The Truth About Su Yuehe

An Changsong leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “We were classmates. I know how dangerous his research is. As for Changqing, she chose to be his friend. It has little to do with me.”

Su Jin closed her eyes, hiding the emotions in them.

“But what’s happened over the past few days has made me realize that it’s difficult for human authority to alter the course of fate.”

When she opened her eyes again, her gaze fell on the shadowy patrol soldiers outside the tent.

“The curse he left for his daughter is beginning to awaken.”

An Changsong was stunned for a long while. “You mean the Word Spirit?”

Su Jin nodded. “The outside world has always believed that she’s a genius, gifted with a supernatural ability unseen in a century.”

She walked around the sand table and approached the desk.

“But that isn’t a talent at all.”

Su Jin picked up the remote and pressed a button. The image of the figure on the large screen vanished, replaced by a topographical map compiled from the data brought back by the eastern team.

“Back then, Lu Ming insisted on coming to this barren wasteland despite the beast tide because he was searching for an ancient corpse from a hundred years ago.”

She withdrew her hand and walked to the desk to pour herself a glass of warm water.

“That corpse still retained the Word Spirit the person had cast on himself just before death.”

Su Jin gripped the glass, pressing her fingertips hard against its surface.

“Lu Ming extracted it and forcibly fused it into Yuehe’s body when she was just born.”

An Changsong’s mouth fell open as he drew in a sharp breath.

“He used his own daughter as a test subject?”

Although he had known a little about Lu Ming’s research, he had never realized that Lu Ming’s own daughter had been his first subject.

He had wanted to get to the bottom of it back then, but Lu Ming’s wife had refused to let him ask further questions. In the end, An Changsong had not pushed the matter.

Su Jin lifted the glass and took a sip. The warm water slid down her throat, but did nothing to dispel the chill in her stomach.

“That is the truth behind the Word Spirit. It’s an external force, something that doesn’t belong to her.”

She placed the glass on the desk. Its base struck the wood with a dull thud.

“Yuehe has always had low blue reserves. Every time she uses her ability, she rapidly exhausts herself. Even casting the most basic protective barrier is a struggle for her.”

Su Jin watched the ripples spreading across the water. “You all thought it was because of her weak constitution, or because the energy consumption was too great and she was too young to control it. Even she believed that.”

She raised her head. “In reality, her body and soul are rejecting that power. Her genes are trying to purge the foreign substance.”

Su Jin slowed her speech.

“The endless conflict between the two drains her mental strength. It’s a fatal form of internal attrition.”

An Changsong remained silent for a long time before sighing. “I always thought it strange. With the genetic combination of a twelfth-order and an eleventh-order ability user like you and Lu Ming, your child shouldn’t have such a low-level congenital defect.”

“Now, the truth is even harder for me to accept. Are you saying that Yuehe originally had no talent for supernatural abilities at all—that she was just an ordinary person?”

“…Yes.”

Back then, Su Jin had found it even harder to accept. Lu Ming was the child’s father, and he had personally selected their genes with great care. How could two people standing at the pinnacle of the world have an ordinary child?

Lu Ming must have thought the same, which was why he had committed such a monstrous act.

As for Su Jin, although she had been disappointed, she had intended to send the child away and let her grow up as an ordinary person. She had never considered trying to overturn fate.

An Changsong rose and walked to stand opposite Su Jin. “Will the rejection continue indefinitely?”

The fatigue in Su Jin’s eyes finally showed. She pressed a hand against her temple.

“Lu Ming wrote in his research notes that the first person to possess this power was ultimately unable to control it. In the end, he sealed his lips, imprisoned himself in the snowy mountains, and starved to death.”

Su Jin lowered her hand, her nails digging into her palm.

“I can’t stand by and watch my daughter follow the same path.”

An Changsong slipped both hands into his pockets and looked at the woman before him.

One of the most powerful humans in the world, the founder and supreme guardian of human civilization’s order, was now revealing her vulnerability in the face of an unsolvable dead end.

“You kept this hidden for so many years. Even I didn’t know the source of that power was an ancient corpse.”

An Changsong sighed and walked to the other side of the sand table.

“Actually, there’s something I’ve kept from you for nearly twenty years.”

Su Jin’s gaze followed him.

“What is it?”

A powerful sense of disorientation coiled around Su Jin’s heart.

“Lu Ming came to see me the night before you placed him under house arrest.”

Su Jin’s eyelid twitched. The fingers hanging at her side curled inward.

“What did he give you?”

An Changsong returned to the folding chair and sat down.

“He gave me an encrypted data file.”

Seeing the astonishment on Su Jin’s face, An Changsong slowly continued, “He said he’d found a way to resolve the backlash from the Word Spirit.”

Su Jin took a step forward, braced both hands against the desk, and leaned over it, momentarily losing her composure. “If he’d found a solution, why didn’t he give it to me directly?”

An Changsong met her intimidating gaze and terrifying presence without backing down. “Because he said you were too rational.”

“He told me to keep it safe and wait until Yuehe turned eighteen before opening it at the right moment.”

“I asked him what he meant by ‘the right moment.’ He smiled and told me that I would definitely see the moment he was talking about. He trusted the future I could see.”

An Changsong looked at Su Jin. “He also repeatedly warned me never to let you know about it. Otherwise, you would destroy the storage drive immediately.”

He pointed to his own eyes. “And that is exactly what I saw.”

Su Jin stood frozen in place. Her breathing fell out of rhythm for half a beat, her chest rising and falling. “He was guarding against me.”

An Changsong did not respond. Unlike him and his wife, who had married for love, Su Jin and Lu Ming were a couple brought together halfway through life. They had the name of husband and wife, but not the slightest trace of affection.

Su Jin had been born during the Reconstruction Era and grown up in a world where demons ran rampant, mutated beasts threatened humanity, and order teetered on the verge of collapse.

At twelve, she became famous after a single battle, emerging as the mastermind behind the scenes. At thirty, she became a twelfth-order Knowledge-type ability user and stepped fully into the public eye. At thirty-five, she was elected the current Chairwoman, becoming the founder and supreme guardian of human society’s order.

How much weight could love possibly carry for someone who had spent her entire life trapped beneath the burden of responsibility?

Of course, Lu Ming was no ordinary man either. He had reached the eleventh order at just twenty-eight, a bona fide genius and the eldest legitimate son of an eminent family.

Yet in order to gain the support of Su Jin, who had already become Chairwoman at the time, he had resolutely married into her family. He devoted his entire life to genetic research. Their marriage had begun without love.

The two had joined forces for mutual benefit. Now that he thought about it, Lu Ming was even colder than Su Jin. At least An Changsong knew that Su Jin held some affection for her daughter.

As for Lu Ming, An Changsong did not know how to judge his old friend.

Su Jin had no idea what was going through his mind. She let out a cold laugh.

“That Lu Ming—he can barely protect himself, yet he’s still playing mysterious. An Changsong, what exactly is the future you saw?”