Chapter 478 - 419: Chaisi, Damian’s Goal

Chapter 478: Chapter 419: Chaisi, Damian’s Goal

’What?’

’Wait, hold on, this is a lie—’

When light and color returned to Chaisi’s vision, he found himself kneeling on the ground. Sharp pain still pulsed through him, threatening to tear his body apart, and his vision threatened to go black again at any moment.

...He remembered now. In his panic, he had lunged forward and aggravated his injuries.

’Am I really this badly hurt?’

"Brother Chaisi!"

On the other side of the lot, Sha Xue couldn’t help but cry out. Both she and Chebri were frantic, but the moment they moved, Damian let out a cold laugh. "Nobody moves."

He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.

Frustrated as they were, they both stopped in their tracks, still about ten meters away from Chaisi. They stared at him intently, as if hoping their gazes could form a lifeline.

Chaisi tried to give them a smile, but his facial muscles only twitched before he slumped down again.

’Uncle Kai—I have to warn Uncle Kai not to be fooled by Damian. Uncle Kai knows. There’s a Black Abyss Belt between the Nest and the Human World. The Nest can’t cross the Black Abyss Belt...’

’The Black Abyss Belt... the driver’s head...’

Chaisi knelt in a daze, looking up at Kai Luonan on the ramp nearby.

Kai Luonan was still looking at Damian. He never turned around.

"You really are the Resident my son became."

He stared at Damian without blinking and said in a low voice, "That boy... he always aimed high. No matter what it was, he only wanted the biggest and the best. He only liked the rarest sights and only wanted to do the most difficult things, things few had ever succeeded at. It was like that when he built with Legos... and it was like that when he seized power."

Haiper lowered their head and wiped their eyes.

"Back then, I was both worried and proud. I knew it... Damian had every quality needed to conquer the world. This world was a coming-of-age cake waiting for you. I just never thought that your ambition and vision would, in turn, lead to your early death."

Damian didn’t speak. Haiper didn’t speak. The parking garage fell into a silence that felt unreal, a silence that shouldn’t have existed.

Chaisi propped himself up with one hand and slowly sat down.

He had to force his body to do something; otherwise, he would be afraid—afraid of the dark, heavy dread that was always waiting behind him.

"You are my son. I know you better than you think."

Kai Luonan paused, as if realizing he was starting to treat the Damian before him as a human. "The same logic applies to the Resident my son became... because it seems you inherited a lot from him."

"Not ’a lot,’"

Damian said, his face expressionless. From the deep eye sockets of his shell, he seemed to be staring intently at the man who was his father in life. "It’s ’almost everything.’ If you believe in souls, then Damian’s soul simply moved from a human body into a Resident’s body."

Kai Luonan was taken aback. "...Really?" he asked, his voice trembling.

Before Damian could answer, he shook his head and let out a self-deprecating laugh.

"No, you’re just trying to make me care. I’m getting old," Kai Luonan said gravely. "...I almost started to have hope for a Resident."

Damian didn’t explain. He just laughed—and except for the age and timbre of his voice, both the way he laughed and the mockery within it were nearly identical to Kai Luonan’s.

It was as if Kai Luonan had been sucker-punched. Everyone realized it, and he was no exception.

After a few seconds, he caught his breath and looked at Damian to continue. "So... I don’t believe you."

Chaisi’s head snapped up.

"What don’t you believe?" Damian asked softly.

"I don’t believe your purpose in coming back is to let me win the Nest Dominance Game, to let me have everything, to rule everything. Like your mother, you should resent me. You should think I let the wolf in the door."

Kai Luonan said slowly, "Damian... he had many virtues. But repaying injury with kindness was not one of them."

Damian laughed brightly and clapped a few times.

"As expected of you, Dad. You’re a tough one," he said with a smile. "But you’ve misunderstood. I never once said I came back so you could rule the Human World. Let’s just say, that’s merely a side effect of me achieving my goal."

Chaisi suddenly understood.

He understood before anyone else here—but he still felt he had been laughably slow.

"I have only one purpose for returning."

Damian held up one index finger in an almost childish gesture. "Ever since I discovered that my willpower alone wasn’t enough to get me through the Black Abyss Belt, I realized something. The way for me to return to the Human World and my goal for returning to the Human World are two sides of the same coin. There’s no need to separate them at all."

Haiper had been listening in a daze and finally asked, "What does that mean?"

"He can’t get in on his own,"

Chaisi was slightly startled to hear his own voice.

"I don’t want to hear you—" Haiper had just started to speak when Damian cut them off.

"Haiper," he said with a smile, though it was tinged with impatience. "Let him talk."

Haiper fell silent.

"He can’t enter the Human World on his own," Chaisi said, almost numb. The airflow from every word vibrated against his broken ribs. "He has no Path, so he can’t cross the Black Abyss Belt. So, the only way... is to bring the Nest here."

No one spoke. Everyone just watched him from a distance.

"If the Nest comes in, he comes in. His goal is to bring the Nest here. That’s why he said his method for entering the Human World and his goal for entering the Human World are two sides of the same coin."

For some reason, Chaisi suddenly couldn’t help but let out a soft laugh.

’He had re-examined that night countless times. Each time, he saw infinite possibilities. If only this one thing had been nudged, if that one thing had been changed... perhaps the next seventeen years would have been completely different.’

’Take a good look, if there really is an "Observer" in this world.’

’His sin and his guilt were necessary.’

’He hadn’t killed the wrong person.’

"Back then, I killed you to stop a Resident from entering the Human World."

Chaisi raised his eyes to the young man on the ramp. "Now you want to make me see that the very thing I did back then has led to the entire Nest coming in, plunging the Human World into irreversible chaos and collapse... You want me to suffer. That is your ultimate goal. Am I right, Damian?"

For a moment, it was as if Damian’s face suddenly split apart.

Like the overlapping masks of tragedy and comedy that represent drama, in that instant, Chaisi thought he saw Damian’s face split into three: one roaring with laughter, one twisted with hatred, and one utterly blank.

The illusion vanished in a flash. When he blinked again, Damian looked just as he had before.

"Brother Chaisi, you really are quick on the uptake. I’ve envied you since we were kids. You’re smart, you’re skilled, and you were as tall as an adult by the time you were thirteen. It makes sense. If you didn’t have so many convenient and useful advantages, how could you have been allowed to shamelessly live off the Kai Family for so many years?"

As he spoke, he tilted his head slightly, his deep golden hair falling softly to the side.

"But why are you so calm? You used to act like it was the end of the world if even one Resident got in. Being so composed now... it’s a little disappointing, don’t you think?"

No one could answer him.

"Ah, I see now." Damian’s eyes slowly curved into crescents. "It’s not that your injuries are so severe you’ve lost your sense of reality. It’s that the idea of the ’Nest entering the Human World’ doesn’t feel real to you yet... You seem to think it’s just a bit of Original Liquid spilled, just a few more Residents getting in. You think you can just drive them back like you did before, don’t you?"

Ever since he was a child, Damian had possessed this almost unnerving perceptiveness—the more you wanted to hide a thought from him, the more transparent it became.

"Dad," Damian said, suddenly turning to Kai Luonan with a smile. "Before you make the biggest choice of your life, you should first get a look at what that choice entails. Right? Do you want to see?"

Kai Luonan stared at him blankly. "See... see what?"

"See what?"

Damian seemed to find the question stupid.

"Why, to see the Human World as it connects with the Nest, of course, as it’s gradually being transformed into a part of the Nest. Starting with Blackmoor City, the Human World will fall to its knees at your feet, piece by piece... There will be no more presidents, no kings, no billionaires. For you, there will be no more aging or death. This world will become your new ’Kai Family’.

"And the beginning of this new ’Kai Family’ is right above our heads."

Damian looked like he was enjoying himself—no, he truly was enjoying himself.

He slowly extended an arm, as if to touch the ceiling. His eyelids were lowered, and if one listened closely, one could almost hear a faint, low humming coming from him.

The next second, Damian suddenly snapped his fingers.

A cold night wind, still laced with threads of rain, instantly flooded the underground parking garage. Whether from the cold or from shock, Chaisi shuddered. When he looked up, he saw a vast, open night sky—starless, moonless, heavy with dark clouds—stretching out over them at an angle amidst the drizzling rain, as if about to crush the Human World.

A few Hunters let out low cries of alarm. "Where’s the nightclub?"

Above the parking garage, the entire building that housed Temptation was gone.

Damian looked immensely satisfied.

"Next, let me show you a little of my sincerity, Dad."