The King and the Rebel Minister (IV)

More than ten minutes passed.

The boy and girl sat facing each other in a pool of blood.

The battle was already over.

Their fight seemed to have been incredibly fierce. Broken, burning rails and sparking fragments lay everywhere, while trailing sparks streamed down from above.

"Mm." Xia Mi's Golden Eyes were no longer cold. She raised her clawed blade high and drove it through Chu Zihang's body. "Have you finished asking all your questions?"

"One last one... are you really Xia Mi now?" Chu Zihang raised his eyes. His pupils were dim in those black eyes, and all the blood in his body had burned away.

"Just think of her as me. What difference does it make?"

"It feels like a very long nightmare." After softly speaking those last words, Chu Zihang fell unconscious.

"The nightmare is over. Once you become a Deadpool, you won't dream anymore." Jormungandr spoke softly as well and drew him into her arms.

A discordant voice pierced the atmosphere again.

"Junior Sister, are you done talking with Senior Brother Chu?"

Someone approached at an unhurried pace and stopped about thirty meters away from the boy and girl.

It was Lu Mingfei, who had taken a long detour and run over from the direction of Apple Orchard Station. After more than ten minutes, he had finished Fenrir's chips and successfully shaken off Fenrir's pursuit.

That was hardly surprising. A subway station was not open ground, after all, and Fenrir was not particularly bright. His real brain had just finished a love-and-hate battle with a human.

Jormungandr rose without surprise, laid down the severely bloodied Chu Zihang, and quietly watched Lu Mingfei. "Did you deliberately give us time to say goodbye, Odin?"

"I originally thought there might still be a turning point." Lu Mingfei shrugged. "From the moment I saw you, I thought you were the 'Little Heroine' possessed by Chiyou. Once I saw through you, I was even more certain. That's why I was willing to leave you a chance."

"Have you ever unlocked the hidden ending of the game Kalpa of Heaven and Earth? In the end, the 'Little Heroine' was saved."

Jormungandr shook her head. "The Abandoned Race and the world will never reconcile. That's so naive... are you really Odin? I was never an internet-addicted girl in human society."

"What the hell?" Lu Mingfei laughed and denied it. "Even if I were a dragon, I'd be a cowardly one. Before entering your Nibelungen, I was already afraid, terrified. But I hadn't even fully figured out what exactly I was afraid of."

Most of the time, he was not suited to pondering overly profound philosophical questions.

Lu Mingfei found a place to squat. The stone blocks, steel beams, and anything else nearby that could have been used as a seat had already been melted or crushed by the aftershock of the battle. "Junior Sister, after talking to you a little more than ten minutes ago, I think I figured out what I'd always been afraid of. So, thanks. I mean it."

"I think I was afraid that I still had a way out. I was afraid that if I didn't lay my cards on the table, I'd miss something in the future."

"Junior Sister, have you noticed? Compared to the me you remember, the current me... has improved a little, right?"

"I can see that, but I can't tell whether you're pretending." Jormungandr did not attack. She was waiting for Fenrir to return. Alone, she did not stand much chance against Odin.

Judging by the vibrations in the ground, Fenrir was about to circle back.

Lu Mingfei said, "Every stage of life has its own enemies. Right now, my greatest enemy is something called—happiness I think I can obtain. I didn't just come to save Chu Zihang. I came to save myself."

"Pursuing happiness shouldn't be difficult for you, should it? In the outside world, I often heard people say that different choices brought different kinds of happiness." Jormungandr asked thoughtfully.

"It's difficult... I used to think that if I took one step back, there would be happiness waiting to be stored away. But why should I beg someone else to give me happiness? Could I even get it by begging? Is happiness something another person can give you?"

The boy spoke calmly, but a mournful, suppressed rage weighed on him.

"When things get troublesome and the pressure becomes overwhelming, getting angry and staking everything on it... behind that unrealistic thought was my inner unease. I always felt that some mountain of cast-iron mistakes would someday come and destroy my life."

"I don't really understand. It sounds like the unnecessary adolescent fantasies of a middle schooler. I never thought you would have such stupid ideas." Jormungandr cut straight to the point. She had already heard Fenrir's furious roar.

"You're good at observing humans." Lu Mingfei nodded. "Because I have nowhere left to retreat to."

Jormungandr spread her blue-black dragon wings and began closing in. "Are you telling me all this because you want to leave your last words before risking your life?"

She suddenly felt that the person before her could not possibly be Odin.

The tail of the Dragon King, its scales cold and grim, moved across the ground like a giant serpent awakening.

"If you don't say some nonsense before risking your life, how will your enemy know you're about to risk your life? Forgive me, Junior Sister." Lu Mingfei spoke honestly. "I'm telling you this because I'm using you as my whetstone. If a whetstone doesn't know it's being used to sharpen a blade, that's a little too tragic."

He had previously entertained many thoughts of keeping trump cards in reserve and holding something back. For example: "Chu Zihang is important, but maybe he isn't the most important person." "No matter how much you sacrifice for your friends in a dungeon, they won't notice in reality anyway." "What's wrong with running it a few more times and making a guide? You've already watched your friends die hundreds of times."

There had been nothing inherently wrong with those thoughts. They were rational, useful, and suitable for most people who cautiously longed for happiness. To protect one's happiness, one had to keep trump cards in reserve.

Not long ago, he had also hesitated to step back. He had thought that his life needed love to mend it, nourish it, and make it whole. The love of his other half would ensure that he would never feel sorrowful again.

He would meet some girl who made his heart race, whose cheeks would flush when she saw him. He would bleed and fight for her, grow for her into a bold, commanding man. If he used up his trump cards and risked his life for a friend somewhere now, wouldn't that be unfair to the girl he would meet in the future?

"Promises of eternal love were always made on credit" was an old literary line that had always moved Lu Mingfei. When you loved someone, you often felt indebted to them. In his youth, he had indulged in such artsy fantasies through countless lonely moments.

Because I love you, I don't want you to lose out. I want to find a journal and write down every beautiful thing I owe you. I have had moments of sorrow, melancholy, conflict, and weakness. Sometimes I ran into walls everywhere, crying because I couldn't find the entrance to happiness. And because I love you, I selfishly hope that you can see such a pathetic version of me. I also hope you can fight through thorns and brambles, enter my vortex, and save me.

If one day you fall into your own vortex, I'll sharpen the blade I prepared long ago and bring that ledger of debts to find you and save you. At that time, no one will be able to stop me.

That fantasy was beautiful, but he was already trapped in the vortex of this enormous world. In reality, he was closely monitored and treated as some kind of tool. Troubles would come one after another in the future, the difficulty of the remaining dungeons was unknown, and cold reality showed that it was no longer the time for him to guard his friends and lover and live an ordinary life.

The difficulty of obtaining happiness was hundreds or thousands of times greater for him than for others, and the blade he needed to sharpen had to be sharpened hundreds or thousands of times faster.

Under such circumstances, if he retreated again or clung to luck, he would not be able to save anyone.

Lu Mingfei patted his trench coat and stood up. Ancient Dragon Serum had long been in his hand, its black, viscous blood writhing inside.

He wondered whether he ought to say something harsh, like, "Damn you, King of Earth and Mountains. For the world, for my justice, for my way as a man, I'm going to take you down with me." But there was not that much hatred between them. He had long sensed that the Ancient Dragon Serum might only be a fuse. What mattered more was releasing the demon in his heart.

...Still, one run it is.

Just before the dragon tail pierced his body, Lu Mingfei raised his head to study Jormungandr, tilted his head, and plunged all the Ancient Dragon Serum into his neck.

"See you around," he said.

A blood-red lotus bloomed.

A magnificent, savage heartbeat rang out. The first beat, then the second, the third, the fourth... faster and faster. In the new century, it was the sound of bells, the sound of war drums.

A vast, invisible shadow suddenly coiled around Jormungandr's heart.

The roar of the sea began echoing all around them. Rain and rushing water came from every direction, surging black tides gathering into a towering vortex, mixed with hoarse, furious echoes. The chime of bronze bells drowned out Fenrir's roar.

Suddenly, a subway train thundered past. Its cars were black as ink... this was a dead end, Zero Station, yet after the train stirred up wild wind and waves, it passed through without obstruction.

In the shadows behind the train, someone in formal dress scattered white roses. That was the leader of ghosts and demons. Unwilling spirits wandered about, beating gongs and drums. The dead had wings burned down to black frames, and half-rotted bone spurs covered in thorns. In unison, they hummed a cold ancient battle hymn from a thousand years ago, one that had once sent warhorses forward through blood deep enough to cover their bits.

"Holy, holy, King of Hosts!"

"Mourn the blazing day of my king's entry into the city, for afterward comes the twilight of all kings."

Jormungandr's scalp went numb.

"From that day onward, the age of nations standing side by side would be no more. God would reclaim the King's Authority from the kings of the four corners of the earth."