Chapter 15

Zhao Kongcheng felt like he was about to explode with anger.

"Me! And you're asking who I am? I'm the innocent victim you toyed with emotionally and left out in the cold wind for half the night!"

Zhao Kongcheng locked tightly onto Lin Qiye's hand like a chaste middle-aged man afraid someone would steal his boyfriend away. "I'm telling you, quit playing dumb! You're absolutely not getting away today!"

Lin Qiye looked at his arm, which had been firmly restrained, gave up on futile struggling, and assumed a look of complete resignation.

"Fine. You tell me—where are we talking?"

"Come with me."

Zhao Kongcheng hooked his arm around Lin Qiye's and strode off in some unknown direction...

When Lin Qiye saw that they were steadily approaching a couples' hotel, his expression abruptly changed, and he turned to flee the scene!

But Zhao Kongcheng gave him no such chance. He locked him down again and forcibly dragged him toward the hotel.

"Y-you... what are you trying to do? I'm telling you, I have hemorrhoids! Don't try anything weird...!"

"...What exactly do you male high schoolers have in your heads? We're just finding a place to talk."

"You need to go to a couples' hotel to talk? Didn't you see the way everyone was looking at us along the way? I'm fucking dying of embarrassment!"

"What do you know? This is a safe house. I didn't bring you here for any other reason. Besides, do I look like... like that kind of person?!"

Zhao Kongcheng rolled his eyes, dragged the struggling Lin Qiye to the front desk, and gave the dumbfounded female clerk an exceptionally greasy wink.

"One dynamic passion-themed room with a king-size bed, thank you."

Lin Qiye: ...

The female clerk froze on the spot. After her brain briefly shut down, she inexplicably became excited!

"O-okay, sir. We'll need your ID, and this young... young comrade will need to show his ID as well."

Forced to hand over his identification, Lin Qiye looked strangely at the ecstatic clerk, having no idea what kind of slash-fiction scenario she was imagining...

But no one could blame her. In the middle of the night, a middle-aged man forcibly dragged a teenage boy into a couples' hotel to book a room with a king-size bed—a dynamic 'gay' passion suite, no less—and claimed they were just there to talk... Who would believe that?!

"Here is your room key. Your room is 3966. I wish you both... a pleasant stay!" The female clerk smiled at Lin Qiye's aggrieved expression, her eyes nearly narrowed into slits.

Lin Qiye's fists clenched.

"What are you standing around for? Come upstairs with me." Zhao Kongcheng pulled Lin Qiye toward the elevator.

Once they swiped the card and entered the room, Lin Qiye saw the dazzling array of bizarre facilities with his own eyes and finally realized that rich people really did play this wild...

It really was passionate enough!

Zhao Kongcheng locked the door behind them before finally releasing Lin Qiye. He walked straight to the electric bed and sat down, his body, tense all day, finally relaxing.

"Don't be so nervous. We're really just talking." Seeing Lin Qiye's expression as though he were facing a great enemy, Zhao Kongcheng laughed and scolded him.

Lin Qiye sighed and sat on the sofa beside the door. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Of course, we're talking about you."

"Lin Qiye, male, seventeen, single, 175 centimeters tall, weight..."

"You know that's not what I mean." Zhao Kongcheng held his forehead and pointed at Lin Qiye's eyes with his other hand. "I mean your eyes."

Lin Qiye fell silent.

"You've met Michael?"

At those words, Lin Qiye's body trembled slightly. After hesitating for a long while, he gently nodded.

Sure enough, the man before him knew many things, and the force behind him... was certainly far from simple!

Those words had also revealed an important piece of information to Lin Qiye: the Seraph he had seen ten years ago was actually the famed King of Angels, Michael.

Seeing Lin Qiye nod, Zhao Kongcheng finally relaxed. The look in his eyes as he watched Lin Qiye gradually grew fervent.

"Why did He seek you out? What did He say to you? How far can you use your Forbidden Ruins now?"

Zhao Kongcheng's questions came like a barrage of cannon fire. Lin Qiye frowned slightly and shook his head.

"You have too many questions."

Zhao Kongcheng also realized he had lost his composure. He gave an awkward chuckle. "That's true. You must have a lot of doubts right now, so let me answer them first. Ask whatever you want to know."

After pondering for a moment, Lin Qiye stared into Zhao Kongcheng's eyes and asked his first question. "Do Mythological Gods... really exist in this world?"

"They do." Zhao Kongcheng nodded without hesitation. "But not every god exists."

"What does that mean?"

Zhao Kongcheng fell into thought, as if considering where to begin. "What do you think mythology is?"

Lin Qiye thought for a moment. "Ancient people's spiritual sustenance? Fear and fantasy toward the unknown forces of nature?"

"You're right." Zhao Kongcheng nodded. "Until a century ago, everyone believed that."

"A century ago?"

"That's right. Before that mist appeared, there had never been any trace of gods in this world." Zhao Kongcheng narrowed his eyes slightly. "However, ever since that mist blanketed the Earth, everything... seemed to have changed.

In September 1922, the year after the mist appeared, one of Great Xia's mist exploration teams observed a colossal dragon slowly flying through the sky above the Mariana Trench. It was the first time in human history that a Mythical Creature had been observed.

Through research and verification, that dragon was identified as Leviathan, Dragon of Chaos from the Bible, a creature said to have been created by God. The discovery of this dragon directly overturned the understanding of Great Xia's upper echelon. They realized that, since the arrival of that great mist, the world had become completely different from what it once was.

At the time, the mist had only just appeared, and all of Great Xia had fallen into panic. To maintain national stability, the higher-ups concealed the results of this expedition.

As Leviathan, Dragon of Chaos was the first Mythical Creature observed by humanity, Great Xia's upper echelon assigned it the code 001. More Mythical Creatures were gradually discovered during subsequent explorations, and they continued numbering them in sequence.

The Seraph Michael you saw was the third Mythical Creature observed by humanity in 1928, code 003."

"1928?" Lin Qiye froze. "We hadn't even mastered the technology to land on the moon then, right? How did they find the Seraph on the moon?"

"We didn't find Him." Zhao Kongcheng shook his head. "In March 1928, a streak of golden sword light shot out from the moon, crossed the cosmos, and leveled a massive volcano in North America. Only then did we learn that there was a god on the moon."

"North America? What was there?"

"Later, our exploration team spent a year reaching that volcano. Amid the ruins, they discovered No. 04, a god sealed within a Divine Ruin..."

Zhao Kongcheng paused, then continued, "The Fallen Angel, Lucifer."