The Monsters All Covet Him - Chapter 26

Lin Yang had never heard of a plant called a “rose” while living in the human base; the elderly seniors there mostly described edible foods. In days where survival was a struggle, love became a hollow luxury.

His fingers cautiously touched the rose in Lin’s palm. The petals were soft to the touch, and the fragrance was intoxicating. It was no exaggeration to say that this bouquet of roses brought an incredible shock to Lin Yang.

Lin moved the rose into a flowerpot. “This rose is nurtured by my blood. Unless maliciously destroyed, it will never wither. However, it is also highly toxic; do not let the thorns scratch you.”

Lin Yang stared unblinkingly at the rose, nodding absent-mindedly.

Lin felt a surge of malice toward this rose nurtured by its own blood, wanting to destroy it. Such evil impulses had become as natural as breathing since Lin Yang appeared, eroding Lin’s mind, yet it struggled to suppress them.

Lin Yang will be unhappy.

These six words were like heavy chains, firmly binding Lin’s impulse to do evil.

“These are rose seeds; you can plant them yourself in the future. Though the roses grown from them will wither once the blooming period passes, they will not be poisonous.”

Lin Yang took the seeds, his eyes curving. “Thank you.”

Lin observed carefully. This time, Lin Yang’s smile was genuine; his dark eyes were tinged with the colors of spring and shone brightly. Lin Yang looked beautiful when he smiled, making Lin want to kiss his eyes.

They had reached a consensus regarding the conflict between monsters and humans: standing on their respective sides, they would each rely on their own abilities. Their mutual killing did not prevent them from loving each other. Whether it was Lin relying on itself to walk out of the temple and slaughter the surface, or Lin Yang successfully deceiving Lin into sparing the ground, their ending had already been written. Even if they loathed each other in the future, they would remain entangled until death.

After Lin left, Lin Yang planted the handful of seeds in a flowerpot, looking forward to them taking root, sprouting, and blooming.

00 flew in, looking worried. “Lin Yang, if the Lord Evil God truly destroys this world, will you really continue this relationship with him?”

If Lin Yang truly fell in love with the Lord Evil God and let him do as he pleased, wouldn’t these small worlds be completely finished?!

“I won’t.” Lin Yang withdrew his gaze from the rose and looked at 00 as if looking at a fool. “Everything said to deceive the evil creature was just for the sake of the conquest mission. I will never betray my position.”

He would not love his enemy, nor could he. He simply thought the rose was beautiful, nothing more.

00 felt relieved yet also a bit sad. It had obtained the answer it wanted but wasn’t happy. It gave a muffled “oh” and went out to find Linlin to sleep.

Sitting in the darkness of the room, Lin Yang reached out a finger to toy with the rose’s sharp thorns. His fingertip rubbed against a sharp thorn, and then he pressed down with a beaming smile. The thorn pierced his flesh, and toxic poison seeped into Lin Yang’s body. Black blood flowed out.

Drip, drip. It landed on the soft petals. The rose plant turned black, like a necrotic heart, and the fragrance became even more intense, saturated with a scent that enticed one into depravity.

The next morning, Lin Yang reported to Fubai on time. With the Evil God trapped by the magic circle, he had to figure out the principles of the array.

Unluckily, Lin Yang happened to sit next to the Silver Jiao named Shan. The moment they saw each other’s faces, they clearly both remembered their past grievances. Shan’s face was very sour, but it ultimately did not provoke Lin Yang again. If it truly fought Lin Yang, it would have no chance of survival; it wasn’t so stupid as to provoke a monster like Lin Yang on its own.

Yes, in Shan’s eyes, Lin Yang wasn’t human at all, but a monster. He radiated the Evil God’s aura from the inside out; calling him a fanatical follower of the Evil God wouldn’t be an overstatement.

Lin Yang ignored Shan’s sour face. He had always believed in the principle of “I will not attack unless attacked; if attacked, I will surely retaliate.” This level of sourness couldn’t affect him.

He sat down at the small stone table. Despite his annoyance with the obscure ancient language, he listened to Fubai’s explanation without missing a word; there were even notes left by Lin Yang on the spread-out white paper.

Fubai’s class lasted two hours, two sessions a day, with a half-hour break in between. Aside from Lin Yang, everyone else attending the class was a Silver Jiao.

His routine over these few days had been very regular: attend class at Fubai’s, return to study ancient books, water the rose seeds, and go to the temple to sleep with Lin. Every time he left the temple and went to Fubai’s to sit beside Shan, Shan’s loathing would deepen by a fraction. It suspected Lin Yang was simply a clone created by the Evil God; otherwise, how could he smell exactly like the Evil God, and why were the clothes he wore every day so strange?

What kind of decent clothes would make a person’s waist look so thin? It must be evil sorcery!

Lin Yang had already become immune to Shan’s daily sinister glares. In this session, Fubai finally finished the theoretical knowledge and began letting them practice.

A magic circle required the practitioner’s blood as ink. If drawn correctly, the blood would turn pure gold; if it failed, the color would remain unchanged. Opening a magic circle required paying an unknown price, mostly linked to one’s lifespan or divine consciousness this was why only Silver Jiao, and not humans, came to learn. Silver Jiao had a lifespan of a thousand years, while humans only had a hundred; in terms of endurance and physique, humans were also inferior to Silver Jiao.

However, only humans followed Fubai in innovating new arrays; Silver Jiao were not gifted in intellect.

Lin Yang cut his palm and traced the pattern of a summoning array on the small stone table according to what Fubai had said in class. As the final stroke was completed, a golden magic circle appeared. The array was only the size of a palm. Fubai said that if one’s conviction were strong enough, it would be sufficient to support the array to any location. Lin Yang’s lips curved. “Open!”

In the temple, Lin sat cross-legged on the sacrificial altar, fresh red blood pouring into the pool. It looked up at the array on the dome; the gold was becoming fainter and fainter, and it would soon be unable to withstand its power and collapse completely. The day it stepped out of the temple would be the death day of all living things on the ground.

Suddenly, a golden magic circle appeared directly in front of Lin, carrying Lin Yang’s aura.

Blood as sacrifice, incantation as guide. Seek wealth and see ghosts—Evil God, appear quickly!

Lin Yang’s voice appeared in Lin’s ear through the golden array. Lin scanned the human-made crudely constructed thing; rather than a summoning array, this circle was more like a megaphone for humans to use when striking deals with devils. Humans satisfied a hungry ghost’s greedy desires in exchange for the objects they wanted to fill the hollows in their hearts.

This was the first time Lin had met such a greedy human one who actually wanted a god.

Lin Yang looked at the unresponsive array, suspecting he had made an error. Just as he was about to erase and redraw it, a cold voice emerged from the array: “What price can you pay for this?”

Lin Yang raised an eyebrow; it was Lin’s voice. This was very similar to a mobile phone’s function in human society. He answered casually, “How about exchanging an entire wonderful night for it?”

As soon as Lin Yang’s words fell, a fresh, red, still-beating warm heart appeared on his small stone table. Uncleaned blood splashed onto Lin Yang’s pale cheek. It looked as if the Evil God had gouged it out and thrown it to him.

Lin Yang corrected his previous thought: there was still a huge difference between a magic circle and a phone.

Amidst the terrified expressions of the Silver Jiao, he wrapped the heart up. It truly wasn’t intentional; he didn’t know Lin would actually throw a heart over. Fortunately, the clone did not appear; otherwise, it would have been difficult to end things peacefully.

During the half-hour break, Lin Yang was considering taking the heart back to his residence when Little Sprout peered in from outside Fubai’s house. She called out crisply, “Brother Lin Yang! The little grass you gave me last time has sprouted! Little Sprout brought it for Brother Lin Yang to see. 00 said Brother Lin Yang was studying here; can Little Sprout come in?”

Fubai closed his book. “Little Sprout is here for Lin Yang again. Come in; you’ve raised this little grass very well.” Fubai was always soft-spoken with children and had endless patience.

Compared to Fubai, Lin Yang still didn’t know how to interact with children. He spoke dryly, “Mm, raised very well. Very impressive.”

Little Sprout held that patch of emerald green, tilting her chin up proudly. “Of course! I water it every day. 00 said Brother Lin Yang’s little grass was raised to death.” Like a little adult, she struggled to stand on tiptoe to pat Lin Yang’s shoulder. “Don’t be sad; Little Sprout can help you raise it.”

Lin Yang, sitting on the ground, gave a faint smile and nodded solemnly. “Then I must trouble you, Little Sprout.”

By the time class resumed, Little Sprout had obediently left. Lin Yang carried that heart with him until Fubai’s teaching for the day ended. He returned to Linlin’s belly and placed the heart in the blooming rose pot. His gaze brushed past—the rose seeds he had planted had sprouted. A beautiful emerald green, like a vibrant spring.

He suddenly wanted to see Lin and tell him the news of the seeds sprouting. Lin Yang couldn’t wait for dark. He climbed the chains and pushed open the temple doors just as the light faded.

Sitting on the sacrificial altar, Lin opened its silver-white eyes. The breathless Lin Yang, enveloped by those eyes, realized he hadn’t brought the flowerpot up; Lin couldn’t see the sprouted seeds. Lin Yang calmed his breathing and walked up the blood-stained steps, a hint of a smile on his lips—no different from Little Sprout when she came to show off to him that afternoon. “Lin, those rose seeds you gave me have sprouted. Do you want to go and see them with me?”

Black silk threads climbed up Lin Yang’s ankles. Lin’s silver eyes were infected by Lin Yang’s smile. “Is this what the human world calls a ‘date’?”

Lin Yang said loftily, “You can interpret it as that.”

Lin’s true body could not leave the temple; it was a clone that went to the surface with Lin Yang. This was the first time in thousands of years that Lin Yang had experienced such an impatient mood. He was almost running, his long dark hair flying freely in the wind, his brilliant smile more dazzling than flowers in midsummer.

A few seconds later, the smile on Lin Yang’s face turned deathly still.

Linlin was gone.

The tall Giant Stone Monster that had stood on the ground had been smashed to pieces. The enclosed space was exposed to the empty night. The stone bed and wardrobe were completely wrecked. The rose Lin Yang had placed in the window had been crushed to a pulp under a Silver Jiao’s foot. The tender sprout that had newly grown today was withered and dead.

A black cross stood upon these ruins, with the Evil God doll Lin Yang had painstakingly mended hanging from it. In front of the ruins lay the body of Little Sprout, turned into a pincushion by feathered arrows. In her hand, she still tightly clutched the little green grass.