Living too long wasn't always a good thing. At least, that was true for Elena, who was now over 230 years old. It was no wonder that, back when she was head of the academy, many of her students had sworn they would become Titled Douluo, only to fall silent after a century had passed—or, when they were just one step away, choose not to attempt the difficult breakthrough to Titled Douluo at all.
To see the people and things you loved become nothing but memories was a silent punishment, more terrifying than any legal sentence. It covered everything in the world. Whether you were good or bad, before the judge called Time, everyone was merely awaiting execution.
And the longer time passed, the more you gained, the less it could ever make up for what you lost.
Even though Elena could tell her husband, Barus, "I've already had all the love I need. I don't need to pin my longing on lifeless things. As long as my memories remain, the elders and family who loved me will always live in my heart."
Yet whenever she saw the portraits her parents had commissioned, capturing their family at different ages, the stone statues commemorating her elders, and the black-and-white photographs taken in the final years of her parents' lives, after the two-hundredth year in Levant, Elena would always lock herself away in her childhood room and quietly weep, clutching the teddy bear her parents had given her. It should have fallen apart after more than two hundred years, but she had mended it again and again, and managed to preserve it.
A normal child raised in a loving family, Elena had been cared for by her family for more than two hundred years. Her father, Osuen, and her mother, Liana, had long been deeply etched into her mind. That was Elena's weakness, but Barus knew that if some fool ever tried to exploit it, they would incur Elena's wrath.
Ding-dong—
Rus Wang arrived in the Kairon District beneath the royal capital, Ravenna, with Tingxiao (the World-Breaking Thunder Dragon). Along the way, he had picked up some of the things Barus and Elena liked to eat. He stopped at the entrance to the estate Osuen had built. Over the past two hundred years, Osuen had never failed to keep the estate up to date with the times. But after Osuen and Liana were gone, Liana inherited the family estate and never made any more changes to it, limiting herself to renovations and upkeep every five years.
When Elena opened the gate and saw that her visitors were Uncle Rus Wang and Aunt Tingxiao, both in human form, she immediately ushered them inside.
"Why is it just you, Elena? Why don't you hire some help? And where's my brat? Is he holed up in the study again, tinkering with those Soul Tools of his?"
Rus Wang glanced around the estate's front yard and pretended to be angry.
"Nothing's wrong, Uncle Rus. Barus is making dinner for me right now, so I came to answer the door."
Though fake Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts had been elevated to the level of Hundred-Thousand-Year Soul Beasts by high-level Elves through the Mental Contract Law, they still possessed the ability to transform into human form.
"Looks like my brat is pretty responsible after all. Here, Elena, I brought you plenty of the peach pastries you like. And I brought along some things my son likes, too."
"You really didn't have to bring so much, Uncle."
Elena took the food. The fragrant peach pastries mingled with the aroma of spices—that was the scent of the spiced roast lamb chops her husband, Barus, liked.
While Elena carried the things inside, Rus Wang and Tingxiao stayed in the estate's front yard.
Osuen had continually renovated the yard, but the ginkgo tree with its crooked trunk, the swing, and the white bench where Osuen, Elena, and their children used to sit together had all been carefully preserved.
The ginkgo tree remained, but the people of the past were gone. Only the memories of the Elves and Soul Beasts who had once lived alongside them remained. History would remember their deeds, proof that they had once walked this world.
"Ah..."
Rus Wang walked over to the white bench and gazed at its empty seat.
"Long time no see, old friend."
Rus Wang took the grape wine Osuen had liked from the storage ring that held his Soul Tools and set it on the left side of the bench, where Osuen used to sit most often.
"I still remember when you retired. You'd use my visits as an excuse to drink this wine, and you dodged Liana's surprise inspections more times than I could count. Heh... Looking back, you were pretty pitiful. You couldn't even have a drink without your wife keeping an eye on you. Now Liana won't nag you anymore, but it's a shame you can't drink either."
Rus Wang stood up and placed the glass bottle of wine, its cap already removed, beside the white bench as a tribute to his old friend.
"Osuen and the others chose not to pursue immortality. That was their choice, Rus. All we can do is respect it."
Tingxiao came to Rus Wang's side. Osuen and Liana had been qualified to break through to Titled Douluo and live for 1,200 years.
But after Evans and Light died, Osuen and Tewitz seemed to realize something, too, and chose not to advance their cultivation any further.
"Death is the beginning of new life. That was their choice."
Rus Wang nodded, then looked toward the house. It was time to go catch his son.
Before long, Barus, in human form, sat in a chair, at a loss. He looked to his right at his father, then to his left at Tingxiao, and finally toward Elena, who was peering at him from behind the door through an unusually wide gap. Under the pressure of Rus Wang's imposing aura, he turned back around and sat up straight.
"Tell me, what were you planning to do when you wrote down the possibility of a fake Soul Beast Transformation and an Elf having offspring under theoretical research? Hmm, son?"
"Th-this was for an experiment."
"Just an experiment? Then how do you explain Elena's blushing face?"
Rus Wang and Tingxiao dropped their human forms and reverted to the Blade Ruse King and the World-Breaking Thunder Dragon, sized to fit the room. They rested their large hands on Barus's head.
"You little brat! At least you didn't get yourself killed!"
A Star Luo scouting team headed for the far south to rendezvous with the Asura Eye Outpost. When they reached their destination, their anxiety—already mounting because they had been unable to contact the colonial outpost—plunged into utter despair upon seeing that the entire Research Station had vanished.
The Star Luo People and Spirit Pagoda personnel began gathering whatever information they could. But there was nothing. Rus Wang had used Overturning Seas to clear away the nail driven into the Soul Beasts' escape route to Folded Ear Continent so thoroughly that he had left humanity almost no useful clues to follow.
With their search yielding nothing, the scouts could only attribute the outpost's mysterious disappearance to a Soul Beast possibly even stronger than the ape that had appeared on this continent—the one over four hundred thousand years old—or perhaps...
The Spirit Pagoda personnel looked south, toward the other continent that might lie thousands of kilometers away, beyond the dense icy fog—a continent belonging entirely to Soul Beasts.
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