Liu Xiao's Last Words

Liu Feiyu shouted, “Second Brother! You’re destroying yourself! Stop!”

“Destroying myself?” Liu Xiao turned his head toward him. Half of his face had already shattered into purple motes of light. “No, Feiyu. This is called sacrifice.”

“Although His divine shadow has dispersed, the power He infused into my body is still here.”

He raised his hand. The tips of all five fingers had already turned transparent, revealing streams of purple-black light flowing within them.

“I’ll burn myself up in exchange for one strike from a god.”

Long Ao hauled himself up from the ground. Blood was still trickling from the wound in his left shoulder, and he supported himself with his right hand on his knee. His voice was hoarse.

“This guy’s got to be insane.”

Chen Guan stared at the cracks spreading across Liu Xiao’s body, repeating Baal’s words in his mind. “He is insane. He has completely lost the mind that belonged to Liu Xiao and become Astaroth wearing Liu Xiao’s skin.”

This was the danger of demons. This was why anyone discovered to be involved with a demon became a public enemy of humanity.

Even Baal, whose subjective malice was relatively minor, could still inflict utterly terrifying damage.

Because His driving force was amusement. He could do anything for the sake of having fun.

An Changqing pointed the tip of his sword at Liu Xiao. His arm was trembling, and his body had already reached its limit.

“I can block it. I’ll divert the attack.”

“An Changqing, you can barely hold your sword anymore.”

“I said I can block it.”

Chen Guan glanced at him and did not try to dissuade him again.

This was the protagonist’s resolve.

Most of Liu Xiao’s body had already disintegrated. Everything below his legs had transformed into streams of purple particles, leaving him floating in midair.

Liu Feiyu suddenly took a step forward.

Liu Chengjun grabbed him by the arm.

“What are you doing?”

“He’s my second brother.” Liu Feiyu’s voice was soft. “Let me try.”

“Try what? He doesn’t even care whether he lives or dies. Approaching him is suicide!”

Liu Feiyu did not pull free of Liu Chengjun’s grip, but neither did he retreat.

He looked up at the dissolving figure and moved his lips.

“Second Brother, do you remember how terrified you were of thunder when you were little?”

Liu Xiao’s movements halted for an instant.

“Whenever it thundered, you would hide in the wardrobe. I was the one who found you, but I never told anyone.”

The spread of the purple particles slowed slightly.

“Shut up!” Liu Xiao’s voice became distorted, layered with echoes. “Those memories mean nothing to me!”

“You’re trembling,” Liu Feiyu said.

Liu Xiao’s floating body was indeed shaking. The streams of light near his remaining chest briefly fell into disarray.

“I am not!”

His roar shattered the fragments of glass still scattered around them. Purple light surged, and his disintegration began to accelerate.

“Enough!”

He raised his only remaining arm. A dark-purple sphere of light, roughly the size of a fist, condensed in his palm. Space around its surface twisted and collapsed.

“Go to hell.”

The sphere shot from his hand.

At the same moment, Chen Guan released the scythe in his right hand and spread his fingers. The black mark in his palm erupted with incandescent light.

“Chen Guan!” An Changqing’s voice came from behind him.

He did not turn around.

The instant the dark-purple sphere collided with the black radiance erupting from his palm, all the air in the theater was sucked away.

The protagonist had the protagonist’s resolve. As the Hard-to-Kill King, Chen Guan had a resolve of his own—and there was no one more suited to withstand this attack than him.

At the point where the two forces collided, the air was torn into a vacuum. Shock waves spread in every direction, hurling the theater’s remaining seats and fragments of its walls into the air.

Chen Guan’s right hand was blasted backward. The black mark in his palm flickered erratically, while the joints of all five fingers emitted a dense series of cracks.

The purple-black sphere was not completely neutralized. Its remaining energy grazed past his shoulder and blasted a hole through the wall behind him.

During that brief contact, Chen Guan successfully extracted Liu Xiao’s emotions. He had Liu Feiyu’s words to thank for that—they had provoked a powerful emotional reaction in Liu Xiao, giving Chen Guan an opening to strike.

Liu Xiao floated in midair. The disintegration had already spread to his chest. A mass of dark-purple light shone from where his heart should have been, flickering in and out through the cracks in his shattered skin.

He lowered his head and looked at his vanishing body. A peaceful expression, almost one of release, appeared on his face.

“I didn’t kill you.”

His voice was much softer now. The distortion in the echoes was fading, and he sounded more like an ordinary person.

Chen Guan looked up at him. “You’re lucid again?”

“Lucid? I suppose.”

Liu Xiao smiled. The skin at the corner of his mouth shattered into motes of light as he did so.

His gaze passed over Chen Guan and settled on Liu Feiyu in the distance. After lingering there for two seconds, it moved away.

“Actually, from the first time I came into contact with Astaroth, I knew this day would come.”

Liu Feiyu’s voice came from behind him, hoarse and trembling. “Then why did you still choose this path?”

“Because I wanted to live.”

Liu Xiao’s answer was simple to the extreme.

“I wanted to survive. I didn’t want to die at Big Brother’s hands, and I didn’t want to become a stumbling block in your eyes—or in the eyes of our uncles.”

Liu Xiao turned his head. Half of his face had been reduced to an outline made of purple particles.

“But why, exactly, did I end up sinking step by step to where I am today?”

His left arm vanished completely, its particles drifting through the air.

“How did I sink so far that, in order to protect myself, I killed everyone and even tried to drag the world down with me? How did I sink so far that I stopped caring about my own life and was still willing to bleed out the last drop of blood for that demon god?”

Liu Feiyu stood five paces away, his lips pressed tightly together.

Listening to his second brother’s final confession, he felt deeply conflicted.

“I remember now. I remember everything. It all began with my own wishful thinking.”

“From the moment I believed I was special, that I could bargain with a demon god and walk away unscathed, today’s ending was already destined. From the first time I heard His voice, I had already been influenced by His power and reduced to a plaything in the palm of the demon god.”

Liu Xiao let out a bitter laugh and looked at Liu Feiyu. “I know that, as a dying man, I have no right to lecture you. But Feiyu, remember this: never trust a demon god. They can never be trusted.”

Though Liu Xiao was looking at Liu Feiyu when he said those words, Chen Guan could sense that they were meant for him.

He was warning Chen Guan to beware of Baal.

“Never forget your original purpose. Never forget why you set foot on a path you should never have taken.”

Liu Chengjun clenched his fists. Looking at Liu Xiao before him, he could not help feeling the sorrow of a rabbit mourning the death of its companion.

“Second Brother, about what happened before… I know it will sound hypocritical, but I’m sorry.”

Liu Chengjun looked at Liu Xiao. He knew that he could not escape responsibility for the fate Liu Xiao had arrived at.

He had not been born cruel. Once, he had looked forward to the birth of his younger brothers with a heart full of joy.

But…

There was no need for further words. If given the chance to do it all over again, he would make the same choice. Still, as the eldest brother, he truly owed Liu Xiao far too much.

“There’s no need to say anything else, Big Brother. I won’t forgive you—but I understand, too. You’re the eldest son, the one everyone sees as a thorn in their side. We’re all the same. If I’d been born a few years earlier, I might have become another you.”

Liu Xiao cut Liu Chengjun off. His body had disintegrated until only his upper half remained, and he was slowly sinking lower in the air.