VAP - Chapter 186
Chapter 186: The Ruler in the Endless Deep Darkness (19)
Three years ago, on a certain late night, eleven students were locked in the disciplinary room, throwing themselves into the flames with bodies full of scars and bone-deep despair.
They became vengeful spirits and burned down the academy, but they could never take revenge on the true culprit. Their resentment deepened daily, turning the academy into a dead land isolated from the real world.
And now, their long-held wish was fulfilled.
Having lost the symbiotic fire spirit, Mr. Geng was completely powerless against the ghostly flames. He was almost instantly burned beyond recognition, yet his inhuman vitality prevented him from dying, leaving him to do nothing but roll on the ground and howl in agony.
The vengeful spirits surrounded him, making strange sounds that were neither crying nor laughing.
Only when Mr. Geng’s body was completely incinerated, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes on the ground, did they stop making noise. They stared blankly at the ground, the ghostly fire in their eye sockets flickering uncertainly.
The battlefield, which had been raging moments ago, fell into a dead silence, an eerie quiet.
The players retreated to one side, looking at each other in dismay.
“Is that it?” Song Zhan asked in a low voice. “Why aren’t they moving? It’s making me a little nervous.”
Tang Ying also whispered, “They just got their revenge. Give them some time to process.”
Yue Du looked at Ah Jiu and asked via her thoughts, “Have you received any messages from the game?”
Ah Jiu nodded lightly. “Yes, this instance is over.”
According to the mission parameters, players only needed to survive the vengeful spirits’ pursuit tonight to clear the instance. The spirits wouldn’t use their full strength against players who weren’t their enemies, so there were always two or three survivors—yes, this was a reusable instance.
Now that the vengeful spirits had killed Mr. Geng and resolved their resentment, they were about to receive eternal release, and this instance would close with their disappearance.
The evening wind rustled past, scattering the ashes. The vengeful spirits’ bodies gradually filled out, returning to how they looked when they were alive.
Fang Panpan turned and smiled at them. Her companion childishly stomped on the scattered ashes nearby. Li Wei waved a hand at the crowd with his back to them, not looking back.
They turned into points of white light and ascended into the vast night sky. A shimmer passed through Yue Du’s eyes, and she saw the black and red resentment shrouding the academy dissipate rapidly, like clouds parting to reveal the moon.
At the same time, the buildings before them silently collapsed and decayed, becoming a stretch of black and gray ruins. Weeds grew wild underfoot, and the branches of nearby trees were scorched and withered, yet new shoots sprouted from the places once burned by the fierce fire.
This was the academy’s true appearance three years after the fire. It had finally returned to reality. People would soon discover and remember its existence, then clear this place out for other uses.
“Ah, my phone!” a young girl cried out.
Everyone then noticed that their phones and other electronic devices were lying on the ruins of the teaching building. They all went forward to retrieve them, only feeling at ease after seeing the instance completion message sent by the app.
Yue Du said, “So, how do we lea—”
Before she could finish, her companions vanished before her eyes, clearly teleported away.
Yue Du, who had watched the other players leave the instance while she and her system remained, was speechless: “…”
Oh, the battle had been so intense, she’d forgotten there was a Lord of Deep Darkness hiding behind her, watching her intently.
Yue Du turned around and said helplessly, “Is there anything else you need?”
Xuan Jiu gestured for her to hold out her hand. Yue Du hesitated for a moment before complying. She felt a slight weight in her palm as a black silk pouch was placed there.
“The horns of my kinfolk.” Xuan Jiu looked at Yue Du, a faint smile in her deep black eyes. “The colors are different, and so are the flavors. If you like them, try more.”
Yue Du was stunned.
She had thought Xuan Jiu had come over to tease her like a little pet, or to ask some questions, just as Einser had done before the last instance ended.
But this one was actually here to give her something. What’s her angle? Yue Du wondered.
Seeing her accept it, Xuan Jiu’s expression softened further. She suddenly sighed softly, “Earlier today, you seemed very sad.”
Was it when she was with the students?
Yue Du remained impassive. “It was nothing. It’s only human.”
Xuan Jiu whispered, “Is that so? I don’t quite like that feeling.”
She had said she wanted to see more sides of Yue Du, and her wish had indeed been granted.
Before Aiona, she was a warm and meticulous older sister, like a protector.
In Einser’s eyes, the little cutie was like a young deer, wandering around harmlessly, twitching her ears in vigilance, yet also capable of piercing an enemy’s chest with her beautiful horns.
And the Yue Du under Xuan Jiu’s gaze was respectful and docile on the surface, but who knew how she was baring her claws on the inside. She was cunning, she was serious, she was afraid of ghosts but forced herself to stay calm, she was sad but tried not to let it show.
Emotion stirred emotion. Since the birth of the Deep Darkness Ruler, this was likely the first time she had felt such a vivid, undisguised emotion, and the first time she had felt the heart-wrenching pang of sadness.
It’s only human. Are humans like this?
Among the many races in the universe, humans were neither the weakest nor could they be the strongest, but they seemed to be the most emotionally rich and complex.
Xuan Jiu had witnessed the complexity of human nature but had never been moved by it until now. Through Yue Du’s perspective, the concepts of human right and wrong suddenly took shape in her eyes.
The above can be summarized as: Anyone who makes Yue Du sad can go die.
Xuan Jiu collected her thoughts and looked up at the bewildered Yue Du across from her. She said slowly, “You must be very tired these past few days. Rest well. I’ll send you away.”
Yue Du said, “Wait.”
“Hm?”
“It’s nothing. Thank you for your gift.”
The combination of “thank you” and the formal “you” had a destructive power far greater than one plus one.
Xuan Jiu’s own feelings were advancing by leaps and bounds, so hearing the other party use honorifics in every sentence made her feel a bit unbalanced. She stepped forward and resentfully pinched Yue Du’s cheek, receiving a bewildered look in return.
Yue Du: “…”
What was wrong with this big boss now? She suddenly seemed displeased.
The next moment, she felt her body lighten. The sudden feeling of weightlessness made Yue Du instinctively close her eyes. When she opened them again, she was in a simply but comfortably furnished small room.
This was the rest area for the intermission after an instance ended.
“Strange, how did I offend her?” Yue Du muttered, looking around. “Ah Jiu?”
The surroundings were empty; there was no sign of her system.
At that moment, Ah Jiu was standing opposite Xuan Jiu, her expression placid.
Two completely different faces, yet their temperaments and auras were strikingly similar. This similarity reached its peak as they looked at each other. Someone as perceptive as Yue Du would have easily noticed, but unfortunately, she wasn’t present.
“Seven. It should be seven, right?” After a moment of silence, Xuan Jiu spoke first. “How many of the seven parts are you?”
Ah Jiu stated flatly, “All of them, except you.”
Xuan Jiu was thoughtful. “I see. There’s no trace of her in the memory fragments I possess. Did you meet her after I was split off?”
This time, Ah Jiu’s voice carried a clear note of delight. “Correct. Calculated in this small world’s unit of time, it was about three thousand years after you were split off.”
“To think it was only by that much time. Tsk, if I had known, I wouldn’t have helped her.”
“You don’t have to pay any attention to Her in the future. If you want to vent your anger, you can kill Her a few hundred more times. By the way, She has a name now. It’s The One.”
Xuan Jiu was slightly surprised. “Why would She think of getting a name?”
“Because I got a name first,” Ah Jiu’s smile widened. “Yue Du gave it to me. I like it very much.”
So the main body was here to show off.
Xuan Jiu stared silently at her detestable main body, then suddenly said as if to herself, “By human definition, you and she are already partners, aren’t you?”
Ah Jiu: “Uh-huh.”
Xuan Jiu immediately said, “Let’s fuse. Isn’t the purpose of you coming to this world to reclaim your fragments? I agree. We can do it right now.”
Being the Deep Darkness Ruler was incredibly boring, destroying worlds was uninteresting, and chatting with her alternate accounts was dull. She genuinely wanted to return to the main body. To one-click own a partner would be the greatest joy.
But Ah Jiu smiled and refused. “No.”
Xuan Jiu stared at her silently.
If the main body’s consciousness were here, she could fuse directly. However, there was only a shell here to act as a medium, so she couldn’t return even if she wanted to.
Ah Jiu added, “We will fuse eventually, but not now. In any case, you’ve been here for billions of years. Are you afraid to wait a few more days or months?”
Xuan Jiu wasn’t afraid of waiting, but she was annoyed.
The nature of Greed demanded absolute possession. Seeing another figure hovering around Yue Du, even though her rational mind knew it was also “me,” her emotions desperately wanted to annihilate that thing.
Xuan Jiu confirmed one last time, “You really won’t fuse?”
Ah Jiu: “Obviously.”
Xuan Jiu: “Fine.”
Before her voice had even faded, several strands of black thread shot out, completely destroying the girlish shell before her. However, at the moment the body was destroyed, a mysterious smile appeared on Ah Jiu’s beautiful face.
Xuan Jiu immediately sensed something was wrong.
A miscalculation. The main body’s medium for entering the small world wasn’t in this shell. In that case, it could only be on Yue Du herself.
In the desolate ruins, the Deep Darkness Ruler’s face was like frost, her gaze suddenly sharp.
The will of Destruction radiated out from her, annihilating the ashes left by Mr. Geng along with the residual spirits attached to them in one fell swoop. She vented her anger with considerable self-righteousness.
Meanwhile, in the rest space.
Yue Du was steeping tea with the kinfolk horns, the picture of peace and tranquility, when she suddenly heard Ah Jiu’s resentful voice, “You weren’t even worried when you found me gone.”
The voice came from her mind; it seemed the system had returned to her mental space.
Yue Du was quite surprised. “You’re back? I thought the game treated you as another player and teleported you to a different rest space.”
As she spoke, she lowered her head and took a sip of tea, sighing, “This tastes really good. Do you want to come out and have some?”
Having lost her temporary body, Ah Jiu couldn’t appear in the outside world. She sighed without much regret, planning to go find “The One” to make a new one.
The pouch Xuan Jiu had given her seemed to contain a pocket dimension, holding a great many things. Besides the kinfolk horns, it was also filled with all sorts of strange and curious trinkets, each with a description. There were things to eat, things to play with, and also rare and precious objects that looked very valuable at a glance.
Yue Du picked up a honey-colored, unknown crystal the size of her palm. It shimmered under the light, and when gently rotated, it refracted different shades of glimmer.
The accompanying description read:
The Luerta, the most faithful race in the universe, use this gem to make engagement earrings. This is the most precious of its kind. It suits your eyes very well.
Yue Du weighed it in her hand and said cautiously, “I suspect she wants to murder my ears.”
Ah Jiu: “…”
“Just kidding. I’m not so dense that I can’t see such an obvious hint.” She paused, placing the gem back in its box. “But don’t you think it’s too sudden?”
If it was love at first sight, Einser’s attitude a few days ago was nothing like this. But if it was love that grew over time, they had known each other for less than ten days.
Most importantly, a god, a deity on a completely different level of existence from humans and any other living being, a being far beyond human comprehension—how could it develop feelings akin to love for a human?
“What you’re thinking is indeed reasonable,” Ah Jiu said gently. “But there’s one problem here. Why do you think a god shouldn’t like a human?”
Yue Du was taken aback. “Isn’t that the case? They should be emotionless, or only develop feelings for beings of the same level, just like a human couldn’t possibly love an an—”
She stopped herself mid-sentence.
Ah Jiu said, “You see, the fact that elder gods are inscrutable and incomprehensible conflicts with the notion that they have no love and cannot possibly like humans. The idea of what an elder god ‘should be’ is also something imagined by humans.”
“Since it’s all imagination, why not imagine that a god is inherently capable of feeling something like love for a specific creature, regardless of race, appearance, gender, strength, or any other factor? And once they fall in love, it’s eternal and unchanging?”
“Stop, hold on a second.” As Yue Du listened, she found her train of thought was actually being led astray by Ah Jiu, and she began to ponder the philosophy of divine love. She immediately cut her off. “This is too absurd.”
Ah Jiu argued sophistically, “Perhaps from a god’s perspective, liking one’s own kind is the absurd thing.”
She suddenly thought of her only peer and immediately felt a strong sense of discomfort from the association.
What on earth was this? Yue Du didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but a thought suddenly popped into her head.
Judging by Ah Jiu’s behavior, it seemed like she was actively trying to change her perception, to make her believe that it was perfectly normal for a god to like a human.
Why? Was it because Ah Jiu herself was a deity? Or was there another reason?
Jiu, Jiu, Nai Yin, Ah Jiu.
Yue Du suddenly asked, as if by chance, “I’ve been curious for a while. Your image in my mental space has always been a cat, but you’re in human form in the outside world. Can you meet me in your human form in the mental space?”
Oho, she’s suspicious.
Ah Jiu said calmly, “You don’t like cats?”
It’s precisely because all the “Ah Jiu” human forms look the same that I don’t use one!
Yue Du smiled faintly. “I do, but there are many things that are inconvenient to do with a cat.”
She’s doing it on purpose. She’s definitely doing it on purpose.
Ah Jiu’s voice unknowingly deepened. “Such as?”
For example… Yue Du was stumped. For a moment, she couldn’t think of anything a talking cat couldn’t do. She could only clear her throat and say, biting the bullet, “Like hugging me back, for example.”
Ah Jiu was expressionless, her tone dangerous. “Fine. Come in and you’ll find out.”
Did Yue Du dare? No. She was just being cautious, definitely not because she was a coward.
Ah Jiu: “Heh.”
Fortunately, she didn’t bring it up again after that. Yue Du breathed a sigh of relief and pretended nothing had happened.
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