The Heavy Love of Parents

"The choice is yours and Wan'er's. This mission isn't mandatory. You can refuse. But it still has to be carried out, and we'll activate the backup plan to find another couple... Perhaps they won't be quite as suitable, but they'll still have to make sacrifices." He paused, his voice strained. "If you choose to accept, then from this moment on, Lin Tianxiao and Ye Wan'er will be officially listed as 'martyrs' in Blue Star's records. The only ones who will know the truth are me, your father, and the three other guardians who signed the highest-level Soul Contract. Not even your mother, Gong Qin, not your son, Lin Hao, not your daughter, Lin Xiaorou, and not any of Wan'er's relatives... can know the truth. You'll have to bear the hatred, confusion, and eventual forgetting of those closest to you. And you will truly... 'disappear.'"

Lin Tianxiao stood there, feeling the ground beneath his feet sway. Han Feng's words, his father's grief, the grotesque darkness and crimson fissures on the holographic projection, and the tender sight of his wife holding Xiao Rou beneath the warm light at home, humming a lullaby, the sparkle in Hao'er's eyes as he ran over to show off after finishing his homework... All the images spun and collided wildly in his mind.

Refuse? That meant pushing this destined, bloody, crushing duty onto someone else—onto another couple who might also have young children. Then he'd cling to a sliver of hope and wait for the apocalypse to arrive, whenever that might be? Watch Hao'er and Xiao Rou face the darkness that devoured everything, perhaps in the not-so-distant future?

Accept? That meant killing his identity as a father and husband with his own hands, leaving endless pain and years of lies for his aging parents and little children.