Chapter 25: Royal Capital: Come to my room at night
After Kairusha left, the lounge fell into a long, unnatural silence.
Xiao Yun looked at Yaris's calm and sad face, and suddenly a shocking idea came to his mind.
He took Yaris's hand.
【You actually did that on purpose, right? 】
【Um? 】
[You knew Kairusha was resting in the inner room, so you deliberately let him hear our conversation?]
【I……】
You've always been cautious. Whenever you discuss secrets in Silver Moon Palace, you'll have the mages set up an anti-eavesdropping barrier. But today, while chatting in the palace's lounge, you actually gave up on the most reliable and secure method of communication, telepathy, and spoke to me verbally.
Ulysses's confidant, named Edmund, is actually your subordinate. However, when you talked about how you manipulated Edmund, you didn't mention Ulysses' name at all.
Anything else?
[Instructor John Deere said that you possess a strong talent for magic, and sensing life forms within a certain range around you is the entry-level practice of magic.]
[…As expected of my blood-related younger brother.]
Yaris gave a sad smile.
I knew Kairusha was in the inner room, and I had deliberately let him overhear our conversation. I wanted to test him, to see if he, like most people I'd met before, had seen the ugliness and vileness deep within me and left in anger...
"I hope he'll break his promise and never see me again. That way, he won't die for me, and even after my death, he'll remember our past friendship and take you to Monglis to take care of you despite everyone's objections... But he... He actually..."
【Not only did he not leave you, he even gave you his sword. 】
【yes……】
Yaris lowered his head, tears seemed to be in his eyes.
You look like you’re in pain…
[It's okay, I'm just not used to it... I can't believe that someone as awful as me can actually receive pure, unrequited love from someone we're not related to by blood nor have ever lived with...]
【elder brother……】
Xiao Yun tried hard to suppress the strong emotions that suddenly surged in his chest and prevent tears from flowing out of his eyes.
(You are so beautiful and lonely, proud and fragile... Even without Lucien's feelings, I can no longer leave you... I must be by your side to support you...)
Lucien...
【Um? 】
Come to my room tonight and sleep with me, just like the day Madame Alice (Lucien's mother's name) left with our father... You hold me in your arms, thinking of me as your mother... I hold you in my arms, thinking of our father... his sorrow, his frustration, and the unrecognized love he spent his whole life nurturing...
…
…
The Silver Moon Palace is exceptionally quiet tonight.
The servants changed their master into soft pajamas and quietly left. The double curtains were drawn on the windows, and the night lights quietly emitted a dim light, preventing the elegant and beautiful bedroom from being completely dark.
The air was filled with the scent of Bisarua mixed with Rosamari.
"Hmm...are you still asleep?"
A soft, disembodied voice echoed from deep within the bedroom.
Then, the owner, wearing a robe made of the softest silk, raised half of his body, and his soft long hair scattered on his shoulders, which were whiter than silk and as white as snow. Under the dim light, he looked like a flower that only bloomed dimly on a moonlit night.
"Did I wake you?"
"Don't feel bad if you can't sleep. We're not 11 or 12 years old. We can't sleep soundly and carefree like children."
Yaris said softly, stretched out his snow-white arm and smoothed his hair.
"Since you can't sleep either, let's just lean against the bed and talk."
"That……"
Xiao Yun thought for a moment and realized that even though Yaris was leaning elegantly on the pillow in a double-layered nightgown, her body was still too slender and delicate, like a young girl.
"Are you curious about my clothes?"
"Um."
Xiao Yun echoed softly: "I just wanted to ask... about my brother's clothes..."
"My body is too weak, so the clothes I wear next to my body must be made of the softest fabric, with special sewing techniques used at the joints. Clothes cannot have buttons, and only specially crafted drawstrings and buckles must be used to prevent bruises on my skin while I sleep..."
"In fact, every time I fall asleep I run the risk of never waking up."
Yaris murmured softly and self-deprecatingly, "Perhaps people like me were born to be admired, just like the beautiful and fragrant flowers that a gardener carefully cultivates, which are picked after blooming and placed in a pitcher for their owner to enjoy."
"Don't say such self-deprecating things—"
"I'm not kidding."
"Both magic and science aim to achieve 'immortality,' or rather, to understand why humans must die, how to prolong the lives of the living, and how to bring the dead back to the living world. Six thousand years ago, the Eternal Empire, destroyed by divine retribution, used both magic and science to bring those who should have died back to life in ways and forms beyond our imagination. To achieve even longer lifespans, they even infused genes from different life forms into human bodies."
"ah?"
Xiao Yun was stunned.
At this moment, every word that came out of Yaris's mouth was subverting his understanding of this strange world.
"You are about to go to Gaola, and I must tell you all the information I have about the Eternal Empire."
"First, the Eternal Empire has no emperor. In all the records I can find about the Eternal Empire, it is a great country called an empire but without an emperor, ruling the entire planet of Ella without dividing people into nobles and slaves. Although there are poor and rich people within the empire, everyone is equally granted the title of citizen and receives equal welfare and political treatment."
"They called themselves the Eternal Empire because they believed their empire would last forever, more eternal than the sun in the sky."
"Their technology and magic are far more advanced than ours... They draw inspiration from mythology and extract the life force of both men and women, allowing human life to no longer be conceived solely by mothers, but to be born through experiments..."
"Not only do they incorporate genes from various life forms into the human body to create stronger, more intelligent, and longer-lived bodies, they also attempt to combine completely different genes to create unprecedented chimeras, bringing themselves closer to the legendary god who created all things."
"They built gleaming silver cities, and traveled in and out using vehicles that could soar through the sky like birds. They constructed an unprecedentedly large and magnificent structure called a 'space elevator,' allowing every citizen of the empire to leave the ground and touch the depths of outer space... They planned to transform planets into giant ships capable of exploring the vast universe, piloting them to search for the palaces of the gods..."
"However, even with such extraordinary super-technology and super-magic arts, the Eternal Empire was destroyed, along with almost everything they created, on the Day of Divine Retribution six thousand years ago... The divine retribution not only permanently destroyed the Eternal Empire's capital, but also all the planet-wide structures built by the Empire, including the space elevator... On that day, ten thousand disasters occurred on Ella, resulting in the deaths of at least one hundred million people... The remaining flames of civilization gradually died out in the thousand years following the divine retribution..."
"A thousand years of blankness?"
"Yes, there's a thousand-year gap in our world. Existing texts record in detail how the humans of the Western Continent, led by the Holy Family, gradually emerged from desolation and rebuilt civilization five thousand years ago. There are also fragments describing the romantic and magnificent Eternal Empire before it was destroyed by divine punishment. However, there's no record of the thousand years in between."
"The detailed history of the Holy Family, which has a strange connection with the gods, begins precisely five thousand years ago. Therefore, there's a view that the Holy Family is a relic of the Eternal Empire, or rather, the result of the Eternal Empire's ultimate experiment in fusing magic and technology. They suspect that the ancestors of the Holy Family deliberately created a thousand-year gap to conceal their true origins and monopolize divine power."
Xiao Yun thought of Edmund's words again.
(The Holy Family is a relic of the Eternal Empire, which was destroyed by divine punishment six thousand years ago. It is a gift dedicated to the Twin Gods, created by all the scientists and magicians of the Eternal Empire using super science and super magic...)
"Then...the truth is..."
"I have no idea."
Yaris had a strange expression on his face.
"I don't know where the Holy Family came from, why they exist in this world, or where they will go in the future... I only know that no matter how advanced magic and science are, no matter how great the achievements, they can only postpone death... Life can never defeat death... Life comes into this world to welcome death..."
"With my body, it's hard to live past thirty, but I don't think thirty years of life is sad or short... Especially after meeting the 'Dark Night Mentor' who claims to have lived for at least five hundred years..."
"Why?"
"Because I saw a foolish man, a bewildered and ignorant person who, after five hundred years, still didn't know why he lived. He possessed immense power, yet he indulged in world domination, competing with other magicians for the title of the strongest, forcing others to respect and fear him... such lowly desires. If the price of extending life by hundreds or even thousands of years is to live such a lowly existence, never being able to understand or touch anything truly valuable, living simply for the sake of living, what is the meaning of living?"
"But death—"
Yaris’ words filled Xiao Yun’s eyes with uncontrollable tears.
He tried hard to hold back the sob in his throat and pretended to be calm and said: "Death is a terrible thing. It will make those who love you feel sad."
"The one who loves me..."
Yaris reached out and stroked his brother's naturally curly hair.
"When I first saw you, you were only six years old... chubby, like a round pearl, playing on the lawn of the Little Cupid Palace. With rosy cheeks and eyes larger than those of an average boy, you looked like a child blessed by the god of love. My father and Lady Alice watched tenderly from the side. I was hiding behind them, behind a large tree that completely obscured my presence..."
"When you accidentally fell, Father and Mrs. Alice immediately ran over to hug you. It was so warm... so beautiful... But I... I've never been hugged by Father or Mother. I can't even remember them smiling at me..."
"Of course Mrs. Rowling loves me very much. She kisses me, hugs me, and sleeps with me every day, but I know she is not my mother... She is Mikael and Marina's mother. The kind-hearted Mikael and Marina gave their mother to me... My mother... My real mother... She abandoned me when I was born... She always spoke to me coldly and threw away everything I touched after I left..."
"Time and again, I asked Mikael to secretly take me to the Little Cupid Palace, so I could secretly watch you growing up in the sunshine. You were so cute, so innocent, like a treasure, completely different from a monster like me..."
"...No, you're not a monster, you're my brother."
Xiao Yun spoke hoarsely.
Under the night light, there was no emotion in Yaris's black eyes.
"...I'm actually not unfamiliar with death. I've been exposed to it since I was very young, and every high fever brought me one step closer to death. To this day, I only have one question about death: where do people go after death? To the underworld, hell, or heaven? Or perhaps reincarnation into another world... Death is a one-way journey from which no one can return..."
"Perhaps God really exists, and the afterlife does exist, but I believe even more strongly that the world after death is nothingness. After death, the soul dissipates, fading completely as the memories of others fade. Only a very small number of great souls will remain temporarily, as memories of future generations pass on, but they will eventually vanish with the demise of civilization... Humanity, civilization, and planets will all perish, and the universe will also die..."
“We don’t need to feel sad about this. Life is just a journey of groping forward in the darkness…waking up from a long sleep, wandering forward confusedly like a sleepwalker, and will fall back into sleep after a short journey…waiting for the next awakening, or perhaps never waking up again…”
(I truly don’t remember anything from the time I died to the time I became Lucien… Even what kind of person I was in my previous life, what kind of life I led, and why I died… It’s all as blurry as sleepwalking…)
“…We can only truly understand ‘death’ when we die. Perhaps ‘death’ is not an understanding, but an experience, something that life must go through and ‘know’… Unfortunately, this ‘knowing’ is meaningless to the living who try to understand ‘death’ in some way…”
Yaris's voice became softer and softer, with a hint of melancholy in his gentleness.
Xiao Yun remembered Marina's description.
(The man we see is a pale illusion woven by the goddess of death using moonlight and shadows... The real him is leaning on the cold throne of death, his body and mind gradually dying...)
Xiao Yun couldn't stand this terrible feeling.
“—Stop talking!”
He interrupted Yaris and hugged her overly slender shoulders tightly. "Think of something happy, okay? Our plan has already taken the crucial first step! I will become the monarch of the Principality of Gora, as you wish. Then, together we will end Edmund's tyrannical rule, enter the eighth floor of the Divine Tower, and you will personally place the crown on my head, completing the grand coronation ceremony."
"Um."
"So—live on! Even if it's just for our plan, you must live seriously!"
"Of course I will live my life seriously. I also want to solve the blank of our history for a thousand years and find the true origin of the Holy Family and the High Priest."
Yaris touched his brother's cheek with his slender white hand and said slowly, "Then, I will fly the spaceship away from the planet, find the palace of the gods, and tell those gods who carelessly toy with our fate - I am here, we are alive here! In a world under your absolute control! Live forever!"
Looking at Yaris's pale skin that turned red due to excitement, Xiao Yun swallowed the hot emotions that surged up again.
(John Deere was right. Pitiable, beautiful, precious, arrogant... none of these words could truly describe Yaris. There was a terrible, twisted, irresistible demon in him, decadent and fiery, desperate and beautiful...)
"--Lucien, there is one more thing you must remember."
"What is it?"
“Never let others know that you are still a child at heart. This world is cruel. People who covet you—whether they covet your body, power, or something else—once they find out that you are still a child at heart, they will covet you even more and hurt you.”
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