Chapter 523 - 464: Chaisi: What Happened Back Then Was Because You Were Too Outstanding (Part 2)

Chapter 523: Chapter 464: Chaisi: What Happened Back Then Was Because You Were Too Outstanding (Part 2)

If the "movie" didn’t have it scripted, Chaisi was powerless to act.

He could only follow the script written by Kai Luonan.

That was how Chaisi was able to "push open the door" and see Kai Luonan on the bedroom bed. It was also how he could follow behind him, stumbling step by step along the streets of the Nest.

The day Kai Luonan brought Daiju Monroe into the Nest, it was an afternoon with a somber, overcast sky.

The sky was a vast slab of slowly hardening cement, pressing down on their heads. The air was thick and sticky, impossible to draw into the lungs no matter how hard one breathed.

This was the first time in his life Chaisi had seen the Nest, and it was also the first time he was completely oblivious to it.

He roared, cursed, and begged. Time and again, he charged forward, reaching out, but the "movie" had not scripted it—so he could never catch up. He would forever remain a few steps behind Kai Luonan.

Because it wasn’t scripted in the "movie," he couldn’t grab Kai Luonan by the shoulders.

He was one-point-nine-eight meters tall and immensely strong, but he couldn’t reach across twenty-five years to snatch his mother’s body back.

The only thing Chaisi could do in this "movie" was watch his mother’s rigid feet dangling from Kai Luonan’s back, swaying gently with every step he took.

They didn’t sway much; rigor mortis had long since set in.

"Tell me, Kai Luonan, where are you taking her?" His voice was completely hoarse, and speaking felt like being scraped by a blade.

The Kai Luonan from twenty-five years ago, naturally, didn’t even turn his head.

"Stop! You... her... why? I don’t understand! Even if you want to use her to control me, why did you have to turn her into..." Chaisi paused for a few seconds, still unable to finish his sentence.

He suddenly stopped walking.

Chaisi watched Kai Luonan’s back, which never stopped walking yet always remained right before his eyes. For a moment, he suspected that this night was nothing more than an elaborate conspiracy concocted by the Nest.

The Uncle Kai who had raised him so carefully, the Uncle Kai who had brought him home, the Uncle Kai whose voice had pulled him out of the Black Abyss Belt time and again... How could that be the man up ahead?

"The resident in Damian’s bedroom back then... was—was—"

Chaisi tried to phrase it differently, but he still couldn’t say the words.

"The reason Damian died... in the end, was it because of you?"

The Kai Luonan ahead, weighed down by his considerable burden, seemed to be growing tired. Just then, he slid Daiju Monroe’s corpse from his shoulder, letting it fall to the ground with a THUD, and took a few gasping breaths.

He didn’t look back at Chaisi, but an off-screen voice suddenly spoke.

"Of course not."

Kai Luonan’s voice was deep, and from what Chaisi knew of him, he could tell there was a hint of displeasure in his tone.

’But did he really know his adoptive father?’

"Damian’s death has only one cause, and that is you," Kai Luonan said, his tone flat. "Did you think it was your mother who emerged from the Damian Path back then?"

’...It wasn’t?’

’Otherwise, why would a resident from the Blackmoor City Nest have my mother’s face?’

"What’s the use of merely having her corpse produce a resident?" Kai Luonan snorted. "Residents can’t be completely controlled... The night seventeen years ago is the best proof of that."

He, too, seemed to be stirred by difficult emotions.

"Damian... was my son, after all. The first time I saw him in the hospital, he was wrinkled and red, like a surprisingly small alien." Kai Luonan’s throat bobbed. "If he had truly died because of a seed I had sown, do you think I would have done nothing?"

Chaisi didn’t move.

"How much of that was for Damian’s benefit?" he asked coldly. "Even if the resident that killed Damian back then was... you wouldn’t admit it, would you? Because then you’d have to face a resident’s revenge, too."

"Seeing what happened to your mother after her death, you can still remain calm enough to try and drive a wedge between me and Damian?"

There was no condemnation in Kai Luonan’s voice, but rather a hint of appreciation. He said in a low voice, "A pity, though... even Damian himself learned after he died that the resident who killed him had very little to do with your mother."

Chaisi couldn’t hold it in any longer. In his entire life, he had almost never been so furious and desperate, yet completely powerless.

His mother’s body lay crumpled on the sidewalk before him, yet he could only stare blankly, like a helpless, useless pillar.

He squeezed each word out from between his teeth. "Then you tell me, why did that resident look like her? What exactly are you planning to do, bringing her in here?"

"Keep watching. You’ll understand soon enough."

The place where Kai Luonan had stopped was in front of a butcher shop.

Rows of plastic letters were stuck to the display window; in the space between "Ribs" and "Italian Sausage," a flattened human face was pressed tightly against the glass.

The face stared intently at the corpse on the ground. After a few seconds, it licked the glass.

"Get lost!"

Chaisi couldn’t take it anymore. He smashed his fist against the display window. "Get lost!"

When his fist plunged into empty nothingness, he could no longer hold back. A roar, like thunder rising and exploding from the pit of his stomach, erupted from him—he couldn’t stop what had happened back then, but he could smash his fist into the brick wall again and again until his skin split, his knuckles throbbed with a dull ache, and his palm grew hot and wet.

He thought he faintly heard someone chuckle. The voice sounded a lot like Damian’s.

"Can’t take it already? You’d do better to calm down," said Kai Luonan’s voice-over.

Chaisi suddenly froze.

Because the other Kai Luonan was crouching down, studying Daiju Monroe’s face for a few moments before sighing. "I’m sorry."

In the Nest, no sound answered him.

Kai Luonan stood up and knocked on the butcher shop’s door. The face in the window, its eyeballs rolling, vanished from behind the glass.

As the creature pulled the door open a crack from inside, the bell announcing a customer’s arrival rang—DING-A-LING—right above the resident’s head, making Chaisi’s muscles twitch.

"What do you want?"

It only showed half its face from behind the door—one of its eyeballs was split in two, with one half looking at Kai Luonan and the other at Daiju Monroe’s corpse.

The four words Kai Luonan spoke next made Chaisi lean against the wall and slide down, bit by bit, until he was sitting on the ground.

It was as if an endless, thick black fog was rising from the ground, spreading into the air, starting from his feet and slowly devouring his world, painting it black.

He understood, but he didn’t understand.

"I want meat cut," Kai Luonan said.

Chaisi sat numbly on the ground, his mouth half-open. His muscles, his lips, his heart—it was as if their nerves had been severed. He couldn’t feel a thing.

"I’m not a heartless man."

The Kai Luonan in the voice-over sighed, as if even he couldn’t bear to watch. "If I weren’t forced by circumstance, I would have preferred to leave her body in Luocheng for a proper burial. If you weren’t Chaisi, if you were just an ordinary child, then perhaps you would have lived an ordinary life with your aunt, gone to school, graduated, gotten married, had children... The intersection of our lives would have ended long ago, and I would still have a son."

Chaisi couldn’t make a sound.

’Damian’s revenge,’ he thought, ’is now complete.’

"What part do you want cut?" Both halves of the butcher shop resident’s eyeball were now fixed on the corpse.

The Kai Luonan from twenty-five years ago replied, "Start with the brains."