Free Web NovelSnow began to fall from the sky.
After the doomsday-like gale had swept through, Blackrock Star seemed to return to silence. Snowflakes drifted down little by little, covering the black earth.
Among the ruins of collapsed walls and broken structures, a figure lay on the ground. Judging by the outline not yet buried by snow, it was a young boy whose frame had not fully grown in.
He lay on the soft ground with his eyes tightly shut, as if he had completely lost consciousness.
Cold snowflakes landed on that snow-white cheek, then on the long, curled lashes, the bridge of his nose, his lips...
In a haze, the boy on the ground seemed to be startled awake by that piercing chill.
His lashes trembled slightly, and then a pair of pale golden eyes slowly opened.
The moment the light entered his vision, the boy’s pupils contracted faintly.
Where was he...?
Wen Yuzhi touched his cheek.
His fingertips came away cold.
...Water?
He stared blankly at the droplets on his fingers.
But Wen Yuzhi quickly realized where the droplets had come from.
A vast field of white came into view. He lifted his head and discovered that snow had begun falling at some point.
And what surprised him even more was that it was already night.
The light he had just seen had actually been moonlight.
The bright, clean moonlight spilled down, illuminating cold, solemn stone pillars, as well as sections of ruined walls that had long since broken apart.
...Where was this?
Clutching his head, Wen Yuzhi struggled up from the ground. The moment he stood, the snow that had collected on his cloak slid off in soft cascades.
But Wen Yuzhi paid it no mind. He reached out and felt around on the ground, as though searching for something.
At last, not far from where he had fallen, he spotted the dagger Chong Fengxue had given him lying in a crack between the stones.
Luckily, he had not lost it.
Wen Yuzhi hurried over, picked it up, and gripped it tightly in his hand.
At the moment, he had no idea where he was. Chong Fengshuang and the others from the hunting team were nowhere to be seen, and the white wolf was not nearby either...
Because of that, Wen Yuzhi did not dare relax.
He kept reminding himself of what Chong Fengshuang and Chong Fengxue had told him.
On Blackrock Star, things became extremely dangerous after nightfall. This was when stray beasts were most active.
If you failed to make it back to the base before dark and had to spend the night outside, you had to be extremely careful.
Considering what had happened with the beast tide the night before, Wen Yuzhi needed a weapon to defend himself. ƒree𝑤ebnσvel.com
Even though a dagger did not provide much sense of security, it was the only weapon Wen Yuzhi could find right now.
After tucking the dagger close against himself, Wen Yuzhi finally had the chance to observe his surroundings.
He had been brought here by that sandstorm.
Before that, he and Chong Fengshuang had been near a sand dune. When the sandstorm hit, the whole world had gone dark.
He had heard the white wolf roaring, and he had heard Chong Fengshuang calling for him, but Wen Yuzhi had been unable to respond.
Wrapped in the gale, he had been unable even to keep his footing, much less move toward Chong Fengshuang and the others.
And now it seemed they had been separated by the sandstorm.
...The only question was where exactly he had ended up.
Wen Yuzhi brushed the snow from himself and started walking forward.
This place seemed to be the ruins of some kind of structure.
There were countless stone pillars around him, along with enormous blocks of fallen stone scattered everywhere.
Wen Yuzhi approached one of the pillars and discovered that it was carved with exquisite reliefs. But after years of wind and sun, those carvings had become mottled and blurred.
He checked five or six pillars in a row. Nearly all of them bore traces of relief work, and every one featured a different pattern.
And looking out into the distance, there seemed to be well over a hundred pillars like these.
To carve every one of them had clearly required an enormous undertaking.
It was easy to imagine how overwhelming the sight must once have been, back when these pillars still stood together in unbroken lines.
As for why Wen Yuzhi said once...
It was because the pillars before him had obviously been abandoned for many years. Some were broken, some had collapsed, and even the reliefs bore the scars of wind erosion and water damage.
On several pillars, he even found fractured sections that looked as though they had once been burned by intense fire, the surfaces still charred black to this day.
Walking through this place, the first thing he felt was a lifeless desolation.
Moonlight spilled down, and the pillars rose tall and broad, still faintly reflecting the grandeur they must once have had.
Seeing all this, Wen Yuzhi already had a vague guess in his heart about what this place was.
Blackstone City.
Chong Fengshuang had mentioned it to him before. From the scale of the place alone, it was obvious that the buildings here must once have been extraordinarily tall and imposing.
Wen Yuzhi’s eyes showed a trace of surprise. Pulling his cloak tighter around himself, he glanced at the dark night sky overhead, then at the unfamiliar surroundings.
He had no idea what lay farther ahead if he kept walking. So ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) in the end, Wen Yuzhi decided that tonight, he would stay here and rest for the time being. Once it was daytime and a little safer, he would look for the way back.
It was a good plan.
Unfortunately, his luck today was truly terrible. Just as he made up his mind, Wen Yuzhi heard the faint sound of footsteps behind him.
He turned around and saw pairs of scarlet eyes fixed tightly on him.
Wen Yuzhi: “...”
The worst-case scenario had arrived.
Those stray beasts were here too.
Looking at this pack of ill-fated enemies crossing his path again, Wen Yuzhi felt a headache coming on, but he still drew the dagger immediately.
And the stray beasts clearly had no intention of letting this human go.
Every living thing on Blackrock Star lacked food. They had already been starving for so long their bellies were burning with hunger.
That fierce starvation drove them to devour large amounts of flesh and blood to replenish their energy.
And to them, a living human was undoubtedly the best source of nourishment.
The tension in the air gradually thickened. The battle was on the verge of erupting at any second.
...
While Wen Yuzhi was falling into danger on this side, on the other side—not far from the pillars—Xi Heyan was walking among the ruined remains.
He watched his surroundings.
Even though these buildings had already been mostly destroyed, Xi Heyan could still find traces of familiarity in them.
He had once lived here for five years.
Before he turned five, these ruins had been his home.
Every street here, every corner, had once been walked by a child skipping through them.
When the adults saw him, they would smile and greet him. When the children saw him, they would teasingly call out to him—
“Little General.”
“One day Little General’s going to lead us all in conquering the star sea!”
“We’ll fight together to protect the Empire!”
Back then, Xi Heyan’s greatest worry had probably been whether he ought to learn from his father how to go to war and kill on the battlefield, or study with his mother and grandfather how to build mechs, or else follow in his aunt’s footsteps and become a respected researcher.
But those had all been tiny, trivial worries from childhood. His life had still stretched long ahead of him, and under the protection of his elders, he had had more than enough time to think about what he truly liked.
The Xi Heyan of that time probably could not have imagined that his future self would make his life’s choice under such unimaginably brutal circumstances.
At that thought, Xi Heyan lowered his eyes, and the memory cut off there. freewebnøvel.com
He stopped walking.
Without realizing it, Xi Heyan had arrived at a wide open space.
In the middle of these broken ruins, this place alone had miraculously remained intact.
Rows upon rows of gravestones stood here.
Each bore a name. On the farthest stones, the names had already begun to fade. The closer the stones were to the front, the fresher the markings became.
Xi Heyan stood before them.
He stood there in silence, his head lowered slightly, his face hidden in the dark so completely that it was impossible to make out his expression.
And in front of him stood four brand-new gravestones.
Carved into them were four names—
Xi Yuelin, Xi Shixiao, Lena Damian, and August Damian.
Beside those names was another line in smaller lettering:
Evil still lingers, but souls of light shall endure forever.
Clearly, this was a cemetery.
At a glance, the gravestones here were so densely packed they seemed to stretch on without end. More than half of them were still new, as though they had only been raised not long ago.
Looking at them, Xi Heyan’s gaze darkened.
He lifted a hand and lightly brushed away the dust on one of the stones.
The gravestones had stood here year-round, but there was not much dust on them, and the surrounding area had been kept very clean, as though people came often to pay their respects.
Xi Heyan was not surprised.
He set down what he had brought in front of the gravestone.
It was a moon brooch broken cleanly in two.
Looking at it, Xi Heyan lowered his eyes and said, “Bernard’s mental sea is beyond saving. Now he can only lie in bed every day, tormented by nightmares, relying on machines and drugs to stay alive. I used the same method to make him suffer the pain you once endured.”
“But that still isn’t enough.”
Xi Heyan spoke without expression.
“The blood debt for the tens of thousands of lives on Blackrock Star still has to be repaid.”
When he said that, even his voice carried a cold, unshakable finality.
But he did not stay long.
Even though he had countless things he wanted to tell his family in person, he hoped even more that the next time he spoke to them, everything would already be over.
And when that day came, he would also tell his parents that he had made a friend.
A little young master with a very lovable temperament, and very soft too.
As if thinking of something, the coldness in Xi Heyan’s eyes faded slightly, and a faint smile gradually surfaced.
Just as he was about to leave, however, the roar of stray beasts ripped through the silent night.
Xi Heyan instantly judged that the source of the noise was not far from where he was now.
...Should he go take a look?
He hesitated for a moment.
But the burst of mental-energy fluctuation that erupted from that direction instantly erased that hesitation.
Someone was there.
His expression sharpened. Without wasting another second, he immediately rushed toward the source.
Among the forest of stone pillars, Wen Yuzhi gripped the dagger and finished off yet another stray beast charging at him.
His face was very pale, and the cloak draped over him had already been torn to shreds by fangs and claws, but Wen Yuzhi showed not the slightest sign of discouragement.
On the contrary, his eyes were bright, like the most dazzling and beautiful gems in the world.
There was not much method to his attacks.
After all, before this, Wen Yuzhi had never held a weapon like a dagger in his hand. The sharpest things he had ever had access to were kitchen knives.
And yet Wen Yuzhi learned frighteningly fast.
He had only seen once how Chong Fengxue used a dagger to kill those stray beasts. Following her example, Wen Yuzhi had already learned how to find the weak points on their bodies with precision.
If one stab could not kill them, then he would stab again.
And perhaps because his mental energy had grown stronger, Wen Yuzhi felt his body becoming lighter and more nimble too.
With mental energy supporting him, Wen Yuzhi was just barely able to hold off the few stray beasts in front of him on his own.
And he did not fight them head-on. Instead, he used the surrounding pillars to split the pack apart.
Very quickly, only one stray beast remained alive at the scene.
And this one was the hardest to deal with.
Like the fire-spitting beast from before, it had a special ability of its own.
What it spat was venom.
Seeing the black liquid corrode the ground into a hollow, Wen Yuzhi’s expression turned serious.
He could not let that liquid touch him.
Lips pressed tight, Wen Yuzhi’s breathing grew a little hurried. All the running he had done just now had nearly exhausted his strength.
He had to find a chance to kill this stray beast quickly. If this dragged on any longer and his stamina ran out, then he would probably become its dinner.
There was no way he was going to get eaten by something that ugly.
With that thought, Wen Yuzhi made a risky move.
He stopped dodging and charged straight at the stray beast head-on.
The beast froze for a second. It probably could not understand why the human who had been darting around like a slippery fish had suddenly stopped running.
But seeing delicious food deliver itself right to its mouth, the stray beast was instantly thrilled. It opened wide, ready to enjoy its meal.
Then Wen Yuzhi vanished from right in front of it.
The stray beast went completely blank.
When it lifted its head, it saw that the skinny little human had somehow appeared above it, and spread behind him was a pair of white wings.
In that brief instant of stunned delay, the dagger in Wen Yuzhi’s hand had already slashed open its throat.
By the time Xi Heyan arrived, he happened to witness Wen Yuzhi killing the last stray beast with his own eyes.
The instant the dagger sliced through flesh, warm blood gushed out, scattering like raindrops across the snow.
It dyed the pure white ground a vivid red.
And the boy holding the dagger stood right in the middle of that snow, with several stray beast corpses piled at his feet.
Wen Yuzhi himself seemed utterly oblivious to it. With visible distaste, he shoved away the stray beast that had just died.
Perhaps because of that motion, the shredded cloak that had been hanging from his body slipped down at that moment, revealing the silver hair hidden beneath—brighter even than the moonlight.
Xi Heyan’s eyes sank at once.
And sensing an unfamiliar presence drawing near, Wen Yuzhi turned sharply in that direction as well. The battle intent had not yet faded from his pale golden eyes. Cold and indifferent, they reflected the other person’s figure.
It was an unfamiliar man.
He wore a fitted black combat uniform. He was tall, with long legs, and a gun was strapped at the lean waist defined by his belt.
He stepped forward two paces in heavy military boots.
That movement brought him out of the dark and into the full brightness of the moonlight.
Only then did Wen Yuzhi realize that the man before him was strikingly handsome.
His brows and eyes were cool and remote, his features deep-set, and his pale skin only sharpened the chill he gave off. The fitted black combat uniform on his body, combined with that forceful, razor-edged aura, made him seem like a blade already drawn from its sheath.
And beneath those black, slightly tousled bangs was a pair of dark, distant eyes.
The moment Wen Yuzhi met them, he had the sudden feeling of falling into a deep darkness.
His lashes trembled almost imperceptibly.
“Who are you?”
