Chapter 477 - 418: Chaisi’s Obvious Choice

Chapter 477: Chapter 418: Chaisi’s Obvious Choice

...Damian had become a Resident.

Perhaps it was because his injuries were too severe, his mind hazy and adrift. After Chaisi repeated the sentence to himself a few times, for a brief moment, he wanted to laugh out loud.

Residents couldn’t enter the human world.

And Damian was dead. He shouldn’t have appeared again at all; that was the law of nature.

Damian becoming a Resident was doubly impossible—yet here he was, having entered the human world and standing right before him. Wasn’t that hilarious?

Currents of air passed through his chest, trying to form a laugh, but they only tugged at the sharp, dark pain of his broken bones.

Chaisi stopped a smile that had just begun to form.

He stared almost indifferently at the dark, iron-gray wall of the parking garage. ’Maybe I’m the one who’s laughable,’ he thought.

Based on what he knew of his younger brother—even if it was the seventeen-year-old memory of a twelve-year-old Damian—Chaisi knew that Damian would never let him off the hook.

Chaisi just didn’t know what kind of script Damian had prepared for him.

But no matter what, this wasn’t the time to stand around in a daze, sorrowfully recalling the past.

Chaisi turned his head, glancing at the other Kai Family Hunters in the distance.

Chebri and Sha Xue were both Core Hunters in charge of this transfer, but there was still no sign of Tian Xi. The third person standing beside them was just a low-level Kai Family Hunter.

’Two reliable people are enough.’

As if sensing his gaze, Chebri and Sha Xue both turned their attention to him.

Chaisi lowered his eyes, glancing at the hand pressed to his abdomen—that was enough of a signal. To ensure they were extra careful, he looked up again at Damian on the ramp.

Damian was looking at him, too.

"You... you pushed him into the Nest?"

Kai Luonan wiped his face hard. For a moment, he looked at neither his wife nor Damian. His gaze fell emptily between the two, as helpless as his expression. "Then... his body is in the Nest..."

"Body?" Haiper’s voice sharpened abruptly. "He’s standing right here, alive and grown up! What body? You didn’t save him, but the Nest did—"

"Damian is, in fact, dead."

Damian’s voice, like a wooden splinter driving between nail and flesh, smoothly pierced through Aunt Hai’s words. It made her expression falter, like a curtain about to come undone.

"I’m not Damian."

Damian smiled at Haiper, his face angled distantly in Chaisi’s direction. "I’m the Resident produced after his death. Many of his memories and emotions have been preserved in my mind."

...These were words Chaisi would never forget for the rest of his life.

Before Damian spoke again, Chaisi already knew what he was going to say.

"You are the mother he left behind, and I am the Resident he left behind... But when I look at you, it’s just like how he looked at you. I can’t help but feel that I am him, and you are my mother."

Chaisi wanted to laugh, to roar, to tell Aunt Hai that Damian’s words were meant for him.

Those were the same words the Resident who had become Daiju Monroe had said to Chaisi the first time she set foot in the human world.

Chaisi clenched his back teeth, repeatedly reminding himself not to move, lest a broken bone pierce his internal organs.

’If someone told him right now that he could pull the broken bone from his body and use it to stab Damian’s heart, again and again, he would do it.’

’Do you think that’s your son expressing his feelings for you? Do you think that after waiting seventeen years, what you got was truly a mother-son reunion?’

But Haiper let out a trembling cry.

"Yes, yes, I said it, I won’t regret it no matter what you’ve become. As long as a little piece of you was left behind, I’m happy, so happy... So what if you’re a Resident? You are my child, you are Damian..."

Chaisi opened his mouth, but the impulse to roar with laughter or rage from moments ago vanished completely.

He was like a fish yanked ashore. In that instant, he didn’t know if he was snapping awake into a world of ice or about to be suffocated by the air.

’Forget it.’

’There’s nothing to say... Just let her be happy for a little while.’

That night seventeen years ago, when the Resident who looked like Daiju Monroe stood before Chaisi, he never once thought with the same conviction as Haiper, ’You are my mother.’

He envied Haiper.

Even a moment of such happiness was better than the desolate truth.

’A pity, Aunt Hai. You’d better cherish this little moment. Take a good, long look at him.’

’Damian came back as a Resident. So what?’

’He’d killed Damian seventeen years ago; Chaisi wouldn’t mind killing him again now. Whether a Resident could die wasn’t his concern.’

’Damian had only two choices: die, or crawl back to the Nest.’

’Uncle Kai wouldn’t stop him. After all, this one right here had admitted to being a Resident, hadn’t he?’

’Didn’t Uncle Kai forgive him even after he killed the real Damian back then?’

Kai Luonan took a step back. He seemed to want to take another, but his feet froze.

"You... you really are a Resident."

His voice deepened, as if he were still the same Kai Luonan who controlled every situation, no matter where he was. "Haiper, come here. Residents can’t be trusted."

Haiper didn’t move, only glaring back at him. "Then who can be trusted? If Damian can’t be trusted, who can? The son you took in yourself?"

Warmth flared in Chaisi’s chest—but he couldn’t say a thing.

’Right now, Damian’s attention had to be focused on Uncle Kai and Aunt Hai. He had to make himself as marginal as possible.’

After receiving his signal, Sha Xue had quietly opened a car door and disappeared behind it for a few dozen seconds before reappearing beside Chebri—Chaisi knew what she had gone to do.

He had built and structured everything the Kai Family was today; of course he knew.

Traveling with the convoy tonight was a collection of Illusions—some of low value, others kept as spares for their own people. Among them were several that could be used for healing and recovery.

The problem was, even if Sha Xue had gotten a Healing Illusion, she had long since missed the window to approach Chaisi. At this moment, if any Hunter took a single step, Damian would know that Chaisi was making a move.

He glanced at Sha Xue. One of her hands was stuffed in her pants pocket, and she was trying her best to look calm, but like Chebri, she couldn’t hide her underlying anxiety.

"Don’t use that tone with me."

Kai Luonan’s eyelids were half-lowered as he looked at his wife. His voice was murky, like a giant python slithering unseen beneath a pool of mud. "Go wait in the car."

Haiper glared at him fixedly. After a few seconds, she seemed to finally yield to decades of habit. She glanced back at Damian, then walked down the ramp.

But she wouldn’t go to the car. She stopped at the bottom of the ramp and stood still, just looking up at Damian as if he were the most fascinating sight in the world.

"Dad," Damian said with a smile. "You don’t seem very happy to see me back, do you?"

"Because my son didn’t come back. You’re a Resident." Kai Luonan stared at him coldly. "I’ve been a Hunter for many years. I know what kind of things Residents are."

"Aren’t there harmless Residents, too?" Damian tilted his head, asking with near-curiosity. In that instant, he almost looked twelve years old again.

Kai Luonan looked at him, pausing for several seconds before finally asking, "And are you harmless?"

"Dad, how do you define harmless?" Damian retorted. "In my entire life, whether before death or after, I have never personally killed a single person. That’s a statement... my brother wouldn’t dare make, would he?"

It took Chaisi a moment to realize that "brother" referred to him.

"Dad, I’ve never blamed you."

Damian continued, "Even though you brought Chaisi Monroe into our home, giving him the chance to eventually kill me, I never blamed you."

The glare Haiper shot over could have flayed the skin off a person. Her years of suspicion were finally confirmed tonight by her dead son himself.

Kai Luonan’s face was grim. He said nothing.

"Even though you continued to raise him as a son after I died, I never blamed you. Even though you loved an outsider more than you loved me, I never blamed you."

"Stop talking nonsense," Kai Luonan finally said, unable to keep the tremor out of his voice. "That night—you were both just kids. I never—"

He didn’t finish his sentence. He took a breath and asked, "How did you get into the human world? You have a Path, so why have you only returned now? Your sudden return... what do you want?"

"Uncle Kai," Chaisi called out, his voice hoarse.

He remembered what Fu Tailan had said about the "Original Liquid" and wondered if it was connected to Damian’s appearance. He had barely started to speak when Kai Luonan cut him off without even looking back. "Now is not the time for you to talk."

"I don’t have a Path, Dad."

Damian had kept a gentle smile on his face, but only now did he seem to truly laugh. His row of snow-white teeth gradually emerged from his red lips, like a snake rising slowly after catching the scent of its prey.

"All I have is an Illusion named ’???’. Yes, you know about it, don’t you? It’s one of the target Illusions for the Nest Dominance Game. It can dissolve the boundaries and limitations of reality... With it, things that were once impossible are now possible."

Chaisi’s heart sank—but it wasn’t until a few minutes later that he realized this was the least bad piece of all the bad news.

"The reason I could get in is because the barrier between the human world and the Nests... the ’Black Abyss Belt,’ has lost its function. Brother Chaisi hates it when Residents enter the human world?"

Damian smiled a genuine, happy smile, just like the child from seventeen years ago.

"The human world is now connected to the Nests, you know."

He seemed to hear the thoughts of everyone present, and to be savoring them. He glanced at Chaisi before his gaze returned to Kai Luonan.

"However, as long as we win the game, we can still gain dominion over the Nests, no matter where they are. Dad, you have two of the target Illusions Chaisi gave you, and I have one... and I know the location of every other one."

Chaisi felt as if he were standing on a shore, while behind him, the pitch-black ocean sent out wave after wave to grab at his ankles, trying to drag him into the deep darkness.

"Kai Luonan."

Damian said softly, "Tonight, you face the most important choice of your life. Will you choose to rule everything, to possess everything, to atone for your sins and restore your biological son to his human body... or will you, just like you did in Luocheng twenty-five years ago, drive the Resident before you back into the Nest?"