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Chapter 786 - 784: "?

Chapter 786: Chapter 784: "?

"Who got copied, who vanished? Who smiles with two kinds of smiles? Whose voice takes the place of two voices speaking? Who nods for two heads in agreement? Whose gesture lifts the teaspoon to the lips? Who peels off another’s skin? Who is still alive, who has passed away, entangled in whose palm lines?"

—— "Selected Poems by Szymborska"

...

...

Today marks the 32nd year since the Catastrophe, our first encounter.

He has a charisma that draws me in. I think I understand who I have been waiting for all this time. I invited him to walk with me, and he isn’t afraid of me. This is a perfect start, I believe we will become very good friends, until the year my life comes to an end.

...

"Dah, dah, dah."

Su Ming’an stepped back again and again, his vision spinning and collapsing in the Emotional Resonance, countless emotions colliding in his mind.

The heavy rain, red blood, blue blood, shattered experiment liquids, sludge, dust, splashing ginkgo leaves... these were all he could see.

Not until his heel found empty space did he immediately latch onto a protruding shard of glass, preventing a fall, as blood flowed down from the palm of his hand.

He couldn’t hear Mu Team’s or Xiaomei’s voices; the only sound left in his ears was the gloomy voice of Lin Guang.

This Emotional Resonance was far beyond his Ability to Defend.

...because he and Lin Guang were hardly alike at all. It was entirely different from the Emotional Resonance with Acto.

Where his gaze fell, Lin Guang stood in the hall, head slightly lowered. Even his expression lost its sense of reality, his features obscured by shadows and remaining motionless, like a still stone sculpture.

...

That night, I looked through the windows of the City of Gods and saw him. He was in Qiu Li’s room, tidying up the watercolors. What’s so fascinating about those pigments?

He must be cold.

I will go find him.

...

Crimson, entangled tubes writhed behind Lin Guang, like layer upon layer of wheat waves under autumn winds. His fingers, as if held by the evening breeze, curled subconsciously, unable to grasp anything.

He looked at Su Ming’an standing on the edge of the window.

Su Ming’an, his whole body smeared with blood.

Su Ming’an, with a blurred look in his eyes.

Su Ming’an, just one step away from falling.

Su Ming’an, who seemed to be in great pain.

Yet in Lin Guang’s heart surged a subtle sense of pleasure.

Like an innocent child, he felt a vindictive delight, along with an indescribable sourness and pain. He seemed to have encountered this feeling many times before.

When he shot himself, when he strangled his own neck, these were the mingled emotions of joy and pain he felt.

Because he hadn’t experienced many emotions and didn’t understand their definitions, he couldn’t determine what this feeling really was.

What distinguished humans from animals was not the natural attributes of humans, but their social attributes. Social attributes arose from human interactions, like communication, like walking together, like cooperation; only by constantly summarizing the experiences of these activities did one become more and more like a "human."

But he didn’t have that.

He was nothing like it.

...

I crawled towards him.

He actually smiled.

It’s funny to see me dying on the ground?

"I walked with him last night, and he was clearly happy too. If he likes the scenery from before the Century Catastrophe, he doesn’t need Qiu Li to paint it for him, I can show him as much as he wants. I’ve come to understand, the reason I’ve been looking for someone with black hair and grey eyes is to meet him."

"I want to tell him, I want to be his friend. But his gun is pointed at me."

"Why?"

"..."

"Just because I have a ’Camp BOSS’ sign in his view?"

"So I can’t be kind to him?"

"So he must reject me?"

...

"I understand."

"The Deity told me—just order the Beacon gathering place to hand him over directly. This is the correct way to make friends."

...

Lin Guang walked toward Su Ming’an.

"Lin Guang, must it be this way?"

Su Ming’an’s voice was soft and slow, even affable. During the years of the Dawn War, when he was spreading the teachings of the Lighthouse Church, Su Ming’an used this gentle storytelling tone, highly bewitching.

"You are the one Acto trusts most, you have the highest administrator privileges, and you’re the only one who can contend with the Deity. If you attack me again, the Ruined World will have no hope," Su Ming’an said softly: "You are his best companion, don’t let him down."

Lin Guang stopped in his tracks.

About ten steps apart, they looked at each other, and Lin Guang suddenly said:

"...Then why didn’t you say this earlier?"

Su Ming’an let out a light "Hm?" as if calming an agitated pet.

"Why didn’t you... say this earlier?" repeated Lin Guang.

His voice grew hoarser, as if a weighty burden had settled in his pupils.

"If you could have treated me with such gentle tones a bit sooner. If you could have been a bit more submissive to me, offered me a bit of warmth, smiled at me like you do with your companions, agreed to be my friend," Lin Guang said quietly: "Would we have ended up like this?"

Su Ming’an’s pupils trembled, and after a moment, he softly said:

"Yes."

Because that’s the kind of person you are.

Lacking in emotion, devoid of basic principles and a moral foundation, easily misled by a Deity, capable of doing the most terrible things. With a Deity whispering in your ear, how could you possibly become friends with me.

No matter how I treated you, we would have come to this point. The Deity’s schemes leave no room for error.

"No," Lin Guang stubbornly denied: "There must have been a possibility for us to become good friends."

"In the 32nd year after the Catastrophe, if I wanted your City of Gods, would you have agreed?" asked Su Ming’an suddenly.

"..." Lin Guang’s expression trembled violently, and after a moment, he said with a shaky voice: "No."

"In the 49th year after the Catastrophe, if I wanted you to stop the nuclear explosion, would you have agreed?" Su Ming’an asked again.

Lin Guang clenched his fists: "...No."

"In the 63rd year after the Catastrophe, if I wanted you to reveal all your hidden secrets to me, would you have agreed?" asked Su Ming’an with a third question.

Lin Guang hung his head: "No."

"Then..." Su Ming’an softly launched a fourth question: "In the 71st year after the Catastrophe, if I want you to back down now, not to collude with the Deity, would you agree?"

A long silence.

Lin Guang couldn’t give an affirmative answer to any of the four questions. And these four questions were all objectives Su Ming’an must achieve.

How could their stands possibly align? There were inherent, unavoidable contradictions.

How could they possibly be friends.

"Every time I asked you to leave with me, to get away from the hellhole of Doomsday City, you refused. In the end, just as I expected, you were betrayed by humans over and over again." Moments later, Lin Guang spoke up:

"But whenever they asked you to stay, to take care of them, you would without hesitation remain, refusing to leave with me. As if it were my place that was the true hell."

"You never showed me any affection, only trying to persuade me when you needed me. To you, I am no more than a tool."

As Lin Guang spoke, he suddenly reached out, and Su Ming’an thought to step back, but realized Lin Guang was only reaching towards himself.

Like a madman, Lin Guang tore open his Hanfu, revealing his shoulder, lower arm, abdomen... the bleeding bandages and the bruises around his neck. With his movements, blood seeped out, dyeing the bandages like white roses stained with blood.

Su Ming’an watched this scene alertly, and then he noticed that Lin Guang was seriously injured, wounds all over his body.

Who could have hurt Lin Guang?

"I must have told you more than once not to treat me like an NPC," Lin Guang said in a low voice, tugging at the bloodied bandage, "but your attitude has always been the same. You treat me as if I were a wild beast that might go mad at any moment—you never considered that I might not have ill intentions towards you."

"Of course, I’ve considered it," Su Ming’an said softly, "You yourself personally shattered that consideration."

"It was the deity who told me this was the right thing to do. I didn’t know how it could hurt you," Lin Guang said.

"A wild beast driven by others," Su Ming’an said, "isn’t a wild beast anymore?"

He clenched his fingers, the glass wound in his palm still bleeding.

"The wounds you caused, you’ve stitched them up," Su Ming’an raised his voice, "Does that mean they never caused harm?"

Cracks appeared in Lin Guang’s expression.

He seemed to have realized something, looking at Su Ming’an with lifeless eyes; it was as if he was pleading for Su Ming’an to stop speaking.

Don’t... keep talking.

Please.

"If you truly were Lv Shu..." Su Ming’an spoke loudly, clenching his fist, forgetting the wound that was still bleeding, his tone as sharp as a knife:

"—after all the things you’ve done over forty years, could you still be Lv Shu?"

What makes us human is the social connections we forge with each other. When those social connections and experiences are gone, that person can no longer be the same person in social terms.

In that instant,

a tense string within Lin Guang, along with his crumbling expression, snapped.

...

[As I looked down upon this human world like a deity, I never thought I would one day feel as lowly as a rat in the sewer.]

[I never understood what "friendship" meant, what "loneliness" was—the only things I could sense were despair and numbness. Finally being able to feel a trace of happiness, I wanted to hold onto it.]

[But why...]

[Can’t I?]

...

"Alright."

In that moment, Lin Guang’s voice was calm. He stood there like a solitary tree.

A pale smile surfaced on his pale face, like a tree that’s taken too much burden and finally snapped.

"Still Lv Shu."

"Still... Lv Shu."

He touched his fingers to his chest, ripping open the bandage there. Then his fingers neared his skin, his nails dug in, starting to tear at the flesh of his own left chest. Blood followed his nails into the crevices, running between his fingers.

Watching this scene, Su Ming’an felt increasingly that Lin Guang’s behavior was absurd. He shifted step by step to the right, quietly calling for "Captain Mu."

The text before his eyes flickered, seemingly Captain Mu’s response, but Su Ming’an couldn’t make it out due to the overlapping illusions of sight and sound.

Wave after wave, an overwhelming emotional resonance overpowered all his senses, as if a figure wearing Hanfu stood silently in the rain, holding an oiled paper umbrella.

Blood blossoms spread across the surface of the water, the figure in Hanfu moved slightly, tilting his head upward, gazing toward some unseen point.

"Is there any point anymore?"

"You must never give up."

"Whether shot by a gun, pierced by swords and blades, pushed off a train, or scorched by flames."

"Whether misunderstood or deeply hated."

"You must never give up."

...

In an unending illusion, Su Ming’an even saw—beneath the dim yellow light, a figure with white hair stood indoors. He placed a couplet that had dried ink into a travel backpack, organized the flute scores, sorted the ginkgo leaves on which he had written diaries by year and locked them away one by one, carefully hid his delicate stitches, creating a clinking knot chain.

"Look, for my next journey, I’ll come to find you. This is the flute I plan to give you."

The white-haired youth, while organizing, cradled a flute, talking to the air as if to himself, with an expression of warm contentment.

It was as if there really was a friend in the air, one who conversed with him daily, always caring about him.

But in reality,

There was no one.

Afterward, it all turned into an inferno, incinerating all contentment. Amidst the fire, only the voice of the arsonist mercenary cursing him as a devil could be heard.

...

"Is there any point anymore?"

"You must never give up."

...

"—Grandma, I saved you, can you answer me, what is love?"

"—Lin Guang! Devil! Stay away from me! Stay away!!!"

...

"—You should avoid places infested with Exotic Beasts in the future. You’re the leader of the Mercenary Corps, right? Then you should know a lot, can you tell me, what is love?"

"—Lin Guang, although we’re grateful you saved us, please leave. If others see me standing with you, I can no longer be the leader of the Mercenary Corps."

...

"—Little girl, I’ve driven away the bandits, can you answer me, what is love?"

"—You are! You’re the bad person my mom told me to stay away from! You’re Lin Guang! I’ve seen your portrait! Mom, save me!!!"

...

"Tap, tap, tap."

Amid the hallucinations, Su Ming’an saw thousands of ginkgo leaves fluttering like butterfly wings, the cold wind scattering these "butterflies", countless golden leaves twinkling "shasha" like stars.

The white-haired Agent stood at the entrance of the garden villa, the white fence enclosing the light, shining on the clear stream, making it gleam and constructing a long bridge of water and light.

His expression was one of startled realization, it was a look of incomprehension towards everything in the world.

Without fundamental thought processes, unable to perceive positive emotions, incapable of interacting properly with people, unable to love or be loved. Like someone born bereft of all senses, shrouded in a black shell, whose actions are eternally infused with both innocence and cruelty.

Afterward, he turned his head, looking toward Su Ming’an, as if seeing a living butterfly hidden among the myriad ginkgo leaves.

A smile appeared on his pale face:

"xxx."

"xxxx?"

...

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