The Tomb of the Saint (4)
Chapter Summary: Caesar decides to create an even more "successful" new human using his brother's genes once again. However, this time he seems completely unaware that Phaethon is no longer his obsession; his obsession has become Gratian.
Perhaps it was because Caesar finally felt an unprecedented loneliness and fear.
When I woke up, Octavian took my temperature with concern and said I was fine and needed to rest. I asked him where the emperor was.
"Of course His Majesty has state affairs to attend to, but he doesn't have time to spend his time on you every day."
"If you're bored, you can take a walk in the garden... Well, do you really need to know? His Majesty is revising the Imperial Succession Law, intending to abolish the achievements of the previous Imperial Noble Reforms and the constitutional system of the Republican Alliance. There's a lot of opposition in the court. I've even heard it."
"If you don't want an imperial system, and you don't want an alliance system, what does the emperor want to do?"
"Ah...maybe it's going to destroy this country."
“However, this is something His Majesty has worked hard to obtain, and he has the right to do so,” Octavian said.
"Doctor, do you think Gratian would be a good father?"
"Hmm? I hope Your Majesty has a child of your own. That way I can continue to be loyal to him or her. It would be best if it were a boy, so there would be less trouble, he could succeed to the throne, and he could help Your Majesty handle matters in the future. Your Majesty wouldn't have to fight against the ministers and nobles alone."
“I don’t understand much about other things, but His Majesty is really good to me. He’s very good to boys my age. If he has a child, he’ll definitely be even gentler and love the child’s mother very much, right? A man becomes very different when he becomes a father.”
"How are they different?"
"I will...be more responsible, more composed, and consider the future. I will be less self-centered?" The boy scratched his head.
Yang Luo is pregnant.
One day, I was swallowing pills prescribed by the hospital. Three months ago, after waking up, my left leg had been somewhat weak, causing me to walk with a slight limp. Octavian had visited me several times, saying my physical body was generally intact, but my brain nerves were damaged, and irreversibly so. It was probably related to an overdose of confession drugs and aphrodisiacs. He gave me a form for regular checkups at the hospital, and since then, I've spent more than half the year on lancets, alcohol swabs, and pills. The pill scratched my throat, so I quickly poured myself another glass of warm water. Looking up, I saw she was still there. She wasn't alone; Gratian was walking beside her. She turned to the side, nestled in the emperor's arms, her long, flowing black hair brushing against Gratian's golden head. In the sunlight, her slightly rounded belly formed a beautiful curve, bathed in abundant light. This was the color of life. I smiled.
I lowered my head and drank water, the pain intensifying as it went down my throat. The pill seemed stuck there, yet it also seemed not. I rubbed my neck with my fingers, repeatedly, but the tight, foreign feeling in my throat didn't subside. My nose felt a little sore.
Looking at Yang Luo and Gratian, I felt a little sad for some reason.
After that day, Gratian never spoke a word to me again. He seemed to have forgotten me.
On that same day, after Gratian raped Yang Luo in front of me, Yang Luo became pregnant with Gratian's child.
I slipped into the Imperial Bioscience Laboratory. Located within Zeus's university city, security checked my credentials and immediately let me through after seeing the royal seal. I requested a lab room and acquired some incomplete equipment. Incomplete, but sufficient for me. This wasn't particularly advanced technology. More than a decade had passed since the emergence of the first superhuman, the "Glatian." Every technology related to human embryo creation was now nearing perfection.
I took a comb out of my bag, a new one. Wrapped in soft white cloth, it was wrapped with golden hair, the same bright color as the wooden comb. The hair was long, and its owner had thick, abundant hair; although, objectively speaking, his lion-mane-like blond hair had thinned considerably in recent years due to illness. I cut a lock of my own hair, black, tied the two together, and tossed them into the gene-embryo synthesis machine. I examined the two gene-fused sequences; a boy, black hair, icy eyes, a forehead and nose like his emperor father, lips like mine. Personality… hard to say. I spaced out for a moment; then I turned off the artificial womb's bright red backlight, plunging it into darkness.
The instrument asked me whether I wanted to generate the human embryo.
I clicked "Yes".
The lab equipment started humming. After finishing, I felt exhausted and slept for a while. I dreamt that Gratian, I, and our child were sitting on the lawn. The night sky was high in the mountains, the Milky Way shone brightly, and a deep blue curtain enveloped the earth. A while later, it rained, but it wasn't cold at all. The sky was still clear, and the moon was hidden behind thin clouds. I saw our child jump up, pointing at the magnificent, dazzling raindrops reflecting starlight, shouting, "Daddy, look! It's a waterfall! A waterfall from the sky!"
"Is this my and Gratian's baby? It looks a little different than before." I looked at the tiny infant floating in the amniotic fluid, its arms and legs clenched. More than five months had passed since I created that fertilized egg, and the researcher I had dragged along to care for the embryo nervously accompanied me on a tour of the lab. "Did you secretly switch it out while I wasn't here?"
“No, no, Your Highness,” the researcher explained hastily, not daring to ask why the embryo contained half of the Emperor’s genes, nor daring to think about it, “This embryo is mixed with half of an ordinary human, that is, your genes, and has chosen a natural development pattern. That is to say, it cannot have its growth controlled by a computer in every detail, like it did before His Majesty was born.”
The baby's facial features were not yet fully developed. Dark, grape-like eyes adorned the upper half of its flat little face. I placed my palms against the outside of the glass jar, tilted my head back, and the artificial womb's backlight was on, revealing a deep red interior, like a mother's womb stained with blood; the baby slept peacefully, oblivious to my presence, displaying its underdeveloped and somewhat deformed little body.
"How pitiful, you have no mother, only a father who created you on a whim, and another father who doesn't even know you exist..."
"Your Highness..."
"Don't be so scared. Afterwards, just say you didn't know anything. In fact, you really didn't know. You were just threatened into doing my work."
I couldn't be with the baby all the time. The incubation chamber was made of glass, and although the researchers repeatedly assured me that the temperature inside was controlled at the optimal level for fetal development, I still felt it was cold, dark, and hard.
"Can I hug it?"
"You know this, Your Highness. You participated in related research before. The embryo is still developing in the uterus, and it cannot be removed from the capsule prematurely under any circumstances!"
"In five months, no, four months and twenty days, you and His Majesty will have a child!"
Yang Luo's due date had arrived. This was a major event for the entire empire, and I often overheard the maids and guards gossiping about it. I wasn't used to being served, so there were hardly any people around the house; even so, the gossip kept reaching my ears like snowflakes. I was learning to knit from a picture book, choosing a symmetrical picture and intending to separate it and knit each piece onto two sweaters for the baby. This was a woman's job, and as I knitted, I started to doubt myself—it was too ugly. The stitches looked like the edges of a primary school student's paper cutting, as if a dog had chewed them.
One day, Gratian pushed open the door and came in.
"Is Your Majesty quite free lately? Don't you have time to spend with the Empress?"
“I heard from Octavian that you are ill.”
I gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I've been ill all along. Your Majesty, I haven't been well since I came to the Empire."
"I remember when we were allies, you would get out of breath just climbing a mountain."
"At least it's much better than it is now." My health has indeed deteriorated. These days I often sneak into the lab to see the little boy who's growing up. I'll stay all day to see my child with Gratian. Last week I got caught in the rain and felt unwell all over; my left leg, which had been aching for a while, started hurting again. I used that as an excuse to decline royal events and council meetings that required my attendance as a nominal imperial prince.
"Did the doctors treat you well?"
"And you, Your Majesty, seem to be feeling much better."
"I heard that the Empress has given birth to a child for you. It's a boy. That's wonderful. How does it feel to become a father for the first time? You now have the Crown Prince of the Empire, Your Majesty."
"My child?" The emperor's cheeks flushed slightly, and he certainly looked more spirited. "I've thought a lot, and I've found what I truly should be responsible for, what I should bear. I feel I can't just collapse like this. For you..."
“I…I have a gift for you,” the emperor suddenly bowed, his voice slightly shy. He rummaged through a large bag he had brought. No servants helped him carry it; the emperor carried the bag himself as he entered. I saw the head of an infant emerge from the bag, followed by limbs. The two hands hung loosely at the sides of the short thighs, the eyes were tightly closed, the lips were pursed, the tender skin on the face was wrinkled and red, and the neck was white and smooth, with a shocking bluish-purple ligature mark. A deep scarlet red appeared when the infant was pushed in front of me, its lips slightly parted. The infant was already dead; the limp little thing under its splayed legs indicated that it was a boy. Its lanugo was very light in color, its eyelashes had not yet fully grown, and sparse pale gold covered the top of its head, giving its eye rims a halo.
"Caesar, look, I killed Yang Luo's child. It was just born, and I strangled it. I only love you, I don't want anyone else, and I will never sleep with any other woman. I only want you. Please forgive me, Caesar?"
＊
"Gradius, what are you doing here?" The sky was dark, and a downpour was imminent. Sunflowers swayed occasionally in the gloomy, heavy, and damp wind. The boy's small, golden head gazed at the sky, his delicate nose pointing towards the clouds, and his icy blue eyes turned to me.
"Let's go home. It's going to rain. Where's your kite? I'll get it for you."
"Caesar!" The boy suddenly ran towards me, grabbing my leg. I bent down and saw his hands were covered in blood, large drops of red blood dripping down, his pale wrists crisscrossed with red, staining the nails of each finger. My pants were soaking wet. His fingers were hooked around a disemboweled kitten.
“Look, I took out its heart, liver, spleen, stomach, kidneys, and brainstem. And its teeth and bones. It was dead. I was a little sad, wondering if it could come back to life, so I used a metal frame for its skeleton and filled every organ I tore apart with silicone and conductive devices. Then I even installed a battery where the heart should have been! I sewed its belly back up…” He zipped up the dead cat's abdomen like a zipper. The cat suddenly opened its eyes, for a fleeting moment. It moved, its golden-brown pupils gleaming. “It’s alive! Isn’t it!”
The cat seemed to stare at me for a long time. Just as I reached out to hug it, it suddenly closed its eyes, its legs went limp, and it died.
Intestines and artificial entrails, stained with putrid black blood, gushed out from the freshly defecated abdomen, spilling onto the ground.
The boy knelt beside the cat's entrails, poking its shrunken belly with a stick. "Brother," he said, "how did it die? Its belly was so full before it died, could it have had kittens? Oh, no, it was a male cat..."
"Brother, what's wrong? Why aren't you saying anything?" The boy looked at him with his icy eyes. "Brother, aren't we going home?"
Phaethon, Gratian; Gratian, Phaethon...
Octavian told me I had been unconscious for three days. I said I wanted to go out for a walk. "Sure. But please don't go too far, and please come back soon, or His Majesty will blame me."
Octavian didn't even look up. He was studying a small booklet recording the emperor's illness.
"Your Highness, you've finally arrived."
The researcher saw me and burst into tears of joy.
Inside the Imperial Laboratory, a woman dressed in luxurious and neat clothes was half-lying outside the amniotic fluid tank of the artificial womb, her arms outstretched, embracing the infant that was quietly floating in the tank through the glass.
"Your Highness, the Empress... she somehow found out your and His Majesty's child is here, and she refuses to leave. She won't even step out of the amniotic fluid tank. It's terrifying. I planned to quietly drag her away while she was asleep or exhausted, to tell her to go to her room to rest, or to return to the palace, to His Majesty's side, but she's gone mad. I told her I'm a researcher here and would never do anything to harm the child; I was just changing its electrolyte water and giving it some nutrient solution. She pounced on me and bit my hand." The researcher took off his white gloves; the teeth marks were so deep they seemed to smell of blood. His hand dangled in the air. "She still won't let us near the child."
The woman's long, black hair resembled tangled blades of grass. She tilted her head and whispered, "The baby is about to be born."
“Yes. Seven more hours,” I said.
"He's grown up now. A boy. Look how handsome he is. How strong he is."
"Um."
"It's hungry. We need to give it some IV fluids. It's also a bit dirty. We'll have someone come and clean it up."
"Really?"
“Of course,” I said.
Yang Luo hesitated for a moment, then slowly moved away from the jar. "Indeed. The baby is hungry. He's feeling a little unwell. We need to take care of him..."
I touched her arm, trying to pull her up from the ground. She jerked her hand away, her face contorted in a grimace, "No! No!"
"What are you doing here? What do you want to do? What do you want to do to the child?"
I tightened my grip, and she screamed. I dragged the woman's body several meters away. The researcher immediately rushed over and quickly tied the woman up with the rope he had prepared beforehand. The woman twisted and thrashed wildly.
"This is not your child. Wake up. Yang Luo, your child is dead."
The woman wailed as if she had been whipped. A heart-wrenching scream exploded forth. "Murder! Someone is trying to kill the emperor's child..."
The researcher's hands and feet were trembling. He walked up to me and said, "Your Highness, what are you doing?"
I scanned the data line by line on the slightly glowing screen, bringing up the control panel. "Where's the keyboard? Where's the keyboard?"
"No keyboard input!" The researcher's lips trembled. "The baby is fully grown. It's about to be born. The previous programs were running perfectly, the computer was controlling the environment the whole time. Look, look, the baby is so safe! Don't type anything in! No!"
I thought for a moment. "But I want to kill it. How can I accurately input commands without a keyboard?"
The researcher was stunned.
"We don't need a keyboard. Can we remove the latex tube from the amniotic fluid tank? You mean the tube connected to its navel, the artificial umbilical cord. If we cut off the nutrients and oxygen supply, it will suffocate and die quickly. Okay, then we don't need a keyboard. Open the amniotic fluid tank. You know the password, right? A six-digit number?"
I left the control panel and walked to the glass enclosure. The baby hovered above my head, eyes closed, its tiny mouth moving gently. Its hands were clenched into fists, resting beside its chin and chest. I knocked on the glass and said, "Come here. Open it."
The researcher collapsed to the ground. "No! No! Your Highness, he's already ten months pregnant! This is murder! This is infanticide!"
"Even if it's an embryo, even if it's only a few days old, you can't just destroy it like that. This is your and His Majesty's child, your child. Don't you have a heart? Aren't you human? No way! I can't do this against my conscience. This is a life, a living, breathing human life! A life! Don't you have even the slightest bit of reverence?"
"Besides, his other father is His Majesty the Emperor! He's a prince of our Galactic Empire! How could I..."
“Precisely because it is Gratian’s child,” I said, “it deserves to die even more.”
"From now on, there should be no more such freaks, nor should there be any bloodline of such freaks in this world."
"Everything that involves gene editing is a mistake."
I looked around the lab, smashed the fire cabinet, took out a fire axe, and laboriously dragged it to the amniotic fluid tank. I lifted it, and with all my might, smashed it. Once, twice, three times… Cracks gradually appeared on the hard quartz glass surface, spreading out like a spider web. Yang Luo rammed her entire body into me, pushing me to the side, causing me to lose my balance and half-fall to the ground. A trickle of blood seeped from Yang Luo's forehead. The woman kept headbutting me, preventing me from getting closer to the amniotic fluid tank. At that moment, I saw the baby's eyes flutter and open a crack in the shimmering water. Its limbs began to wriggle, its tiny white body trembling, causing the dozens of latex tubes attached to its skin to move as well, churning the amniotic fluid into a murky state. Its chubby little legs took a step forward; it was about to be born.
I charged at the baby, axe in hand. Yang Luo leaped up, taking the blow head-on; her chest ripped open, blood gushing out. The woman collapsed to the ground like a doll with its strings cut. I continued dragging my blood-stained axe toward the amniotic fluid container.
It must be killed before it is born. This child should not have been brought into this world.
Suddenly, a woman's hand reached out from behind and gripped my neck. Yang Luo continued to vomit blood, but her grip remained firm; she was striking the right spot: the carotid artery. No wonder she was a former prosecutor from the old alliance; she must have learned a thing or two from reviewing murder records. However, she wasn't the kind of person who could bring herself to kill. As my body went limp, she loosened her grip slightly. My vision blurred. The bloodstained axe clattered heavily to the ground.
I heard the researcher scream, "Soldiers! Soldiers, save me! I'm being threatened! By the Galactic Empire! Our Prince is going to kill him and His Majesty's child..."
The amniotic fluid container was opened. Clear, yellowish fluid was slowly drawn from the container until it dried up. Yang Luo quickly picked up the wriggling baby and held it tightly in her arms. A soldier shouted at her, "Back off! Back off! Get away from His Highness the Prince! Quickly!"
Soldiers from the Galactic Empire arrived, their guns all aimed at Yang Luo. My limp and pathetic state prompted a swift reaction; they clearly believed that if I died here, Gratian might not only execute them, but skin their entire families alive.
The baby cried loudly. The woman put a finger in his mouth. The child sucked, his rosy cheeks quieting down. She blocked my way, pushing me toward the entrance to the laboratory, where soldiers were gathered. With each step I took, the soldiers parted to make way. She picked up a fruit knife and held it to my throat, cradling the snoring baby in one arm.
I walked out of the lab like that. Yang Luo had a soldier give her a spaceship, and under her coercion, we left Zeus. In a remote star system, she kicked me off, leaving me covered in cuts from her wounds. I hadn't given up on killing the baby the entire way. She was probably badly injured too, but once on the spaceship, she took control of all the weapons inside. The spaceship was on autopilot, and unfortunately, I was unarmed, except for my feverish, throbbing brain, filled with murderous intent. The spaceship sailed away. I continued to lose blood. Imperial soldiers arrived later and carried me onto a medical ship to return to Zeus. Only then did I hear that the head of the intelligence bureau, Caligula, had been released on bail by the collective of the Imperial generals, and that the army, under his command, had responded swiftly to the emergency, immediately pinpointing the location of Empress Yang Luo fleeing with the baby. The researcher had been hit by a stray bullet and died in the accident before the Emperor could interrogate him in the lab. The Emperor hadn't gotten anything out of me. I asked Gratian why he hadn't come, why he hadn't participated in the rescue operation. As soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my incurable dependence and naivety. It turns out that when I was seriously injured and on the verge of death, the person I truly hoped would appear before me was him.
——tbc——
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