The crimson setting sun descended from behind the high wall, casting shadows that enveloped the entire town, where light and darkness intertwined like mirror images at the boundary ford at dusk.
In places unseen by people, many dark activities and cris lurking within the shadows take place, illicit transactions, bloody violent clashes, and gang fights, a seemingly peaceful town under which dark currents surge.
Ti is a fair and silent ruler.
For everyone, ti flows equally and uniformly, and in its ceaseless forward movent, the base shall pass through hollow, empty pleasures, and the obsessed will bury themselves in desolate absurdities.
The stars are sparse, as the season slowly approaches deep autumn, the climate becos increasingly cold and dry, and that celestial body hanging in the vast galaxy emits a strange purple light, like a giant opening his eye in the dark night sky. From the ground’s perspective, one can clearly see the surface scars on the celestial body, covered by a purple dust, with craters thousands of miles in diater, surrounded by an asteroid belt that orbits due to impacts.
What kind of world are we truly in?
What kind of existence is the planet beneath our feet in the cosmos?
How profound and far-reaching is the cosmos?
No one can provide an answer to this question; the cosmos is mysterious to everyone, and the space stations and satellites built in near-star orbits are nothing more than a grain of dust in the vast galaxy, insufficient to prove that humans have left their mark in the cosmos.
Current technology can’t even lift the veil of the planet under their feet, with distances of millions of kiloters between Nest Cities. Based on the currently known number of Nest Cities, the size and mass of the planet they are on will exceed everyone’s imagination.
Only when people are completely freed from the troubles of the tales, embarking on the journey of exploring the starry sky above, will the Golden Era that truly belongs to them arrive.
The firelight occasionally reflected from within the giant walls dyed the sky golden-red, voicelessly narrating the night’s restlessness.
On the open-air terrace, two figures sat in spread-out folding chairs, clinking their glasses, one toast to the noble fighters within the giant wall, another to the brilliant starry sky above.
"Teacher, your health..."
The young man beside him stepped forward with a worried expression.
The man waved his hand, indicating he was fine.
"Heidelberg, wasn’t that right?" Sebastian raised his glass at the man beside him with a chuckle.
"That na is no longer important. You’re right; in the final monts, I should try to let go of those regrets, I should try to understand my daughter more in these last monts."
Haji downed half a glass of strong whiskey in one gulp, exhaling deeply.
Nearing fifty, he was like a child compared to the old monstrosity beside him who had lived a century, but tonight they were both just fathers of a daughter.
"All along, I’ve been busy with my work, neglecting her feelings. I didn’t know she had been led astray, going down the wrong path."
Saying this, Haji held the sugar block inside a plastic bag and shook it in front of Sebastian. Under the eerie purple moonlight, the prismatic crystal surface refracted an enchanting light.
"It wasn’t until that day when I found her collapsed in the bathroom did I realize that those wandering thugs had been dragging her into bars every day, causing her to get into this stuff."
"On the way to the hospital, Qing Cai’s heart stopped beating. As a chemistry teacher, I clearly understood her cause of death: cardiac arrest induced by overstimulation. In the last monts of her life, she kept questioning why I never cared about her feelings."
Haji’s eyes reddened, and his sigh was filled with helplessness.
"She was right; if I had paid her a bit more attention, noticed her emaciated body earlier, as well as the scars left by the Moon Sugar, none of this would have happened."
Sebastian shook his head without saying anything, slowly filling a glass with whiskey. He hadn’t touched alcohol for a long ti; the last ti he rembered was twenty years ago, still beside his wife, before his daughter was born. He didn’t look as old as he did now, appearing unchanged from his youth.
His wife disliked the sll of smoke and alcohol, and he thought he wouldn’t touch these things again in his lifeti. Who would have thought that the once illustrious and dominant Ghost would one day fall to illness’s clutches, the prolonged battle over long years had left him with chronic diseases, and even the top physicians of the Chichu Family were helpless against his scarred body.
His regrets were not being able to protect his loved one and not dying heroically on the battlefield with old friends from the past era. However, it also allowed him to encounter sothing significant in his life. People said that the old wolf had his claws cut off and teeth blunted by that Young Master.
Love makes a person full of flaws, and he didn’t know when he beca so worried, so timid, hiding all his sharpness, learning to be smooth in dealing with things. From the mont he took the crying girl from his wife’s hands, the spirited man disappeared and was replaced by a steady old butler.
No longer revenging for every wrong, no longer acting on impulse, no longer placing so much importance on pride, fa, and desires, enduring insults for the sake of Miss’s safety, the old Ghost from the battlefield of yesteryears in a sense found his new life.
For Miss, he forgot his past self, all the glorious past, all the regrets and remorse, accompanied her childhood as Sebastian.
The two fathers spoke a lot that night, venting many words buried deep in their hearts.
As Haji, flushed red, buoyed by rising intoxication, intended to say more, the old man beside him had, at so point, a sharp look, suddenly drawing out a long knife, its blade bending to almost break, mighty winds swirling, cutting intents like a bright flash illuminating boundless darkness, annihilating everything around them.
The entire terrace was sharply divided in two, the wall’s cross-section incomparably neat, slowly falling downward. A chasm-like crack appeared in the dim do, even the eerie purple full moon in the sky seed to be sliced in half, vehicle alarms echoed in the black night, reverberating throughout the entire town.
With just one slash, death’s splendor tainted the night sky above Dragonfly Town.
Noticing the long knife pressed against his throat, Haji shakily raised his head, swallowing his saliva, completely sobered by fright, his words full of unrest: "This...this is?"
"Killing." Sebastian’s tone was calm.
The old man, dressed in a butler’s uniform, monts before appeared like a frail patient. Now seed he had crawled anew from the Corpse Mountain of an old battlefield, regaining his peak aura in an instant, every gesture vigorous and powerful, bringing Haji back to cold reality, seeing the old man beside him anew.
Three rounds of drinks nearly made him forget the other was a bona fide Prism Tier Cleaner.
"Kill who?"
"All absurdities disadvantaging Miss." A sharp gleam flickered in Sebastian’s eyes; this old wolf, dormant for so long, finally intended to reveal his fangs to the world before he died, preparing a storming shock if he moved!
Sebastian slowly withdrew the long knife from Haji’s throat, "I will use the final monts to clear all obstacles for Miss."
Watching Sebastian vanish into the desolate night, Haji exhaled slowly, collapsing into his chair in relief, wiping the sweat off his forehead. The young man nearby was already scared limp on the ground, bewildered.
Depression, suffocation, insult fernted potent emotions in Haji’s heart. He tightly grasped the bagged Moon Sugar, intending to throw it far away, when suddenly his examination report popped up before him.
Nurous data indicated the chemotherapy had taken effect, his lung tumor had significantly receded since the last ti, the black blood he spat in the morning was rely a side effect of chemotherapy...
Heidelberg clenched the sugar block in his hand tightly and finally stowed it away, patting the young man seated on the ground, "Let’s go, Gao Jian, my student."
This night was destined to be restless. The shadows of the old era would once more loom over people’s heads, the world rembering the fear once instilled by the na Ghost.
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