Chapter 29 Part 3

Old Qianning shut his eyes. When they reopened, his voice rasped steady and low. “Found that out later. Borrowing ghoul lore from Mida University. Too late—you were carrying our second. No choice of ours. Monsters forbade abortion; eyes everywhere.”

“…” Little Qianning sat stunned—his own origins a nightmare twist. “But… in my memories, Mother… she loved me…”

“Bet my paycheck it’s you taking after your old man.” Pharaoh cupped her cheek, slumping half onto Old Qianning’s shoulder. “Plus that golden hedgehog hair of yours? Scampering round the yard? Adorable as hell. Double for us, back then.”

“He is our hope.” Old Qianning had probably never said anything like that to his son in his entire life, deliberately avoiding Little Qianning’s gaze. “We hoped he would be born in that gloomy mansion but still grow into a little sun. The bank’s scale kept expanding… until he was twelve.”

Faust sucked on his cigarette nearby, just shy of washing down the gossip with a sip of sherry. “What happened at twelve? —Oh! That kid just said the person who sent his mother away was someone he found, right? So… back then, this kid must have secretly pulled the strings, faking his mother’s death and having her whisked away?!”

Damn, this kid had some nerve. Twelve years old! He kept completely quiet about it, fooling everyone.

Faust would bet that Pharaoh hadn’t been nearly as “helpless and frail” back then as Little Qianning had described. She had simply never told him the truth, probably to protect her son’s innocence or something like that. The knife scars covering her body when she awoke, along with the wounds on her hands, proved that the traffickers hadn’t abandoned her without reason—they had likely been scared off by her sheer ferocity and forced to cut their losses and flee.

Ode thought for a moment. “That explains why you’ve been playing dumb all this time—back then, you believed your mother had been harmed by your father, so you couldn’t let him realize you’d orchestrated it. You couldn’t let him know you had the ability to scheme right under his nose and the Ghouls’, successfully sending your mother away. Otherwise, he would have grown suspicious, and she definitely would have been dragged back.”

Ode paused, considering. “And your act… was pretty convincing, wasn’t it? If you hadn’t slipped up in the slums, I never would have realized how every time you tried to stir up trouble, I just happened to catch you in the act—you’d seen me intervene in similar situations before, right? You knew I’d step in, so you deliberately chose those moments to put on your show.”

“…” Little Qianning was struck speechless for a long moment before slumping in defeat and covering his face. “Don’t bring that up—if everything I know now is the truth, what the hell have I been doing all these years?!”

Ode pieced it together in his mind before speaking slowly. “It did start with a misunderstanding, but… I don’t think everything you did was meaningless.”

“If you hadn’t seized the chance to send Pharaoh away—and then drunk that slow-acting poison for ten years—would she ever have had the opportunity to become who she is today?”

“It was precisely because of Pharaoh’s faked ‘death’ that the Ghouls were left with only you as leverage over Mr. Old Qianning. That’s how you’ve managed to survive relatively unscathed until now.”

“As for Mr. Old Qianning—I can say with certainty that while such an accident was far from your desire, you must have gained some bargaining power from it. You used the opportunity to acquire something that doesn’t just make these Ghouls covet your wealth but forces them to fear your true strength. Otherwise, today at Qian Ning Mansion, you wouldn’t be occupying the master bedroom, and Big Qianning wouldn’t have left at a single word from you.”

Faust eyed Old Qianning inquisitively. “What did you do?”

“…I acquired a Seal of the King in Yellow at Mida University.”

Mr. Old Qianning undid the top button of his shirt, revealing a vicious brand nestled between his lean, pale collarbones. “I told them that my wife was dead anyway, so I didn’t mind summoning the King in Yellow and dragging them all down with me. It’s not some coin or slip of paper they can steal. I sleep lightly—they’d never get the chance to carve this patch of flesh from my body.”

“…!!!” Pharaoh grew so excited that faint grains of golden sand floated up around her. She braced herself against the armrest of Old Qianning’s chair and whispered, “I may not have my past memories, but I absolutely adore this side of you… If no one else were here, I’d…”

“Urgh, urgh, urgh—!!!” Little Qianning clapped his hands over his ears in abject horror.

He had perhaps imagined their reunion a thousand times—dramatic scenes like biting his own tongue on the spot—but never anything like this. Still, everyone present noticed the glimmer of wetness at the corner of his eye, born from a reality far sweeter than any fantasy. “Don’t say that kind of thing in front of me!!”

Ode watched the family across the long table, their misunderstanding unraveled and chatter filling the air once more. A faint, silent smile tugged at his lips as he straightened up.

Faust glanced at the abruptly quiet Ode, exhaled a plume of smoke, then stood and slung an arm around his shoulders. Together, they slipped out of the meeting room, tactfully leaving some private space for the family that actually seemed to get along. “Did you get the wood carving?”

“Little Qianning was too busy trying to murder his dad to pay it any mind.” Ode paused on purpose, drawing out the moment until Faust’s face turned green, then leisurely fished the wood carving from his pocket. “But could I forget? I snagged it while enjoying my ‘dessert.’”

Little Qianning’s furious shout carried through the door from the meeting room. “You bastard!! I just realized something—when I walked in the door, that Ode guy said he wanted to smash me with the ashtray, and he actually did it!! And it was the one from Father’s office! What’s his damn obsession with bashing me with that thing??”

Just settling an old score from the previous loop. Vengeful Ode pretended not to hear as he kept walking. “So, what are your plans for…”

He hadn’t finished speaking when the wood carving in his palm suddenly grew scalding hot. The hard tentacles at its base turned supple and flexible, curling against his skin like a lick.

“…” Ode’s words cut off. Less than half a second later, he smoothly tucked the sculpture back into his pocket, his expression unchanged. “I’ll take care of it. That Audience Hall needs to be destroyed anyway—is the London Branch team able to clear everyone out of the Witch’s House in thirty seconds flat?”

Faust arched an eyebrow at him. “You questioning my command of my subordinates?”

“…” Ode couldn’t resist flicking a glance at Faust’s lower body before drawling, “Of course not. I have total faith in your… prowess.”

Faust: “…Hey! It’s not that I can’t—I’m just not interested! I’ve got a lover, and I’m staying pure for them, understand?! Hey!”

Ode was already waving dismissively as he walked away.

Once outside the outpost, he summoned the Aston Martin right away. As he gripped the gear shift and slammed the accelerator, more tentacles stirred to life on the sculpture, slithering toward the skin beneath his clothes.

Ode didn’t so much as blink. Amid the roar of the engine, he plunged straight into the golden glow of the Alchemy Teleportation Array. In the next instant, the car dropped sharply downward before kissing the ground with perfect steadiness.

Crowds still milled around the Witch’s House, arguing and refusing to leave. But soon, a thick fog rolled in from nowhere, blanketing the night and shrouding all of London in a hazy veil.

The clamor died away. Thirty seconds ticked by with Ode’s long fingers resting on the black leather steering wheel. He casually rolled down the window and let one arm dangle out, clutching the statue—which was now alive halfway—in his hand.

—As Big Qianning’s diary had noted, how could a god like Nyarlathotep bother linking himself to some ordinary wood carving? How could He deign to descend upon London after so long, all for one insignificant human soul?

Ode’s arm muscles tensed in a flash. He hurled the now-grinning statue viciously toward the Witch’s House.

The next moment, the Alchemically Modified Mortar Cannon flipped up onto the car’s roof and locked onto the soaring carving—

“Boom…”

A ferocious tongue of flame devoured the palm-sized wood carving—and the god’s Audience Hall behind it.

Ode remained seated in the car, one hand pressing the wheel, and lifted his gaze indifferently skyward. Through the roaring inferno, a figure clad in opulent black appeared like a mirage before the Witch’s House and turned to face him.

Ode curled his lip in mockery at the apparition, silently mouthing the words:

‘You dare?’

—Why had Nyarlathotep stayed away from London for so long? Why abandon the Witch’s House, once such a hotbed of activity?

Because that year, Seral Cavendish, the Duke Cavendish, had moved from his old mansion in Scotland into his residence in London.

Ever one to hold a grudge, Ode had been forced by Nyarlathotep earlier to burn a wax figure attuned to his own senses. Now he returned the favor by incinerating a wood carving linked to Nyarlathotep’s perceptions.

He didn’t even linger for the mirage’s reaction. He stomped the accelerator, and the gleaming Aston Martin whipped around amid the sea of fire before roaring out of the blaze and vanishing into the London fog.

“…” Amid the charred, collapsing ruins of the fire, the mirage—bedecked in glittering jewels—hovered above the flames. Most of its form had blurred away as the carving burned, leaving only a pair of black eyes blazing with unnatural intensity. They fixed on the direction of the departing Aston Martin, just as Pharaoh’s eyes had fixed on Old Qianning.

Could fire make a god feel pain? Perhaps.

But perhaps that searing agony brought an equal thrill. A few seconds later, the crumbling inferno held only a murmur drifting away on the wind:

“Ya…”

Mine.