Author: 易修罗 / Yi Xiu Luo

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 125

Even Ying Feng, whose emotions were incomplete due to his status as a Lone Star reincarnation, felt a profound sense of loss emanating from the depths of his soul. It was as if a place of belonging had suddenly vanished; although he stood on his own land, he was overwhelmed with a strong sense of drifting.

Suddenly, he thought about what Fu Yao had said—that the soul’s guidance was limited by the distance to the lighthouse. What would become of the Tianxiu people now that they had lost their beacon? He turned to look around; people were helping each other up amidst their grief, but some knelt and refused to stand. His gaze fell on someone, and with a sudden sense of alarm, he rushed over and grabbed Dai Xuan’s wrist. In her delicate hand, she tightly held a sharp dagger.

“You’re mad,” he scolded. “Doing this will scatter your soul.”

Dai Xuan then lifted her head; her face was streaked with tears, and her voice was so strained that it was painful to listen to.

“If we continue living, won’t our souls still scatter?” she asked.

Ying Feng was at a loss for words, his grip on her hand frozen, unsure whether to hold on or let go.

Fu Yao approached, silently taking the dagger from her hand and tossing it aside carelessly. Ying Feng let go, and this time Dai Xuan didn’t reach for the weapon again, instead bowing her head once more as tears silently fell onto the ground.

“Who exactly are they?” Fu Yao asked, as Nie Yun also joined them. They had teleported back to face the ground’s impact risk, yet they were still too late to prevent the enemy’s final suicidal attack.

Ying Feng had little knowledge to share. “They are of the same species as us, not afraid of injury, not fearing death, and even in death, their souls can reincarnate.”

Every general who rose to high rank was informed of the truth about the Tianxiu species, and the secrets of the base were passed down from generation to generation. Fu Yao, of course, knew they were not a natural species, but only Ying Feng, through Ling Xiao’s senses, knew the truth that the Tianxiu had eliminated their creators—a fact he hadn’t shared with anyone, not even Fu Yao.

“Could our genes have been cloned?” Nie Yun’s first reaction was this.

“That’s impossible.” Fu Yao firmly denied this possibility. “I’m certain no one has gone missing recently.”

The last time someone attempted to kidnap a Tianxiu was when the Tai Yin coalition schemed against Ying Feng with the Huoxiu people, and that was decades ago.

“What do we do now? Are we really only to…”

Wait for extinction? Nie Yun, for once, felt utterly lost about the future.

Fu Yao took a heavy step forward, looking in the direction where the Soul Tree had fallen. The enemy had been annihilated in the recent destructive attack. What kind of people would go to such lengths to destroy them?

Ying Feng felt something missing at his side, looking around restlessly until Nie Yun asked what he was searching for. That’s when he realized. “Has anyone seen a gray wolf?”

Fu Yao and Nie Yun exchanged a look of confusion and shook their heads in unison.

Ying Feng was concerned. He left Fu Yao and Nie Yun quickly, asking everyone he encountered, but no one had noticed Xiao Hui’s whereabouts.

He remembered that Xiao Hui had followed him to the base, so he retraced his steps. Along the way, daggers lay scattered on the ground—each one representing a life. The sight was as horrifying as a battlefield littered with corpses.

The base was unrecognizable from the war’s destruction, a stark contrast to Ying Feng’s memory of the awe he felt at its grandeur when he first visited as a fledgling. Now, it was nothing but desolation.

He navigated through the rubble and craters, calling Xiao Hui’s name in the silence. The rustling of the fallen leaves of the Soul Tree, brought down by the wind, was eerily distinct.

Ying Feng realized he had reached the front of the Soul Tree. He had expected no one to be there, but to his surprise, two figures stood before the remains of the tree, one with hands behind his back, sporting rare pale yellow hair, and the other standing straight behind him at an angle.

“Excuse me, can I ask…” Ying Feng began, but his words abruptly stopped as the person in front of him slowly turned around. As the face became clear, Ying Feng involuntarily widened his eyes in shock.

“Zhu Yue? How could it be you?!” Since the self-destruction of the Eagle, he had heard nothing of this person.

Zhu Yue’s demeanor had changed again from the last time Ying Feng had seen him. Back then, Ying Feng thought of him as a crazed lunatic, but now this person seemed to exude a dangerous aura that even Ying Feng could sense.

Zhu Yue seemed unconcerned with Ying Feng’s wariness, instead offering a faint smile as he took two steps forward. The person behind him, with a face identical to Zhen He, also turned around, expressionless and with eyes so cold they seemed devoid of human warmth.

Ying Feng’s instincts told him that their presence boded ill. “What are you doing here?”

“We came to pay our respects to the Soul Tree,” Zhu Yue stated flatly, his voice devoid of emotion. “It’s been a while. Your sunglasses are quite amusing.”

Ying Feng’s thoughts darkened with the memory, of course, invisible to Zhu Yue.

“Ling Xiao? Did he die in that explosion years ago?” Zhu Yue was unaware of what had happened after his departure. “To perish as a fledgling, how pitiful.”

He paused before asking another question. “What about you? After all these years, have you still not made a sworn pact with anyone? Otherwise, you would have taken off those sunglasses long ago.” He lowered his head. “Someone who once scorned me is willing to scatter his soul for another. Even if Ling Xiao is no more, I still feel a bit jealous of him.”

Ying Feng glanced at Zhen He nonchalantly. “His eyes are black.”

“Ah,” Zhu Yue admitted without denial. “Because he’s not Zhen He, although I still call him by the same name. He’s not, and that’s clearer to me than anyone else.”

“Then where is Zhen He?”

“Just like Ling Xiao, scattered to the winds, right before my eyes.” Zhu Yue recounted the event as if it were about someone unrelated to him.

Ying Feng kept silent and didn’t correct him. Zhu Yue continued as if he had waited too long for an audience and urgently needed to share his story.

“I suppose you wonder where we went after that incident?”

He lowered his gaze, slipping into memories without waiting for Ying Feng to inquire. “Zhen He was forced into the pact with me and never forgave me. Though I was the Qizhu, I had to be wary of my own Qizi day and night. I never anticipated that he would rather end his own life than continue with me.”

“After my plans failed, during our escape, he tricked me. He set the escape ship’s destination to Huoxiu, a place the Tianxiu can never reach. Once we exceeded the distance for soul traction, our bodies began to wither, and even our souls couldn’t return.”

“I couldn’t move, but my senses were clear. So I saw every detail of his departure.” He chuckled unnervingly. “His soul fragments just dissipated into the vast cosmos, never to come together again. As a Qizi, he didn’t even have the resistance to the soul traction that the Qizhu has. Isn’t that laughable?”

Ying Feng felt chills from his laugh. If Zhu Yue was a paranoid madman back then, by now he had lost all human reason. His thoughts were incomprehensible to a sane person, lost in his own world, driving those around him to madness or leading himself to ruin.

“Ying Feng, I admit I was infatuated with you during my fledgling years. But it only shows that the loyalty code embedded in the Tianxiu’s genes is too strong. Even someone as impure as me, not entirely Tianxiu, was swayed by it. Even when with someone I was using, I gradually became devoted to them.”

“I believe it was the same for him, just unable to let go of the hatred in his heart. What does it feel like to love and hate someone at the same time? I suppose it’s similar to how you must have felt when you first made your pact with Ling Xiao.”

He lifted his head. “Ying Feng, do you still remember the words you once told me? You asked me not to interfere in your family affairs, and even if you were forced together without any feelings, you regarded him as family from the start. It was those words that made it impossible for me to forgive you, no matter what.”

“I have nothing to do with you in the first place,” Ying Feng finally retorted.

“You’re right,” Zhu Yue continued. “I was weaker than everyone else when I first awoke, the gap was so large I couldn’t catch up no matter how hard I tried. People either mocked or bullied me, yet you, who were furthest from me, saved me. My unrequited love for you began then, and no matter how much ridicule or abuse I suffered after that, as long as I retreated into the fantasy of being with you, nothing else mattered, not even the physical pain.”

His stark confession made Ying Feng uncomfortable, but Zhu Yue did not take shame in it.

“I know you must find me disgusting, but it was indeed by clinging to a fantasy of you that I managed to get through each day at the junior academy with hope. I know that even though you saved me, you still looked down on me. You even scorned the idea when I offered my most precious blood. Only Ling Xiao, your equal, could garner more of your attention.”

“And me, I’ve never been acknowledged or encouraged by anyone. Even though I gained the abilities of Zhen He, and even recovered the memories of being an ancient Tianxiu, I could never escape the psychology of the past. In any situation, no matter who I faced, I couldn’t raise my head.”

“The first person to tell me to lift my head and walk was Zhen He. Whether it was out of malicious mockery or not, at least he truly changed me little by little. I thought my time at the senior academy would continue under the indifferent days at Bikong, but it was under his harsh tutelage that I gradually regained my confidence and could finally look others in the eye.”

Ying Feng realized that all the words Zhu Yue had just spoken were while looking him in the eyes, an act so simple for others, yet many years ago, it only surfaced briefly when he mustered the courage to confess, and even then, it was fleeting and uneasy. Zhen He truly left a significant mark on Zhu Yue, and Ying Feng finally understood what the most obvious contrast was between his past and present.

Zhu Yue closed his eyes, as if returning to years past, to that familiar voice that chastised him with clenched teeth. “You’ve obtained my power, yet you’re still so timid; even I am ashamed for you!”

If you don’t want to be looked down upon forever, walk with your head held high. If you can’t lift your head on your own, who else will look at you?

“He was the first one who saw me,” Zhu Yue muttered to himself. “Maybe I was that lonely, that even just achieving that was enough to satisfy me. All that talk of genetic codes being loyal to each other was just a self-deceiving excuse.”

“And you,” he slowly opened his eyes, “the one who has always seen me, is only Ling Xiao, right? In some ways, we really do have something in common.”

Ying Feng didn’t want to listen to his mad ramblings anymore. He only cared about one thing. “So how did you survive?”

“Me?” Zhu Yue said lightly. “At the last moment, I was saved by someone. You must have heard of them, the descendants of the ancient Tianxiu who migrated to the Huoxiu thousands of years ago. They not only continued the bloodline of the ancient Tianxiu but also thrived and prospered, something the rebels of that time could never have imagined.”

“To them, I was a fellow compatriot forced to use the Lone Star to survive. My good colleague at the science academy had already secretly copied the Lone Star’s code, and with my joining, recreating an artificial human was as easy as flipping one’s hand.”

Ying Feng was shocked. “Those people just now, could it be…”

“That’s right,” Zhu Yue admitted frankly. “I’ve been in hiding all this time, just to deal this fatal blow to you. What we created was a Lone Star, your original version. They have no emotions, absolute obedience, existences without the soul traction, who would execute any command without hesitation, even self-destruction.”

“So this person was a Lone Star cloned in the image of Zhen He?” Ying Feng couldn’t comprehend. “Why didn’t you endow him with human emotions? Wouldn’t that make him closer to the person you missed?”

“Emotions?” Zhu Yue repeated disdainfully, turning his head and looking fondly at that face, a gaze that would never be reciprocated. “What use are emotions? Without emotions, there’s no betrayal. He will always obey me. No matter what I say, he will carry it out without a second thought.”

He turned back. “Allowing you to have emotions was the most erroneous decision I made. If it wasn’t for my overconfidence in controlling humans, the tragedy of creators being annihilated by their own creations wouldn’t have happened.”

After saying that, he cracked a smile. “But it all ends here. You were born from my hands, and you will end by my hands. Without the Soul Tree and no lighthouse, the symptoms of soul traction will soon appear in every Tianxiu person. You will gradually lose the ability to act until complete extinction. I have personally experienced that feeling; it’s like a battery slowly running out of power. I assure you, it won’t be pleasant.”

“Don’t even dream of migrating to Huoxiu to repeat history. To prevent you from doing so, I have personally modified the function of the lighthouse. Only the souls of the Lone Stars can be guided, and we are decidedly excluded.”

Ying Feng noticed his pronoun changed from ‘you’ to ‘us’. “By doing this, even you can’t be reborn.”

“I am just an ordinary human. Without you, I would have died of old age over four thousand years ago. Having lived so much longer, I am already content. Once, someone sacrificed their soul for me, and I didn’t die. Today, I want the souls of all Tianxiu to accompany me in death.”

Having said all he wanted to say, he turned and walked towards a small spacecraft parked nearby. Only then did Ying Feng realize he could not let him go.

“Stop!” He rushed forward to intercept him, but the impostor Zhen He blocked him. This delay allowed him to board the spacecraft.

“Since we’re all headed to the end, does it matter whether you kill me now or not?” Zhu Yue said, turning around. “Unfortunately, I want to live a few more days, to witness the end of the Tianxiu with my own eyes.”

He called out, “Come back, Zhen He.”

The person with the same name took a few steps back towards Ying Feng, and after entering the spacecraft, quickly closed the hatch. Ying Feng hesitated for just a moment, and they were gone, leaving only a shadow in front of him. The subsequent arrival of Fu Yao and others only caught a glimpse.

“Who was that just now?” Fu Yao asked Ying Feng.

Ying Feng settled himself and recounted the key points of Zhu Yue’s words. Those who heard showed signs of panic. The truth was too shocking, and even well-trained soldiers struggled to accept it momentarily.

“I believe what he said is true.” Fu Yao’s gaze flickered rapidly, a sign he was thinking. “But we cannot just sit here and wait for death.”

He pondered for a moment. “Although it’s a risk…”

“No matter what you decide, I will follow,” Nie Yun declared without hesitation.

His loyal subordinates also stood up one by one. “Marshal Long Yin is gone; you are the new marshal. Whatever the marshal commands, we will follow unconditionally.”

Fu Yao looked into the trusting eyes of everyone and nodded solemnly.

“The military once had a seed from the Soul Tree, which is now missing. Although the properties of Huoxiu’s lighthouse have been modified, there must still be a Soul Tree there, and if it was planted recently, it couldn’t have grown much.”

“I know the chances of getting it are slim, and we might not return, but if one person can bring it back, those who stay can survive.”

“Since we are bound to die whether we stay or go, we can only seek life in the face of death. Gather the remaining forces of the military—anyone willing to go. The more we have, the greater the chance.”

Ying Feng stepped forward. “I will go as well.”

“You are still a fledgling,” Nie Yun objected subconsciously.

“At this point, does it make any difference whether I’m a fledgling or not?”

Fu Yao hesitated. “Are you sure? You’ve been risking soul disintegration waiting for Ling Xiao for decades, and he might return any moment. If he comes back and you’re gone, what was the point of your waiting all these years?”

Ying Feng was calm. “If he returns and sees that I was selfishly clinging to life alone while the country faced danger just to wait for him, he would be disappointed in me too.”

Fu Yao was conflicted for a moment but finally made a decision.

“Alright, I respect your choice.”

The remaining forces of the military gathered from all directions, and Ying Feng was reunited with his former classmates after many years—Bing Can, Red Head, Yu Ji, Shuang Feng… Their hands clasped tightly together, not for a happy reunion but for a joint journey towards death.

Yu Ji was worried about Xiao Hui; besides Ying Feng and the priest, he was its closest companion. Seeing Ying Feng naturally brought up questions about Xiao Hui. This reminded Ying Feng of Xiao Hui’s disappearance, and he reported it to Fu Yao, and several people split up to look for it.

Today might have been the day Ying Feng initiated conversations with people the most. He approached a burly figure not far away to ask a question.

“Excuse me, have you seen a gray wolf around here?”

The man turned around, and Ying Feng paused. This rare individual, even taller than him, had a pair of light gray eyes. Even Ying Feng, who was a well-developed Qizhu, had to look up to see him. What happened to this person? What kind of Qizhu would have such a peculiar taste?

Upon seeing Ying Feng, the burly Qizi showed a slight, hard-to-detect fear in his eyes and subconsciously leaned back.

“No,” he replied in standard Tianxiu language.

Ying Feng, preoccupied with his thoughts, didn’t notice much else, only that there was another person behind the large man whom he had completely missed at first glance, showing how imposing the figure was.

Could he be the Qizhu of this man? Ying Feng wasn’t sure, eyeing the other’s silhouette. The figure looked a few centimeters shorter than himself, but recalling Fu Yao and Nie Yun, Ying Feng thought it wasn’t impossible.

Ying Feng got his answer and should have moved on to search elsewhere, but for some reason, he stood rooted to the spot, his gaze fixed on the person, feeling more and more that the silhouette was familiar.

“Excuse me…” he began in a deep voice, and the person who had been turned away started to rotate slowly at the sound of his voice. The face he had missed for decades miraculously appeared before his eyes.

“Ling Xiao!” Ying Feng couldn’t believe his eyes and instinctively took a step forward, but then stopped himself.

Ling Xiao, now fully turned around, still had his familiar appearance and his signature smile, but the light gray eyes that Ying Feng had grown accustomed to were now pitch black.

As Ling Xiao turned around and saw Ying Feng, the smile on his lips grew wider, playfully showing his white teeth, and he blinked slowly, his long eyelashes seemingly stirring the air, sending the scorching temperature around Ying Feng plummeting in an instant.

“Hi,” Ling Xiao said, smiling at the stunned Ying Feng. “Long time no see.”

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