But Xiao Fan kept doing things that left him bewildered.
Sometimes, Xiao Fan would suddenly cry out and roar.
"Don't make me look in the mirror!"
Xiao Fan howled, clutching his hand:
"It's all fake, it's all fake!"
He furrowed his brow:
"What's fake?"
Xiao Fan's pupils shrank, brimming with terror. In an instant, his gaze went unfocused, a foolish smile hanging from his lips, his eyes hollow as a dusty, withered well.
"I don't know. Heh heh, heh heh."
Xiao Fan's old illness had returned.
He lamented how swiftly time passed.
He would never see his little sister again. He would never see Gillette again.
He sat on the threshold of the royal palace, staring blankly at the sky.
Remembering that scene from long ago.
"If only I'd been faster. If only I'd been stronger, my little sister wouldn't have died."
He had become utterly alone.
All he had left was Xiao Fan, but Xiao Fan often fell into a daze.
He longed to return to the past, to his little sister, to his parents.
It seemed he could see his little sister's smile once more.
There she was, giggling, her eyes narrowed into fine lines. Her little hand still covered her mouth, unable to hide the mischief brimming in her eyes.
"You run too fast, big brother."
She chased after him like that, chasing him without end.
A long road stretched between them, one she could never walk to the end of, never reach his side.
Tears welled in his eyes, until at last they ran dry.
He understood his mission.
"I will slaughter every Ancient God Beast under heaven and make a road from their corpses.
"A road that will go on... forever, without end."
War erupted once more!
The Human Race's armies marched out, beginning to