Five Hundred Years of Obsession Carved into Bone, Forsaking All Tenderness in the Mortal World, Yearning Only for Kallen's Return Date!

"He dies in every moment." Huo Yuhao's Spiritual Eye twitched slightly. "Whenever he chooses to use calculation to replace emotion, whenever he uses chips to define relationships, that boy dies a fraction more. Vera was only that final knife—cutting off the last bloodied, mangled connection between him and the 'mortal world.' From then on, he is clean, thoroughly clean. The reverse of being clean is emptiness."

Ning Tian spoke up abruptly, her voice calm yet carrying the sharpness of a blade. "Did you all notice one thing—before Vera closed her eyes, the last sentence she said was 'You're still the same as ever.' What did she mean by 'the same as ever'? It was the Otto she had seen from childhood to adulthood, the one who always kept a distance. She followed him for seventy-three years; she had seen him make ruthless decisive moves, seen him play against the world as a game, but had she ever seen him cry for her even once? No. The embrace in that photograph was the last time in her life she saw that soft Otto."

Silence fell over the entire gathering once again.

Niu Tian heaved a heavy sigh. "Seventy-three years. A hound follows its master for seventy-three years, and when it finally closes its eyes at the end, the master doesn't have a single extra wrinkle on his face. How fortunate this old lady was, yet how unfortunate. Her fortune was that she followed him for a lifetime and was never cast aside; her misfortune was that she followed him for a lifetime and was never truly embraced."

"Yet she smiled by herself." Tai Tan said in a low, muffled voice, his tone heavy and carrying an unexpected, dull pain. "She was smiling when she closed her eyes. Didn't you see it?