That day, when the sun sank below the mountaintop, Lin Ge stood outside the house, her face deathly pale.
The blood-soaked ground was completely the gruesome aftermath of high-level alien creatures’ rampage. Her mind went blank, and by the time she reacted, she was already screaming as she rushed into the house.
“Dawn!! — Dawn!!”
The smell of blood inside the house was even stronger than outside. Lin Ge choked, her voice trembling. “…Dawn!! Jiang, where are you–”
Just as she had imagined 800 different ways Jiang Jianming might have died horribly, and was regretting her decision to go out to the point of wishing for death, her gaze suddenly froze.
On the wall, words scratched out with a stone: I took Ryann out, deal with the stuff outside, will explain later.
“……”
The young woman, who had nearly been scared to tears, stood woodenly for a moment, then turned to look at the dozens of corpses outside, those nauseating countless severed limbs and organs.
Deal with the stuff outside…
Deal with those…
Lin Ge’s expression changed several times before finally settling on one of extreme indignation.
Damn it! Jiang actually… actually ran off with that bastard little nobleman, leaving her at home to move corpses in confusion!?
– This, perhaps, was the beginning of the countless grudges between the future founding great emperor and Her Majesty the female emperor… as well as the origin of those numerous stories written as “love-hate entanglements” but read as “squabbles for favor”.
Yongle Garden Star City.
Smart floating lights illuminated the path ahead. A mysterious person wearing a long cloth robe with a small crystal on their chest walked through a hidden passage, arriving before an antique-styled bronze door.
Following behind was a young nobleman with a grave expression. He looked up at the door, then reached out to touch it. He quickly realized it was a high-level security device disguised as a vintage art piece.
“Is this the meeting place of your cult?”
The mysterious person touched their chest and lowered their head. “That’s correct, our Archbishop is inside. Please open the door.”
“By opening this door, will I find the method I’ve been dreaming of… the way to bring happiness to all our people?”
The young nobleman murmured softly. After saying this, as if having made up his mind, he placed his hand on the door.
The micro-cameras disguised as beast patterns on the bronze door completed iris collection, recognition, and unlocking within half a second. The giant door opened to both sides with a creaking sound.
Thus, the still-young nobleman of the old empire, Gerhard Laurent, stepped into the Crystal Cult’s secret base.
Looking around, it was a spacious indoor architectural space. The decoration style was similar to a church, but with hints of eeriness throughout. In the center was a raised platform like an altar, where two figures, one tall and one short, were vaguely visible. Below, a sea of people stood packed together.
The Crystal Cult member who had led Laurent here continued to guide the young nobleman through the crowd. They walked to the foot of the platform.
Laurent looked up closely and saw that the taller figure on the platform was a man in white robes with bare feet. His expression was serene, his eyelids half-open, half-closed, as if he were resting.
The shorter figure belonged to a little girl who looked no more than ten years old. She had white hair and blue eyes, and was extremely beautiful, but her limbs were twisted and covered in crystal growths. Her expression was very foolish, and she kept staring blankly at the man in white robes.
“That one is our Archbishop,” the Crystal Cult member beside him said with reverence, raising his arm to point at the man in white robes. “His Excellency Gaius.”
“And the other one?”
“That deformed girl? She’s a failed product from the Empire’s Chaos Correction Project. She should have been disposed of, but His Excellency the Archbishop happened to save her and raised her… Hehe, don’t be fooled by her appearance, she’s actually several decades old.”
Stunted growth… and her intelligence doesn’t seem quite normal either. What is this “Chaos Correction Project” of the Empire? I’ve never heard of it…
Laurent’s inner alarm grew as he pondered. After another moment, the man on the high platform suddenly opened his eyes, and the surrounding movement and whispers quickly quieted.
“This is a routine sermon,” the Crystal Cult member told Laurent.
In an instant, the man in white robes walked forward.
His gaze was deep and lightless, quietly sweeping over the crowd below, then stopping on Laurent, who showed signs of nervousness. He smiled slightly.
“Today, have any lost souls come here?” Gaius spoke, his voice gentle, yet without a trace of emotional fluctuation between words. “Speak your doubts, and the radiance of the crystal particles will guide the lost lambs back to their path.”
For some reason, as this person gazed at him, Laurent’s heart involuntarily began to race.
The young nobleman swallowed dryly and stepped forward. “Your Excellency, Archbishop of the Crystal Cult!”
“I come here with questions.”
Many of the Crystal Cult members present turned to look.
Laurent stood tall, his voice deep. “I want to know when our country can break free from its current dark state.”
“Looking back at human history, the strong have bullied the weak, the rich have exploited the poor… This injustice has never changed from ancient times to now, and it’s now at an extremely terrible point.”
“I’m willing to abandon my privileged background to save my compatriots who are suffering greatly. I hope for equality and happiness for all… but while I have ambition, I lack direction.”
“Even if I spent all my wealth, I could at most save thousands, but not billions; even if I overthrew the Holy Human Empire, I could at most dispel the current tyranny, but couldn’t maintain peace for the next few, dozens, or even hundreds of centuries!”
“Your Excellency, I’ve heard your wisdom is unparalleled, that you’ve received the calling of a higher alien civilization, that your eyes can see the truth of the universe.”
Laurent became excited, “Please guide humanity – this race struggling in the swamp – towards the direction of paradise!”
Gaius stood on the high platform, silently listening to Lauren’s impassioned words.
Then, he frowned slightly, “My child, I understand why you’ve come here, but I’m afraid the answer might disappoint you.”
“But truth has always been cruel, so I must tell you…”
Under Laurent’s anxious gaze, the Archbishop softly uttered two words. “There isn’t.”
“There is no direction, no paradise.”
Laurent paled. “No!”
Gaius shook his head. “Humans are a race born in error, possessing the most tragically laughable contradictory nature. The future you hope for is merely a mirage that can never be reached.”
“Because it contradicts the basic laws of the universe, and of course, it contradicts human nature itself.”
The Crystal Cult members around suddenly erupted in frenzied cheers, as if the Archbishop’s words degrading their own species were a pleasing gospel to them.
The noise of these cheers buzzed in Laurent’s head. Unable to understand, he could only repeat. “The basic laws of the universe…?”
****
“Why did we come out?”
At the same moment, in the Z2 Wild Zone of Blue Mother Star.
As the sky darkened, the little monster who had just caused a massacre was walking through the desolate winter wilderness, carrying the only disabled human he was interested in in this world.
Jiang Jianming lay on Ryann’s back, eyes closed, speaking softly. “What do you think?… If we hadn’t run out, Lin Ge would have wanted to fight you when she saw.”
His body was almost entirely encased in crystal bones. Through that semi-hard, strange sensation came a comforting warmth, barely warming his exhausted shell.
Ryann: “It wouldn’t be a fight. She wouldn’t be a match for me at all. You did it to prevent me from hurting her.”
Though his words seemed casual, there was something subtle in the young boy’s actual tone.
But Jiang Jianming was too drained of energy to think deeply – perhaps even if he had, he wouldn’t have thought much of it – and simply assumed Ryann was angry about the day’s events.
He sighed: “I know… you don’t think you did anything wrong this morning.”
Ryann kept a cold face and remained silent.
He indeed didn’t admit fault, but he also didn’t want to upset the disabled human further. So he could only stay quiet.
His feet stepped on dry branches, the crisp rustling making the surroundings even quieter.
Ryann looked up and saw the hillside where they had unexpectedly first met. “Why did you want to come here?”
Jiang Jianming: “I wanted to look at the starry sky and talk with you. For so many years… there are some things I’ve never found the right person to say them to.”
Ryann blinked in surprise: Aslan chose to speak to him, whom he had only picked up and raised for a short time, rather than to Lin Ge, whom he had been with for years…
Instantly, the little monster’s mood improved again.
He walked up the hillside, listening to the soft, low voice that sounded again from behind him.
“Your Highness, I still don’t know what kind of environment you grew up in.”
Laboratory, Ryann thought silently.
“Perhaps someone taught you that survival of the fittest is the basic law of nature. Or perhaps no one taught you, and you realized it on your own.”
Jiang Jianming tilted his head slightly, looking at the night ahead. As Ryann walked towards the hilltop, the darkness and those stars seemed to rush towards him.
When the darkness grew darker.
Those stars also appeared brighter.
“…I’m not going to argue against this point. To see the big in the small, perhaps this is indeed one of the basic laws of the entire universe, and what’s abnormal is actually humanity itself.”
Ryann frowned. “What do you mean?”
Jiang Jianming smiled: “What else? When a leopard chases an antelope, if the leopard is faster, the antelope will be devoured, and the leopard gets food; if the antelope is faster, it escapes, but the leopard might starve to death.”
“Cats will torture and kill birds or mice for fun even when not hungry, many insects have cannibalistic habits – these are merely the cruel nature of the natural world.”
“Your killing this morning, in the grand scheme of the universe, is just an ordinary phenomenon. No wonder you don’t want to admit you were wrong.”
—Across a galaxy’s distance, Archbishop Gaius faced the frenzied gaze of countless followers below, “As for concepts like good and evil, right and wrong, fairness and justice.”
“These concepts are merely narrow human definitions. When viewed on the scale of the universe, they seem so… laughable.”
Below, the crowd surged like boiling water, countless hands waving, emitting beast-like howls. Faces crying and laughing, laughing and then crying again.
Laurent, trapped in this human tide, was dumbstruck, cold sweat rolling down.
Jiang Jianming: “If the universe had consciousness, perhaps it would think we are the ones who are wrong.”
Ryann was so shocked he was momentarily speechless.
He had thought Dawn Aslan was just one of those old-fashioned benevolent types, perhaps a Buddha who would cut his own flesh to feed eagles.
But these words were so sharp they sent chills through one’s body. This person’s understanding of the cruel nature of the universe was astonishingly clear.
They had reached the hillside. Ryann helped Jiang Jianming sit down, still holding him with crystal bones, “Then you…”
The black-haired young man smiled, unabashedly resting his head on Ryann’s shoulder, pointing towards the sky—
“Your Highness, look at this night sky.”
Ryann raised his head following the hand of the person beside him, his fair neck stretching into clear lines.
In his inorganic emerald eyes, countless stars were reflected. The black sky was vast and low-hanging, like a big bowl covering them on top of this hillside.
“How vast the universe is,” Jiang Jianming said wistfully, “In such an immense, cruel, and dark universe, our small race was born.”
“Only it tries to criticize the ‘cruelty’ that is commonplace in the universe; only it tries to reverse the law of survival of the fittest in nature.”
“It was nurtured by the universe, imprisoned by the universe for life, yet it pursues a concept that contradicts the rules of the universe.”
Jiang Jianming said softly. “…Love.”
“Your Excellency!!”
Suddenly, Laurent cried out hoarsely, eyes brimming with hot tears, “Then what of the ‘love’ that countless sages throughout our history have pursued!?”
Gaius spoke slowly. “It counts as an error, my poor child.”
The man raised his hand, his white sleeve falling to reveal two smooth forearms. His face showed an expression of pity. “The history of human civilization is but a repetition of errors.”
“Humans, born in this universe, fundamentally cannot escape their nature as living beings. On one hand, they yearn for peace, benevolence, and justice; on the other, they create war, evil, and oppression with their own hands, constantly tormented by this contradiction!”
Gaius: “—So humanity fails miserably time and again.”
Jiang Jianming: “So humanity stands up countless times.”
Gaius: “Hypocritical and foolish.”
Jiang Jianming: “Clumsy but refusing to stop moving forward.”
Gaius: “No matter how noble the morals one claims to have, they will be devoured by cruel bestial nature; no matter how seemingly stable the golden age, there will come a day of its downfall.”
Jiang Jianming: “Whenever a dark age arrives, there will always be its reformers; whenever the fires of chaos burn, there will always be those who end it.”
Gaius: “No matter how advanced this civilization becomes, destroying it will always be easy, because human society grows against the rules of the universe, like water without a source, a tree without roots.”
Jiang Jianming: “From beasts, to primitive society, then to slave society, feudal society, until the late era of the old Blue Mother Star when we stepped into an age pursuing equality and co-prosperity… Humans, against the rules of the universe, have painstakingly yet indeed built their own civilization.”
“Such a race.”
Gaius said, “Is it not laughable?”
“Such a race.”
Jiang Jianming said, “Is it not brave?”
…..
On the stage, the voice faded.
Below, the sea of Crystal Cult followers erupted into another round of screaming frenzy.
The young Gerhard Laurent fell to his knees, his face ashen.
The white-robed Gaius slowly walked down from the platform, came before Laurent, and with a smile, virtually placed his right fingertip on the young nobleman’s head. “The current situation is proof.”
“The arrival of the Black Wave radiation destroyed the moral rules humans had shaped over thousands of years in just a few years. Isn’t that enough to demonstrate the absurdity of this species?”
“The human species has come to the time when it should perish. My confused child, please do not resist it.”
“Because in this universe, the end of all things is death, destruction, and chaos… This is the truth and the ultimate.”
“…”
At some point, Laurent lowered his tear-stained face, listlessly banging his forehead on the ground twice.
“Yes,” he murmured, “Perhaps what you say is right, but… I still… No, perhaps what you say is right.”
….
On the desolate hillside in the wild zone, the night wind grew colder.
Jiang Jianming frowned in restraint, covering his mouth as he coughed softly, his body seeming about to slide down.
Ryann finally came back to his senses, hurriedly embracing him, “Aslan?”
It was then that the little monster realized his back was already drenched in cold sweat. Those words just now had almost overturned his perceptions.
Looking down again, Ryann’s eyes twitched gloomily at the corners. There was blood again on this person’s fingers that had just covered his mouth.
He couldn’t help but think silently: If there really was an ultimate form of human civilization… No, if only the old humans could receive the same respect as the new humans.
How could someone like Aslan end up in such a state?
“It’s nothing, listen to me finish…”
Jiang Jianming smiled, seemingly unconcerned, “Even if civilization has regressed now, the foundation remains. Reconstructing a golden age might only need a spark that hasn’t been extinguished.”
As he spoke, he looked at the handsome young man beside him. His complexion was weak, but there was light in his eyes, “Your Highness, do you want to try… becoming a human who is more monstrous than monsters, to fight against the entire universe?”
Something seemed to flicker in those emerald eyes.
Ryann: “Is this what you want to do?”
Jiang Jianming sighed wistfully. “Yes, ever since my mother passed away, whenever I look at this dark starry sky, I always feel a kind of anger that wants to rebel… but I have no strength, and I’m about to die.”
“But Your Highness, you’re different.”
“Your high birth, innate power, and even certain qualities I see in your character, can all support you to do things that ordinary people can’t.”
Jiang Jianming turned his face, looking directly at the young prince with clear eyes. “The following words are entirely out of my selfishness.”
Their faces were very close. As the wind passed between them, it intertwined their breaths.
“I hope you…”
Jiang Jianming took Ryann’s right hand, and with his own bloodstained finger, lightly drew on the boy’s palm, “Ignite the spark.”
Thus leaving a trail of blood.
Like a lit match, a flaring star flame.
Ryann’s breath trembled slightly.
“If you really want to destroy something, I hope you can burn down this brutal empire, and also burn down these withered years of civilization.”
“And after the destruction?” Ryann suddenly interrupted, “Who will establish the new order?”
He didn’t give Jiang Jianming time to answer, stubbornly biting out the words, “I won’t, anyway.”
Jiang Jianming sighed: “You’ll learn in the future.”
“Who will teach me? I don’t like obeying.”
Ryann looked straight at him. “What if a drug is developed?”
The boy’s words were clearly somewhat disjointed. Jiang Jianming was stunned for a moment.
“Drug?”
“A drug to treat crystal disorder.”
Ryann: “If there is one, can you survive?”
“I… survive?”
“That’s right.”
The boy suddenly stood up, his platinum curls flowing in the wind, “How about it? If you agree, I’ll agree to your request too.”
He looked stern, extending his bloodied right palm, and under the surprised gaze of the disabled human… slowly clenched it into a fist.
“I will destroy this Holy Human Empire.”
“You will survive, follow me, and see with your own eyes how I do it.”
