Different Paths

The crimson setting sun sank behind the great wall, casting long shadows that shrouded the entire town. Light and dark stood like mirror images of each other, blending at the boundary formed at the moment of dusk.

In places hidden from sight, much darkness and evil still occurred in the shadows: the trading of contraband, bloody and violent conflicts, and gang skirmishes. Beneath the surface of this seemingly peaceful town, undercurrents surged.

Time was a fair and silent ruler.

For everyone, time flowed equally and uniformly. Within the constantly advancing stream of time, the base would spend their days in empty, hollow pleasure, while the obsessed would bury themselves in the absurdity of their own desolation.

The stars were sparse, and the moon shone bright. As the season slowly stepped into late autumn, the weather became increasingly cold and dry. The celestial body hanging in the vast starry river emitted an eerie purple glow, like a giant opening his eye in the pitch-black night sky. From the ground, one could clearly see the scars on the celestial body’s surface and the purple dust veiling it—craters thousands of kilometers in diameter and the asteroid belt surrounding it after ancient impacts.

What kind of world did they truly inhabit?

What kind of existence was the planet beneath their feet in the grand universe?

How deep and mysterious was the universe?

No one could provide an answer to these questions. To every individual, the universe was an enigma. The space stations and satellites established in near-earth orbit were but a grain of sand in the vast starry river, insufficient to prove that humanity had truly left its footprint in the cosmos.

Existing technology could not even unveil the shroud of the planet they stood upon. Distances between hive cities often spanned millions of kilometers; based on the known number of hive cities, the volume and mass of this planet would surpass everyone's imagination.

Only when people completely escaped the harassment of urban eldritch creatures and stepped onto the journey of exploring the starry sky above would it mean their golden age had truly arrived.

In the distance, the firelight occasionally reflected within the giant walls dyed the sky a golden red, silently recounting the unrest of the night.

On an open-air rooftop, two figures sat on unfolded folding chairs, clinking glasses. One toast was to those fighting the noble battle inside the great walls; another was to the brilliant starry sky above.

"Teacher, your body..."

The youth nearby stepped forward, a look of worry on his face.

The man waved his hand, indicating he was fine.

"Heisenberg, that's right, isn't it?" Sebas smiled faintly at the man beside him, holding his wine glass.

"That name isn't important anymore. You were right—in my final moments, I should try to let go of those regrets. I should try to understand my daughter more in the time I have left."

Chencun Yi downed half a glass of strong whiskey in one go and let out a deep sigh.

At nearly fifty years old, he was as young as a child compared to the century-old monster beside him, but tonight, they were both simply fathers to their daughters.

"All this time, I was preoccupied with my work and ignored her feelings. I didn't realize she had already been led astray, wandering down a divergent path."

As he spoke, Chencun Yi shook the lumps of sugar in the plastic bag in his hand before Sebas. Under the eerie purple moonlight, the surfaces of the prismatic crystals reflected a soul-stirring light.

"It wasn't until I found her unconscious in the bathroom that I knew. Those wandering thugs had been taking her to bars every day to mess around, and she became addicted to this stuff because of it."

"On the way to the hospital, Haruna's heart stopped. As a chemistry teacher, I knew her cause of death very well: cardiac arrest caused by extreme overexcitement. In her final moments, she kept questioning why I never cared about her feelings."

Chencun Yi's eyes reddened, a sigh filled with helplessness.

"She was right. If I had given her a little more attention, if I had noticed her thinning body earlier, and the scars left by those moon sugar crystals, none of this would have happened."

Sebas shook his head without saying anything, slowly filling his own glass with whiskey. He hadn't touched alcohol for a very long time. The last time in his memory was over twenty years ago, back when he was still by the Madam's side. The little lady hadn't even been born yet, and he didn't look as aged as he did now; his appearance then was no different from his prime.

The Madam disliked the smell of tobacco and alcohol, so he thought he would never touch such things again in this lifetime. But who could have thought that the once infinitely glorious and peerless Specter would one day fall to the hands of illness? In the long years of combat, he had accumulated numerous chronic ailments. Even the top doctors of the Chi family were powerless against his riddled body.

His inability to protect his beloved and his failure to die alongside his old friends from the old era on the battlefield were his regrets. Yet, it was those same regrets that led him to find the most important thing in his life. People said this old wolf had clipped his own claws and ground down his teeth for the sake of that little family head.

Love makes one full of vulnerabilities. He didn't know when he had started becoming so cautious, so timid, hiding all his sharpness and learning to be tactful. From the moment he took the crying girl from the Madam's hands, the high-spirited man of old vanished, replaced by a steady, aged butler.

No longer seeking revenge for every slight, no longer acting on impulse, no longer holding pride, fame, or power in such high regard. He became someone who could endure others' angry scoldings, someone who could lower his status and endure humiliation for the sake of the little lady's safety. The old ghost from the battlefields of the old era had, in a sense, found his rebirth.

For the little lady, he forgot his past self, all his glorious history, all his regrets and remorse, existing only as Sebas to accompany her as she grew.

The two fathers talked much that night, pouring out many words hidden deep within their hearts.

Just as Chencun Yi’s face flushed red and he intended to continue speaking fueled by the alcohol, the old man beside him suddenly gained a sharp gaze. He abruptly drew a long blade, the blade bending at a divine speed almost to the point of breaking. A powerful gale surged out, and the sword intent he slashed was like a brilliant flash of lightning illuminating the boundless darkness, annihilating everything around it.

The entire rooftop was sliced cleanly in two, the cross-sections of the walls incredibly smooth as they slowly began to slide down. A deep, abyss-like rift appeared in the gloomy firmament, as if even the eerie purple full moon in the sky had been cleaved in half. Car alarms echoed in the dark night, ringing throughout the entire town.

With a single strike, he draped the night sky over Dragonfly Town in the colors of death.

Noticing the long blade pressed against his throat, Chencun Yi looked up tremblingly, swallowing hard. The shock had completely sobered him up, and his words were far from calm: "This... this is?"

"Killing," Sebas said in a flat tone.

The old man in a butler's uniform, who had looked like a terminal patient moments ago, now resembled a Specter that had crawled out from a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood on an ancient battlefield. His aura instantly restored to its peak. With every movement, he possessed a majestic and powerful momentum, the kind of majesty capable of cleaving seas and mountains, bringing Chencun Yi back to cold reality as he re-recognized the old man beside him.

After several rounds of drinks, the alcohol had nearly made him forget that the other party was a genuine prism grade fixer.

"Killing whom?"

"All the absurdity that threatens the little lady." Sharp light shot from Sebas's eyes. This long-dormant old wolf finally intended to reveal his fangs to the world once more before his end. He remained still until he moved—and when he moved, it would shake the world!

Sebas slowly withdrew the long blade from Chencun Yi's throat. "I will use my final days to sweep away all the obstacles in the little lady's path."

Watching Sebas disappear into the lonely night, Chencun Yi exhaled slowly. He slumped into his chair as if a heavy burden had been lifted, slowly wiping the sweat from his forehead. The youth beside him had already collapsed onto the ground in terror, lost and trembling.

Depression, bitterness, and humiliation—multiple intense emotions fermented in Chencun Yi's heart. He gripped the bag of moon sugar in his hand, wanting to hurl it far away. At that moment, his medical report suddenly popped up on the curtain.

Countless data points showed that the chemotherapy was working. The tumor in his lungs had receded significantly compared to the last scan. The black blood he spat out this morning was merely a side effect of the treatment...

Heisenberg tightly gripped the sugar in his hand, but in the end, he tucked it away. He patted the shoulder of the youth slumped on the ground. "Let's go, student Gao Jian."

This night was destined to be restless. A shadow of the old era would once again loom over the people's heads. The world would remember the dread that the name Specter once brought.