Free Web NovelSir Aiwen’s gritted voice came through, “Of course I saw it, but you’ve also drawn an even more troublesome opponent! Don’t dally in battle, return to my side immediately, I have a way to deal with that Plague Doctor’s Black Hand!”
“No problem! I’m coming right now!”
Lynn said nothing more, adjusted his bearings, and sped off, piloting the Little Fiancée toward the direction of the four Root-level titans’ blood-soaked battle.
Huge explosions kept detonating around him.
The battlefield’s situation had become unprecedentedly chaotic.
“Big Brother Aiwen, be honest with me, who exactly is that Root in the sky?! Is she really the Black Hand who’s been behind the Plague Doctor all along?!” Lynn shouted into the storm, sparks and lightning trailing him as he flew.
Sir Aiwen gritted his teeth and said in Lynn’s mind, “Yes, a Fallen Angel, but so far no one has truly seen her face, and no one knows what she really is. If nothing unexpected happens, this should be the first time in thousands of years that she’s formally appeared before the world!”
But Lynn instantly heard the concealment in Sir Aiwen’s words.
Lynn said deeply, “Don’t hide it from me, Big Brother Aiwen. Tell me the truth. That Fallen Angel in the sky, the Sovereign behind the Plague Doctor, is she really our Matriarch?!”
At these words,
he could clearly feel a tremor in Sir Aiwen’s consciousness linked to him.
Then came a long silence.
Lynn pushed up his Monocle and said solemnly, “Am I right? There’s actually no so-called external Black Hand, the root of everything comes from our revered Matriarch. Whether Night Doctors or Plague Doctors, none of them are mere traitors blaming each other. They chose two different doctrines of the Matriarch: one Chaotic Evil, one Lawful Good. That’s why for thousands of years our City of Night has never been able to completely purge the Plague Doctors, right?!”
Like two sides of a mirror.
If the Night Doctors were the bright, righteous face, then the Plague Doctors were their warped reverse!
There was never an outside Evil God interfering.
Because from beginning to end there was only one root!
Sir Aiwen’s gaze was complicated. He knew this young man named Lynn had always been exceptionally clever, and that Lynn carried some special ability to pierce through a person’s identity. Yet at this moment, when Lynn laid the question bare before him, Aiwen did not know how to answer.
Just like nearly three thousand years ago.
After the first great split within the Night Doctor alignment, he, as the strongest Monarch taken in by the Matriarch, personally took over the investigation into the Plague Doctors’ schism.
He searched continuously, probed continuously.
And when he gradually approached the truth, he regretted it.
The Matriarch was pure and holy.
That was beyond doubt.
But he had overlooked one thing: how could a deity capable of falling into hell not be at all influenced and twisted by this Dark World?
The brighter you are, the more catastrophic your corruption when you’re consumed by darkness!
Sometimes,
that corruption happens silently, without you even noticing!
Like that night nearly three thousand years ago, when he guessed the truth and shoved open the underground palace door.
He saw with his own eyes the massive wings that continuously generated dark power under the torment of distortion and pain. Beneath the barbed chains, those golden feathers gradually turned from shimmering gold into terrifying pitch-black. The once-beautiful face, nearly twisted by agony, became pale and venomous amid rising malice.
A falling hatred.
A loss of all sanity.
In that instant a hideous, venomous expression had written itself across her face.
In that state of being invaded by hell, she was almost merging with the curse upon her, and he knew very well that if that process were ever completed, she would irrevocably become an unsolvable, insane root within this hell!
“She is our Matriarch.”
Finally,
Sir Aiwen’s complex voice echoed in Lynn’s mind.
Lynn’s long-standing doubt at last cleared like mist dispersing when those words sounded,
and his gaze became unsettled.
“Or rather,” Sir Aiwen’s deep voice continued,
“this is the Matriarch after being corroded by this hell. She has independent thought now, a deathly goddess whose eternal objective is madness and malice, a nightmare living within the Matriarch’s heart.”
Lynn took a deep breath and said solemnly,
“So the reason you rarely leave the City of Night is because…”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
But he had more or less guessed the rest.
Except for special reasons, Sir Aiwen rarely left the City of Night. He always said it was because of lost data, but it now seemed there were deeper reasons.
Sir Aiwen fell silent.
For a long time.
His hoarse, taciturn voice finally came through.
“Yes.”
He was the first to discover the Plague Doctors’ truth and the Matriarch’s secret, and until then the only one who knew.
He had never told anyone about it, and he had worked to prevent anyone from approaching that truth.
The reason was simple.
Because this was essentially a mutual redemption.
Just as when he fell into confusion and wandering in the world, it was the Matriarch who first reached out to him, pulling him out of that shattered hell.
So after learning that brutal truth, he did everything possible to guard it.
Because he knew.
Once the thing was exposed, the faith of the Night Doctors—the Matriarch they cherished—would shatter overnight.
After all, who could accept that their immaculate Matriarch, a Sacred Angel from the Upper World, was the mastermind behind the Plague Doctors, the monster spreading madness and evil across the world?
So he kept seeking a solution.
At the same time,
as long as he stayed in the City of Night as much as possible, his constant presence acted as a deterrent, preventing the dark side within the Matriarch from acting rashly.
It had almost become a terrifying balance.
Because he could not remove the evil consciousness within the Matriarch’s body, and that evil consciousness did not dare to fully tear away and fight him, they had been locked in stalemate for thousands of years, making him nearly a guardian of a prison.
“Then… does the Matriarch know about this?” Lynn asked, brow furrowed.
Sir Aiwen’s voice became hoarse, “She does not know, and I dare not let her know, because it’s almost unsolvable. As long as the curse on her exists for a single day, that nightmare will never vanish. Like my memory, it is a shackle this hell has imposed on us. Even if she knew, it would only intensify pain and chaos, having no useful effect.”
Cannot suppress.
Cannot remove.
Like a cancer that spreads, one day it will take your life.
All you can do is try to delay the process, to prevent the degeneration from accelerating.
That is why he guarded the secret.
No matter how many times he wanted to tell the Matriarch everything, in the end he chose silence and strove to keep her from thinking along those lines.
“But if that’s the case!”
Lynn suddenly looked up, frowned at Aiwen’s direction, clenched his fist and demanded,
“Then why are you taking part in this operation? Why do you insist on coming to this Cursed City?! Wouldn’t staying in the City of Night be a better choice for you?!”
Yes!
If you already know about the Matriarch’s split consciousness, why leave her side?
There was no necessary reason for the Night Doctors to interfere here at all!
This was a battle between the Flesh and Blood Cult and the Mechanical Cult—so what if the Plague Doctors were involved?!
He couldn’t understand it.
Why would Sir Aiwen come here? Could it really be just to deal with those negligible Plague Doctors?
Silence.
A long silence.
It even overshadowed the thunderous explosions erupting on the battlefield.
Finally, he saw Aiwen’s eyes turning toward him from afar in the heat of battle, and he saw that look filled with countless inscrutable meanings.
“You still don’t understand, Lynn.”
“You have long since become the hope upon which the Matriarch and I can possibly escape all of this…”
