Zhao Kongcheng felt he was about to explode.
"Me?! You're asking who I am? I'm the innocent victim who had his feelings toyed with and stood in the cold wind half the night because of you!"
Zhao Kongcheng locked Lin Qiye's arm in a death grip, like some lovestruck uncle terrified of his boyfriend being stolen. "Let me tell you—drop the act. Today, you are absolutely not getting away!"
Lin Qiye looked down at his pinned arm, abandoned the pointless struggle, and adopted a look of do-with-me-as-you-will.
"Fine. Your call—where do we talk?"
"Come with me."
And so Zhao Kongcheng, arm hooked through Lin Qiye's, strode off toward some undisclosed destination...
When Lin Qiye realized he was steadily approaching a couples' hotel, his face abruptly changed, and he spun around to flee the scene!
But Zhao Kongcheng gave him no such chance, twisting his arm back into a dead lock and dragging him bodily toward the hotel.
"You... what do you want? I'm warning you, I have hemorrhoids—don't try anything...!"
"...What is wrong with the brains of you high school boys? We're just finding a place to talk."
"You need a couples' hotel to talk? Didn't you see the looks people were giving us the whole way here? I'm about to fucking die of embarrassment!"
"You don't understand anything. This is a safe house. There's no other meaning to bringing you here. Besides—do I look like... like that kind of man?!"
Zhao Kongcheng rolled his eyes, dragged the struggling Lin Qiye to the front desk, and threw the slack-jawed receptionist an extravagantly greasy wink.
"One Dynamic Passion themed king-bed suite, thank you."
Lin Qiye: ...
The receptionist froze solid. After a brief system reboot, she grew inexplicably, tremendously excited!
"Yes—yes of course, sir! I'll need your ID, and this little... little comrade, your ID as well, please."
Forced to hand over his ID, Lin Qiye eyed the vibrating receptionist strangely, wondering just what fangirl-bait storyline she was writing in her head...
Not that he could blame her. Late at night, a middle-aged man dragging a teenage boy into a couples' hotel for a king-bed room—a Dynamic Passion suite, no less—claiming they were "just going to talk"... who on earth would believe that?!
"Here's your keycard, room 3966. I wish you both... a most pleasant stay!" The receptionist beamed at Lin Qiye's put-upon face, her eyes narrowing into happy slits.
Lin Qiye's fists hardened.
"What are you standing there for? Up we go." Zhao Kongcheng towed Lin Qiye toward the elevator.
Only after they'd carded into the room, and Lin Qiye saw the dazzling array of marvelous fixtures with his own innocent eyes, did he understand how creatively the rich amused themselves...
Passionate indeed!
Zhao Kongcheng bolted the door and finally released Lin Qiye, walking straight to the motorized bed and sitting down, letting his body—rigid from a full day's stakeout—finally relax.
"Relax, it's really just a talk." Zhao Kongcheng laughed and swore at the sight of Lin Qiye's braced-for-battle expression.
Lin Qiye sighed and sat on the sofa by the door. "What do you want to talk about?"
"You, obviously."
"Lin Qiye. Male. Seventeen. Single. Height 175. Weight..."
"You know that's not what I mean." Zhao Kongcheng pressed a hand to his forehead, and with the other pointed at Lin Qiye's eyes. "I mean those. Your eyes."
Lin Qiye fell silent.
"You've seen Michael?"
At those words, Lin Qiye's body trembled faintly. He hesitated a long while, then gave a small nod.
Sure enough—this man knew a great deal. And the power behind him... was anything but simple.
The question had also handed Lin Qiye one important piece of information: the seraph he'd seen ten years ago was the renowned King of Angels, Michael.
Seeing him nod, Zhao Kongcheng's heart finally settled, and the look he turned on Lin Qiye grew hotter and hotter.
"Why did He seek you out? What did He say to you? How far can you use your Forbidden Ruins now?"
The questions came like chain-fired cannonballs. Lin Qiye's brow creased, and he shook his head.
"You ask too many questions."
Zhao Kongcheng realized he'd lost his composure and gave a dry laugh. "Fair enough. You must have a mountain of questions of your own right now. So let me answer yours first. Ask whatever you want."
Lin Qiye considered for a moment, looked Zhao Kongcheng in the eye, and asked his first question. "In this world... do the gods of mythology truly exist?"
"They exist." Zhao Kongcheng nodded without the slightest hesitation. "But not all gods exist."
"Meaning what?"
Zhao Kongcheng sank into thought, as if deciding where to begin. "What do you think mythology is?"
Lin Qiye thought about it. "The spiritual refuge of the ancients? Their fear of, and fantasies about, the unknown powers of nature?"
"You're not wrong." Zhao Kongcheng nodded. "Until a hundred years ago, that's what everyone believed."
"A hundred years ago?"
"That's right. Before the Mist appeared, there had never been a single trace of a god in this world." Zhao Kongcheng's eyes narrowed slightly. "But after the Mist that swallowed the Earth appeared, everything... changed.
"September 1922—the year after the Mist appeared—one of the Mist survey teams Great Xia dispatched observed, over the Mariana Trench, an ultra-massive dragon in slow flight across the sky. That was the first mythological creature ever observed in human history.
"Research and verification concluded that the dragon was the chaos dragon of the Bible—Leviathan, a being said to have been made by God. Its discovery flatly overturned the worldview of Great Xia's entire leadership. They understood that from the coming of that fog onward, the world was no longer what it had been.
"The Mist had only just appeared then, and all of Great Xia was gripped by panic. For the sake of national stability, the leadership concealed the survey's findings.
"And as the first mythological creature humanity ever observed, the chaos dragon Leviathan was assigned the code 001 by Great Xia's leadership. As further mythological creatures were discovered in later surveys, the numbering simply continued downward.
"The seraph you saw—Michael—was the third mythological creature humanity observed, in 1928. Code 003."
"1928?" Lin Qiye blinked. "We didn't have the technology for moon landings back then, did we? How did they find a seraph on the moon?"
"We didn't find Him." Zhao Kongcheng shook his head. "In March 1928, a beam of golden sword-light issued from the moon, crossed space, and razed a great volcano in North America to the ground. Only then did we learn that a god stood upon the moon."
"North America? What was there?"
"A year later, our survey team finally reached that volcano. And in the ruins, they discovered god number 004, sealed within a Divine Ruins..."
Zhao Kongcheng paused, then continued:
"The fallen angel. Lucifer."