Chapter 200

Qin Lu was dressed exceptionally formally today. She’d cast aside her usual lazy and casual demeanor. Without her usual small braid, her shoulder-length short hair made her appear even younger. 

She had also brought a bouquet of white flowers. Fresh dewdrops still clung to the petals, as if she’d just picked them somewhere and brought them straight over.

After her initial surprise faded, Qin Lu calmly placed the dew-covered bouquet onto the stone coffin before turning to look at Ye Zheng.

She asked sharply, “Did you come to find me, or did you come to find Sykes?”

Ye Zheng didn’t answer right away. Qin Lu studied her expression, then nodded as though she had suddenly understood. “Looks like it’s both.”

“Go on. What do you want to ask me, Your Holiness the Papess?”

Ye Zheng looked at Qin Lu, who stood there with her arms crossed. It was obvious her mood today wasn’t very good, her fingers tapping impatiently.

Today was Qin Tian’s memorial day. Ye Zheng didn’t need to ask to know that Qin Lu would definitely come here. Moreover, to avoid certain troublesome people, she would’ve arrived very early.

Qin Lu probably hadn’t expected to run into two uninvited guests even after coming this early.

She must’ve already crossed paths with Sykes earlier, which explained why her mood had turned sour the moment she stepped inside. And now, she’d run into Ye Zheng as well.

In truth, today was also Sykes’s birthday. To avoid any taboo, the emperor had designated Sykes’s official birthday as the day after his actual birth, so tomorrow would be his nominal birthday.

But no matter which day Sykes chose to celebrate his birthday, Qin Lu would never accept him. She would never accept this monster who had taken her sister’s life.

“Qin Lu.” Ye Zheng didn’t address her as teacher. Her sincere tone carried an unmistakable firmness. “Please do me a favor and describe in detail everything you saw on the day Sykes was born.”

Qin Lu’s pupils suddenly contracted. The body that had been leaning against the stone coffin slowly straightened.

“And if I say it’s inconvenient?”

Ye Zheng lowered her head and let out a soft laugh, then lifted her gaze to look at the other woman with probing eyes.

“A few months ago, I visited you because I wanted to learn about Sykes’s secrets.”

“But instead, you told me an even greater secret, 【Mother of All Things】.”

“I’m very grateful to you, Teacher Qin Lu. Without the clues about 【Mother of All Things】, it would’ve been extremely difficult for me to reach where I am today.”

As Ye Zheng spoke, she walked around to the opposite side of the stone coffin and gazed across it at Qin Lu’s slightly trembling eyes.

“【Mother of All Things】 is the Church’s greatest secret. The fact that you were willing to tell me proves that not only am I your beloved student, but more importantly, you believe I have the ability and the resolve to bear this secret.”

“So why not continue to trust me?”

“Trust me, to keep advancing your cause of revenge.”

Listening to Ye Zheng’s soft, coaxing whispers, Qin Lu slowly closed her eyes. “I wasn’t just using you to take revenge on the Church. I don’t like treating people like chess pieces.”

In other words, she still preferred to regard Ye Zheng as a student who needed her guidance.

Ye Zheng shook her head. “I don’t blame you at all. Rather than calling it ‘using,’ it’s more accurate to say it’s a tacit understanding where both sides get what they need.”

“So, Qin Lu, are you willing to keep working with me?”

Hearing this, Qin Lu half-closed her eyes and fell silent for a moment.

Her pupils were small, with the whites of her eyes more prominent. Eyes like that easily gave off a cold, distant impression, especially when she had no expression, making her thoughts even harder to read.

Ye Zheng also lowered her gaze. From Qin Lu’s reaction, she’d most likely already made her own plans.

She had already taken her revenge on the Church and the Hope Project through her. The only one left was the true culprit. Perhaps even Sykes didn’t count, and the emperor was the person she hated the most.

Ye Zheng had already sensed Qin Lu’s refusal. Her lips pressed into a tight line as her hand suddenly came down against the edge of the stone coffin.

“What are you doing?” Qin Lu was startled by her sudden move.

Ye Zheng gave her an innocent smile.

“I’m going to open the coffin.”

The moment the words left her mouth, Qin Lu swiftly pressed down on her hand, staring at this usually well-behaved and polite former student in disbelief.

“Since you’re unwilling to tell me what really happened that day, I can only use this offensive method to find the clues myself…”

“Ye Zheng!” she roared in anger.

“Hm?”

Qin Lu looked like she was about to explode with rage. She forcefully yanked Ye Zheng’s hand down. Ye Zheng’s strength was far greater than she had imagined. After stopping her, Qin Lu panted as she stared at the other woman.

“I’ll tell you. But you’re never allowed to approach her again.”

Having achieved her goal, Ye Zheng raised both hands and nodded.

Qin Lu leaned her back against the stone coffin and looked up at the grand, towering dome carved above them. She began recounting what had happened on the day Sykes was born.

That year, she’d only been sixteen. While interacting with her sister, she’d accidentally discovered a shocking secret. The emperor had announced the good news of the empress’s pregnancy two months earlier, yet her sister was still having her periods. Qin Lu, who was familiar with biological knowledge, realized that her sister wasn’t pregnant at all.

She kept pestering her sister to tell her what was really going on, but her sister always answered vaguely and would occasionally say things she couldn’t make sense of. Two months later, the royal family seemed to have noticed that something was off and stopped allowing the sisters to meet.

Then, one day, four months later, from the very moment she woke up that morning, Qin Lu’s heart began to pound violently with unease, as if something earth-shattering were about to happen.

Without any hesitation, she slipped out of the house with practiced ease, deceived the palace guards, and finally forced her way into her sister Qin Tian’s room.

There were only three people inside, and all three turned to stare at her in shock from the doorway.

“I didn’t know back then. They had actually prepared a real pregnant woman as a stand-in, disguising her as my sister and making her give birth in another room to conceal the truth.”

Sixteen-year-old Qin Lu only knew that she came to this room every time to see her sister. She had never expected to stumble straight into such a heaven-shaking secret.

Her sister lay on a small bed that had been temporarily moved in. Her abdomen was visibly swollen. The Pope at the time was pressing down on her belly, muttering incomprehensible words. Beside them sat a strange transparent jar covered in obvious scratch marks, as if some small creature had once been trapped inside.

Qin Lu closed her eyes. What followed was something even her memory seemed unwilling to revisit.

Ye Zheng waited in silence. She knew she was forcing Qin Lu this time, and a trace of guilt stirred in her heart, but she didn’t have a choice.

“The emperor wanted to have me killed on the spot, but my sister suddenly woke up. Her body began to convulse. I shoved the emperor aside and rushed forward to grab her hand.”

“She couldn’t speak. I looked into her eyes and knew she regretted everything. She was begging me to save her!”

“I tried to pull her up, to take her away from that place, but the emperor cried out as he clutched her other hand, calling her by her childhood name and saying things like, ‘Our child, the hope of the empire, is about to be born.’”

“And then, she let go of my hand.”

Qin Lu suddenly let out a short laugh. “I should’ve cried out loud like the emperor did back then. Maybe she would’ve softened and gone with me. But I couldn’t cry. I was anxious, furious, and desperate to take her away.”

Ye Zheng stayed silent. Qin Lu couldn’t have taken Qin Tian away. Qin Tian might not have been moved by the emperor either. The moment he grabbed her hand, she had probably already realized there was no escape. Giving birth to that child might have been the only way left to carve out a path of retreat for Qin Lu.

“Actually, Sykes’s birth wasn’t that different from an ordinary child’s, except that he’d been temporarily placed into the womb and then ‘born’ soon after.”

Qin Lu gave a small shrug.

Ye Zheng had already guessed the truth the moment Qin Lu mentioned the transparent jar in that room. Sykes had originally been an independent lifeform created from dragon bone, existing in a monstrous form inside that transparent container.

Without a human form, it could only remain as the Demonic Dragon. Only by gaining a human shell could it become the so-called hope of humanity.

In the end, the former empress Qin Tian had been reduced to nothing more than a complete tool. They had used her flesh and blood to fill out the monster’s skeletal frame, and that was how Sykes came into being.

Mercè listened to this piece of the past in silence. Since it involved 【Mother of All Things】 and dragon bone, Ye Zheng had awakened her ahead of time.

『The power of 【Mother of All Things】 differs from person to person. Those without a womb can’t create humans, so they had no choice but to borrow a woman’s womb to complete the transformation… A bunch of vile creatures. Hanging them isn’t enough. They deserve to be flayed alive…』

Mercè’s curses were sharp and precise. Ever since she’d learned the true nature of the Demonic Dragon last time, it was as if a switch inside her had been flipped. She no longer spoke with the restraint she once had.

Ye Zheng’s gaze darkened. Beyond her anger, she truly couldn’t understand why they’d gone to such extreme lengths to create Sykes. Why did they believe that a child born through such a method would become the hope meant to save the world?

No matter how one looked at it, Sykes seemed far more like a monster destined to bring destruction. And reality had already proven that he was indeed developing in that direction.

Qin Lu paid no attention to Ye Zheng’s thoughts. She simply continued to immerse herself in those memories.

The Pope’s right hand rested gently against the woman’s belly, yet the woman was plunged into unbearable, inescapable agony. Her screams tore through and filled the entire room.

“It didn’t take long before a baby was born from her body, completely normally, just like any ordinary pregnant woman giving birth to an ordinary child. At that moment, I was pleasantly surprised and thought everything was finally over.”

Ye Zheng couldn’t help but ask, “What was Lady Qin Tian’s condition after Sykes was born?”

“She was fine. She was even completely clear-headed. All the pain seemed to have disappeared without a trace. She stretched her neck, wanting to see the child. I was just about to carry the red, wrinkled baby over to show her—”

“That man stopped me. He said he needed to cut the umbilical cord, and he took the child from me himself.”

In her memory, the emperor, then still in the prime of his life, radiated brilliance. He lifted the newborn child effortlessly with one hand, tears still streaking his face, looking every bit like a devoted husband and loving father who truly cared for both his wife and child.

He first raised the wrinkled baby up for Qin Tian to see. Qin Tian gave a weak smile and said, “His eyes look like little grapes.”

Qin Lu knew her sister loved grapes more than anything. Out of curiosity, she wanted to step closer and take a better look, but the man turned his body away from her.

Then he set the child down and picked up the scissors.

The instant the man grasped the umbilical cord, Qin Tian, who had been slowly regaining her strength, suddenly changed expression. The color drained completely from her face, as if she’d just seen something utterly horrifying.

“Mon… monster—”

Qin Tian abruptly stretched out her hand toward the child in desperation.

The man didn’t even lift his head as he cut the umbilical cord himself.

“The moment the cord was severed, my sister suddenly vanished into thin air. I didn’t even have time to react.”

“She disappeared like an ice sculpture that had suddenly evaporated. Sykes was the last and only thing she left behind.”

Sixteen-year-old Qin Lu threw herself frantically onto the bed, but there was nothing there except the baby. No other trace of life remained, even the severed umbilical cord had vanished without a single trace.

“Sykes was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. The instant my sister disappeared, his wrinkled skin suddenly became fair and smooth. He had light golden brows, and his eyes stayed gently closed. He didn’t look like a newborn at all.”

“That’s everything I witnessed.”

Qin Lu spoke indifferently.

“The substitute pregnant woman in the other room died during childbirth. Everything had been arranged beforehand. Qin Tian couldn’t be allowed to live, so that pregnant woman had to die as well. That’s how the empress died in childbirth.”

“I don’t know if any of this helps you. Either way, remembering the past doesn’t hold any meaning for me anymore.”

Because across countless nights, she’d returned to that exact moment in her dreams. Sometimes she managed to take Qin Tian and escape the palace, sometimes she stopped the man from cutting the umbilical cord, only to wake up alone again in the dead of night.

Only by making them disappear completely, even more thoroughly than Qin Tian had, could she finally bring the nightmare to an end!

Qin Lu took a deep breath, glanced at the bouquet resting on the stone coffin, said nothing further, and turned to leave.

Watching Qin Lu’s retreating figure, Ye Zheng fell into deep thought about everything that had happened that day. She turned over every detail Qin Lu had mentioned again and again in her mind.

Something about it was very strange. Several details didn’t feel right.

Qin Lu shouldn’t have been lying. She didn’t like lying, and she had no reason to deceive her. Moreover, such a heart-wrenching memory shouldn’t be mistaken, she must’ve remembered every detail with absolute clarity.

For instance, when Qin Tian first saw Sykes, she had praised his eyes, saying they looked like little grapes.

But Sykes clearly had golden eyes, which didn’t match that grape comparison at all.

Furthermore, Qin Lu said her sister loved grapes the most. Ye Zheng didn’t know what kind of grapes Qin Tian preferred, but Qin Lu herself often ate grapes and favored the large, red-purple kind. Ye Zheng couldn’t see any resemblance between those grapes and Sykes’s eyes.

Another suspicious detail was that after the emperor let Qin Tian take a glance at Sykes, he had deliberately turned away from Qin Lu and stopped her from seeing the child’s face.

Only after Qin Tian disappeared did Qin Lu finally see Sykes’s full face, yet his eyes had remained closed.

And at the exact moment the emperor cut the umbilical cord, Qin Tian had suddenly lost control and screamed “monster.” Was it because she felt her own life force completely pouring into Sykes?

Although golden hair and golden eyes were the hallmark of the royal family, not every child of the emperors possessed such noble features. For example, Heath had golden hair and blue eyes.

Yet every generation of emperors had devoted themselves to producing children with golden hair and golden eyes. According to Imperial History, the first emperor who established the Aston royal family seven hundred years ago also had golden hair and golden eyes. This was regarded as the ancestors’ recognition. Therefore, once a child with golden hair and golden eyes was born, they’d basically be established as the next emperor of the empire.

Ye Zheng had stayed up all night reading. Exhaustion lingered between her brows as she held her forehead with one hand. Suddenly, she tapped her own head, and her eyes sharpened with clarity.

Last night, in order to search for the true identity of the Demonic Dragon, she had read the second edition of 『Imperial History』. Although her focus had been on the period of Aston XIV, she’d also roughly flipped through the earlier sections in search of more clues, which was why she hadn’t slept at all.

The second edition of 『Imperial History』 made no mention of the first emperor’s specific appearance from seven hundred years ago. Ye Zheng only remembered that he wasn’t very tall and that his looks had probably been quite ordinary.

She tried hard to recall; even the third edition of Imperial History had never mentioned that the first emperor had golden hair and golden eyes.

Yet she, or rather every citizen of the empire, had come to believe that emperors must have golden hair and golden eyes based on the currently popular historical books.

But when she thought about it carefully, every generation of emperors had golden hair and golden eyes. The royal family treated it as a given that only princes with golden hair and golden eyes were qualified to ascend the throne. This rule felt extremely forced and strangely unnatural.

Why should appearance determine a person’s ability and qualifications? Especially for the position of ruling a nation, which was by no means a trivial matter.

If her guess was correct, then Sykes’s true eye color wasn’t golden at all.

Why did the emperor want to conceal his real eye color? Was it so he could rightfully become the Crown Prince and inherit the empire?

For the time being, Ye Zheng couldn’t find an answer. She left the monastery and headed toward the Order of Sacred Conduct’s base in the Lower District.