Chapter 139: Dawn: The Secret of the Dragon [VIP]

(Where did this flower come from? Why did it appear on the battlefield?)

(Why did the Golden Blade bring Rosa Marie to me?)

While thinking, Xiao Yun moved closer to the huge, blooming crimson Rosamaria and took a light sip.

The unique strong fragrance of Rosa Marie mixed with the elegant sweetness of Bisarua hit me in the face. Looking closely, I found that there were marks on the flower stem left by fingers gripping it tightly.

(Yes, that’s right! This Rosamari was left by Jarris!)

(He was here! He might even have just left!)

(He kept looking at me, so nervous that he almost broke the flower stem...)

"—What are you looking at?"

Kairusha's voice sounded behind him.

Before Xiao Yun could answer, he had already seen Rosa Marie in Xiao Yun's hand.

“It’s actually…”

"You thought of that, too?"

"Um."

Kairusha revealed a pained expression. "For him, for my promise, I can cross the line between life and death, but... if I can find him in time, he's not far from us..."

"This is something that only the gods can predict in advance."

Xiao Yun said comfortingly.

"Perhaps."

Kairusha sighed. "No matter what, we will continue to move forward, find him, and - break the darkness!"

Then he opened his black cloak and strode towards his tent.

Xiao Yun lowered his head and calmly looked at the Rosa Marie in his hand, which was blooming as richly as blood and fire, and the clear marks on the flower stem, as if he saw the man's calm and mysterious smile.

(Yaris, I find that I am increasingly unable to bear the fear of separation from you... especially when I see the flower you left behind...)

(Thinking about how I just passed you by... I can't help but feel scared. I'm afraid you'll never come back to me, or even worried that you're no longer in this world...)

(Even though you once made a promise to me, you said you would wait for me, that you would not think about death anymore...)

(Now I don’t know how to think properly about things related to you... I’m worried that my world will fall into complete darkness if you disappear. If I...)

"What is the young master thinking about?"

Romila's figure emerged from the darkness, and her fleshy lips uttered the hoarse voice of "Dark Night Mentor".

"How could you—"

Xiao Yun looked at the old man warily.

Although he claims to have escaped His control, his ultimate goal now is revenge against Him.

"I just successfully injured the 'Priest of the Sea God'."

"...A sneak attack?"

"Yes."

The "Mentor of the Dark Night" smiled triumphantly, and the shrewd smile blossomed on the succubus's smooth and frivolous face, looking both weird and funny.

"I've been pretending to be under His control lately, secretly watching the 'Sea God Priest'. When I sensed he was seriously injured, I immediately attacked and severely injured him!"

"Is he still alive?"

"He ran away!"

The Dark Night Mentor said unconvincedly, "This guy fled after I defeated him. He probably thought I was attacking him on his orders, and he was worried that he would take advantage of his injuries and devour him."

"So the real relationship between him and the 'Priest of Sea God' is far worse than it appears?"

"How can there be true friendship and cooperation between dark mages who aim to become the strongest in the world? All cooperation is purely an exchange of interests. Anyway, I'm going to hunt down that bastard now and won't be back anytime soon. But don't worry, I'll leave Romila to you. She's good at all kinds of interesting things."

"Best at massaging a man's spirit~"

Romila's consciousness suddenly interrupted.

Xiao Yun held his forehead speechlessly.

"...Anyway, thank you for your help."

"I'll be back soon."

The Dark Night Mentor twitched his lips and smiled, preparing to leave—

"Oh, I almost forgot to remind you of the most important thing. You must not let the princess die! A dead Yaris is more terrifying than a living Yaris."

"This sentence—"

"I don't know what this sentence means. It suddenly popped up when I was fortune-telling the night before last."

After saying this, the consciousness of the "Dark Night Mentor" left Romila.

Having regained control of her body, Romila tried to stick to Xiao Yun like a slug, but because Xiao Yun dodged in time, she fell to the ground in a mess.

"Sir, you... you're so rude... I even brought you information about Her Royal Highness the Princess~"

"What did you say?"

Xiao Yun took a breath and said, "Say it again."

"I've had a sudden onset of intermittent amnesia, and I can't remember what Her Highness the Princess asked me to bring you~"

Romila pouted her lips and looked at Xiao Yun with watery eyes: "I need a kiss to remember it."

"Then take your time to think about it."

Xiao Yun turned and left.

Romila: "... Come! I remember everything! I really remember everything!"

…

…

For thousands of years, the Capital of Light, as the capital of the empire, has always been associated with prosperity.

Even beggars living in the slums outside the capital, as part of the capital, would proudly hold their chests high.

However, these glories are now a thing of the past.

Changshi is becoming increasingly mysterious, especially the downtown area.

After the Ebola Bridge incident, the downtown area was severely blocked, most people lost their jobs, and the shops were out of stock. Day and night, heavily armored soldiers marched up and down the streets, their powerful strides and murderous intent. Their leader was usually a lizard-headed monster.

People were forced to lock their doors and even board up their windows from the inside to avoid being seen by these monsters.

Fortunately, the supply of daily necessities such as food and medicine has not been cut off.

——The capital's City Hall is still operating normally. Civil servants distribute food to civilians in the downtown area at regular intervals. The wounded hiding in citizens' homes receive necessary medical treatment through secret coordination by Mr. Royce and others.

In addition, after repeated persuasion from Lady Sonya, the capital's top socialite, the Merchants' Guild agreed to provide jobs for women in the lower city. The employed women crossed the Ebola Bridge in groups every morning to go to work in the upper city, exchanging their labor for food and other necessities from their employers.

"Alas...if this continues, the beautiful Kingdom of Light will be reduced to a terrifying dark city..."

"I firmly believe that the darkness will be dispelled one day, but..."

"As long as you believe, there will be a future, and—"

The woman suddenly lowered her voice: "Today, as usual, I went to Count Zog's mansion to deliver something. When I passed by the Countess's room, I heard some good news..."

"Good news?"

"Count Zog was killed in battle on the Ram Plains!"

“Oh my God!”

The people sitting around the table drinking their thin soup exclaimed, "Count Zog... he died in battle, so that means..."

"Yes! The suffering will eventually end, and we will soon see the light!"

…

…

"His Majesty!"

"What's up?"

Edmund raised his head impatiently.

"The situation in the capital is far from ideal..."

Williams, who was following behind Marquis Matenia, spoke cautiously.

"What do you mean the situation is not ideal?"

“People in the downtown area are becoming increasingly frustrated and angry because they can’t get enough food and basic necessities… I’m worried about what might happen next…”

"I see!"

Edmund angrily interrupted Williams: "You are just a nobody! You have no right to say anything I don't want to hear in front of me!"

“But…but…”

"Matenya!"

Edmund raised his voice: "Take him down immediately!"

"yes."

Marquis Maternia nodded woodenly, bowed and left.

Williams looked back at Edmund unwillingly, and suddenly realized that the emperor's shadow on the wall was actually—

The head is like a lizard!

…

"Your Majesty, please—"

As soon as Edmund's sinister figure appeared on the fourth floor of the White Tower, a young servant who looked no more than fourteen years old immediately stepped forward to try to stop him. Edmund waved his arms impatiently and pushed the young man away with magic. He screamed and hit the wall.

However, even with Edmund's rude and impolite attitude, the other servants did not back down. While helping their companions to their feet, they politely said, "Please wait a moment, Your Highness... Your Highness is..."

"It's so noisy!"

Edmund said this viciously, rushed into the fifth floor and kicked open the closed door.

"Yaris——"

Yaris was leaning lazily on the pillow, and his servant Kelly was sitting at the foot of the bed massaging his legs. When they saw Edmund suddenly breaking in with a hideous and distorted face, both of them showed an almost transparent tranquility.

"You're being very rude right now."

Jarris quietly criticized Edmund.

Kelly stood up, saluted Edmund, then sat back down and continued massaging his master's leg muscles.

"you--"

Edmund's overly peaceful attitude made him even more angry. He waved his fist at Kelly and said, "Get out! Get out now!"

"Your Highness—"

"He probably has something important he wants to discuss with me privately. Please leave for now."

"yes."

Kelly stood up and left the room, but stood stubbornly behind the door, ready to rush in to protect his master at any time.

"snort!"

Edmund snorted, sat down opposite Jarris, and crossed his legs roughly.

"Get ready!"

"do what?"

"I will hold a rally to prove to the public that the tragedy of Denos never happened. You were kidnapped by the rebels entrenched in Denos, and I led the army to rescue you!"

"I refuse."

"You have no right to refuse."

"oh?"

Yaris asked Edmund with interest: "How are you going to threaten me?"

"I……"

Edmund suddenly became frustrated and stammered, "Why! Why are you trapped in the White Tower, unable to escape and in danger of being devoured by Him at any moment, and yet you still act so proud!"

"Because you know nothing about the real me."

Yaris said calmly.

"Nothing?"

Edmund stared at Yaris in amazement. "Are you sure I don't know anything? Things have developed to this point, all because of you! If you hadn't been so outstanding and perfect since childhood, I wouldn't have lived in inferiority and jealousy for so long... and I wouldn't have... For all these years, I actually... the only thing I wanted was..."

"What is it?"

"I want you to kneel before me and thank me, saying that you are alive because of my kindness... I want your approval, your love, your..."

"That's absolutely impossible."

"Do you know how dire the situation is out there? After the crushing defeat at Ram Plains, the local lords supporting me are dwindling. The Dalavian and Brania armies will arrive in Denos in three days at the latest! If this continues, not only will the civilians in the lower city, but even the nobles in the upper city will be in danger of starvation—the regions surrounding the capital have declared neutrality one after another and stopped supplying the capital!"

"Isn't it because of you and His atrocities that things have come to this point?"

Yaris said coldly, "Even before the great defeat at Ram Plains, the lords of various places had already lost their loyalty to you. They were afraid of the army you commanded, so they had to maintain a superficial obedience."

“…”

"If you truly care about the civilians in the Lower City, please stop patrolling the Lower City, remove the Great Ward of the Capital, and let everyone leave on their own."

"That's impossible! Most of them are either members of the rebels or sympathizers of the rebels! If we let them go, the capital will be even more dangerous, and my throne will be even more unstable."

"More unstable? Are you really planning to use civilians to feed those lizard monsters when the city runs out of food?"

"—All of this is because of you! If you weren't so outstanding, if you didn't encourage your brother to pursue the throne, if you didn't have such great prestige that could influence the entire Western Continent, how could I have become His puppet! How could our country have come to this point today! "

Edmund yelled rudely.

Yaris smiled tiredly. "I'm tired. I don't want to communicate with an idiot who only knows how to yell all day. If you can hear my voice, come out and talk to me."

"Yaris, you—"

Edmund's emotions continued to collapse, but soon, his face showed a frozen coldness.

"How do you know I deliberately let him out to talk to you?"

"Such a simple thing still requires thinking?"

"All right."

Edmund narrowed his eyes and said, "Jaris, I find I don't understand you anymore. You've clearly never received true fairness and justice, so why are you still willing to love this world?"

"I don't understand why you're so fond of lying. Your ancestors were clearly a group of lizard-like reptiles who fled to our planet after their own planet was destroyed. Our planet tolerantly accepted you, but you, clinging to your so-called racial pride and refusing to assimilate, secretly merged and tampered with our ancient mythology, equating yourselves (dragon) with the loong in our mythology, occupying the dragon's secret language characters, and even proclaiming yourself the Emperor of Dragon after our dragons were forgotten."

"So you..."

"I know you better than you think."

"If you truly understand us, you should know that our ancestors arrived on this planet approximately a million years ago. At that time, your planet had not yet given birth to the intelligent species known as humans. We did not come to this world to occupy your planet. On the contrary, it was our arrival that gave rise to the seeds of civilization on the desolate planet of Ella."

"We've spent hundreds of thousands of years building your planet like our own, striving to transform it into our second home planet. The dragon (loong), which plays an important role in your ancient mythology, is based on our ancestors!"

"You 7 are lying to me."

Yaris retorted coldly, "If you are truly the heroes who gave birth to civilization on our planet, why do the different pronunciations of the word 'dragon' have completely different images? 'dragon' represents evil, barbarism, and stupidity, while 'loong' represents wisdom, kindness, and elegance."

"because--"

Edmund narrowed his eyes. "The demons who claimed to be gods and drove us out of our homeland discovered that we had successfully built a second home on Ella across the interstellar sea and came after us. They destroyed everything we built and divided us into two categories. Those who resolutely opposed them were degraded into evil, barbaric, cruel, and stupid monsters, while those who submitted to them were glorified as slaves serving them and given the name Loong!"

"Sadly, even after submitting to the gods and receiving the name Loong, and even undergoing transformations to look different from those of us who cling to tradition, these surrenderers still couldn't escape destruction. Even the pronunciation of Loong was buried. Conversely, we who resisted, after millions of years of darkness, have finally welcomed new hope!"

"As for you... your ancestors were originally our servants. After the gods perished, they needed new servants, so they supported you and allowed you to spread across the land and become the mainstream intelligent species on Planet Ella."

"so--"

"So I must become a god. Only by becoming a god can I achieve ultimate victory in the long and fateful battle against the demons who repeatedly persecute us! You brothers are a crucial link on the road to godhood! Merging with me will not bring any harm to your civilization. On the contrary, you, who have long been suppressed by the demons who call themselves gods and whose civilization has remained in a semi-primitive and immature state, will open up a path to a higher civilization that you could never achieve on your own through this fusion! Our fusion will turn Ella into the center of the universe!"

"If you hadn't maliciously kidnapped Lucien and hypnotized him into doing something he didn't want to do, if you hadn't allowed your lizard monsters to feed on humans, and if you hadn't taken it for granted that the native intelligent life forms of Ella were your servants, I might have believed your deception."

Yaris panted and said, "Unfortunately, even when you fabricated lies to gain sympathy, your words were still filled with contempt and disdain for our world, thinking that our kind were all a group of semi-primitive, immature insects."

"I don't mean to look down on humans, but—compared to us, humans truly know nothing. They've spread across the planet with their astonishing reproductive capacity, yet like insects, they still know nothing about this beautiful planet. You're different. You were born intelligent, graceful, and beautiful, completely different from these lowly, primitive, and ignorant creatures around you."

"Such a primitive and backward world is not worthy of you. You should join us instead of getting yourself hurt all over by these ignorant people who can't even understand you! And in the end you won't even get a word of thanks!"

Edmund's eyes began to glow a strange red.

"Join us! You will become the Dark Queen of the incredibly powerful Earthly Kingdom I'm forging! If you want your brother to be the Emperor, I wouldn't mind placing the crown on his head!"

"...You are indeed a foolish and ignorant beast, and you have yet to obtain the necessary truth about me from the mouth of Him who is collaborating with you."

Yaris's voice was extremely hoarse and weak, as if it came from the underworld.

"For me, death is just a necessary stage in life's journey... Life is just a continuous groping in the darkness... Waking up from a long sleep, wandering forward like a sleepwalker, and will fall back into sleep after a short distance... Waiting for the next awakening, or never waking again..."

"From a long, long time ago, I've been dreaming frequently. Every night, I die in my dreams and then resurrect... Sometimes, I can no longer distinguish between reality, illusion, and dream... or between life and death... What is life, and what is death? Thinking with my own brain, moving with my own limbs... Is this what life is? What does it feel like to be alive..."

"...Perhaps only when I experience complete death can I truly understand 'death'. Or perhaps 'death' is not an understanding, but an experience, a stage that life must go through and 'know'... Unfortunately, this 'knowing' is meaningless to the living who try to understand 'death'..."

"—Why are you saying this all of a sudden? Wait! Your eyes! What's wrong with your eyes?!"

"Edmund" cried out in horror.

The red light he just emitted was a magical method, but Yaris did not react to it at all.

"My eyes... A few days ago, over the Ram Plains, after I made sure he was safe, my eyes were accidentally pierced by the first rays of dawn..."

Yaris murmured, "My eyes can't stand strong light now. In the dim light, I can only see the outline of everything."

"You... don't you regret it? Your body shouldn't have broken down so quickly... If you could..."

"My younger brother once told me a story. The protagonist is Luo Ji, who lives on a planet called Earth. To resist alien invaders known as the Trisolarans, Luo Ji becomes the Sword Bearer. He battles the Trisolarans with wits and courage, protecting Earth's peace for decades. However, after a long period of peace, the people he protected forget his kindness and, under the Trisolarans' instigation, bring the elderly Luo Ji to justice."

"Then what?"

"Then Luo Ji became the sinner, and the people of Earth quickly paid the price for their stupidity. But even so, the people of Earth still didn't thank Luo Ji, and of course, Luo Ji didn't need their thanks or apology."

"What exactly is the point of this story? Do you think you are the Luo Ji in the story who neither deserves nor needs to be thanked?"

"I'm not Luo Ji, and I don't understand why people on Earth would think this way, but I do know that I'm part of Ella, and I have a duty to protect this world. Even if they are truly, as you say, a bunch of ants and bugs who don't understand my words, can't comprehend my thoughts, and will be ungrateful to me, they are still my compatriots."

"Even if you will suffer endlessly because of this?"

“Suffering is my choice.”

Yaris said calmly.

"You're not afraid of dying?"

"Will you let me die?"

Yaris asked back, "You are more afraid than anyone else that I will die now. If I die, all your plans will be in vain, but my brother will gain more power because of my death."

"Shut up! Stop talking!"

Edmund roared.

"All right."

Yaris pursed his lips and picked up the bell at hand.

Ding-ling-ling——

After the slight sound, Kelly walked into the room, carefully came to his side, helped him lie down, and put his increasingly cold hands into the quilt. 7 lowered his head to his chest and listened for a while. After making sure that his heart was still functioning normally, he clasped his hands together and knelt in front of his bed.

"Edmund" silently looked at the master and servant who were completely immersed in their own world, and suddenly felt so tired that he could not breathe.