The night sky gently wrapped around the world, and the evening breeze blew across the lazy stars.
Servants accompanied each other in twos and threes, vague gossip floating in the air and then quietly dispersing, without disrupting the harmony of the night in the slightest.
Everything combined together, as if sketching out a deep, sound dream that a single heart couldn’t hold.
Otto sat quietly at the desk in front of the window, flipping back and forth through that thick book on the desk.
Suddenly, a clear breeze brushed past his ear, stirring strands of blonde hair and also carrying along a faint fragrance.
Raising his gaze to look, it was Lucien.
Lucien put his hands behind his back and grinned at Otto:
“Kallen has gone to save the suffering and deliver them from distress, come take a look at what good thing I brought for you?”
After saying that, he showed Otto what he had hidden behind his back — — which turned out to be a pot of green lily flowers that looked very fresh and refined.
After Otto saw the green lily potted plant clearly, Lucien placed it across the window onto Otto’s desk, and then walked through the wall into the house himself.
“Other than books and airplanes, your desk is just too lifeless.
Now it’s great, full of vibrant greenery!”
With you here, how could this desk be lifeless?
Otto thought like this, yet said nothing on his lips, only curling his fingers affectionately to hook the delicate, half-opened flower buds of the green lily.
Wait, green lily?
Otto, who finally reacted to what the potted plant in front of him implied, glanced sideways at Lucien with exasperation.
Good grief, the whole green lily thing is really never going to be lived down.
Just you wait.
If Lady Green Lily can’t deal with you, surely the real “lady” can?
Thinking thus, he revealed a faint smile of “a promising future”.
Lucien naturally didn’t know what Otto was thinking; he looked at Otto, then at the pot of green lilies beside the table, and his smile grew even purer.
For a time, both inside and outside the room were filled with a joyful atmosphere.
While the two of them were laughing happily, Kallen hurried anxiously to the window, without saying a word, and through the window, she grabbed Lucien’s wrist and wanted to run outside.
Seeing her solemn expression, Lucien didn’t delay either; after giving Otto a couple of instructions, he followed her and phased through the wall.
Inside the room, only Otto was left.
The lamplight swayed gently, reflecting the nearly frozen smile on his face, drying up the silence.
After a moment, he sighed softly, closed the open book on the table, used it as a cushion, and then leaned over the table to admire the pot of green lilies.
A fine breeze swept past gently, softly unfolding the self-admiring buds a bit.
Otto thought back once more to the day he “chose the wrong multiple-choice question”.
As the story goes, Kallen anxiously dragged Lucien out towards the outside of the Apocalypse Family grounds, not explaining a single word and only telling Lucien to follow.
Lucien vaguely guessed the reason for Kallen’s unusual behavior in his heart, so he didn’t ask a single extra question, only focusing on following behind the young girl.
The two rounded the street corner, all the way arriving at Priest Victor’s residence, and stepped into the hidden basement within the residence.
Several guards and Victor lay sprawling across the ground, but neither Lucien nor Kallen paid them any mind.
The two fell silent together, silently looking at the scene before them.
They saw a gigantic blood-colored hexagram blooming in the center of the spacious basement.
Crosses were stuck at all six corners of the hexagram, and young little girls had their hand and foot tendons severed, bound upon it — looking at them, each one was haggard and pale-skinned, covered all over with bizarre and bewitching purple patterns.
In the center of the hexagram, a purple regular hexahedron floated quietly.
At first glance, it was indistinguishable from Void Archives, and only by carefully observing could one pierce through the overflowing evil aura and malice within it.
A chilling wind of Shuhu swept past, stirring up a thick stench of blood and foul odor, causing shivers to run down one’s neck.
A drop of crystal-clear cold sweat slid down Lucien’s cheek.
He had known from the very beginning that Schicksal was secretly capturing young girls with natural Stigmata to conduct inhumane experiments.
He was no bleeding-heart do-gooder, not even counting as a good person.
Aside from Otto and Kallen, he had never truly looked at anyone else in this era, and thus would not waste his few remaining moments of “time” to rescue these innocent young girls.
Lucien originally thought he could calmly accept everything, but he was wrong.
When seeing this scene before him, his still-beating heart felt as if it had been fiercely gripped by someone, suffocating and painful.
When seeing this scene before him, he would feel unmitigated rage.
It wasn’t that he had a soft heart, or that he had developed any feelings for these young girls suffering from man-made disaster.
This was merely an existing life’s instinctive repulsion towards actions that desecrated life.
Just like instinctively wanting to eat more when tasting something delicious; instinctively wanting to walk around when seeing something dirty; instinctively wanting to run away when encountering something dangerous.
Incomparably natural and irresistible.
After all, it was these instincts that constituted humanity itself.
Although Lucien resided within Void Archives, his essence remained human, and naturally he could not be exempt from convention.
He had love, great love, for the “beauty” contained within humanity;
He had hatred, deep hatred, for the “ugliness” lurking within humanity.
[ The hidden ugly truth can be concealed for a time, but not for a lifetime.
]
[ On this routine night of robbing the rich to give to the poor, Kallen accidentally witnessed Schicksal secretly conducting inhumane experiments in the city.
]
]
[ What should she do?
]
[ Aside from panic, anger, and disgust, Kallen had no mind to think.
]
[ And under such circumstances, the first person she thought of, and the only person she thought of, was you.
]
“What on earth should I do?
What on earth should we do?” Kallen looked toward Lucien, her face bearing a sorrowful expression.
Hearing this, Lucien pressed all the bad emotions in his heart down to the bottom, yet did not directly respond to Kallen’s question:
“Why did you want to avoid Otto?”
[ Remaining time for the maintenance of your existence: Four years.
]
“I don’t know whether I should trust him,” Kallen lowered her eyelids, her tone no longer as naive as before, “No, I can only trust you.”
“Kallen, you can completely trust Otto, just like how you trust me right now.” Lucien gently pulled Kallen into his embrace, comforting her thus.
Otto would absolutely never do such filthy things behind his back.
He firmly believed this.
[ During those days and nights of conducting experiments to conquer the Black Death, the gazes and worlds of you and Otto held only each other.
]
[ When being injected with every single dose of medicine of unknown efficacy, when drinking every single bowl of mostly poisonous medicinal decoction, you would secretly glance at Otto to see his reaction.
]
[ The two abstract words of pain and forbearance were hard-pressed to describe the expression on his face at that time.
]
[ It was as if — the medicines acting upon your body had actually transformed into countless formless knives, carving piece by piece into his flesh-and-blood heart, just like death by a thousand cuts.
]
[ To the extent that, whenever you looked at him, you inexplicably felt that the medicine in your mouth wasn’t all that bitter anymore.
]
[ Even so, the experiments of the two of you still continued on, and achieved ultimate success.
]
[ Why?