After Sang slipped away, only the red-haired girl was left standing there. Furious and humiliated, her face nearly turned crimson with rage, yet utterly helpless, she could only stomp her feet on the ground and vent her temper at the dirt.
But suddenly, she sniffed with her dainty nose, as if catching a whiff of an utterly exquisite bloody scent. Lowering her gaze, she saw that her white glove was stained with a smear of blood.
She wasn’t injured herself, so clearly, the blood on her glove had come from that boy just moments ago.
She removed the glove and tentatively brought it close to her nose for a gentle sniff.
She had been fuming just a second before, ready to grind that human into dust, but in an instant, a sensation of spring warmth and blooming flowers washed over her, brightening her mood like the sun breaking through clouds. Her amber almond eyes sparkled once more with little stars.
“Oh my God! What is this smell!?”
It was the scent of her heart skipping a beat.
Confirmed the taste—I’ve found the one.
“Super delicious blood, without a single trace of impurity… Just who was that guy?”
“I really want to… really want to… gobble him up~” As she spoke, the girl’s amber eyes abruptly shifted without warning, turning a deep, profound crimson red.
No one knew exactly when it had happened.
A man over six feet tall, clad head to toe in black armor, had appeared silently behind the girl. He bore a black cross pattern on his back—the mark of Black Gear, and also of the Central Knight Order. The civilians nearby spotted the towering figure and fell deathly silent, trembling in fear.
That imposing black silhouette…
It was the Vice Captain of the Central Knight Order, a Diamond Tier powerhouse!
Why would someone of his stature show up here!?
After a long moment, the man said calmly, “Princess, I hope you won’t run off like that again next time.”
“Stop following me everywhere, Noi… I’m all grown up now. I’m not a little girl anymore…” As she spoke, her gradient red hair fluttered in the wind, like a Red Lycoris on the verge of blooming.
…
After leaving the explosion site, Sang could only press on from the Second District toward the Inner Ring. As he passed the border between the First District and the Inner Ring, he spotted a group of men who looked like slave drivers forcing a large crowd of slaves to build a new stretch of railway—the line connecting the First District to the Inner Ring.
So far, the tracks only linked the First District to the Third District.
The connections between the Inner Ring and Outer Ring, and between the Central Hub and other cities, were still under construction in parallel.
What was interesting—or perhaps grim—was that the exploiters were humans, and so were the exploited.
Several corpses lay haphazardly nearby, covered with white sheets.
Just then, another slave collapsed. The drivers could have tried to save him, but they chose to ignore it, bellowing instead, “Leave him on the side! Back to work!”
These callous humans, handed a scrap of power, extended their claws toward their even weaker kin.
In that moment, the idea of passing on the spark of revolution flickered in Sang’s mind once again, only to fade as quickly as it came. In the end, he let it go and stopped thinking about it.
About an hour later.
It was high noon, when the sunlight blazed at its brightest. Sang arrived at the Heavenly Key Sky Pavilion, where, as expected, he found the True Ancestor. Beneath the dazzling sun, her pale skin contrasted sharply with her black hair, making her look like a doll from a black-and-white television—save for her vividly red lips, which added the only splash of color.
“Little Bug, you’ve come…”
Her familiar, languid, and profound voice echoed as always. Day after day, the solitary black-haired silhouette sat unchanging on the rooftop of the Heavenly Key Sky Pavilion, wrapped in her three rolls of white cloth.
No matter how many times he saw it, it always gave the impression of an eternity in a single glance.
“Don’t you ever get bored staying here every single day?” Sang stood a few steps from the Black Coffin beside the black-haired woman and asked.
The True Ancestor smirked playfully. “Little Bug, don’t you get bored with living every single day?”
Sang: “…”
Damn it…
I hate you so much, yet here you are, smiling and saying these sad things right in front of me, making me feel down too…
Even to this day, Sang’s attitude toward the True Ancestor hadn’t changed: respect, respect, and more respect.
Even after becoming a noble with his own territory, his strategy toward her remained the same as at the beginning—play it safe and survive.
So far, he’d only ever stood up to her once, back when it came to Inu’s wish. And even then, he’d nearly backed down at the last second.
There was just no helping it; that was the pressure she exuded.
But today, he seemed a little unsettled. Perhaps it was the scenes he’d witnessed on the way here that had stirred something in his heart.
“Why do you insist on staying cooped up here? Why not go out and rule properly? Whether as a benevolent monarch or a tyrant… it has to be better than this…”
At his words, the True Ancestor fell briefly silent in surprise, then teased, “Roar~ Are we discussing the meaning of life today?”
“Yeah, sure. We’re just chatting anyway—why not talk about stuff like this?” Sang replied.
“Fine, chatting about something new for a change doesn’t sound bad… But first, I must clarify one thing, Little Bug—you’re mistaken about something. Over my endless lifespan, I’ve tried everything you could possibly imagine. I’ve wiped out an entire nation overnight, built a regime from the ashes of a wasteland; I’ve contemplated destroying the world, exterminating humanity… so many ‘once upon a times’ that I can’t even remember them all anymore. Anyway, that’s digressing. Back to your question: why stay here and go nowhere… An endless, tedious life is part of it, but there’s actually a more direct reason.”
“A direct reason?”
“Because I have the ability to see through everyone’s innermost thoughts.”
“The ability to read everyone’s minds?”
“Yes. Remember what I told you when we played chess before? I said I could peer into others’ thoughts, but not yours.”
“Because I’m an Abandoned Child?”
“Maybe…”
This had to be the True Ancestor’s superpower. No one with a Channel could escape her gaze… She simply loathed the noise of human hearts so much that it overwhelmed her, so she hid away here.
Human hearts were far too intrusive.
The moment one opened their eyes, they were bombarded with the Seven Original Sins.
“I’m starting to understand why you never killed me…”
As a transmigrator, I’m the being in this world closest to the True Ancestor—at least in that sense of utter alienation and loneliness. We’re alike in that way.
But even so, as the one closest to her, if others are a 1 compared to her 99, then I’m barely a 1.1.
That tiny 0.1 bit of closeness couldn’t make up for much.
“You’re right—that really is why I spared you back then. Pfft, hahaha! Don’t tell me you actually thought it was because of that bizarre confession of yours?”
“I…”
As he spoke, Sang recalled his first meeting with the True Ancestor over a year ago, when he’d confessed: I love you for ten thousand years; my love for you is as sturdy as Le Shi potato chips.
His face turned beet red on the spot.
Damn, so embarrassing he wanted to claw his way into the earth and dig out a whole apartment building.
“Little Bug, I don’t know why, but you fancy yourself one of a kind… How naive. You always think you’re unique, that you hide your emotions well—but in front of me… no, in front of anyone with a bit of worldly experience, you’re an open book. No superpowers needed to see right through you.”
“Oh…”
Of course… Even without saying it outright, she’d known from the very start. She knew everything.
He’d spent too long holed up in that remote Orphanage, his eighteen-year-old soul stuck among little kids, thinking himself above them all. But he’d never really matured. Tricking children and fooling old foxes were worlds apart.
Had he never actually deceived the True Ancestor at all? Had he just been fooling himself this whole time?
