Chapter 325 - 323: The Truth Behind Asher and Charlie’s Fire Back Then

Chapter 325: Chapter 323: The Truth Behind Asher and Charlie’s Fire Back Then

"They locked the door, and a fire started outside. The flames quickly surged in, and we... we couldn’t escape..." Asher whispered, his voice trembling.

Remembering the past and what they went through, Asher still couldn’t help but shudder.

"Actually, if Charlie and I had worked together, we might have had a chance to escape. But that day, we had a fight in our dorm room, and it got physical..." Asher looked at me. "He hit me by accident, and I passed out..."

I froze, staring at Asher in shock. I never knew this had happened.

"Charlie... he knocked you out?" My own voice was trembling too.

"He was too extreme. He wanted to kill everyone in the genius class, and I stopped him. I knew the people outside had locked the door, but I stalled him on purpose... I never expected them to start a fire. I just thought it was a prank to mess with us. Even they didn’t realize that with the orphanage’s faulty wiring, a tiny flame would cause such a massive disaster..."

Asher was consumed by guilt. He pulled at his hair and leaned against my shoulder.

We just stood there, and I felt the weight of his pain.

I finally understood the truth and the cause behind the fire back then.

Asher and Charlie were both unparalleled geniuses. How could they have simply let others burn them alive in their room?

Charlie had crawled his way up from the very bottom. He harbored both an angel and a demon within him.

Just as Asher had said, the essence of human nature lies in how a single thought can turn one into a demon or a Buddha.

If Charlie truly wanted to kill, he would probably be even more terrifying than the masked man behind the Resistance.

I could vaguely guess why Charlie wanted to kill the people in the genius class. It probably had something to do with Lucas Grant...

Asher knew Charlie was going to kill, so he stopped him that day. In a fit of rage, Charlie injured Asher, knocking him unconscious.

Asher, fully aware that the people outside had locked the door, thought it could trap Charlie. He didn’t want Charlie to take things to the extreme and walk past the point of no return.

But he never expected the people in the orphanage to be far more vicious than they imagined. They set a fire...

Combined with the orphanage’s aging wiring, the small flame caused an explosion, and the entire room was engulfed in a raging inferno.

Charlie had struggled in the fire. He went mad, blaming himself, drowning in regret...

He tightly shielded the unconscious Asher with his own body. He would rather let the flames consume him than abandon Asher to save himself.

In the end, he had willingly chosen to die in that fire, hadn’t he?

Perhaps he was also afraid of being consumed by the demon within, terrified of turning into a cold-blooded monster who disregarded life and killed without batting an eye.

"This isn’t your fault, Asher..." I comforted him softly, wrapping my arms around him.

Both he and Charlie blamed themselves. That was why they cherished, protected, and guarded each other so fiercely.

They were the ones they trusted most in the world. Whether it was love or friendship, their bond was supreme and unbreakable.

"That’s why I tried so desperately to complete that experiment. I wanted to prove that as long as we cracked the genetic code, the physical body would merely be a vessel. The soul could be reborn, locked in by the gene chain..." Asher looked at me with red eyes. "Cece...

"The soul is just an independent entity imprisoned within the body, and genes are the chains. I unlocked them. I found the answer..." Asher’s voice quivered.

He had found the answer in the psychiatric hospital. So, after escaping, he conducted the experiment for Charlie.

He knew that the Genetics Organization had once extracted Charlie’s genes to create a clone. He wanted to bring Charlie back. He wanted to try.

"What about the soul that already existed inside the clone?" I was just a little curious.

The clone itself had a soul too, didn’t it?

"Cloning is like replicating an empty shell. It’s an act of defying the natural order... They possess residual consciousness, but souls can merge." Asher’s theory was that clones didn’t have souls of their own.

However, some scholars believed that clones did possess independent souls.

I thought of Ace. The way she looked at me was full of jealousy, envy, and other complex emotions.

Perhaps Ace wanted to be an independent, one-of-a-kind individual. She wanted to be a unique and complete soul.

"Charlie’s was a success, right?" I looked at Asher nervously.

Charlie was Felix Foster, and Felix Foster was Charlie.

"He is Charlie," Asher nodded. He firmly believed that Charlie was Felix Foster.

"Is that why you were so convinced that I am Cecilia Caldwell?" I looked at Asher.

"I... made a deal with Silvia Lynch," Asher mumbled.

He was finally willing to open up to me completely. He was willing to tell me the truth.

"Silvia voluntarily helped me bring you back. She said she wanted to disappear forever," Asher said softly.

Silvia Lynch was a world-weary existence.

"Through observing all the clones, I discovered a problem... Nature’s law of natural selection is terrifying. Any species that isn’t naturally conceived faces the fate of self-destruction." Asher looked at me very seriously. "That’s why I’m afraid..."

I finally understood why Asher was so terrified of me dying.

He wasn’t afraid of the external environment taking me away. For us clones, our greatest natural enemy was ourselves.

It was as if we were born lacking the five senses. We had no emotional anchors, and we couldn’t find a reason or excuse to keep living.

In the end, most died by suicide.

"For people with depression, their bodies force them to die. They might be in immense pain and truly not want to die, but it’s as if an invisible force violently drags them away," Asher explained softly, citing his experimental data.

This was the conclusion he had drawn from his observations. "Clones seem to have an innate predisposition to depression. It’s like patients with severe depression—some might even develop more serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder."

In superstitious terms, our souls were incomplete, and our senses were lacking. In reality, it was the consequence of reckless cloning and the arbitrary creation of life.

This consequence fell into a realm that humanity’s current scientific and medical capabilities couldn’t reach.

This was why the end of science was said to be metaphysics.

This metaphysics wasn’t in the traditional sense; it was an invisible shackle that humanity currently couldn’t explain or break through.

Just like the code on the gene chain—once deciphered, one would find that the soul was merely a form of consciousness imprisoned within the body.

Once the body was destroyed, the soul would receive a hollow and unconscious liberation.

No one knew about the world after death, except for those who were reborn.

But this so-called rebirth required a medium. That medium was the genetic code.

"So, you wanted me to find a reason to live. You wanted me to know what love is, what friendship is, what despair is..." I looked at Asher, suddenly feeling a twinge of suspicion.

The Resistance... With all these killing games along the way, was it truly a series of unfortunate coincidences, or was it deliberate?

Why did it feel like the people in the Resistance were using an almost cruel method to teach me about love, familial affection, friendship, anger, fear... and despair?