Chapter 62: He No Longer Had a Reason to Stay Part 2

It would consume much magic power, but for insurance, it was worth it.

Double insurance.

After all, this was Meieruita—An Luo couldn’t be too cautious.

The days passed calmly, like a frozen lake surface. Only An Luo sensed the surging currents beneath. He would occasionally ask, and Meieruita would smile at him, nod, and reply, “Soon.”

Indeed, it was soon. The illness had been a blessing in disguise for Meieruita. More knowledge poured from the dark walls, like live fish leaping from water. Meieruita knew this was the “traveler’s” insurance for him.

With the influx of knowledge, claiming the wizard tower was nearly guaranteed. Yet Meieruita remained cautious, preparing meticulously. The wizard’s desiccated corpse had become vials of materials.

This was the loser’s fate—silently lying in glass jars, mixed with other ingredients.

The wizard tower’s interior was dim, stone walls sometimes seeping damp beads. It was a shoddy tower, but for now, an excellent trophy, enough to sustain his sleeping beauty.

Since that illness, a faint longing stirred in Meieruita. He didn’t know what he wanted—just more. More from An Luo. But he didn’t know how to get it; he had reached the end of the path.

Meieruita was unsatisfied. He wanted more.

Sometimes in dreams, An Luo’s fair skin flashed by—like an ivory statue nobles hid in bedrooms, to be played with alone by candlelight’s flicker. Smooth white skin, gentle curves. Meieruita reached out, but it wasn’t cold or hard—instead, warm, with soft fleshiness.

He caressed along the warm, gentle curves, then saw An Luo’s panicked face. The beautiful ivory statue came alive, struggling to escape, but Meieruita pinned him with one hand.

Meieruita wanted to tear open An Luo’s flesh and suck his blood. Didn’t An Luo’s world have a creation myth called Pangu opening the heavens and earth? The blood of the creation god Pangu eventually became the crisscrossing rivers on the land, nourishing the creatures of that world with their endless flowing waters. An Luo’s blood must surely be just as sweet.

The helpless Creator resisted, and Meieruita got slapped across the face, a slight stinging pain. He turned his face away and smiled at An Luo. Smiling, he drew closer, licked the tears from An Luo’s face, and heard choked sobs in his ear. Meieruita bit An Luo’s shoulder lightly—no blood, just leaving a ring of teeth marks.

Finally, he held the ivory-statue-like Creator in his arms, caressing him from fingertips to arms, then from arms to shoulders. The fair, warm skin trembled slightly under his pale palms. Meieruita closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he saw the gray-black stone ceiling. Everything from the dream scattered like clouds and smoke, leaving only a hazy bewilderment.

He didn’t know why he was so sick and twisted. The cool morning air entered his lungs, and even, prolonged breaths came from beside him. Meieruita looked at An Luo, who hadn’t woken yet, and quickly made a decision.

A Creator always drew too many fawning gazes. Meieruita knew well that if he forced An Luo to stay, it would backfire. Yet he couldn’t kill everyone in the world except himself and An Luo.

The story of Sleeping Beauty opportunely came to mind. The beautiful princess fell into a deep sleep, lying quietly on the soft bed in an ancient castle, with layers of hanging curtains. Without external force to awaken her, Sleeping Beauty would slumber forever.

Meieruita wasn’t strong enough yet—not like his former self as a “Traveler,” who could dominate everything. He was still too weak to monopolize the Creator. So, the best way was to let An Luo sleep like Sleeping Beauty, under layers of curtains, amid silk and soft pillows, eyes closed, with even, prolonged breaths, quietly drifting off.

Once Meieruita reclaimed all his power, he could peel back the curtains layer by layer and wake An Luo.

By then, no one could rival him, and he could indulge without restraint.

He looked at his hands—pale, rough palms, slender fingers like spider limbs.

Thus, Meieruita got out of bed. He needed to claim this Wizard Tower as soon as possible.

It was nearing the end of the month, and Meieruita didn’t take An Luo on any missions. When An Luo asked, Meieruita looked at him, a strange light flickering in his gray-green eyes—as if even their color had changed.

“No need to worry,” he said.

An Luo understood immediately.

It was this month.

Perfect timing—he was just about ready. After the first full preparation, when nothing happened, he’d had to prepare a second time, then a third. An Luo recalled his college entrance exams: all the knowledge points were memorized, but if the test didn’t come, he’d repeat them endlessly.

It was quite grinding. A week before the exams, not just An Luo but most of the class felt the same—overly tense, uncomfortably so, wishing for the exams to start tomorrow and end the agony.

With mental preparation, when the entire Wizard Tower suddenly began to shake, An Luo didn’t panic.

The Mid-Level Apprentices in the middle layer hall panicked, the crowd surging like headless flies. They’d stayed in the Wizard Tower so long that subconsciously they saw it as an eternally stable continent. Now that the safe haven shattered, they floundered.

An Luo went against the flow, heading to the dormitory. His heart pounded, his footsteps echoing urgently in the corridor. He unlocked the door and closed it—without locking it this time.

Strangely, with the “bang” of the door closing, An Luo’s tension and anxiety faded, gradually turning to calm.

His state now resembled the exams.

Before entering the exam hall, during the final morning reading, he was nervous. It peaked when the proctor scanned him with the metal detector at the classroom door. But once inside, finding his seat by the number and name on the desk’s upper left, the tension ebbed. By the time he sat down, he was serene.

An Luo had rehearsed this countless times in his mind. His fingertips no longer trembled as he methodically checked off his mental list. He tossed the diary into the fire; pages curled, blackened, flashed brief crimson, then turned to ash. An Luo poked them with tongs, ensuring they were thoroughly burned.

He looked at the ashes, thought for a moment, and collected them.

Better to take them outside and dump them in the river.

Then he cleared all his belongings. The ground shook, but An Luo stood steady, drawing on memories of riding buses.

Soon, the list was full of checks—everything done. An Luo took out the farewell letter he’d pieced together and placed a book from the desk on top to keep it from falling into a corner amid the shaking.

With that finished, he pulled out the note hidden away, written in Chinese characters.

An Luo hadn’t mentioned Chinese characters in front of Meieruita for a long time. When he did occasionally, it was with helpless resignation that they required too much magic power—utterly unaffordable.

Meieruita hadn’t noticed anything amiss, since An Luo hadn’t lied.

Now, seeing the Chinese notes again felt like a lifetime ago.

He hadn’t lived in this dormitory long, but it held many memories. He flipped open a book on the desk, glanced at Meieruita’s sharp, elegant handwriting, and smiled a little reluctantly.

He truly liked Meieruita—Meieruita was his protagonist. But liking was liking; now it was time for the curtain to fall.

Just like graduating and leaving campus—he had no reason to stay any longer.

He thought carefully, reviewed his actions, filled any gaps, and decided this was the best he could do.

Everything that could be done was done.

The Wizard Tower still shook as An Luo sat on the bed’s edge, waiting quietly—like English exam time nearly up, answer sheet completed and checked, just awaiting the bell.

Finally, intricate glowing patterns appeared on the Wizard Tower’s gray-black stone walls, flashed a few times, then vanished. The walls fell silent again.

This was the effect of the Wizard Tower’s ownership changing hands. An Luo stood, exhaled deeply, and knew it was time to go.

Before leaving, he scanned the room one last time.

“Goodbye,” he said to the air.

Meieruita stood on the top floor, thick carpet muffling his steps.

The Old Wizard, owner of the Wizard Tower, had transplanted organs from a Four-Dimensional Creature—his body covered in eyes, deathly afraid of light. Thus, the top floor, which should have had the best lighting, remained dim and stuffy with stale air.

The Old Wizard was dead, slumped heavily on the floor. The thick carpet muffled the thud, like a sack of potatoes hitting the ground. His hood slipped, revealing his grotesque face.

It was crammed with densely packed eyes, squeezed together like pus-filled blisters, one pressing against another—not just on the face, but the neck too.

Meieruita recalled An Luo’s words: “His body is also full of densely packed eyes.”

“Truly ugly,” he said, eyes downcast on the corpse.

Meieruita had never planned to take this evolution path of transplanting Four-Dimensional Creature organs—not just because of the immense uncertainty.

Time in the Warp Point was brief; killing a Four-Dimensional Creature quickly and harvesting an organ for transplant carried huge risks. You couldn’t know what creature you’d catch or its weaknesses.

Moreover, choosing such an organ locked your future potential.

It prioritized practicality over appearance.

But now, Meieruita had one more reason to reject it.

Looking at the Old Wizard’s monstrous, hideous corpse, he shook his head and repeated:

“Truly ugly.”