The Monsters All Covet Him - Chapter 31

Lin Lin looked down at the tiny person before him. He had striking features, but his entire being was shrouded in a thick aura of sorrow.

The giant rock’s voice was childish. “You are a human. Are you not afraid of me? I am a monster; all the humans here are afraid of monsters.”

Lin Yang walked around to Lin Lin’s back. Sure enough, he saw a brightly colored snake. He drove the snake away and answered Lin Lin’s question. “I am a monster too. Does that mean we can be friends now? My name is Lin Yang.”

“Of course! Lin Lin is willing to be good friends with Lin Yang! Even though humans are afraid of Lin Lin, Lin Lin likes humans. I also like monsters that look like humans—I like Lin Yang!”

“Good. I’ll see you next time.”

With Lin Lin as a guide, Lin Yang spent much less time navigating out of the giant stone labyrinth.

Fu Bai had said there would be a war between the Silver Jiao and humanity the next day, and Lin had said that all wishes made would be fulfilled. He wanted to see with his own eyes how this so-called fulfillment of a prayer actually worked.

After exiting the forest, Lin Yang encountered humans. They drove past him in a four-wheeled vehicle before coming to a stop.

The window rolled down. The driver was a woman in her thirties, a cigarette between her fingers. Her skin was a dark, chocolate-like texture, and her black eyes were incredibly captivating. “Did you go exploring in the forbidden zone? It’s hard to catch a ride here; I’ll take you to town.”

Lin Yang thanked her politely.

Thanks to the woman, a journey that would have taken four days on foot was completed before sunrise. Lin Yang reached the seaside just as the slaughter began.

The humans had weapons—not the crudely made harpoons of a hundred years later, but genuine firearms and artillery.

However, the bodies of the Silver Jiao could mimic water. When thermal weapons struck them, they were simply swallowed into the water and gently spat back out; the damage caused was zero.

Conversely, the sharp claws of the Silver Jiao could tear through human tissue, and their condensed water rings could drown humans instantly.

The scales of victory were still tilting heavily toward the Silver Jiao.

Lin Yang scanned the battlefield. The number of humans was dwindling. These clashing humans and Silver Jiao passed right through Lin Yang’s transparent body, bringing verdicts of life and death.

Lin Yang spotted Fu Bai.

Fu Bai was not on the battlefield; he was hiding in the waist-high grass where Lin Yang had first woken up, tensely observing the situation.

Just as humanity was about to be completely wiped out, something eerie happened.

The Silver Jiao suddenly turned their blades against their own kind. Silver Jiao began killing Silver Jiao.

Another portion of them seemed to be struck by a vile curse, exploding on the spot.

In less than ten minutes, out of nearly a thousand Silver Jiao, only a handful remained alive. Thick blood stained the coastal waters and golden sands red, and a suffocating stench of iron fouled the air of the entire area.

It was the smell of death.

The surviving humans were dazed at first. Seconds later, realizing all the participating Silver Jiao were dead, they began to embrace and cheer.

“It is the protection of the gods!”

“The gods have manifested!”

“I knew that temple was something special!”

In the tall grass, Fu Bai showed a gratified smile. Summoning the Evil God was not something he could have achieved alone. With this great victory, he could just barely face the thousand people who had died.

Everyone had voluntarily sacrificed their lives to exchange for the descent of the Evil God.

Since death was inevitable anyway, they decided to take a gamble. Clearly, they had won.

Lin Yang noticed a black mist gradually emerging from the bodies of the dead Silver Jiao. These mists gathered together, surging restlessly in one direction.

Lin Yang turned around. That was the direction of the temple.

The moment Lin Yang left, Lin who had been lying in the pool immediately opened his eyes. The voices in his head from earlier still left him uneasy; Lin Yang was hiding a secret.

He followed Lin Yang out of the temple, but upon reaching the giant stone labyrinth, Lin froze in place.

He couldn’t remember why he had left the temple.

Was it to follow someone?

But the only person he knew was Fu Bai, and Fu Bai had already left during the day after promising to take him home once the war ended.

Standing in the labyrinth, Lin felt increasingly sleepy. His eyelids grew too heavy to keep open. Like a controlled puppet, he turned back toward the temple and went back to sleep quietly in the pool.

Lin Yang borrowed a four-wheeled vehicle from a local resident of this era.

The elderly woman who lent it said her son had passed away and her husband was gone. Many of the village’s youth were dead; cars and houses were largely abandoned.

She gave the car to Lin Yang, saying he didn’t need to return it.

Lin Yang remained silent. He didn’t know how to comfort her; the phrase “everything will get better” felt impossible to say.

Life a hundred years later was even worse.

Things had not moved in a positive direction.

The old woman didn’t need comfort from anyone. She hobbled back into her dark house and shut the door.

Standing before the door, Lin Yang felt as though a piece of his heart had been hollowed out again.

But he had no time for sorrow. He drove the vehicle at high speeds back toward the temple. The car could only go as far as the main road outside the forest.

Lin Yang sprinted through the forest and the stone maze, arriving at the temple breathless. In the pool, Lin was still in a deep sleep as the surging black mist bored into his body.

This black mist was entirely different from the black threads Lin Yang had seen before. It had no physical form and required no contact; just looking at it made one feel a wave of sheer malice.

This ultimate evil was being completely absorbed by Lin in his unconscious state.

Pain enveloped him. Lin’s face crumpled, and his silver fishtail thrashed violently in the water. The dark blue veins beneath his fair skin bulged, snaking across his body in a terrifying display.

Lin Yang pounded on the transparent glass. It vibrated, but he still couldn’t wake Lin up.

Out of options, Lin Yang extracted his spiritual essence and condensed it into a hook, snagging the very top of the pool. He used the leverage to pull himself up and leaped into the ten-meter-deep water.

He sank to Lin’s side, but as his fingers were about to touch him, he turned transparent.

Time and space had judged that his next action would cause a change in the past. This meant that Lin’s absorption of the black mist was a catalyst for the impending tragedy.

Lin Yang loathed this feeling of powerlessness.

He was watching a tragedy unfold and was unable to stop it, forced to watch lives slip away one by one before him.

What was the point of him being here? Was it just to accumulate pain?

Lin Yang suddenly realized with searing clarity that the being lying before him was the Lin of a hundred years ago. He and this monster were separated by a century of time. A century ago, the immature and innocent Lin had curled up at the bottom of the water in this exact agony.

Back then, this young monster understood nothing.

Yet he was being treated so cruelly.

It was as if he were being pushed by an invisible hand toward a predestined fate.

Lin Yang was unwilling to accept this. Over and over, he reached out, struggling to grab the Lin he was destined to miss. He wanted to change it all; he wanted to end the tragedy.

But many things cannot be done simply because one wants to. Sometimes, even after immense effort, it is still a futile endeavor.

It wasn’t until the black mist had completely merged with Lin and his pain subsided that Lin Yang’s fingers finally solidified, touching Lin’s body.

Lin snapped his eyes open. Even after devouring so much evil, his silver eyes remained clean and clear. Seeing Lin Yang’s face, his eyes showed a look of strangeness. “Who are you? Why are you in my bed?”

His private territory had been invaded, yet surprisingly, Lin felt no animosity.

Looking at the face before him, he felt an instinctive urge to get closer, to be affectionate. His fishtail had already coiled around Lin Yang’s waist.

Ha, forgotten again. Lin Yang suppressed his frustration—not at Lin, but at the rules of time and space.

He noticed Lin’s face was much paler than before and his body was curled unnaturally. Though he was awake, it seemed his body hadn’t recovered from the intense pain.

He reached out with both hands to massage Lin’s temples. “My name is Lin Yang. I am the ‘eighth-second lover’ who only exists in your world.”

“Why the eighth second?”

“Because,” Lin Yang’s tone was gentler than it had ever been, “you are a fish. Your memory of me only lasts seven seconds; by the eighth second, you forget me.”

Every bone in Lin’s body felt as if it had been shattered and crudely pieced back together. He didn’t yet know what changes had occurred in his body, but the continuous pain and the freezing cold sensation made him extremely uncomfortable.

He craved the warmth of Lin Yang’s hands. Hearing that he would forget, he became instantly anxious. He said sadly, “I don’t want to forget Lin Yang.”

His tears turned into white pearls and fell to the bottom of the pool.

Lin Yang stared at the white pearls. So the original tears were white?

Just how much pain would it take to turn every single drop of tear into a tear of blood?

Was Lin brought into this world solely to satisfy the desires of others, only to be loathed, hated, and corrupted until he destroyed the world or the world destroyed him?

Lin Yang retracted his gaze. “Even if you forget me, I will appear in your world again and again, repeating my name to you until we meet once more. Whether as enemies or intimate lovers, I will always tell you my name.”

“But that is so unfair. If only Lin Yang remembers, it will be very hard for you.”

Lin’s tone was serious. “If I forget Lin Yang, you will be all alone. What is the difference between that and being abandoned? I don’t want to abandon you, no matter when.”

Lin Yang forgot to blink. He had never heard words like these.

Everyone always told him to keep moving forward.

Even if Lin Yang was alone, he could endure, because he was Lin Yang—the great hero who lived to protect humanity. How could he be afraid of walking into the darkness alone? How could he be afraid of the dark?

And he certainly wouldn’t be lonely.

Lin Yang steadied his heartbeat, his face once again wearing that nonchalant smile. “If you destroyed the thing most important to me, and I hated you to death and wanted to kill you, what would you do?”

Lin instinctively protested, “I wouldn’t destroy something important to Lin Yang…”

His voice trailed off under Lin Yang’s lazy yet cold smile. He immediately apologized, “I’m sorry. Although I don’t know why I would destroy your most important thing, I will work hard to make it up to you.”

“You cannot make it up.”

“Oh.” Lin whipped his fishtail around restlessly. He spoke dryly, “I’m sorry. If I really destroyed something important that couldn’t be restored, and you hated me and wanted to kill me, I still wouldn’t leave you alone. Although I don’t want to die, if you promise to always remember me, like me, and love me after I’m dead… then I am willing to be killed by you.”

“Why? You want to live so badly. Why are you willing to be killed by me? Is love more important to you than staying alive?”

Lin Yang pressed him, wanting Lin to give up, to shrink back. He didn’t even understand what answer he himself wanted to hear.

Lin spoke, “Living is more important than love.”

As it should be. That is the correct answer. Lin Yang’s tense nerves relaxed, yet for some reason, he had a sudden, powerful urge to hold a knife to Lin’s throat and demand to know why he had just said he was willing to be killed.

“However,” Lin’s tail coiled back around Lin Yang’s waist, and his soft lips pressed against Lin Yang’s, “obtaining Lin Yang’s unchanging love is more important than living.”

Too many qualifiers made Lin Yang feel as if he had been dazed by Lin’s persuasion.

He forgot to close his eyes, so he could see the tender expression on Lin’s face as they kissed.

Lin didn’t understand what a kiss was; he only sensed that the human before him was uneasy. Driven by instinct, he wanted to get close and comfort the human named Lin Yang.

Lin Yang was warm, soft, fragile, and precious.

He was his.

Lin’s slender fingers suddenly grew sharp nails. He reached down and carved a bloody gash into his own arm.

Lin Yang was caught off guard. “What are you doing?”

Lin quickly finished the carving and showed it to Lin Yang. On his arm, the characters for “Lin Yang” were written in neat, straight strokes.

“I don’t know why, but I know how to write these two characters, as if I’ve written them many times. By carving them on my arm like this, I won’t forget you anymore.”

Lin Yang’s heart seemed to have caught a strange illness; its erratic rhythm was beyond his control.

Those scratches did not heal as they would a hundred years later; they remained on Lin’s skin, carved extremely deep.

The young Evil God’s first shed of blood was to remember the name of his eighth-second lover.