Chapter 166
Chapter 166
There was more than one rule binding progenitor-class vampires.
Lu Yuanshi had just broken one.
He had slaughtered his own kind.
And so many of them at once.
“You slaughtered your own kind, knowing full well it was forbidden?” Edwin struggled to suppress the pounding of his heart.
Lu Yuanshi glanced indifferently at the piles of ash. “Yes. And that isn’t the only rule I’m about to break.”
“What did you say?” Edwin glared at him.
A mere player dared trample the rules like this?
Whether he could win was beside the point. The punishment alone should leave him half-dead.
Lu Yuanshi chuckled and strode forward.
He suddenly tipped his head back. His Adam’s apple shifted as his knuckles came to rest against his bloodstained lips.
“He belongs to my bloodline. He is the only one I have marked. How could I let him endure the pain of transformation alone?”
At that moment, Lu Yuanshi tilted his head slightly, and a flash of genuine emotion showed in the corner of his eye.
It held enough warmth to melt ten thousand years of ice.
Lu Yuanshi had been there from beginning to end, watching Xiao Huai in secret as he always did.
Throughout this game, so long as he chose not to intervene, it was as though he had returned to being that lofty god above all.
The gulf between their identities was far too vast.
He was a progenitor-class vampire, bound by the rules. Unable to leave the west wing, he could only watch Xiao Huai in silence.
He had thought that keeping his distance would calm the faint restlessness in his heart.
But he had been wrong.
Completely wrong.
He wanted to stay beside Xiao Huai, even if it meant bearing the price of breaking the rules.
The invisible chains around Lu Yuanshi’s wrists and ankles began to tighten. He raised his head and watched thunderclouds gather beyond the stained-glass windows.
Every step he took seemed to summon the wails of a thousand ghosts before him.
Had he not already broken the rules
The moment he stepped down from the divine altar to see Xiao Huai in person?
Once he had broken them once, what was there to fear about breaking them again?
Xiao Huai had said that being born a god was a tragedy.
The cage that bound the gods was immense.
Lu Yuanshi had spent more than ten thousand years inside that cage called godhood.
In all those millennia, only one beam of light had ever reached him. He wanted to find that light.
To pursue it… and possess it.
Was that wrong?
Edwin stared at Lu Yuanshi’s retreating back. Before even two seconds had passed, the unnatural thunderclouds outside drew his attention.
That was…!
Divine punishment!
Divine punishment did not take only one form. There was a very simple reason gods avoided breaking the rules: the punishment was too terrifying.
Sometimes, because a god had erred, Heaven would trap them in a certain world and torment them repeatedly for a hundred years.
Time flowed differently in every world. They might suffer there for a century while only a few days passed in reality.
Even gods were not omnipotent.
No god could resist the power of Heaven’s law.
The physical torments could take any form, such as having parts of their body sliced away over and over, cut by cut.
New flesh would grow, but the pain would not diminish in the slightest.
Yet mental torment was what truly made them suffer.
Heaven would briefly give the god more human feeling, then lower one beautiful illusion after another.
At the end, the person they loved most in that beautiful dream would be killed in the most wretched manner imaginable.
That was the true torment, was it not?
Thunder often heralded the beginning of divine punishment.
Thunder from Heaven.
The thunderclouds differed depending on the punishment, and the divine punishment would also be adjusted to the god’s identity.
The more powerful the god, the greater the punishment that descended.
Edwin’s pupils shook. Ink-dark storm clouds churned like hideous demons.
One glance was enough to expose the gravity in his eyes.
Lu Yuanshi was no ordinary god.
“Lu Yuanshi, you–” Edwin could not stop himself from calling out his name.
Those thunderclouds had formed because someone had interfered with a player’s causality.
Lu Yuanshi was certainly no mortal, yet he had been pretending to be a player.
Could he possibly be…
That lord?
Lu Yuanshi did not turn around, but his voice passed directly through Edwin’s mind.
“You will forget I ever existed.”
The light vanished from Edwin’s eyes in an instant. He lowered his head and sat on the floor in a daze.
* * *
Xiao Huai lay on the bed drenched in cold sweat. White noise droned endlessly in his ears, while the surge of his blood formed silent waves that battered his organs again and again.
His five senses had expanded to their limits: everything he heard, smelled, and saw.
There was far too much information to process at once.
Yet in the end, the sensation magnified most was pain.
His eyes gradually lost focus, his lids sinking bit by bit as though weighted with lead.
Xiao Huai gave a self-mocking sneer.
Had he known it would hurt this much, he would have simply used the serum and left.
Now he could not move so much as a finger. He could not use the conversion serum, much less avoid the agony of transforming.
His sweat soaked the sheets.
Xiao Huai closed his eyes, his lashes trembling faintly. All he could do was think about something else to distract himself.
Then the door opened.
Xiao Huai did not even have the strength to lift his head. If someone with ill intentions came to kill him now, they might genuinely succeed.
As he prepared to open his eyes, however, he caught a familiar scent.
Light and clean, carrying a trace of coolness, like a sea breeze on a midsummer night brushing across his heart.
Xiao Huai did not rush to open his eyes. For a moment, his mind was filled entirely with Lu Yuanshi.
Why had he come?
Should the rules not have prevented him from coming here?
Xiao Huai thought he heard the low rumble of thunder outside the window.
But the sound outside soon ceased to hold his attention.
“I’ll stay with you.”
That was all Lu Yuanshi said before quietly reaching out and gathering Xiao Huai into his arms.
They lay together.
Xiao Huai’s back pressed against Lu Yuanshi’s chest. The heartbeat behind him was soft but strong.
The transformation from human to vampire brought excruciating pain. But if the progenitor-class vampire who transformed them remained by their side,
The progenitor’s scent would soothe those of their bloodline.
Xiao Huai could distinguish every subtle note of Lu Yuanshi’s scent, its intoxicating aftertaste spreading around him.
For one instant, Xiao Huai wanted to pin Lu Yuanshi down and greedily drink in that scent.
It made the pain recede.
But he knew he absolutely could not become addicted to it.
So he restrained himself.
A long time passed before he heard Lu Yuanshi murmur very softly behind him,
“Does our agreement still stand?”
Xiao Huai opened his eyes. For some reason, heat spread from his neck to the tips of his ears.
Mortifying memories began assaulting his mind.
Back in *Witch’s House*, Xiao Huai had once said,
*Next time, if I meet you again, I’ll accept your challenge.*
The saying that wise men did not fall in love had been wrong from the start.
Xiao Huai remained silent for half a minute, burying his face in the pillow.
In a tiny voice, he said,
“It doesn’t.”
As the words fell, Xiao Huai heard Lu Yuanshi’s quiet laugh, little more than a breath through his nose.
It carried a hint of resignation and something almost… indulgent?
Lu Yuanshi said, “Then why do I feel cheated?”
Xiao Huai turned his head and met his gaze. Those ink-dark eyes were no longer cold.
“What did you lose?”
Lu Yuanshi’s eyes curved. “Nothing. I didn’t lose anything.”
First he had lost out, then he had not? What a strange man.
When Lu Yuanshi saw Xiao Huai lower his guard and rest in his arms,
Everything had been worth it.
What did the punishment for breaking the rules matter?
“Sleep. Once you’ve slept, the pain will be gone.” Lu Yuanshi carefully stroked Xiao Huai’s waist and abdomen.
The wounds there had already healed after Xiao Huai successfully transformed into a vampire.
Xiao Huai did not pull away.
In truth, ever since Lu Yuanshi arrived and Xiao Huai breathed in his scent, he had been able to move freely.
At first, Xiao Huai had planned to leave using the vampire victory condition. But now that he was a vampire,
He could use the conversion serum to become a human player again and end the game immediately.
But for now, he wanted to stay a little longer.