Chapter 113
Chapter 113
He charged toward the corridor.
[Welcome to the Treasury of the Kingdom of Lande.]
At that moment, a notification appeared on the system interface.
Xiao Huai frowned. At the end of the corridor, a door stood half open.
Yet even through that narrow gap, he could see a room overflowing with gold and jewels.
There was no light inside, but the magnificent treasures lay heaped together, reflecting one another’s golden radiance until it was almost blinding.
Xiao Huai stopped and opened the invitation. A key lay inside.
There was nothing unusual about it. It was little more than a rusted sliver of iron.
“What are you waiting for, child? Go on. Take the treasure you desire.”
A woman’s voice suddenly came from behind him. Xiao Huai turned and saw a woman dressed in splendid robes.
Her long azure hair called to mind the waters beside Lake Klette. Although she wore a smile, the distance in her eyes made her seem anything but mortal.
For some reason, Lu Yuanshi’s face flashed through Xiao Huai’s mind at that moment.
His frown deepened.
The two of them could not have been more different.
His instincts told him this woman was no mortal. She was most likely a god playing an NPC in the game.
“Who are you?”
The woman had expected Xiao Huai to ask something extraordinary, but all he did was quietly ask who she was.
The blue-haired woman said, “If you insist on defining my identity, you may call me the guardian of this place.”
Xiao Huai lifted his eyes to her and said evenly, “You haven’t guarded anyone. You’re only a gatekeeper.”
There was no one alive here for her to protect.
The blue-haired woman paused, then her smile widened. A trace of curiosity suddenly entered her eyes.
“Then what do you think I’m guarding?”
“The variable in this game.” Xiao Huai’s gaze seemed to pass straight through her and settle on a dilapidated little room.
In the Kingdom of Lande’s past, the powerful had failed to find treasure in the Lande Royal Palace. It was not because the treasure had been hidden.
It was because no treasure had ever existed here.
When every citizen of a nation lived in peace and contentment, wealth was nothing more than a number. The true treasure was the trust between people.
Xiao Huai looked back toward the treasury. “That isn’t a treasury at all. It’s a prison, isn’t it?”
Everyone chased wealth, only to end up imprisoned in a cage made of money.
The moment Xiao Huai finished speaking, hundreds of crimson lights flared inside the treasury like the eyes of monsters.
The woman arched a brow. Only after a moment did she say, “You are very unusual.”
The greediest sinners were imprisoned there. They were the ones who had brought down the Lande Royal Palace.
A nation once favored by the gods had ultimately been destroyed.
She had seen more than enough of humanity’s ugliness. The one group of people she had finally wanted to protect had ceased to exist, so she had chosen to come here and see how many others were just like them.
But after waiting so long, she had seen neither sinners nor so much as a single person.
She had all the time in the world. Even if no one ever reached the Lost Land, she could still watch how many people chose to slaughter their own kind.
How dull.
Yet the instant Xiao Huai entered the game, he had caught her attention. Her mood had shifted with every choice he made.
He was special. He was unlike the other humans.
He claimed he meant to hurt people, yet secretly protected them.
She could not help being reminded of someone from long ago–the prince of the Kingdom of Lande.
The Little Prince.
The rules prevented her from looking at him again. But as long as she remained here, she could at least sense the Little Prince’s existence.
To her, he was one of the few lights in the world.
Even if she would have to watch that light die with her own eyes.
A human life was no more than a fleeting glance to her.
Xiao Huai tightened his grip on the key. “I’m looking for someone. If he’s the variable in this game, will you stop me as its gatekeeper?”
The woman slowly approached him and raised her head. “Do you really think it’s wise to ask me that so openly?”
What kind of villain announced to the whole world that he intended to kill someone? Only an exceptionally stupid one.
Xiao Huai stared into her eyes. There was no complicated emotion in those azure depths, only a faint, hidden gentleness.
“I can’t beat you.”
He said it with the air of someone simply giving up.
The woman’s pupils widened slightly. Then she laughed.
“Go. I won’t attack you, but you must hurry. My task is indeed much as you imagine. I’ll pretend I never saw you.” She moved forward and passed Xiao Huai, lowering her voice. “If you fail to find him, or if you’re too slow, then you lose.”
She could bear the risk of letting him slip past, but if she had to face divine punishment, she would kill the young man without hesitation, no matter how unusual he was.
The agony of divine punishment was unimaginable.
Xiao Huai did not linger. He rushed into the dilapidated little room, which looked like the filthy quarters of a servant.
Yet the biographies of heroes piled in one corner quietly told him that a boy had grown up here.
He took out a flashlight, illuminated the room, and searched carefully for more clues related to him.
The key… the key…
His eyes widened. He dashed out the door and ran toward the other side of the palace.
The blue-haired woman watched him leave, lightly pinching her chin as she murmured to herself,
“That child is quick. It seems he’s going to win this game.” She gazed into the distance. “Little Prince, will it be worth spending the last of your strength to make him your variable?”
* * *
*Witch’s House*. Where was the witches’ home, and who had given it to them?
Their home was inside the Lande Royal Palace, and it had been given to them by the prince.
Xiao Huai had seen this key before. Back then, the young prince had handed them the box hidden behind his back, and this was the key inside it.
Now the key had rusted and changed with time, but no matter what it looked like, it still represented home.
There was a group photograph in the little room. The young prince and the eight witches had taken it in the palace annex.
He placed the photograph in his system inventory and ran onward.
Ahead lay their road home.
At last, he stopped before the palace annex.
The doors were locked tight. Xiao Huai drew a deep breath and inserted the key. The click of the lock turning reached his ears.
At last…
The moment the door opened, thousands upon thousands of blue butterflies danced among the rafters. Translucent silver fragments linked into chains that bound a young man tightly.
The young man knelt in the center of the room in full battle dress, imprisoned so completely that he could not move.
His body had already faded until only a shadow remained.
When Xiao Huai opened the door, the young man raised his head and met his gaze.
His lips moved. “You finally came.”
Xiao Huai walked up to him.
The young man’s legs had been driven deep into the earth. The ground clung like a muddy swamp, imprisoning both legs completely.
Xiao Huai did not ask why his first words had been “You finally came,” as though he had known from the beginning that Xiao Huai would appear.
He merely asked, “Why me?”