Chapter 219-The Manga Pariah's Guide to Self-Salvation
The birthday fireworks belonging to eighteen-year-old Ye Zheng lit up half the night sky. Ye Zheng stood quietly amid the ravaged ruins of the Imperial Palace, watching for a moment, then turned to find her companions.
After a few steps, Ye Zheng's pace faltered slightly. She reached out tentatively in her mind: "Marcy?"
"I'm here." Marcy's voice finally responded.
"What just happened? I suddenly couldn't sense your presence."
"Ah... perhaps because, in the moment I recognized him through your eyes, he recognized me too."
Ye Zheng's eyes darkened. She spoke that name again: "Vincent... Aston XIV, who should have died long ago."
"So he does know of your existence." Ye Zheng said calmly.
"He and I were enemies for half a lifetime. That nauseating manner of his—I can recognize it at a glance."
Marcy asked with a touch of curiosity: "How did you figure out it was him?"
"There were many clues. Ever since Aston XIV, every successive Emperor has had golden hair and golden eyes. Rather than a hereditary trait, it looks more like some kind of soul imprint. Bai Muqing also mentioned to me that the Emperor's soul feels strange..."
"If it was Aston XIV who created the demon dragon and the Demonic Domains, a person like that could never be content to die an ordinary, unremarkable death."
"I had always suspected it. Then the Emperor seemingly casually showed me that portrait of the Count of Luan—he was clearly testing me for something. The moment he tested me, I became certain of his identity."
Back then, Marcy had been assassinated by people sent by the Emperor. The inheritance of [Mother of All Things] and the Hope Project had always been orchestrated by the Royal Family behind the scenes. Aston XIV, who had lived five hundred years, likely understood [Mother of All Things] better than any successive Pope. So when she entered the room, he had used some method to block Marcy's consciousness—he had already guessed at Marcy's existence.
He had been afraid of Marcy recognizing him—recognizing his rotten, foul-smelling ancient soul.
"Marcy, did Aston XIV have an ability?" Ye Zheng had never found any relevant records in the history books, and Marcy's memories didn't seem to contain any instance of that man using an ability either.
"No—at least that was the official claim, and I never sensed any energy fluctuation from him."
"But he must have some special power." Marcy said with certainty. After years of confrontation, she could sense the wrongness emanating from him.
Ye Zheng pondered. If even [Mother of All Things] couldn't detect the power on him, either his ability was stronger than [Mother of All Things], or... his special power wasn't an ability, didn't reside within him, but was attached to some object?
Regardless, she had at least understood the Emperor's true purpose in creating Sykes.
The moment Sykes appeared before the world with golden hair and golden eyes, he had already become the Emperor's pre-selected next vessel—young, powerful, handsome. A perfect body.
"That little monster has been killed by you?" Marcy said.
"Good. And the body? I'm curious—that man went to such elaborate lengths over five hundred years purely for his own benefit. What exactly did he create?"
Hearing Marcy's mocking words, Ye Zheng thought of something. Her eyes suddenly flew wide open, and then fury ignited in her gaze, burning startlingly bright in the dark night.
"So the true purpose behind his orchestration of the Hope Project was to create a body surpassing human flesh—for himself?"
"...Based on my understanding of him, even if there were other reasons, doing it for himself was his most important purpose." Marcy sighed.
It was already enraging enough to have sacrificed lives for a nebulous future savior—but the truth was even more brutal. All of them who had given their lives in the Hope Project, one after another, had only been satisfying the ugly private desires of an undying ghost?
Ye Zheng looked back. On the mound of the black dragon's remains not far away, Knights were carrying that now-cold body. The Emperor watched them in silence, his thoughts unreadable.
"I should have crushed that body then. Left him nothing."
Ye Zheng's voice was light and faint.
Marcy followed Ye Zheng's gaze and immediately understood what had happened during her absence. Ye Zheng's answer left her feeling heavy, yet with a trace of amusement. Though she hadn't obtained that body of considerable research value, Ye Zheng had already done well enough.
"After all, you're still the Pope. It wouldn't do to leave too brutal an impression in front of people."
"...But for certain people, sufficiently severe methods are the only way to keep them in check."
Marcy reflected. Back in her day, she had suffered precisely from being too slow to act. In her clashes with the Royal Family, she had always been weighing the situation, and had been struck first by the other side as a result.
How embarrassing—she hadn't taught Ye Zheng much of anything. This younger generation had instead been teaching her certain truths through her actions all along.
"It's fine. I've already obtained the most important thing from Sykes's body."
Ye Zheng withdrew her gaze and walked deeper into the ruins.
She saw her mother and the others stepping over the rubble, walking toward her in the moonlight.
Shu Wan quickened her pace and ran over, pulling Ye Zheng into a tight embrace.
"Happy birthday, Zhengzheng."
"You're an adult now."
After such a harrowing ordeal, a thousand words piled up at the edge of her lips and dissolved into the most heartfelt birthday wish and a heartfelt sigh.
Ye Zheng let her exhausted body lean against her mother, slowly absorbing her warmth. Shu Wan quietly touched her cheek, feeling a profound wonder—that such a child had come from her, grown from a tiny infant into the person she was today. It was nothing short of a miracle.
"Mother, do you still have that bone?"
Shu Wan took out a section of bone and pressed it into Ye Zheng's hands. It was faintly warm. "I kept hold of it just as you told me."
"It's a bit... remarkable? When I used my ability, it was heating up, and then I felt my ability was stronger than usual. It shouldn't be my imagination."
Shu Wan recalled the feeling from earlier—it was as if she had returned to the peak of her strength in her youth, back to the S-rank she had been before giving birth. If not for this bone's effect, she likely couldn't have cooperated with Ye Zheng and the others as freely as she had just now.
Ye Zheng gripped it firmly, feeling the residual warmth. Unlike the Dragon Bone fragments she had obtained before, she always felt that this "human bone" belonging to the demon dragon carried some kind of vitality flowing through it.
Ye Zheng wasn't surprised that this bone could amplify abilities—Dragon Bone fragments had always had that effect. But her mother shouldn't have actively formed an energy link with this bone, which meant it was this relic, once belonging to Queen Margaret five hundred years ago, that had actively helped them.
Ye Zheng carefully put it away. The Emperor probably didn't know yet—this bone was already in her hands.
"We need to leave quickly."
The night breeze carried a chill. A voice even cooler than the breeze drifted over: "Your Holiness, don't forget about me."
Wu Shu stepped silently out of the night. Even from a distance, Ye Zheng could smell the blood on her.
Only then did Ye Zheng remember the protagonist team she had been neglecting this whole time.
"Come here, Wu Shu."
Ye Zheng saw her hands were empty, took them, and let [Stream] flow from her fingertips up along Wu Shu's forearms, healing her body.
The two were similar in height. Wu Shu leaned close to her ear and said quietly: "I couldn't get that thing. Not a big problem, right?"
Ye Zheng smiled. "If you had actually gotten it, my jaw would have dropped."
The Divine Sword had its own consciousness. It seemed now that the sword didn't only reject her—Wu Shu couldn't possess it either.
[Stream] continued to flow deeper. Ye Zheng's smile faded. "I never ordered you to definitely get that sword. Aren't you supposed to be clever?"
How did she end up with this many injuries.
Wu Shu half-leaned against Ye Zheng and said quietly: "I am clever. I thought of a brilliant solution—if I just killed the sword's owner, it couldn't refuse me anymore, right?"
"...Very clever." Ye Zheng said nothing more and patted Wu Shu on the head.
The vast Imperial Palace had only a few structures at its edges still intact. The group walked toward the palace gates. From far away, Ye Zheng could already see a dense crowd of people gathered below the walls.
The Demonic Domain had already lifted—why were these people still here?
Drawing closer, Ye Zheng found the expressions on everyone's faces utterly chaotic, even somewhat blank. Many people were huddled in corners, arms wrapped around their heads, trembling. One by one, the polished and dignified nobles had been reduced to the state of frightened quails.
They seemed completely unaware that the crisis had temporarily passed.
At this point, Ye Zheng noticed something strange. She looked around and found there was no one maintaining order. Someone spotted her arrival and called out blankly, "The Pope."
Ye Zheng looked again. There were scorched black marks all around, and the ground had been torn up. This was the edge of the Imperial Palace—her battle with Sykes couldn't have reached this far. Someone had been fighting here not long ago.
Suddenly, Ye Zheng spotted a familiar face. She walked over and looked down at Bai Mulin sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, and said:
"Sir Knight, raise your head. Tell me what happened here."
The Demonic Domain had lifted, yet Wen De and the others hadn't come in to meet her.
Author's Note
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