Listening to Lucas’s invitation, Lu Rong did not answer immediately. He closed the manual and handed it to Lucas, asking, “You seem very eager for me to go see him?”
Lucas choked for a moment. Lu Rong then asked, “Is the Alliance not afraid that Fenié’s people will come to rescue him?”
“No one is going to rescue him anymore, Mr. Lu,” Lucas shook his head.
Lu Rong looked at Lucas.
Lucas continued to explain, “When he sent the Queen and the Prince away, the jump point he set was extremely far. The Alliance deduces that he sent them to A-class Star A311. Once you go there, it is very difficult to return, but it is basically equivalent to getting a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Lu Rong had also heard of the great reputation of Star A311.
That was Cain Star, known as the origin of the Plumed Serpents. Even the founding emperor of the Empire came from Cain Star. As an A-class star, its economy, military, and technology were all top-tier. No one dared to mess with it, and it was one of the few independent autonomous stars not under the Empire’s jurisdiction.
However, as an independent autonomous star, Cain Star remained neutral and did not participate in any interstellar conflicts. Anyone involved in conflicts had to leave Cain Star; for instance, the founding emperor of the Empire voluntarily relinquished his citizenship of Cain Star.
Accordingly, anyone with Cain Star bloodline who wanted to return had to give up all power and status, and could not participate in interstellar conflicts. This had already become an unwritten rule.
Both the Queen and the Prince of Kulkán possessed Plumed Serpent blood. As long as they abandoned their status, did not participate in any actions to restore the Empire, and did not attempt to rescue Fenié, Cain Star would naturally take them in.
The Alliance was wary of Cain Star’s power and did not dare to demand hostages. At the same time, this also meant that no one would come back for Fenié.
“These autonomous stars are local overlords, and their information frequency bands are not shared. People there cannot contact us either. Plus, Fenié’s personal guards were executed on the spot back then, leaving not a single survivor. Fenié is completely isolated and has been abandoned,” Lucas concluded, letting out a somewhat sentimental sigh.
Lu Rong stood beside the display case, staring in silence at the neatly arranged star cores. Sensing that the air pressure around Lu Rong was very low, Lucas wondered if he had offended him somehow and dared not speak for a moment.
Fortunately, a suddenly ringing communication saved Lucas. He turned away to handle a brief call. After confirming the details, he smiled at Lu Rong, “Mr. Lu, the auction for Lot 07 is about to begin. Will you be going in person, or would you prefer to continue letting your assistant handle it on your behalf?”
Roused from his contemplation back to reality, Lu Rong let his gaze fall upon the star cores and answered Lucas, “Let the assistant handle it.”
Lucas immediately relayed Lu Rong’s request and then looked at him again. “Then are there any other auction lots you are interested in? We can take you to have a look around.”
One of Lu Rong’s hands rested on the radiation-shielding cover of the star cores. After careful thought for a long time, he tapped the transparent surface with his fingertips. “You said he only revealed a portion of the star core locations?”
Lucas paused for a moment before realizing what Lu Rong meant, and nodded. “Yes. The Alliance even used memory capture, but the Plumed Serpent is probably truly different from ordinary people; they only managed to extract that tiny bit of information.”
“So, they turned him into an ‘immortal flower’ and put him up for auction here.” Lu Rong withdrew his hand, shoved both hands into his pockets, and a somewhat strange smile appeared on his face.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, X01 sensed a strange nuance in Lu Rong’s attitude: “…Is something wrong?”
Lu Rong: “The Alliance shouldn’t be so strapped for cash that they have to sell prisoners. This looks like a bait.”
Yet, he could not figure out the point of placing this bait here.
“Lucas.” Lu Rong looked down at Lucas.
The tiny blue butterfly was still resting on Lucas’s gland, exerting its suggestion and hypnotic effects. Lucas inexplicably felt a chill on the back of his neck and instinctively reached up to touch it. Lu Rong smiled and said, “I want to take a look at Lot 10.”
X01 blurted out, “Oh, are you going to save him?”
Lu Rong answered lazily, “No.”
X01 hesitated. “The information I just checked says that this kind of ‘immortal flower’ transformation is irreversible. He is basically no different from a vegetative state.”
Lu Rong: “I just want to see if we can still squeeze out the whereabouts of the star cores.”
X01 didn’t answer because he felt something was off. The current turn of events seemed strangely familiar.
Back when Lu Rong led his troops to hunt down Fenié, X01 had also asked if he was going to save Fenié. Lu Rong had rejected the idea just as decisively, claiming he was only going to see if he could scrape together some spoils of war, yet he ended up intervening anyway. But this time, Lu Rong had mentioned the star cores, and he knew Lu Rong’s obsession with the F6134 batch of star cores. Perhaps he had simply guessed wrong.
Lucas led Lu Rong toward the place where Fenié was kept. After walking for a stretch, Lu Rong felt a trace of oddity because Lucas was leading him up toward the high-rise tower of the casino.
To his knowledge, the casino had four towers in total. The lower floors of the towers were generally used to lock up cheats and gamblers who owed debts, while the upper floors featured hollowed-out designs on all four sides for aesthetic purposes, making them unsuitable for holding prisoners and basically kept locked.
The tower they were currently in faced the ocean. As they climbed higher, the view opened up wide, revealing the deep, dark, perennially frozen sea in the distance. On the ice sheets of the frozen sea, the shadows of animals could be seen running, including winter deer and startled night birds, while the starry dome above gleamed brilliantly against the wind and frost.
Lucas stopped in front of a somewhat dilapidated wooden door and pulled out a key.
Looking at the drifting snow by the tower windows, Lu Rong said offhandedly, “You keep him in such a drafty place exposed on all sides? Aren’t you afraid he will escape? He used to be an Imperial Marshal, after all.”
Before Lu Rong could finish, Lucas had already opened the door, and the sight inside made the rest of his words choke in his throat.
Lucas shrugged. “As you can see, there is no need to worry about that anymore. His life has been locked away. This was specifically requested by the ‘Wanderers’: For those who yearn for freedom, out-of-reach freedom is the ultimate torture.”
Lu Rong remained silent for a long time, gazing steadily at Fenié inside the golden cage.
If not for the fact that a living creature was trapped inside, anyone passing by would have marveled at this sculpture as a work of art blending death, bloodshed, and beauty.
The golden cage rose straight from the ground, its bars polished smooth and bright enough to reflect a person’s silhouette. Hanging from the center of the dome was a filigree, hollowed-out three-dimensional golden celestial body. Upon closer inspection, one could make out the outline of the capital star of the Kulkán Empire. Suspended beneath the capital star was a tiny wind chime, from which numerous golden threads extended outward into the gaps between the surrounding bars. As the wind blew, it set them in motion, producing a melodious, deep, and resonant chime.
Hidden among the wind chime threads were two golden chains, each as thick as an adult’s wrist. Extending from opposite sides to the midpoint, they converged upon the silent creature at the center, viciously piercing through his wings, suspending his arms, and locking him right by his protruding collarbones.
The golden chains were stained with blood. The blood dripped down from the metal like red petals descending from ancient twilight, landing drop by drop onto the floor and blooming one after another, layering over each other to form a bloody map frozen into the snowy ground.
A faint mint scent diffused through the air, mixed with the smell of blood. The freezing chill felt as though it had cast a frost over the snowy night.
Fenié was so quiet. He was no longer the person Lu Rong had seen before, who was harsh, arrogant, overbearing, and sharp-edged. His head was fixed in a tilted-back posture, and his long white hair cascaded from his shoulders and forehead, swaying gently whenever the wind blew. It was silent and tranquil, revealing the crisp, deep contours of his jawline and the cyan veins along the side of his neck through his strands of hair, showing a mix of ferocity and despair that made him look as though he were yearning for the out-of-reach capital star at the top of the cage.
His bare upper body still bore traces of physical training, proving his once-vibrant life, but paleness from blood loss made him look slender and thin, nearly blending into the color of the white serpentine lower half of his body, coated in the holy glow of the starry vault like an immolated ancient deity.
Lu Rong’s gaze lowered, falling upon Fenié’s serpentine tail coiled on the floor. It was completely snow-white, resembling pristine drifts of snow, while the wind blowing through the hollowed-out architecture of the tower brought in cold snowflakes that piled up like little mounds beside the tail.
Drifting snowflakes also landed on Lu Rong’s knuckles, slowly melting. The cold, damp sensation on his fingertips reminded Lu Rong of a certain snowy winter day. He involuntarily drew a breath, his lungs filled entirely with the coldness of snow. He choked slightly, his soul shaken and his whole body growing cold.
This freezing snowy night felt just like the day he accidentally descended into this world. Heavy snow fell like collapsing clouds, blanketing the earth layer by layer, with biting cold and frost filling every corner of the universe.
That day, the one trapped and stranded in the snow was him. He had lain in the snow with blast-induced scars covering his body, his viscera exposed, his intestines spilled across the ground, and his limbs bent at abnormal angles, leaving his entire person broken into pieces.
The rich smell of blood had attracted the hungry alien beasts of the snowfields. His future seemed to have only two choices: become the beasts’ meal, watching as his internal organs were devoured by wild animals, or turn into frozen meat before being eaten.
Yet the explosion that had caused him to end up like this had happened just a few minutes prior at his wedding.
As the youngest Alliance commander of Astar, Lu Rong had survived not hundreds, but thousands of assassination attempts. He had thought that perhaps one day he would die in some assassination, but he had never imagined he would die in this one, and die in such a manner.
Because the person who betrayed him turned out to be his childhood companion and partner. But the facts were laid bare here. Not only was he dead, but his adoptive parents might have also been implicated in the explosion.
During the long time he lay in the snow, Lu Rong once thought this was some cruel hallucination rather than reality, perhaps just a nightmare he was having while dozing off before the wedding.
It was also at that moment that he heard footsteps crunching softly through the snow.
His vision was blurred, and his hearing had not fully recovered from the massive explosion. The footsteps were faint, mixed with the panting of beasts, disjointed, but he caught them. Struggling to follow the sound, amidst the thick limbs and foul-smelling saliva of the alien beasts, he dimly caught sight of a pair of military boots. The style was unlike any he had ever seen, with uppers that were clean, immaculate, and carried the soft sheen unique to leather.
The owner of those shoes must have been extremely fond of cleanliness.
Yet on a night of blizzard and howling beasts, those boots were destined to be stained with blood. The bright flash of a long blade cutting through the snow resembled a cold moonlight, smearing the color of blood across a white world.
The foul-smelling blood of the alien beast splattered outward, falling onto the snow like ribbons, ferocious yet beautiful. There were countless simple ways in the universe to kill an alien beast, but this person seemed to have chosen the one that caused the most bloodshed, as if venting anger.
The metallic tang was like poison falling into the snow, making the blizzard howl even more furiously. When the last alien beast collapsed, Lu Rong knew he was saved, but he was also on the verge of turning into a block of frozen meat.
Yet his savior remained utterly calm. That person stood atop the carnage of flesh and blood, looking tall and well-proportioned. Lu Rong couldn’t make out his face, as the stranger appeared to be wearing a silver-gray mask and was leisurely wiping his blade.
Lu Rong heard a cold and weary voice: “This is not a place you should have come to.”
Extremely arrogant.
Lu Rong had almost thought he would be left in the snow to wait for death, but the next second, that person bent down and approached him. The stranger was clearly strong, digging him out of the snow, hoisting him onto his shoulder, and carrying him across the wind and snow, step by step leaving the freezing ice field.
Even after all this time, Lu Rong still remembered the faint scent of mint mixed into the wind and snow back then, a scent that made the blizzard feel even colder, yet also soothed the pain wracking Lu Rong’s body.
Before reaching their destination, Lu Rong lost consciousness amidst that faint trace of mint fragrance.
Later, while at the Planetary Planning Bureau, Lu Rong learned that the planet he had unintentionally landed on was designated D4752, a D-class star located in the Empire’s fourth stellar sector.
A D-class star meant that the planet possessed an environment suitable for life to inhabit, along with animals living there, but intelligent species had not yet evolved.
For such planets, the Empire appropriately opened them up for non-invasive tourism, meaning tourism programs were arranged without affecting the local biological evolution and development. The moment local life forms showed signs of intelligent evolution, the tourism industry would immediately cease.
After that, before those newly born intelligent species discovered that there were beings beyond the heavens, the Empire would not proactively appear.
D4752 was one such place, but local tourism was only open in summer, not during the raging winter blizzards.
As for the mint, it was not a plant that D4752 would have in winter. That freezing scent was the out-of-control pheromone of that person.