Chapter 1214: Shameful

When Nainai brought back an unconscious Qing Ling, a barely held-together car drove to the group. It stopped, and One Stone got out. Face pale, she scanned the group with mournful eyes, her gaze stopping on Gao Yang.

“Uncle Tiger...” Liao Liao wasn’t able to finish her question.

One Stone walked to the tail of the car and opened the slightly ajar trunk. Inside were four bloodied Black Gold weapons—Dragonslaying Giantsword, Green Dog Demon Blade, a Black Gold shortsword, and a Black Gold dagger.

While War Tiger and Wrath fought to their death, One Stone had been away from the battlefield, watching it play out with binoculars. She was the only spectator of the match.

“No...nonono... Impossible!” Zhang Wei said in disbelief. “It’s Uncle Tiger! We could all die, and the old fox would still be alive!”

He turned to Gao Yang. “Brother Yang, Uncle Tiger must have something else up his sleeve, right? He couldn’t have died, right?”

Gao Yang didn’t say anything.

Zhang Wei turned to the others for something, anything, but was met with a heavier silence.

“Fuck.”

He kicked away a broken stone.

For the first time since her arrival, One Stone spoke up, her voice hoarse, “Uncle Tiger told me that the weapons would be Qing Ling’s.”

“Agh...!” Hong Xiaoxiao covered her mouth to smother her cries, but she couldn’t. The series of tragic revelations had broken down her resolve. She felt ashamed. She believed she shouldn’t cry, that she was in no place to cry, and that her moment of weakness was an insult to the companions they had lost.

But she couldn’t control herself. She couldn’t raise the crumbling floodgate, no matter how hard she tried.

Amid Hong Xiaoxiao’s muffled sobs, One Stone summarized the battle against Wrath.

Then an electric moped rumbled over. Gregor rode it with one lone hand steering the handle. His hair was unkempt, his body covered in blood, and he was missing an eye and an arm. In the back, Lovely Lamb held onto Gregor tightly with streaks of tears that had been dried on their way here.

The moped stopped. With a half-finished cigarette in his mouth, Gregor lifted Lovely Lamb off the seat with some difficulty. He looked around and broke into a grin. His voice grated out of his throat, “Not bad. There are more survivors than I expected.”

Hong Xiaoxiao immediately went up to check Lovely Lamb’s injury. One Stone quietly went up to help Gregor down and treat him.

“You’re badly injured,” One Stone said.

“It’s nothing. I’ll live—

ack, ack

.” Gregor got into a bout of coughing.

One Stone injected him with first-aid medicine. “Your arm and eye are beyond regeneration. You’ll need prosthetics. As for the rest of your body, I can heal to sixty to seventy percent.”

Gregor nodded. “That’s good. Good.”

Then he remembered something, his head jerking up. “A cybernetic arm isn’t going to slow my writing down, is it?”

“Don’t know.” One Stone smiled wryly. “Ask Dr. Jia later.”

Gregor took a new cigarette out and lit it. “I considered using voice recognition to write, but I couldn’t get used to it. There’s still a difference between typing and verbalizing the words.”

“What about a verbal report?” Gao Yang asked.

“Oh, I can do that.” Gregor smiled awkwardly and met his eyes. Gao Yang didn’t seem to have changed, yet he seemed...wrong. To make an analogy, he was like a calm before the storm, where everything was uncertain and precarious, awaiting the inevitable outburst and loss of control.

Gregor finished his briefing. The already heavy atmosphere darkened further.

Contrary to them, Gregor remained unusually composed. As the one experiencing the battle himself, he had already braved through the most difficult moment.

He observed everyone and noticed something interesting: everyone was mourning, but those who had lost their teammates seemed to be faring better, while those who had not lost anyone were met with more violent emotions. It was as if their conscience dictated that they must not bear the heartbreak too well, as if that would be an offense, somehow.

That made their anguish feel like overacting. It wasn’t fake, not really, but the complicated end result of complicated facets of human nature.

Suddenly, a great sense of meaninglessness weighed Gregor down. He found this moment worthy of rendering into words, but he didn’t know how.

For the longest time, he had attempted to record the truth with words, but words could only ever be a summary rather than the truth itself.

Truth was the momentary piece of eternity happening before their very eyes, rather than an illusion built with words.

“Lovely Lamb.”

When Gregor broke out of his trance, Gao Yang was kneeling on one knee before Lovely Lamb.

He said in a steely voice, “We’re going to face a terrible enemy. We may all die. Are you still going to join?”

“Yeah!” Lovely Lamb nodded with reddened eyes.

“Why?” Gao Yang asked.

“Because...I’m a fighter.” Lovely Lamb met his gaze with determination.

After a moment of silence, Gao Yang nodded. “Okay.”

He rose and ordered, “Nainai, carry the unconscious ones back to the Millennium Tower. You have twenty minutes.”

“Hmph, this Empress only needs fifteen!” Nainai said.

Gao Yang addressed the others. “Take a break. We depart in fifteen.”

“You’ve found Pride, Captain?” Liao Liao asked.

“Yeah.”

The moment the Three Double-Hours of Heavenly Tribulation arrived, Gao Yang had sensed the general location of Wang Zikai through the bond created by Judge. It was where Wang Zikai’s monsterhood had awakened—the dried well.

Wang Zikai must have sensed Gao Yang’s location then, too, but he honored his word and didn’t seek Gao Yang out.

They waited for the approaching moment without prior agreement, as if the promise had been written in fate.