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Chapter 681 - 678: 【Unforgettable Tonight.】

Chapter 681: Chapter 678: 【Unforgettable Tonight.】

And the next second—

"Cough—!"

Lin Guang coughed out a mouthful of blood.

He leaned backward, his feet already on the edge of the rooftop, like a piece of fluttering white paper.

The snowstorm grew fiercer, with almost zero visibility beyond five meters. Su Ming’an took half a step forward, seeing the look in Lin Guang’s eyes as he stared intently at him—that look was like a wounded beast, like a silent tombstone, like a swamp soaked and rotting in the rain, filled with slimy, turbid, icy mire that no ugly words could adequately describe.

Su Ming’an had seen such a fearsome, curse-like gaze before in Mizushima Haru’s eyes on that rainy day.

—Lin Guang seemed to be cursing him with his life and soul.

There was no light in Lin Guang’s eyes.

He had always found it hard to comprehend positive emotions.

Distorted negative emotions accompanied him at all times. He didn’t understand why happiness meant laughter or why the death of companions warranted tears. He tried to imitate others, tried to talk to them, but always in return, he was met with fear. People cursed him as a traitor, a monster, an executioner.

There were even "self-righteous" individuals who, disguised with black hair and grey pupils, got close to him and then tried to assassinate him.

He dealt with those people cruelly, through skinning, feeding to dogs, execution by slicing... which only intensified everyone’s fear.

After his first meeting with Lewis, he suddenly felt an incredibly strong sense of kinship. Lewis did not refuse his invitation to walk together; for the first time, someone accompanied him as an equal, and he felt as if he’d seen the first light of dawn.

However, at the moment when the blade pierced through his body, Lin Guang suddenly realized—he had never truly seen the light.

"..."

In the dense snow, Lin Guang hung on the edge of the rooftop. Blood gushed forth unrestrained, staining even the golden patterns on his black robe a crimson-red color.

Tretiya lay five meters away, buried under the snow. Her hair, glued to the snowy ground with sticky blood, had almost imperceptible breathing.

Lin Guang slowly lifted his head, his body leaning back, no longer able to support his weight, and he might fall at any moment.

"—We are all cold-hearted madmen, the most terrifying idealists... I thought you would hold back, I thought you would let me go, just like I once did for you," he said with self-mocking laughter:

"However, Lewis—so cold-blooded, so merciless, so inhumane, one day you will turn your ideal paradise into a hell. I am looking forward to seeing you meet the same end, dying for the sake of a city-state."

"You’re insane." Ming’an’s blade shifted, causing a greater wound as Lin Guang took a step back on his own.

The heel of his shoe tapped lightly on the edge of the rooftop, making a "ding" sound. His white hair lifted slightly in the wind, in contrast to his falling body, like a bird spreading its wings.

A line of vivid red, the light from the rooftop spotlight, spread evenly across his face. He smiled lightly, slowly, his expression more one of confusion than anger.

Yes.

He was uncontrollable, abnormal, erroneous, an incalculable anomaly.

He was a mistake, a traitor, a heretic, the worst of sinners.

In an endless simulation, he had thought he was going insane, and it turned out to be true—he had gone mad, mad enough to long for a friend who could accompany him. Most insane of all, he had chosen Lewis, the least likely person to be by his side.

He admitted he had killed many people, he was an unforgivable villain, and friendship was not something a villain should covet.

If a villain wanted something, he should take it by force, not beg like a dog.

He had been wrong from the start; his crime was unforgivable.

He still didn’t think his actions leaning toward destruction were wrong, but felt his mistake was in not acting ruthlessly from the start. If he had disregarded Lewis’s wishes in the beginning, the outcome wouldn’t have been this.

For him, there could be no sadder ending than this.

"Whoosh—!"

The next moment, he fell from the edge of the rooftop, plummeting downward like a bird with its wings broken, as if there were sounds of flapping wings in the air.

From the height of 132 floors, the darkness below seemed like an unfathomable abyss.

——The white-haired youth tumbled in the snow, with flakes landing on him.

Gathered between his fingers was white Yuan Guang. In an instant, a strong current surged from his hands, shaking the rooftop violently as if the entire glass pillar was about to collapse.

Under the powerful impact, a faint light illuminated below the rooftop, pulsating with the energy of space.

In the midst of the intense azure electrical light——Lin Guang fell into it.

Ming’an looked down at the endless night below, then turned around.

"There’s a space vortex below, he escaped, after all, this is his territory," Ming said.

"Our goal has been achieved, it doesn’t matter," Su Ming’an said.

His original intention was merely to stop the nuclear explosion, and now it had surpassed his expectations. If Lin Guang wasn’t dead, those secrets could be unearthed in the future.

This war should come to an end.

Undoubtedly, the victor would be the Freedom Faction. Yasa Acto led the Freedom Faction to victory in the "Dawn War" recorded in history, even though the masses were still unaware of the essence of the so-called "Dawn War" data campaign.

He looked at the flames of war rising in the distance and felt that the sense of historical fate was truly a mystical thing.

"This is what Lin Guang threw down before he jumped. I checked it, there’s no poison," Ming handed him a rather ugly knot.

Su Ming’an took the white fabric with a line of small characters written on it.

[——You are the music in front of my blind eyes, the firmament, the palaces, the rivers, the angels, the deep roses, hidden and endless.]

...Was this a quote from the poem that Violet read to Lin Guang?

"You continue with the decryption," Su Ming’an took off his wristwatch and handed it to Ming, then turned to check on Tretiya’s condition. She was okay, even pierced through, she hadn’t died, and the wound was slowly healing with the flickering of the Yuan Guang.

When Su Ming’an drew close, she slowly opened her eyes. Her face was covered in blood, even around the edges of her eye sockets was a ring of red.

Su Ming’an took out the Blood Bottle and approached her lips, but she suddenly reached out her hand, firmly grasping his wrist with great strength.

"Cough..." Yanked forcefully, Su Ming’an coughed up blood; his physical condition was already poor, and his vision was blurry.

"Why did the teacher choose to abandon me just now? Didn’t you know I would die?" Tretiya said.

"Hmm?"

Su Ming’an hadn’t expected her to ask that——abandon you, to kill Lin Guang, isn’t that what you asked for?

However, he could only see the despair in the depths of her eyes. Her fingers gripped his wrist like steel rods, leaving deep red marks.

"I went through great difficulties to infiltrate the City of Gods to save you——because I love your soul," Tretiya said slowly: "I wanted the love you would give in return, that’s why I left everything in Doomsday City behind, hoping to gamble my life for your attention. However, if you don’t reciprocate this love——then what’s the point of my rescue?"

Su Ming’an blinked.

He suddenly understood the essence of Tretiya’s feelings——

The nature of "love" is selfish.

Her near-deific love was extreme, directed solely at his one soul——so she had to receive a response, she had to get even a sliver of love. Her rescue was essentially an "investment," hoping for a return from him.

She wasn’t as selfless as Yamada Machiichi; when she told her teacher not to worry about her, she was just speaking in passing, her heart still hoped he would come to save her.

But Su Ming’an took it seriously. He thought of Xia Sheng, who selflessly faced death, he thought of Yao Wen, who charged towards the Mechanical Army without looking back—he truly believed Tretiya was just as selfless as them, that she did not want Lin Guang’s escape to lead to an even greater catastrophe.

In reality, her eyes were filled only with "love."

For this kind of "love," she was willing to forgo her life, and when it wasn’t reciprocated, she could fall into abject despair.

It turned out that everyone by his side was a madman.

Her emotions underwent a drastic change, and she laughed in despair, "For these past ten or so years, when we’ve undergone all this suffering, where were you, teacher? Do you only use us? Do you only come back at critical moments to obtain the ’Source’? How can you be so indifferent?"

"..." Su Ming’an came to a halt.

Indifferent?

Maybe she was not wrong.

"I am the arbiter in the camp, responsible for forcefully killing those who are afflicted with the deficiency disease. I have known since I was young that if I became an arbiter, everyone would fear me for life, yet I still chose to pick up the gun. Do you know why I chose to become an arbiter?" Tretiya.

"Tell me."

"Thirty years ago, I went out with my family and encountered a pregnant woman afflicted with the deficiency disease," Tretiya said. "She was close to giving birth, and we let her go because we took pity on her. Three days later, when the disease flared up and I was not around, she killed my father, my mother, my sister, and my brother with her own hands... She killed everyone I ever loved. Since then, I’ve had no one left to love."

"..."

"Since that time, I’ve known that I absolutely can’t love anyone again..." Tretiya cried, "But why did I fall in love with a soul like yours?"

Su Ming’an was silent.

Her hands gripped his wrist so tightly it hurt, and he couldn’t understand her love for a soul.

His body grew increasingly colder, while she clenched him unrelentingly, the emotions in her eyes like searing chains piercing through her body, nailing into her spine.

Her gaze was like falling sunlight:

"Teacher, even if... did you ever love me, even just a little? Can you redeem me? Can you see me? Can you love me? Even if just a hug, can you give that to me?"

Su Ming’an could not accept this mad love, nor would he respond to her, for making a frivolous promise of "love" was a trivial matter. He had no time to love anyone.

"Listen to me, Tretiya, I cannot be to..." he said.

The next moment,

"—Ha, hahaha, hahahaha..." she burst into maniacal laughter.

Strands of hair clung to the side of her face. She was laughing, her beautiful lips curving upward, her mouth forming an arc, her laughing lips smeared with blood. Her body trembled as if it was a young white poplar shaking off frost, "huala huala," crimson blood droplets scattered with her insane laughter all around, and the creaking of bones could faintly be heard.

Her emotions had crumbled long ago.

She had already realized the reason he didn’t love her—he had no time to love anyone.

How absurd, yet how reasonable—what a grand reason! She had no room to argue!

"—Ha, hahaha, hahahaha—You’re even afraid to love, you don’t even know how to hate!" Tretiya laughed loudly. "You measure your feelings for others over and over again, are you still human? Are you still worthy of liking someone? Are you a machine, teacher, are you a machine? So many people have died for you, do you even remember their names? Do you have emotions? Are you just a machine set on winning the war?

"If you hate me, kill me; if you like me, hold me tight.

"If you hate me, kill me; if you like me, hold me tight!!!"

The laughter was like a flock of birds flying out of the wide-open window, colliding and compressing in the clouds.

Her laughter was brilliant... yet her tone was like a death-seeking demon.

Su Ming’an took a step back.

"...It turns out you’re the most terrifying one, teacher, there’s no one more terrifying than you in this world..."

Tretiya’s smile was sarcastic as she questioned him word by word:

"You ignite the flame, and you extinguish it. You attract someone like me to fall in love with you and yet forbid my love. You give Lin Guang hope, then drive him into despair. You clearly have emotions yet act as if you don’t. You’re not human anymore—you’re a deity, teacher, you are the most qualified Yasa Acto!

"The whole world is your chess piece... You only have eyes for human civilization, never considering how cruel your actions are to individuals. Do you even remember why you’re fighting this war? Do you remember who was the first one to hand you food? Do you remember who gave you the Demon Fox mask?"

She took a step back.

Su Ming’an reached out his hand, wanting to pull her—

She leaned backward, her body falling into the night, her hair soaring high—

"...to save the world, how could humans save the world, only gods can." She said, "I regret falling in love with a god..."

The heights of the 132nd floor swallowed her voice.

She vanished from his sight with a crazed expression, perhaps a fall without attempting to save herself, perhaps a self-escape.

Of course, she was beautiful, she danced in the fire with extreme beauty, piercing him with the most decisive and ruthless words, then burned to nothingness.

And now, the flames had dissipated, and the survivor vanished into the night.

...only leaving his hand reaching forward, with nothing but void between his palms.

...

[—Are you a machine? So many have died for you, do you remember their names? Are you just a machine wanting to win the war?]

He stared dazedly as her figure plummeted into the darkness of the 132nd floor, his vision spinning.

"It’s so cold," he said.

Brighter lights flared up in the distance, but the snowstorm nearly obscured his sight. He couldn’t see the millions of soldiers and civilians locked in a battle of life and death.

Lin Guang, Tretiya, Xia Sheng, Yao Wen, Luna... In this instant, his mind was filled with chaos, the memories of the past blurred as if soaked in water, their appearances felt like a dream.

...It was as if he truly had spent days with them.

...And yet it seemed he had never woken up.

Only seven days had passed, yet it felt like he had lived half a lifetime.

For a moment, he questioned whether he had journeyed a long distance, or whether he was a brand-new machine, freshly programmed with nineteen years of life.

Chaotic thoughts dominated his brain, his vision a blur.

...So tired.

Negative physical conditions surged in that moment, he felt ice-cold, closed his eyes, and fell backward—

A light touch came, and Ming’an supported him.

"It’s all right, it’s over, happy new year. You are the best, no matter what they say," Ming’s voice disappeared into the snowy night: "There is something I still won’t tell you..."

...

The 49th year of Catastrophe (the 1st year of the New Era), January 1st, heavy snow.

The Gregorian year 2022, February 1st, the first day of the lunar new year, heavy snow.

This year, was the only year since Su Ming’an was five that he hadn’t stayed up until midnight for New Year’s vigil.

All survivors, as well as the people from Dragon Country in the Main God World, at the moment of midnight, lifted their fireworks high, the brilliance bursting into the night sky. Their laughter and joy sounded like a song of peace, all their happiness glistening at this moment—

No one knew that on the skyscraper of the City of Gods, the day before the New Era, someone’s flame was burnt out, someone was watching over the long night.

They would say, fortunately, there was someone who took their place, in the darkness, holding on to the light.

The new year arrived, and the Chinese New Year Gala sang "Unforgettable Tonight".

Humans entered the fifth month of the World Game.

The New Year begins anew, and everything is renewed.

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