy of our victory.”

The sword tip moved from his throat, where veins and Adam’s apple bulged violently, to the side of his neck.

In a daze, the unbearable human pain faded into near numbness in his blurred senses. Kieran turned his head. In the reflection of the sword blade, he saw a face. It was a hideous, tear-streaked, twitching face.

In the final moment of his life, a powerful thought rose in his mind. No, this couldn’t be his end. He should have stepped into his finale like a god before the burning base, standing in front of Pei Xi and Sykes!

“You… you shouldn’t have appeared in our story…”

With pupils already dilating, Kieran murmured his last unwilling words. Then a flash of white light filled his vision, as though the gates of heaven had finally opened toward endless hell.

Drip, drip.

In the silent underground palace, only faint and barely audible sounds remained.

Ye Zheng lifted the man’s head.

Blood inevitably splashed onto her. She held the head farther away.

The black monster on the ground had completely eroded the body. It seemed to want to crawl toward Ye Zheng. She glanced at it. After wriggling a few times, it retreated wisely.

Now she only needed to take this head out, find Zhou Yun, and settle the final matter in the Western District.

Before leaving the underground palace, Ye Zheng looked back at the endless white spine. Things were far from simple, but she could only move toward the truth step by step.

As she stepped into the stairwell, a trace of worry still lingered between Ye Zheng’s brows. Kieran had said he had other preparations. There might still be considerable trouble ahead.

She climbed the stairs upward, intending to leave this place, but the staircase seemed endless and constantly twisting. The time spent far exceeded what it had taken to come in.

Ye Zheng stopped. She lifted Kieran’s head to eye level and let out a slightly cold laugh.

“You really were full of tricks.”

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After the girl who called herself “Ye Zheng” burst into the Holy Academy, refuted the church’s embellished divine words in the book, and killed the teaching priest, Annie and the others returned to their rooms with extremely complicated feelings.

The base had arranged very comfortable accommodations for them, provided rich meals every day, and had knowledgeable teachers to impart knowledge. All of this had once filled her with immense gratitude. It must have been the supreme grace of the gods, and she had believed she would prove herself worthy of their expectations.

But today someone had suddenly appeared in this paradise, tearing away all the gorgeous disguises and telling them that it was all hypocritical lies. The gods had never said they needed to sacrifice themselves to death.

“I shall remain undefeated forever in darkness and despair. I burn the old to embrace the new.”

Annie softly recited the original words the girl had told her and crossed out the false passage in the book.

The priests said the base had recently been surrounded by monsters, but Annie refused to call them monsters. She knew what they were. They were the Fallen Ones who had failed to resist the demonic dragon’s temptation. They were those senior sisters who had never returned.

Annie suddenly shivered. In the past, thinking about them only brought sadness and worry about whether she could become a Blessed Reliquary. But now an inexplicable fear surged within her, along with anger she couldn’t quite explain.

Driven by restlessness, Annie put down the book and pushed open the door. She saw Lily from next door hurrying out.

Half an hour earlier she had heard some noise and faint male voices. When she opened the door to ask about it, the sorrowful-looking Lily had refused to say much.

But Lily had never been fond of chatting with them anyway, so Annie wasn’t surprised. Unlike their group of orphans, Lily was said to be a noble young lady from a distinguished family. Her room was more spacious and luxurious than theirs, and she even received personal instruction from Bishop Kieran.

Annie raised an eyebrow. Wait. The male voice outside the door earlier had sounded a bit like Bishop Kieran.

Watching Lily’s retreating figure grow distant, Annie steeled herself and decided to follow. Lily’s state looked very wrong.

Along the way she carefully kept her distance. Because of the chaos in the base, no one paid much attention to them. Annie’s expression grew more puzzled. Where exactly was Lily going? That direction wasn’t just off-limits to girls like them. Even ordinary base personnel couldn’t approach it.

Ahead, a white-robed knight blocked Lily’s path. Annie didn’t know what Lily showed him, but the knight allowed her to pass.

A sharp gaze swept in Annie’s direction. She quickly ducked back, her heart pounding. She couldn’t keep following, but she also didn’t want to give up.

After thinking it over, Annie decided to find the abbess for help. She was their guardian and was always like a fairy godmother from the tales. She was gentle yet authoritative and solved all their problems.

Annie ran in another direction. At this time, the abbess usually prayed in a small chapel, rain or shine.

The closer she got to the chapel, the slower Annie’s running became. She looked at the pure white chapel standing not far away on the green lawn and swallowed hard.

A faint smell of blood overpowered the fragrance of grass.

The girl stiffened. She pushed open the heavy carved wooden door. With a creak, her fearful eyes looked toward the figure deep inside the chapel.

A thick blood scent rushed toward her. Beneath the pale statue, the floor flowed red to black. White and flesh-colored chunks lay scattered haphazardly. Annie glanced once and immediately looked up, like a terrified fawn that had stumbled into a slaughter site.

“Annie, what happened? Did you come here looking for me?”

The elderly nun, accompanied by the innocent-faced young woman behind her, walked around the bloody area toward her.

Annie’s lips trembled silently. She didn’t know whether she should ask what had happened here, especially when she saw the young woman covered in chaotic bloodstains. She forced herself to calm down and said loudly, “It’s… it’s Lily. Bishop Kieran seems to have told Lily to go to the central control room for something.”

Hearing Kieran’s name, Annabella’s expression cooled. The lines around her mouth looked cold when she wasn’t smiling.

“Weilai, let’s go see what he’s still trying to pull.”

The young woman clung to the old nun and nodded obediently. She looked down and saw a bit of discordant blood on the old woman’s gray hair. She reached out to wipe it away, puzzled when she found the gray hair turning even redder.

Annabella grasped Zhu Weilai’s hand, which was now almost completely red, and sighed. It seemed there was no time to wash the child first.

A trace of fortunate laughter flashed through the old woman’s gray eyes. Perhaps Ye Zheng had been right not to take this child with her. If she, an old veteran of the base, had died in that earlier encirclement, no one might have been able to stop Kieran’s arrangements here.

Under Annie’s puzzled gaze, Annabella did not head toward the central control room in the middle courtyard. Instead, she walked in another direction and went all the way to the residential building.

At the deepest part lay a small courtyard. The flowers and trees were withered and decayed to the extreme, yet it was still easy to see the elegance and refinement it once had.

Annabella pushed open the crumbling courtyard door. Her aged voice carried a note of recollection.

“This was once the residence of the Western District overseer.”

“I once witnessed a pregnancy here.”

Forty years ago, depressed by pregnancy and her husband’s busyness, the man who spent his days occupied in the base brought her here so she could be better cared for. He placed her in this courtyard and told her that it was merely an experimental base for studying abilities.

Later she grew increasingly uneasy. One day she finally broke into the experimental site and witnessed a woman, big-bellied like herself, being killed on the operating table by the monstrous child inside her.

A few months later, Annabella lost her stillborn Lily here, along with her guilt-ridden husband who took his own life. From that moment onward, she sealed this place away.

“That man built a tunnel in the backyard so he could travel more quickly between work and home.”

Annabella passed through the dusty and abandoned living room. She pushed open the backyard door and led the two girls to a basement, letting them enter the tunnel first.

As she was about to close the door behind her, the elderly nun paused. She gazed at the faded old home of her past, and countless vivid memories flashed before her eyes.

“This is our true atonement, John.”

The door slammed shut. Annabella didn’t look back again. Quietly yet nimbly, she followed the two girls through the short tunnel.

✧✧✧✧✧

The small iron door quietly slid open and then quietly closed again. A petite figure slipped out nimbly.

Lu Qi pulled off the ill-fitting white robe. Her orange ponytail bounced free. She clenched her fist to cheer herself on and stepped into the thick fog.

That elderly nun grandmother had been exactly as Ye Zheng described and had pointed out a small path for her to leave the base. Now she only needed to deliver Ye Zheng’s note to Zhou Yun.

That was all.

But where was Zhou Yun?

Ye Zheng had said that as long as she stepped into the thick fog, Zhou Yun would sense her presence. Still, she had to be careful. Zhou Yun might not be an ally.

The surrounding fog was exceptionally dense. Lu Qi felt a phantom ache in her thigh. The last time she had been in this terrifying fog, humans with guns had treated her like prey and attacked her. Now she felt as though someone was watching from within the fog, waiting for the right moment to strike and hurt her.

Lu Qi jogged a few more steps deeper into the white fog. She took out Ye Zheng’s note, raised it, and waved it.

“Auntie, are you there? I’m Ye Zheng’s friend. She has something she wants to say to you.”

“Hello, Auntie Zhou Yun. We really have something urgent to discuss with you.”

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Lu Qi called out several greetings into the white fog. There was no response, not even the sound of wind. She wondered if she was still too close to the base and Zhou Yun didn’t want to appear here.

Gathering her courage, she ran deeper into the thick fog. After only a few steps, her body suddenly felt weightless.

A surge of mist rolled forward. On the barren ground, only a large white robe remained.

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Authors Note  

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I drank too much iced milk tea today. My period cramps are killing me, tomorrow I’ll update a bit more.