Chapter 17
Ling Xu held her breath, imagining a woman with blazing red hair standing amidst ruin, a flute at her lips producing notes inaudible to ordinary ears yet felt deep within the bones, like tremors rising from the earth's core.
"The Singer," Huan Zheng continued, his voice growing softer, more careful, like someone tending to an old wound that still bled, "in my memory… she always stood between fractures of light and silent destruction. Her red hair flowed like embers that refused to fade in a world on the verge of collapse, and the green flute at her lips was not merely an instrument—but the final breath of the remaining harmony. Every unheard note seemed to hold reality together, preventing it from completely shattering."
He paused, picking up a piece of charcoal from the dying campfire, turning it aimlessly between his fingers before continuing in a tone almost like a whisper.
"One of her eyes was closed, as if refusing to witness a truth too cruel, while the other glowed faintly, reflecting secrets never spoken. Around her, space and time split like glass forced to remember old wounds, yet she remained still—calm, almost fragile—as though she were both the center of the storm and the reason it had not yet consumed everything."
Ling Xu felt her chest tighten.
Not because of the plague of cancer, but because the image was too vivid, too real, as if she was not hearing a story, but witnessing a goddess dancing upon a stage made of the universe's ruins.
"You seem to know her very well," Ling Xu said carefully, her eyes studying Huan Zheng, trying to read something behind the man's lazy facade.
"Have you met her before?"
Huan Zheng smiled—a strangely bitter smile, like someone swallowing medicine too bitter but drinking it anyway because there was no other choice.
"We have all met her, Miss Poison. But most of us don't realize it, because when she sings, you won't remember anything afterward. Only an emptiness in your chest, and the urge to cry without knowing why."
The dying campfire suddenly flared back to life.
Not because of the wind, not because Ling Xu added wood, but because of something emanating from Huan Zheng's body—something warm, yet strangely unlike ordinary fire, more like a presence too heavy to be explained with words.
Huan Zheng exhaled, then continued in a voice that sounded like someone recounting his own dream—a dream too strange to believe, yet too clear to ignore.
"Then there's number two," he said, and for a moment, his voice trembled—brief, faint, almost imperceptible, but Ling Xu, who had spent too long with him, caught it like catching a butterfly between her fingers, "nicknamed The Lazy One. As the name suggests. A man with golden-blonde hair—like the sun that fell from the sky and chose to hide among ordinary humans, because he was too lazy to return to where he belonged."
Ling Xu frowned, trying to imagine a man with golden hair standing amidst destruction, yet instead of fighting or fleeing, he… yawned.
"That Lazy One," Huan Zheng continued, his voice now strangely gentle, like someone caressing a memory too precious to share yet too heavy to bear alone, "in my memory… he always smiled at the brink of destruction. His golden hair reflected dim light like a sun long fallen from the sky. The streaks of blood on his face were not wounds, but a kind of signature of fate—as if every battle he endured only clarified who he truly was."
He paused, staring at his own hands—dirty hands, fingers never neat, nails always cut too short because he was too lazy to care for them properly.
"His gaze was sharp yet relaxed, filled with quiet irony, like someone who had already seen the end of all possibilities and chose to keep laughing. Amid the pulsating fractures of reality behind him, he stood unshaken, carrying a chaotic aura that felt controlled—as if destruction was not something he feared, but something he understood, perhaps even… something he welcomed."
Ling Xu fell silent.
She looked at Huan Zheng—truly looked at him, from his messy hair, his half-lidded eyes, the corner of his lips that always seemed to hold back a smile even when it didn't—and for a moment, she saw something she had never seen before.
The image of a man with golden hair standing atop a pile of corpses, yawning, then laughing—a laugh that was not mocking, not arrogant, but weary, like someone who had seen death too many times and forgotten what fear felt like.
"You… you describe him as if you're looking into a mirror," Ling Xu said softly, her voice trembling despite her effort to remain calm.
"Huan Zheng, who exactly—"
But Huan Zheng had already raised his hand, signaling her to be silent, while smiling that same empty smile—the kind that made Ling Xu want to cry without knowing why.
"Not finished yet, Miss Poison. There's still one more."
Huan Zheng stood—for the first time that night, he stood, leaving behind the wrinkled bamboo mat worn by his lazy rolling, and walked toward the edge of the cliff, where waves crashed against the rocks with a sound like long-suppressed fury.
The night wind lifted his messy hair, and in the fading glow of the embers, Ling Xu noticed something strange about his shadow.
The shadow did not move with his body.
It remained still, frozen, like a statue made of darkness, and around it, the air vibrated at a frequency no human ear could hear.
"The last one," Huan Zheng said, his voice sounding distant despite standing only three steps away from Ling Xu, "is number one. The most feared. The least seen. Nicknamed The Silent One—or more often, The Silent Terror."
Ling Xu swallowed, her throat dry despite having drunk tea just hours before.
Her heart pounded faster, as if something within her recognized that name, even though she was certain she had never heard it before.
"The Silent One," Huan Zheng continued, and this time his voice truly changed—not lazy, not flat, but heavy, like iron sinking into the bottom of a well, "in my memory… he stood with his head slightly lowered, his dark red hair absorbing light like embers that chose to burn in silence. His features were rigid, carved by experiences that never allowed room for softness, while his eyes—glowing in a color not entirely human—gazed upon the world with cold exhaustion and irreversible resolve."
He turned, looking at Ling Xu with eyes that—for a moment—shifted into a pale blue, the same blue as the night at Xuelan Camp when he killed dozens with a single kick, the same blue as when he danced and tore So Weihao's body apart with his movements.
"The fractures of reality around him reflected his figure countless times, as if showing how many versions of himself had been destroyed to reach this point," Huan Zheng continued, his voice growing deeper, heavier, like someone reciting an epitaph for an unclaimed grave, "yet he remained standing, his breath heavy but steady, like someone no longer fighting to win—but merely ensuring that when everything ends, the world will remember that he once existed, and that his existence could never be ignored."
To be continued…