The Monsters All Covet Him - Chapter 34

Upon hearing those words, the few Silver Jiao whispered among themselves.

The Silver Jiao who had spoken first declared, “I pray for the Silver Jiao to win the war tomorrow.”

Lin’s eyes were hollow. “The God has received it. All your prayers shall be fulfilled.”

The transparent Lin Yang did not pay close attention to the other mutterings of the Silver Jiao; his entire focus was on the pair of eyeballs held in Lin’s cupped hands.

After the Silver Jiao left, the sightless Lin sat alone in the inner court. Lin Yang appeared before it; though Lin could not see, it keenly heard the sound of footsteps.

Lin instinctively looked up. “Who are you?”

In less than ten minutes, Lin’s memories of Lin Yang had been wiped clean. This time, Lin Yang did not answer. He crouched down beside Lin, his posture resembling a huddled mushroom. He spoke, “Can you give me the treasures in your hands?”

The presence of so much agony within Lin’s body had left it weary and lethargic, giving it an aura that warned others to stay away.

The first snow had begun to fall over the green plains—numbness, pain, and death were slowly eroding the vibrant life.

It looked toward the source of the voice, its cheerful tone now tinged with a coldness familiar to Lin Yang. “This is a pair of dead eyeballs. They have no value as a gift.”

“They are very beautiful, like the eyes of my lover. I want to keep them.”

“What did your lover look like?”

Lin Yang said calmly, “It was a monster, an Evil God loathed by all living creatures, but it was also once a living person.”

Lin’s white eyelashes trembled. “Are you a monster too?”

“No, I am human.”

“Why would a human fall in love with a monster? You say all living creatures loathe it; are you not among all living creatures?”

Lin did not understand.

Invisible snowflakes covered it piece by piece, sealing its nose and mouth. It was in great pain, yet as the source of all these disasters, it didn’t even have the right to speak of its suffering.

A god cannot refuse a prayer.

Being worshipped and then betrayed was the predestined fate of an Evil God.

It obtained the power to view all living creatures as ants, but in return, it paid the price of being hated by those same creatures; this was the fairness upheld by the Creator.

And it, who seemingly dominated everyone, was not worthy of saying that it hurt.

But… what if it didn’t want to be an Evil God?

Lin fell into a black whirlpool, obsessively waiting for Lin Yang’s answer, waiting for the possibility of an Evil God being accepted.

Lin Yang had a pair of clear, black-and-white eyes. No matter how much hardship and misfortune he suffered, those eyes remained clean.

He gazed at Lin, and Lin grew within his eyes.

Lin’s long silver hair draped softly behind its back, and it wore the cheapest of human clothes. Because it was not in the habit of wearing shoes, the soles of its feet were covered in blood scabs from many scratches.

And this face, which Lin Yang had gazed at for hundreds and thousands of years, surfaced with pain and became distorted.

Having lost its eyes, only blood-stained white lashes trembled helplessly, like the wings of a butterfly caught in a spider’s web.

Lin Yang realized that after leaving the cage of the Crystal Palace, the evil entity he encountered was always in a wretched state.

It was like this at the bottom of the blood pool, and it was like this now, desperately seeking faith from him.

He felt a sudden illusion that Lin was the last dusting of snow in late winter—untouchable, for it would easily melt into water and evaporate from this world.

But eventually, Lin would cycle back as highly corrosive acid rain, returning the pain it had endured to this world in its original form.

Lin Yang suppressed the frustration in his heart, a self-deprecating smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “Perhaps I am a mutation among humans. I feel no loathing for the Evil God, only sharp hatred and the intent to kill. I want to save it, and yet I want to kill it with my own hands.”

“So you love it and hate it? Can a person hate a monster while simultaneously loving it?”

“Perhaps because it isn’t entirely the monster’s fault. I think if the monster were given a choice, it wouldn’t become an Evil God.” Lin paused, speaking aloud his own disrupted principles. “I once wanted to kill every monster in this world to protect every human. But later I realized that humans can be more terrifying than monsters when they turn bad, while a monster… could actually manage to die for a human.”

“To me, a monster doesn’t need to become human, and humans don’t need to pursue being monsters. A difference in form merely represents different species; it shouldn’t be used to distinguish good from evil.”

“Then will I stand on the side of good? If I have no way to make a choice, what should I do?”

“I will stop you,” Lin Yang said firmly. “The meaning of my existence is to prevent you from standing on the side of evil.”

The snow was still falling, but Lin felt as though it could breathe again.

However, it wasn’t enough. That level of choice wasn’t enough. Lin opened its lips. “What if even you cannot stop me?”

It thrust out a sharp knife, but the point was aimed at itself.

Lin Yang stared fixedly at Lin. He smiled, a beautiful smile. “Then I shall kill you.”

Lin, unable to see Lin Yang’s beautiful smile, also smiled upon hearing those words. “I like that ending. My life terminated by you, so you will remember me forever.”

“It’s strange. I don’t know your appearance or your name, but just by smelling your scent and hearing your voice, I’ve started to like you so much.”

“It’s as if I have loved you for a long, long time.”

That night, Lin Yang’s palm held a pair of eyeballs. Around his wrist hung a string of white pearls Lin’s tears, which he had dove into the ten-meter-deep water to retrieve one by one.

The next day, the war between humans and the Silver Jiao resumed. The humans who had not gone to the temple to pray lost the war, as expected.

The Silver Jiao easily won the war with a crushing force, just as they had nearly a thousand times before. However, they soon encountered the same situation the humans had faced initially.

In a war, no matter how easy the victory, casualties are inevitable. And those Silver Jiao who should have died became undying monsters, just like the humans.

The uninjured Silver Jiao could not accept these mutated ones. They tried to kill them, using even the most extreme methods. Even if they were cut into pieces, the countless fragments still possessed the consciousness of the one being cut, screaming “it hurts” all over the ground.

Fu Bai was physically weak; he did not participate in any of the battles. But since the appearance of the Evil God, he had been present at every battlefield, closely monitoring the situation.

Naturally, he noticed the abnormality of the Silver Jiao. They had gone to pray.

In a situation where the humans were already unable to win, the Silver Jiao had summoned the help of the Evil God. Thus, the only path left for humanity was total extinction.

This time, the human mortality rate had reached 90%.

The humans and Silver Jiao on the battlefield had all left, leaving behind only the dead. So many humans and Silver Jiao were dying every day that, at first, their respective camps would move the bodies back. Gradually, however, entire families were killed on the battlefield, and there were no beings left even to claim the corpses.

Fu Bai stood under a sky reddened by the color of blood, the scent of death wrapping around him from head to toe. He bent down to drag a heavy human corpse toward the burial ground.

Time seemed to return to the day he witnessed the death of all his relatives. Among thousands of corpses, he searched for those familiar faces. They had all been torn apart by the sharp hands of the Silver Jiao; not even their bodies were whole.

His once-sturdy elder brother, now slung across his back, was only a very, very light piece.

Fu Bai mechanically repeated the process of dragging corpses. The burial ground had a massive pit he had dug, which would soon be unable to hold more people; a new one needed to be dug.

He didn’t want to.

He didn’t want any more humans to die.

Fu Bai collapsed into the grass along with a corpse. He looked up at the ominous, bloody sky, a thought surfacing in his mind: So what if humans become undying monsters?

If they lose their heads, hands, or feet, are they no longer their own kind?

Isn’t obtaining eternal life much better than sleeping forever in the cold ground?

That child, Lin, was right.

As long as he kept praying and praying, humanity would ultimately win.

Fu Bai had thought about making a wish that would settle everything once and for all—such as all the Silver Jiao dying, or humanity winning the ultimate game.

But prayers came with a price.

Before going to the temple, Fu Bai had already understood this through the summon ceremony, which had cost a tragic price.

Therefore, he was cautious in his prayers, not daring to ask for too much.

Even though he was so cautious, he still brought panic and torture to humanity.

In just a few days, the human death rate had multiplied several times over.

Behind every number was a vibrant life; he could not bear such a tragic cost.

Fu Bai scrambled to his feet. He stumbled toward the temple; he had to obtain the right to pray for the next day.

Lin had said that a god cannot refuse a prayer.

If the Silver Jiao and humans made wishes at the same time, Fu Bai didn’t dare imagine what kind of nightmare that would become.

Fu Bai crossed the giant stone forest. As he approached the temple, he noticed it was already guarded by two Silver Jiao. He could not enter the temple on his own.

The two Silver Jiao were talking.

“The boss said we are forbidden from continuing to pray. The god in this temple is strange. All we need to do is guard this place. If the humans can’t get in to pray, we can win the war. The land will belong to us sooner or later.”

“That prayer was indeed terrifying. But think about it if I become immortal, wouldn’t I be invincible on the battlefield? That way, Qiao could never use military merit to block me and make things difficult for me everywhere.”

“That’s true. Doesn’t the human world pursue eternal life? No wonder they are willing to pray even if they pay a price. Sigh, Ying has always been indifferent to me. If the Evil God could make Ying fall in love with me, I would be willing to pay any price.”

The two Silver Jiao looked at each other. Simultaneously, they looked at the closed temple doors. In the next second, they opened the doors that were said to represent misfortune and calamity.

After they entered, the temple doors remained open.

Fu Bai took the opportunity to walk in, hiding behind a stone sculpture in the courtyard.

Twenty minutes later, the two Silver Jiao walked out of the temple with smiles on their faces, and the doors were closed again.

Fu Bai entered the inner court. Before he could even speak, he saw Lin’s hollow eye sockets without eyeballs. The prayer he was about to say got stuck in his throat. Fu Bai gasped, “This… who did this?”

Lin could recognize Fu Bai’s voice. As the first person it had met in this world, and one given the intimate title of “Father,” Lin had a natural sense of reliance on Fu Bai.

A human without eyeballs is strange. Lin didn’t want to scare Fu Bai, so it lowered its head. “I gouged them out myself.”

Fu Bai’s footsteps stopped. He remembered the way Lin had been in pain on the floor before he left last time. He vaguely realized that Lin’s acceptance of those prayers was not without its effects on Lin.

Lin looked like nothing more than a nineteen-year-old child, innocently acting as a vessel for prayers, only to be rewarded with agonizing torture and the struggle between different factions.

Fu Bai felt a sense of self-reproach.

Since he had accepted the identity of “Father,” he should have spent more time with Lin.