by Feng Yue
“Professor, why aren’t you explaining yourself?” Ye Qingxuan lowered his eyes tiredly and murmured, “Even if you just say you were forced to, why are you so calm?”
He always thought that he had gone wrong somewhere. He could think of a million excuses for Abraham and each one would work. That was why he did not dare. Because once he tried, he would no longer be able to lie to himself.
In the past, many had called him naïve. They were right. Otherwise, he would not tell Lola to leave the Sacred City, go back to Anglo, and not contact him if she could not find Abraham. Without the answer, he could continue being ignorant.
“I’m sorry for lying to you and disappointing you.” Abraham sighed. He looked down at his mask. “I just wanted to come see you again and let you see me…see the real me.”
He held the bloody griffin’s mask in his hands. The black thing was covered in crimson red. Different from Seton’s horse mask, this was a hundred times more violent and arrogant. It was like a natural carnivore, an undefeatable hunter.
In order to hide their identities, every dragon rider had his own mark. It was the true face that one would choose for oneself. They could not be born with that face but they could choose which face they used to kill and die in.
Ye Qingxuan was silent for a long while before nodding slowly. “It suits you.”
“Thank you.” Abraham seemed to not hear the anger in Ye Qingxuan’s words. Humbly accepting the praise, he did not say anything else and just asked, “I know it’s very cliché but I just want to ask, when did you find out?”
“When someone told me that Constantine was Gaius. But sadly, just as you said, it was too late…” Ye Qingxuan answered indifferently. “The first time I saw you with that mask in the Sacred City, I started suspecting it. But in the end, I was the only one still clueless. Charles once told me that if I saw a purple-eyed musician, I should run immediately and never fight… I always thought that he was scared I would lose and die. It seems that he had realized long ago.”
Ye Qingxuan looked at Abraham. He said hoarsely, “He didn’t want me to fight you. That’s why he became so weak and scared. He even begged me not to face you… These days, he was always scared to face you.”
Abraham listened. After a pause, he hung his head and sighed. “Sorry.”
“Tell that to Charles!” Ye Qingxuan interrupted furiously. “Why don’t you think about Bai Xi? She wishes so badly for you to hold her hand like a father and attend her wedding!”
Abraham lowered his head. His expression was hidden but his voice was still calm. He nodded. “I promised her but it seems like I’ll have to break it. Please apologize to her for me.”
“You!” Ye Qingxuan wanted to step forward in rage.
Boom! The counterblade was nailed before him. The blade twanged with a sharp whistle. An invisible barrier blocked his path. In the distance, there was the sound of musicians breaking through the air.
They had been surrounded by dozens of musicians without realizing. Eerie aether waves spread out. In the air behind them, a Valkyrie emerged slowly, eyes full of murderous intent.
“That’s enough, Yezi. Don’t come any closer.” Abraham reached out and snapped the neck of the musician beside him. When the man fell, he stepped on him with ease. The snap of the bone was crisp.
“Professor!” Ye Qingxuan roared.
“Sorry, Yezi.” Abraham’s expression was still dull and his voice was monotone. “I’m not a good teacher. I didn’t teach Bai Xi anything and I couldn’t help Charles. I didn’t have the chance to pass anything real to you either. I am a failure. As you can see, the only thing I’m good at is this hateful thing…” Blood rolled down his cheeks from the corners of his eyes. He studied Ye Qingxuan and could not help but laugh.
“Thank you all for saving me and making me think that my life still held meaning. If possible, I really wish I can spend my entire life with you all. All together in the department… Please tell Bai Xi that I really want to attend her wedding. Truly.”
Boom! Under the explosion, light and shadows intersected. Something whistled past and then stopped. Blood gushed! A body that had been hacked apart fell to the ground. Abraham stood before it with his sword. Half of his body was dyed red. He looked up at the musicians who had grouped here and the solidified Valkyrie.
“Unfortunately,” he murmured, “the realization was too late.”
“You can still turn back, Professor!” Ye Qingxuan roared. He charged forward with all his might. “Professor, please! Don’t keep making mistakes! Surrender now! As long as we catch Gaius, I can extradite you to Anglo and then no one will touch me!”
“Then what about Charles?” Abraham asked. Ye Qingxuan froze.
“You should’ve realized long ago that he’s not normal… The Sacred City won’t let him go even if he’s willing to be imprisoned for life like me. Perhaps God will pity me but the world will not accept him.” Abraham shook his head sadly. “I wanted to forget where he came from and let him live out his life quietly in Anglo but he forced himself down this dead end.
“Before coming here, I thought there was still a possibility but I was wrong. People like me always have unrealistic dreams. We think that we can change our clothes and start over. But now I realize I’ve just been lying to myself. Yezi, I’m sorry… Remember to take care of Bai Xi in the future.”
“Professor, what are you saying?!” Ye Qingxuan yelled. It felt like he had fallen into icy waters. Absolute panic rose up in his heart. “Professor…Charles…weren’t we doing fine? What’s wrong?!”
Lightning flashed and fell from the sky. A terrifying knight with a thunderbolt rode across the sky. Countless spirits sang a song from the kingdom of death.
Behind the Valkyrie, a giant vortex opened up. There, the aether and material world were heavily overlapped. Wagner’s figure emerged. The dying man looked down at the human world. His eyes fell on Abraham and hardened.
“The remaining evil of the Dragon Riders… Gaius had hidden the forbidden waste from the purgatory with you? Do you know what you are doing?”
“I only wanted this world to become better,” a hoarse voice rang out.
The gate of the Judgement Tower fell open. Gaius walked out of the darkness and stared at the saint. He uttered, “Better than before. After tampering with the past and future of humanity, you’ve lost the right to lead the world. Someday, you will choke on your own fruits.”
483 Separation
Boom! In the sky, the vortex was quaking.
A few fissures appeared and expanded from the vortex as if a hammer was beating on the fragile material enchantment. This was the anger of the Saints. Merely their change of mood was difficult for reality to bear.
In the aether vortex, Wagner’s face was livid. “Gaius, you are crazy.”
“Would anyone normal in the world join the Revolutionaries?” Gaius couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ve regarded me as a madman for decades. It’s too late to tell me this now.”
“Is that so? Then the time left for your deathbed repentance will end now.” Wagner reached out his hand coldly. “Pay for your sins!”
The illusion of the horrible Valkyrie before him almost condensed into substance. The war was about to begin. She came out from the legend. Galloping on the battlefield to collect the spirits of the dead, the Grim Reaper raised his hand. Then the spear of thunder grew larger.
In a blink, there was only one fiery light left between heaven and earth. The light descended from the sky, connecting the heavens and the earth like a sharp knife chopping off the canvas into left and right. Destruction descended.
The uncontrolled absolute zone was run through. Crisscrossed lightning evaporated the land instantaneously. The storm swept in all directions.
But the next moment after the storm, something stunning happened.
In the middle of the impact, the electric light flowed in the huge depression. They were bound in the air, forced to maintain the original shape and unable to erupt.
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Someone was holding the spear, making a sharp sound like metallic friction. The scattered currents illuminated his dull face. It was Abraham!
As he clenched his fist, the thunderbolt spear was shattered. At that moment, almost everyone froze. It never occurred to anyone that Abraham could contend with the saints head-on!
Heat and lightning burned half of his clothes, turning the leather into ashes, revealing the body under the robe and cloak. The body was bronze. Mercury was flowing above it like a serpent, forming something like an alchemy matrix.
At this moment, the matrix bloomed with a glowing light as if Abraham was ignited, bathing in the scary flames. The remnants of the electric light lingered in his body. He raised his eyes which had turned into pure white and roared.
Bang! It seemed that pure silver was melted into liquid and swept in all directions, where everything was crushed to pieces, leaving only the smooth mirror-like earth.
The sky was reflected.
“The Silver Tide?” In the sky, Wagner’s livid face emerged with an irrepressible fury. “Do you dare to violate the taboo? Gaius, have you spared no effort in order to destroy the Scared City?”
“The power of the natural catastrophes is my wings…” said Gaius. “In the beginning, the Dragon Riders was established because the Sacred City wanted to create natural catastrophe for musicians outside the seven schools of musicians, was it not?
“They are all dark musicians made in the name of God. What you see is just the remnants of the fruits of that year.”
The Silver Tide was the most well-known existence of the ‘eight phenomena’. It had no senses or feelings. It was totally a phenomenon but became the purest symbol of destruction among natural catastrophe. It ran through the earth. Where it had passed, everything was completely destroyed. All that remained was tens of thousands of miles of mirror-like land.
As the commander of the Dragon Riders, Abraham was the only one who could harness the Silver Tide. He became the most successful natural catastrophe musician of all the defective ones because of his lack of feelings and unimaginable talent of Abstinence.
After many years, he awakened his own power once again, governing the power of the Silver Tide. Using the way of discipline, he became a human incarnation of natural catastrophes.
At this moment, he had been transformed into something inhuman. His body turned into steel. All emotions were wiped by the brutal force of the natural catastrophe. Only the pure fighting instinct was left.
The purifying light bound to the arm was destroyed in an instant. It was not worth mentioning. Since all shackles were gone, there were no more obstructions. He had regained the power of his peak and had returned to the war machine. However, for some reason, there seemed to be iron tears trickling down on his face.
He roared and growled. The sonorous sound burst like steel colliding.
So, the city trembled. The whole chaotic absolute zone was filled with the burning light of metal.
In his body, the inhuman force grew again at an unimaginable rate. It grew again and again! It erupted endlessly… Even the vortex manifested by the saints in the sky trembled too.
Soon, determination emerged in Wagner’s old face. He waved and the huge enchantment of the Sacred City suddenly started operating. His old body trembled. Blazing light, no less than the stinging light by the natural catastrophe, burst forth despite that it would evaporate his remaining years of life completely.
In a blink, the power of the Silver Tide was suppressed again.
“Listen to me. No one show any mercy…” Wagner stared at Abraham in the iron light with no more emotions in his eyes. “—Kill him!”
In the next moment, the power of the whole Sacred City and the iron light of the Silver Tide collided. The fiery light swallowed up everything, leaving a sonorous sound in the air.
“Professor!” Ye Qingxuan’s hoarse roar was drowned in the loud noise. No more sound was heard after that.
When Abraham had resisted the spear of thunder, he was already caught in a cage. He did not expect Abraham to have a sudden attack at this critical time. He had no precautions.
First, countless perception threads extended from the void and attached to the music theory in his body.
Then, a majestic power came along the threads to easily control the music theory in his body. It exceeded his attainment in interpretation hundreds of times. Immediately after, the heart, respiration, nerve center, arteries, spine, muscle, and all other parts of his body were taken as well.
It conquered so quickly!
Was this Bolero?
Under Abraham’s control, the perception threads that Bolero used to read the aetheric fluctuations turned into the wire for the puppet master to manipulate the doll. Ye Qingxuan was totally controlled.
Then, the alien music theory suddenly changed to lead the music theory in Ye Qingxuan’s body to operate automatically, ignoring his will.
Ye Qingxuan danced like a puppet. It was nature interference!
Just in an instant, the music theory in his body evolved violently into an unimaginable state. Pure nature interference was applied to his body and overlapped tens of thousands of times! Vision, hearing, touch, smell… all senses were distorted and withdrawn. In a trance, Ye Qingxuan felt as if he had become a piece of steel being brutally forged, heated, and finally melted into molten iron.
Molten iron congealed, turned into sand, and crushed into dust. The dust flickered in the air. As the wind blew, it turned into mist and dispersed in the world.
He could not feel himself anymore.
‘Abandonment of oneself.’ This was the path that the School of Abstinence sought of the seven questions for musicians.
At the moment, his consciousness was finally detached from the restrictive human body. His perception of music theory became thousand times more accurate. He felt as if he was a scale. The countless music theories were the counterweights. He was on one side and the other end was a rapidly changing world. Balance had been achieved both inside and outside—an unprecedented perfect equilibrium. Thus, he could feel his body again. But Ye Qingxuan found he had entered the…‘vacuum’?
After the thousands of disturbances per second, he experienced the wonderful feeling of being perfectly integrated with the outside world. At the moment he had become an illusion, withdrawn from the physical world. Nothing outside could affect him anymore.
He froze.
What…did the professor want?
He stared at the inhuman Abraham, stunned and fearful, wondering what had happened. But the countless threads that accessed his body never ceased transferring the music theory from Abraham to him.
Constructed with the interpretation, power from the same source gathered at this moment… Ye Qingxuan’s power began to soar. The massive amount of music scores and the application techniques of the School of Abstinence poured into his mind along the perception threads. Abraham’s experiences were imprinted into his instinct, causing unbearable pain and faintness in his head.
In a blink, the music theory in his body collapsed because of excessive expansion but converged again in the chaos… After dozens of bursts and rebirths, the music theory had evolved to a level beyond his understanding.
Looming towers sprang up. The Heaven Ladder was built instantly.
“Professor!” Ye Qingxuan stared at Abraham blankly. “What are you…what are you doing?” Great fear came and caught him by surprise. He almost cried out.
“Goodbye, Yezi.” The hoarse voice sounded from his ear like a whisper from the old man. “This is the last thing I can give to you.”
Boom! Ye Qingxuan’s sound of heart quaked. In the core, a new vacancy appeared between the Philosopher’s Stone, which represented the sub-originator, and Jiu Xiao Huan Pei, which represented the ‘Heaven Ladder’.
Then, a music score called Natural Catastrophes’ Resonance was embedded.
Sub-originator, Heaven Ladder, and Natural Catastrophes’ Resonance were connected
with each other and merged into one.
They became a trinity!
A huge impact burst from the core of the sound of heart.
Ye Qingxuan’s vision went black. It was again difficult for him to keep awake. Tiredness submerged him like tides, immobilizing him.
In the end, he exhausted all his strength. He reached out as if to hold onto that burning figure. But such a short distance was so distant for him at this moment.
“Professor…”
He sank into the darkness.
-
In the turbulent zone, Gaius looked at the shattering scene. Behind him, Wolf Flute’s figure emerged from the glow.
“You’re late again,” said Gaius.
“The archive you asked is a little hard to find. It wasted me some time,” Wolf Flute replied. “But I just sent Charles away. You don’t have to worry now.”
“Thank you for your hard work.”
Wolf flute shook his head indifferently. “The Sacred City’s enchantment is about to be repaired completely. If you need anything else, you’d better tell me now. The rest of my energy is just enough to return there once.”
“I know.” Gaius nodded but looked to the distance, looking at the young man lying on the ground. He was looking at the youth’s white hair and eyes.
Even without consciousness, Ye Qingxuan’s blank eyes still stared at Abraham. The tears in his eyes had dried. The anger was burned out. What remained?
“What’s wrong?” Wolf Flute asked.
“That pair of eyes is…exactly like his father’s,” Gaius murmured. “They once shone bright like the stars but after everything, they became indescribably sad or full of pity. Looking at them is intimidating.”
Wolf Flute was silent and looked away. “You’re afraid too?” he asked.
“Wolf Flute, the man whose heart turns to iron and stone will fear those who are alive.” Gaius lowered his eyes and whispered, “We, as human beings, have suffered and tasted hardships. Now we become cold and merciless to prove that we are made of stone… Once I thought I would be different, but now, I found that I am no exception. I have done so many ugly things. Why shouldn’t I fear his eyes?”