Chapter 520 - 461: Chaisi: She Died in Hope

Chapter 520: Chapter 461: Chaisi: She Died in Hope

...Both cars were empty. There was no one inside.

Chaisi straightened up from beside the car and scanned his surroundings.

His gaze fell upon the dark, gloomy expanse of Blackmoor City, where all the lights had gone out. It felt like a small boat adrift on the Black Sea, struggling to stay afloat, liable to sink into the darkness at any moment and never resurface.

Except for the shimmering Haisen River to one side, the world was silent and dark. Most of the streetlights had flickered out of existence, as if the heavy rain had washed the light from the pupils of humanity itself.

The wind, slicing through the deep and shallow shades of night, grew thick and sluggish.

Aside from the river waves washing against his eardrums, he couldn’t hear any other unusual sounds.

The night had become completely unrecognizable. If someone had been driving, then suddenly decided to abandon their car and walk, it wouldn’t be entirely unimaginable...

’Although the empty police car parked so close behind was a bit odd, it’s not necessarily Mai Mingle’s car, is it?’

It was as if they had agreed to stop at the same time. They were close, but hadn’t collided.

Chaisi took out his phone and tapped the message that had failed to send earlier—but soon, the buffering icon turned into a red exclamation mark again.

It seemed Mai Mingle’s phone could no longer receive messages.

He didn’t know what was going on with that old woman. ’She should still be alive, right? Didn’t they say she had a dozen or so hours left?’ But this wasn’t the time to worry about Mai Mingle. At this critical juncture where every second counted, Chaisi had already wasted several minutes.

Life was vast and the world was wide, yet his vision had narrowed to a single point. He could only see one thing, could only think about one thing.

This life of his had only one final use left.

Chaisi turned, got back in his car, and with one last glance at the two empty vehicles on the deserted road, stepped on the gas again.

As if on cue, not long after he got back on the road, a call came in from Kai Luonan.

For the first time in his life, as he reached for the words "Uncle Kai" on the screen, Chaisi had to clench his jaw tight just to force himself to press the answer button.

The sound of static and breathing rippled both inside and outside the phone. For a moment, he couldn’t open his mouth. He was afraid that if he did, the words that came out wouldn’t be "Uncle Kai."

"...Chaisi?" Kai Luonan waited a second or two before speaking in a low voice.

’Answer him,’ Chaisi told himself. ’Act normal.’

"...Yes," he took a deep breath. "Uncle Kai, I’m here."

Kai Luonan paused.

"We’re on the riverside roadway, under the overpass. You’ll see us when you get close." On the other end of the line, the faint sound of the Haisen River’s waves also rippled through. "When you get here, don’t provoke him. Stop the car from a distance and wait for my signal."

"Yes."

Before hanging up, Kai Luonan paused for another second, but ultimately said nothing more.

On the road beneath the overpass, a single, lonely streetlight remained.

It was like a half-orb of orange moon, bobbing on the dark waves, and it was impossible to tell if it was struggling to rise or about to sink completely.

The car that Damian had somehow driven off with was parked askew on the roadside. It sat there grim-faced, its taillights dark, with only a screen inside casting a soft blue glow.

Chaisi slammed his car door shut with a BANG, the sound carrying far into the distance, announcing his arrival.

He walked around the car and leaned against the hood, quietly gazing at the man who was once his father and the boy who was once his brother.

Damian was sitting on the guardrail by the riverbank, looking at Chaisi.

From a distance, he almost looked like a teenager. His collar-length golden hair, which hadn’t been cut in what seemed like a long time, fluttered messily in the wind.

His eyes were like a scorching fire ignited from black oil and pitch-black coal, searingly bright.

Kai Luonan glanced back at Chaisi, said nothing, and turned back around, continuing to say something to Damian—but Damian suddenly waved a hand as if to brush his words away and shouted, "Chaisi!"

In the dim night, adrift with orange and dark blue hues, he seemed once again to be the twelve-year-old Damian, as if he were just smiling and calling his older brother over to see something new. "Chaisi, get over here!"

’Is it about to start?’

As Chaisi stood up, the flex, exertion, and coiled tension of every muscle were imprinted on his consciousness like a map. This physical body was his only weapon against the night, for his hands and his waist were completely empty.

"Don’t be so tense," Damian said, as if he could tell. "I just want to ask you a question."

Chaisi didn’t say a word. Kai Luonan merely shot him a glance.

"...You know, don’t you?" Damian asked, his smile beaming.

It was less a question and more a punch to the gut—Chaisi’s breath hitched.

"You know everything, don’t you?" Damian continued. "You know all about our dear father’s plan?"

’How could I have thought he was smiling just now?’

Only when you got closer did you realize that his face was like a canvas, pulled by nails into the shape required for a "smile"—but beneath that canvas, a turbulent black wave was churning and roiling.

It was an emotion that perhaps only the residents possessed, and only they could understand.

Merely standing in front of it made Chaisi uncontrollably recall that night seventeen years ago.

"...What?" he could only ask in return, his voice hoarse.

"Stop playing dumb," Damian said, almost calmly. "He can get revenge on you for me, so he’s trading you for the winner’s spot in the ruling game—"

"Damian," Kai Luonan called out gravely, as if warning him.

"What?" Damian was still smiling. "Weren’t you the one who said it? Weren’t you the one who thought something was off about him?"

People are strange.

Even though he was mentally prepared, even though he had already made his decision, Chaisi still didn’t dare turn his head to look at Uncle Kai.

It seemed Kai Luonan wasn’t looking at him either.

"Since he knows, and you know that he knows, what’s wrong with me being the one to spell it all out?"

The smile was still stretched across Damian’s face, but it seemed to be getting wider.

"So? Well? Why are you pretending you don’t know anything?"

Damian was looking more and more like a paper cutout—though his body and weight clearly pressed down on the space he occupied, he felt like nothing more than a pale paper figure standing in the darkness. Something was burning fiercely in the shadows behind him, with only a twisted, venomous fire showing through his eyes.

"You came here so obediently, what’s your plan? How does it feel to be betrayed by Dad?"

Damian’s speech grew faster and faster.

"You know I came here to give the ??? to him, right? Are you here to snatch it away? Are you here to stop him? Are you here to kill him? Do you want to kill him go on and kill him after you kill him let me see you being forced to personally kill the adoptive father who raised you for twenty years personally kill the adoptive father who saved your life all those years ago personally kill the man your mother entrusted you to personally kill him and then wail in grief in his pool of blood let me see let me see it make me happy give me some comfort too—"

"No."

The word slipped out, surprising even Chaisi himself for a moment.

The surging river waves crashed against the banks, like blood flowing in the depths of the night, becoming the only sound in the world.

"I... I know everything. But I won’t kill him."

Chaisi could only look at Damian, still not daring to turn his head. "You don’t seem to understand."

"...What don’t I understand?"

"Uncle Kai... The fact that Uncle Kai betrayed me, wanting to use me as a price to gain greater power—I have no objection to that in itself."

Chaisi took a low, quiet breath.

’How could you even call it "betrayal"?’

’Isn’t this what I’ve been doing for the Kai Family for the past dozen or so years?’

"I have risked my life countless times, trying to gain something for the Kai Family, for Uncle Kai... and those things were often just trivial benefits, nothing compared to the ultimate power of ruling the human world."

Having said this, Chaisi finally turned his head slowly and glanced at Kai Luonan.

Kai Luonan’s heavy gaze pressed down on him, as if with a hint of displeasure, and perhaps a touch of surprise.

’...Just like for the past thirty years, Chaisi still couldn’t read Kai Luonan.’

"To offer the human world to him, with my life as the price. I thought that was our silent agreement, something we both understood."

Kai Luonan was just cashing in on his right—his right to rule over Chaisi’s life.

Damian was stunned, as if Chaisi were speaking another language.

"What... What?" he asked, dumbfounded. "You know he wants to plunge you into suffering..."

"He saved my life. He gave me the best life possible. And I killed his biological son."

Chaisi closed his eyes. He wanted to smile, but his lips wouldn’t move.

"If all that still isn’t enough to trade for my life... then there’s one last thing I’ve never thanked you for, Uncle Kai."

It was too heavy. Bringing it up felt like tearing a layer of flesh and blood from his very organs.

It was so heavy that Chaisi could only speak of it in the softest of whispers, so as not to disturb it.

"...In the final moment of Daiju Monroe’s life, she breathed a sigh of relief."

After Kai Luonan picked him up that night, he had covered his eyes, perhaps so he wouldn’t see the state of his mother’s corpse—but Chaisi had already seen.

Chaisi had never been one to fear blood and gore.

In a scene that would have looked like hell to anyone else, Chaisi saw his mother’s blood, but he also saw her smile.

The last thing Daiju Monroe saw before she died was not her child being impaled and held aloft by a resident. She saw her child being saved, still breathing, still crying, alive, crawling toward her.

She even tried to reach out to Chaisi, wanting to caress him one last time.

She died in hope.

"...For her final moment of peace and relief," Chaisi said in a low voice, "what happens to this life of mine is entirely up to Uncle Kai’s word."

A strange sound suddenly gurgled softly in Damian’s throat, like blood being brought to a boil.

These were all Chaisi’s true feelings—but not the whole truth.

There was only one thing he would not allow.

When Damian had tried to do it back then, he hadn’t allowed it. If Kai Luonan were to try it now, he would not allow it either.

As long as the Nests and their residents weren’t allowed to invade the human world, Kai Luonan could use him as a bargaining chip for anything—but Chaisi didn’t say this out loud.

If Kai Luonan was truly determined to control the human world through the Nests, then Chaisi needed to have at least one card up his sleeve.

Letting Uncle Kai lower his guard would have its uses.

Chaisi would stop Kai Luonan, but he was unwilling to kill him.

The night was swept along by the river, churning forward.

After a long, silent few seconds, Kai Luonan suddenly let out a heavy breath.

His next words left Chaisi standing there in a daze, completely unable to understand.

"See? I told you so," Kai Luonan said to Damian with a slight smile. "Your only option is to do as I say."