Chapter 104
"And not only Huan Shu and Huan Yan, Ling Xu," The Silent One continued, his voice no longer flat and empty, but sharp, piercing, like a dagger slowly driven into the back, like a blade slicing layer after layer of flesh until nothing remains but bone and marrow that can never be healed.
"Huan Mei—the wife who was once loved by Huan Zheng with all his soul, for whom he once sacrificed everything to protect, for whom he once left the battlefield just to make sure she was safe—is rumored to be getting close to handsome men of immense wealth, men who can give her a life she never had with Huan Zheng, men who are not lazy, who are not indifferent, who do not yawn at the wrong moments, who can buy her jewelry and luxurious clothes and magnificent houses she has always dreamed of."
He stopped, looking at Ling Xu with a strangely pitiful gaze, like a grandmother telling a tragic story about her lost grandchild, like a priest reciting a prayer for someone who never believed in God, like someone who has seen too much suffering to distinguish between tears and rain.
"And every time those rumors begin to spread, every time malicious tongues start to move, every time filthy gossip spreads like fire across dry grass, Huan Zheng—the Lazy One, the second of the three Wheels of Cultivation, the man who would rather sleep on an ox cart than celebrate humanity's victory—will terrorize anyone who dares to expose the disgrace of his two children and his wife. Not with physical violence, Ling Xu. Not with murder or torture. He will simply appear before them, with half-closed eyes, hands in his pockets, with a lazy, flat voice, and say, 'Stop. Or you will regret it.' And they always stop, Ling Xu. They are always afraid. Not because Huan Zheng threatens them, not because he shows his power, not because he tells them what he will do if they do not stop. But because in his eyes—in those lazy, half-closed eyes—there is something more terrifying than threats, something more horrifying than violence, something that makes them feel that if they continue, they will not only lose their lives, but also their souls, their dignity, everything that makes them believe they are better than a lazy man who cannot even protect his own family."
The Silent One lowered his hand, and the dim light formed from those gossips vanished instantly, like mist swallowed by the morning sun, like a dream forgotten upon waking.
For the first time that night, his voice was no longer sharp, no longer piercing, no longer flat and empty, but gentle—very gentle—like a grandfather ending a bedtime story, like a storyteller closing a book after reading the final page, like someone who has finished what must be done and can now only rest, wait, and see what will happen next.
"And that is where the story of Huan Zheng's family life ends, Ling Xu."
Amid the smoking ruins of the man-made hell, beneath a sky slowly returning to its original color—grayish blue like a wound beginning to dry—Ling Xu sat beside Huan Zheng's limp body.
His trembling hands reached for the man's hand, gripping it tightly as if letting go for even a second would cause Huan Zheng to vanish into dust carried by the wind, like a dream that was never truly real, like a hope that died before it could grow.
And within his chest, between the pulses of the Cancer plague that had begun to calm upon sensing its host was wounded in a way no poison, fire, or death could heal, something warm yet painfully strange began to gather.
Not hatred, not vengeance, not anger, but a sorrow so deep, so absolute, so devastating that he could no longer distinguish between the light-tears falling from his hollow eye sockets and the blood still dripping from his unhealed wounds.
"I didn't expect it," he whispered, his voice cracking like glass falling from a height, like the string of a harp snapping in the middle of its most beautiful melody.
"I didn't expect that I—someone who has known nothing but hatred since childhood, who only knows how to kill and burn and take revenge—would actually… actually fall in love with a man who already has a wife."
He gripped Huan Zheng's hand tighter, his cold fingers slipping between the man's fingers, and for the first time in his long journey filled with blood, fire, and death, he felt something he had never felt before.
Doubt.
A doubt born from the realization that the love he felt, the love he thought was pure and sacred and untainted, was in fact unrequited, something he could never claim, something that would never belong to him.
Because Huan Zheng's heart, though shattered into pieces, though betrayed by those he loved most, still belonged to Huan Mei—the woman who chose to leave, who chose luxury over loyalty, who was never satisfied with what Huan Zheng gave.
"And you, Huan Zheng… you never told me. You never said that you had a wife, that you had children, that you had a family waiting for you at home, a family you left every morning with a lazy smile and returned to every night with souvenirs from across the universe."
In his quiet heart, between the sorrow that began to subside as he realized that crying would change nothing, Ling Xu remembered Huan Zheng's words in that dark and damp cave—right after they escaped from the sea city of the Gods infected by the Cancer plague he had caused, right after Huan Zheng almost blew himself up because of his ego, right when that lazy man first revealed that behind his indifferent mask lay a wound that never healed, a pain he never shared with anyone, a story about "someone very close" he had lost, whom he had let die, whom he might have been the cause of.
"So that's what you meant, Huan Zheng," he muttered inwardly, his inner voice no longer broken or wet, but flat, empty, like the surface of a lake undisturbed for far too long.
"When you said you had once lost someone very close, someone you couldn't save, someone whose death you might have caused—you weren't talking about a comrade-in-arms, not a fallen brother on the battlefield, not a teacher or a student or a friend. You were talking about your family, Huan Zheng."
Hhhh!
"You were talking about Huan Mei, about Huan Shu, about Huan Yan. You were talking about your wife and your daughters, whose relationship with you has shattered, who chose to leave, who chose to hate you, who chose to live without you—not because you are evil, not because you didn't love them, but because you were too lazy, too indifferent, too incapable of expressing what you felt, that they believed you didn't care, that you didn't love them, that you would rather sleep on an ox cart than spend time with them."
To be continued…