Gu Luoxin took in a shaky breath, feeling like he was about to have a heart attack due to the consecutive shocks he had been receiving. The scene before him seed fuzzy and surreal as though everything was but a re dream, and only the face of Young Master Ares remained clear and vivid.
"Are you the one who– who did this... to him?" he asked with a barely imperceptible tremor in his voice.
Gu Luoxin had no idea where this sadness in his heart ca from. Master Grinu might be an utter failure as a father, ruthless and batshit insane through and through. If anyone asked him, Gu Luoxin wouldn’t even hesitate to say that such a person deserved a painful death of a thousand cuts, but...
But it shouldn’t be Young Master Ares who did it—anyone but him.
It was unfair, truly unfair for this refined and gentle young man to have blood in his hands. He should have lived a leisurely and carefree life. He, of all people, deserved to have a happy ending after all the hardships he had gone through.
Rather than being burdened with the sin of killing his own father.
As if sensing the direction of Gu Luoxin’s thoughts, Ares put on a helpless yet amused look. "It seems like you have so misconceptions toward . Quite a huge one, if I can say."
"I," he gestured at himself, "am not Ares."
Gu Luoxin stared at him blankly, unable to process the single sentence that had co from that mouth.
"Or to be more exact, I am no longer Ares," he corrected after so thought. "Ares has ceased to exist years ago, when his father Grinu threw him off the cliff because he was too afraid to fly. Since then, the person who ca back... was no longer Ares. Now I am but a vessel, a house for the resentnt and evil that has been entrenched deeply in this world for years—decades. Centuries."
Gu Luoxin could do nothing but stare, dumbfounded. "Y-You..."
"You’re not wrong," the person before him, who claid that he was not Ares, smiled. Yet it was such a hollow and empty smile, as if every last flicker of light and hope within him had died, leaving nothing behind but a gnawing void. "I am no longer alive. All this ti, I’ve been dead all along. I have just been using you to achieve my goal. A hundred years ago, I almost succeeded, only to be thwarted at the last mont by a foolish human who would rather sacrifice himself. I was so, so close at that ti..." he lowered his gaze, a hint of resentnt flashing through, and when he raised his eyes again, the darkness in his pupils bled outward like ink, swallowing the whites in his eyes until all that remained was black.
"But this ti, I won’t fail again. I will never—ever— let anyone stand in my way!"
Toward the end, his voice abruptly turned sharp and shrill, echoing round and round as if it had co from all directions. The shadow beneath his feet stretched and swelled, writhing like a bloodthirsty monster was clawing its way out of the abyss. Even the light in the room flickered and dimd, swallowed by the encroaching darkness.
Witnessing this demonic sight, Gu Luoxin finally had to acknowledge that he had never really known the person before him, that the young master he had grown fairly attached to... had never existed to begin with.
Suppressing the rising dread and anxiety in him, he hollered, "What are you planning to do?!"
A faint sinister smile hooked on the corner of Ares’ lips. "Do you know," he said softly, "that the chanism behind this floating island is tied to the reigning ruler’s life? Long, long ago, after the garudas were expelled from land by humans, they begged the heavens for a place they could call their own—a ho, a sanctuary, a paradise. For that, they didn’t hesitate to offer everything they had... even the lives of their own children, believing them to be the purest sacrifice.
"The gods heard their prayers, and this floating island ca to existence. A magical place untouched by science and technology.
"But how could such a good thing co without a price? This island’s existence is forever tied to a single person, passed down from ruler to their chosen successors—a hidden danger who we all refer to as the Master of the Sky. This is the garudas’ greatest weakness, a secret only known to the masters and their heirs."
Ares chuckled mirthlessly. "Isn’t it ironic how awful of a leader Grinu is, yet we still have to bow down to him just so that the garudas can survive? Now what do you think will happen... if I kill him here, with no heir left to inherit his position?"
"Boom—" he whispered, his inky black eyes curving in gleeful malice. "The whole island will co crashing down."
"Finally!" The doctor laughed uproariously, continuing Ares’ sentence. "The world will finally be destroyed and the Nightmare shall descend to bestow its divine presence upon you all! Wait for , oh Omnipotent One—just a little longer, and I will serve this realm to you on a silver platter!"
"Crazy..." Gu Luoxin shook his head as he retreated one step after another, his eyes filled with horror. "You’re all crazy!!"
In one fluid motion, he activated the life-saving prop he had been preparing for all this ti, and his figure vanished on the spot, only to reappear near Young Master Ares’ courtyard with a stagger. But he didn’t even stop to catch his breath despite the dizziness he was feeling.
Sprinting along the dark corridor, Gu Luoxin didn’t think he had ever felt this desperate before.
Crazy... they were all a crazy bunch! How could they even think of collapsing the whole island?! If that were to happen, then the land below... and everyone else in it, including his teammates and Noir... would be buried alive!
No! Gu Luoxin could not allow that to happen, absolutely not! He had to warn soone about it!
A slight movent caught the corner of his eye, and Gu Luoxin instinctively looked up—only to turn aghast at the sight unfolding before his eyes. The sky, which he had assud as pitch-black near midnight, was twisting and squirming as though sothing unspeakably wicked was taking shape. Just one glance was enough to send a jolt of horror through Gu Luoxin’s heart.
W-What the hell was that creature?!
Scared out of his wits, Gu Luoxin spurred himself to move faster—faster still!—before barging into the young master’s room, heading straight to where he had last left his earpiece.
The signal indicator was blinking furiously with an incoming call, and Gu Luoxin jamd it into his ear as he struggled to catch his breath.
Usually, the person on the other end of the call would materialize in the form of a small holographic projection, but this ti only darkness remained and the voice that finally crackled through was layered with static as if there was sothing interfering with the connection.
"X...inxin...! Oh God... you okay?!"
A wave of overwhelming relief crashed over him at the sound of Shen Nianzu’s voice. After all the madness he had seen and heard, Shen Nianzu’s voice was akin to a ray of warmth from a ho where he was supposed to belong, making his nose turn sour.
Blinking back tears, he blurted out without delay, "Xiao Shen, listen to carefully! About the clues Grandpa Song left behind, I think– I think I know what he wanted to convey now! Bred evil, cage, sky, don’t trust... it’s referring to the Young Master of the Sky, warning us not to trust him!"
"Grandpa Song must have been used and betrayed before, which resulted in his death!"
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