Chapter 101

Which one should he throw away? He had been throwing them one by one, and the further he got, the more difficult it became. Even if they were illusions, those illusions dug deeply into the emptiest fears in his heart. But Hels showed no reaction whatsoever and threw them with extreme ease.

Horne stared at Hels’s palm. Hels explained, “These things aren’t really important to me, for the most part.”

The most important one still remained in his hand, but not because he was reluctant to throw it away. Rather, he had discovered something else about the rules.

When he had picked up “Lover,” he had originally thought some imagined scene would appear. But the scene did not change at all. He only needed to look up to see Horne’s profile.

This spatial dimension had separated all of them. At this moment, in Cloud Palace Star, there were actually only the two of them. This in itself was the most hypnotic hallucination.

“Why not throw them all away at once?” Horne gestured with his eyes toward Hels’s palm.

Hels shrugged and said quite casually, “You throw them.”

Horne was stunned for a moment. He turned his back, climbed another step casually, and stopped there. His voice was lighter than the wind: “The question you just asked me—I’ll give you the answer.”

“Hm?”

Illusions turned into hopes upon touch, and throwing them away shattered them completely. None of it was something that had truly happened, yet they were one of the countless possibilities in their hearts. Humans always stalled here, unsure how to personally destroy a world they had once longed for. So this illusion was not entirely false.

If Ais’s original intent was to trap humans, nailing them down with their obsessions over value, then this “forced stripping away” had instead truly awakened him.

Horne inhaled and responded solemnly, “I know.”

He knew Hels was not that child and had never treated him as one. He was all possibilities, all relationships.

After he spoke, the surroundings froze for an instant. That instant seemed to carry tens of thousands of echoes, completing a cycle through time.

Hels’s shoulders dropped in a very relaxed posture. He gazed at Horne for a long time until Horne tilted his head slightly. Then he smiled and said, “Alright, then let’s head up quickly.”

“Go…” As the word left his mouth, Horne finally realized what Hels meant.

The essence of the pendant was to build and destroy. If nothing had changed in their scene after picking up this pendant, then throwing it away would destroy the scene they saw—and the person in that scene.

The reality before their eyes was reality, but it was also the pendant’s illusion.

Of the two of them facing each other, one was certain to be destroyed—the one who threw away the “Lover” pendant last.

So Hels did not care about the meaning on the label at all. Throwing or keeping it was just one step in the game. He had simply volunteered to be the sacrifice, yet told Horne so casually that he could throw it.

Horne stood ramrod straight, saying nothing. His gaze fell once more on the remaining four pendants. When he spoke again, his tone carried a deathly calm: “What if this is Ais’s scheme?”

“The other three are still in other planes.” Hels did not answer directly, but his meaning was clear. Though they did not know the final clearance condition, at least at this moment, they could not drag down the other three for each other’s sake. Even if it really was Ais’s scheme, they had no choice now but to follow this thread and step right into it.

“The Aliens are utterly disgusting,” Horne said, almost grinding his teeth. Hels did not respond to that at all and simply looked at him calmly.

“If you can’t decide the order, then throw the last four away together,” Hels said. “Then head to the top as fast as possible, find Ains, and wait for the other two.”

Horne turned directly away, his back to Hels, and fell silent.

He did not know what would happen if he threw them.

“Horne.” Hels softened his voice. He shifted position beside the thin strands of cloud and walked to Horne’s side. “We need to hurry. There’s less than one month left. The later it gets, the less we know what will happen next.”

Horne closed his eyes tightly. That voice was incredibly gentle, like the campfire that had warmed him for years—possessed, lost, and now reignited.

Looking back now, he had never feared death itself in any of his deaths. He had always called out for Hels. They were both abandoned children in the Snowfield, surviving in loneliness, tightly dependent, growing into each other’s flesh and blood.

“Horne.” He called again, as if coaxing him. “I’m feeling really tired now. I don’t want to go up anymore. You keep going ahead.”

Horne took a deep breath, turned around, and faced the person before him. He touched his feverish face. In the next second, he took a step forward and hugged Hels tightly.

The force was so great that Hels had not expected it. He stumbled back a step before steadying himself and immediately hugged Horne back, as if embracing tens of thousands of nights they had never met.

Darkness flowed quietly below, baring its fangs and claws, ready to swallow anyone at any moment. The cloud layer underfoot was solid yet thin, liable to tear apart at any time. The wind blew endlessly, toward a future with no known end.

Horne buried his head in Hels’s neck, his breathing shallow and deep uncontrollably. The skin against his face was still scorching hot, and the other’s hand continued to pat his back lightly.

“You won’t disappear, right?” Horne asked. He wanted confirmation.

“I won’t,” Hels said with equal certainty.

Horne immediately asked again, “How do I get you out?”

“Wait.”

Horne said nothing. He hugged him tightly, as if he had never held on so fiercely, never resolved himself so firmly.

The scorching body heat rose further. It was impossible to tell if it was illness or inner fervor. Hels asked softly, “Does that signal you gave earlier still count?”

Horne was stunned for a moment, a bit helpless. How was this person still confirming something like that now? Those three pieced-together words formed just one sentence—touch me, no need for my permission.

“Mm.”

Ains’s voice came from above again, asking where they were. This time, Horne heard You Wenjie and Wen Yu’s voices too, right nearby.

Wen Yu was especially close to them. Horne suspected she had heard the whole thing because as she passed slowly, she said unhurriedly, “A hundred years of happiness together.”

Horne: “…”

Had a real century passed? Could she not say something else?

Hels chuckled lowly, pushed Horne away, and reminded him, “Throw the pendants.”

All four pendants were in his hand. Horne gripped Hels’s hand tightly, looked at him, watched as he merely curved the corners of his mouth slightly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

In the instant the pendants fell, darkness surged up. Everything before his eyes shattered. Even Hels’s body turned into fragments like a broken mirror, dissolving into a pile of dust right before him. Horne reached out frantically to grab it, but he clutched only a handful of black curtain. It was as if he had been thrown into a massive black cage. In the blink of an eye, it swallowed everything he could see—clouds, sun, wind pillars, sounds, and sights.

The only thing left was his rapidly pounding heartbeat, amplifying ring after ring in the absolute silence, like ripples spreading across water.

He rose infinitely. His soul ascended to the high sky, then slowly descended.

Horne slowly straightened his body.

Everything had vanished, including the “Lover” illusion and Hels.

“Hels?” Horne called out. Echoes layered over one another, assaulting him. The entire space amplified his voice until it gave him a headache, then slowly faded.

Horne quickly ran a few steps in all directions. There was only darkness here, nothing else. Running anywhere was the same.

If what he had just broken was the illusion of Cloud Palace Star, then perhaps this was the place where he truly existed. He had been here from the start. So what about Cloud Palace Star? Was that where Hels was? Or was it possible that they were each other’s illusions?

Intense headache assaulted him. A needle pierced straight through his temple, stabbing him right through. Horne nearly clutched his head and knelt halfway down.

It hurt so much. What was this now?

“Why did you press that button?”

“You’re no match for the two admirals at all!”

“Strip off his clothes and parade him through the streets! See what the man who doomed all humanity looks like!”

—“Buzz, buzz.”

It hurt. Who was speaking? Horne clutched his head, bent over, and pressed his forehead to the ground. Like tinnitus, accusations in his mind clamored until he was on the verge of collapse.

“You’ve disappointed us so much. How did our family raise such an ungrateful wretch!”

“You have brains, melee, ranged—only I’m irreplaceable, right?”

“Humanity is doomed!”

It hurt too much. His heart pounded wildly, blood vessels swelling throughout his body. The real tinnitus pulsed like waves, “buzz buzz,” sweeping over his eardrums, gradually speeding up, faster and faster.

“My parents clearly didn’t die back then. Why did he only save me and not them? He’s so capable—couldn’t he have tried a bit harder?”

“Humans and Aliens can’t coexist peacefully!”

“Horne, you made a wish yourself to stay with me forever. Why were you gone for so long, so long?”

Footsteps came from ahead. Enduring the intense pain, Horne lifted his head and saw Hels’s back, not far away, facing away from him.

“Hels!” Horne called out. Then his throat seemed constricted; he could not make another sound. He strained to shout the name, but no words came out. He turned red in the face, veins crawling up his neck.

Hels did not turn back. Before Horne’s eyes, he turned into a swarm of wandering particles and vanished.

Horne’s mouth gaped open. He was shouting loudly, but he heard no sound of his own—only fierce breaths, over and over, from within his body. Nothing else existed.

He clenched his fists, forcing himself to ignore the nearly unbearable pain. He slowly stood up from the ground. The moment he did, the scene before his eyes changed again.

It brightened here. Scenes gradually appeared around him. He stood on a large black rock. Ahead were two extremely narrow log bridges. At the other end of the log bridges was another black rock just like the one he stood on. Aside from these three things, the entire space remained pure black.

Soon, Horne spotted something new. From the edge of the black rock opposite came Ains’s voice.

Horne’s first reaction was that it was a trap. He shouted Ains’s name, and the other responded. But the response was not ideal.

She said, “Brother? I… I don’t want to throw this pendant away.”

Not wanting to throw the pendant… This was…

It seemed like the topmost point, after he had thrown ten pendants! From the moment they started throwing pendants, the ground beneath their feet had been swallowed bit by bit. In the end, it would probably become this pure black.

That meant the place he was now was not some personal illusion. He was still on the planet where all five of them were. Throwing one pendant meant bearing a share of the suffering, so no one would have the courage to throw them all at once—except for someone like Hels…

With the illusion shattered, where had Hels gone? Had he completely vanished from the Obelisk, or gone to another illusion? How could he find him?

Or had Hels not been here to begin with?

“Brother!” Ains shouted, extremely anxious. “What do we do!”

“Wait for me a moment.” Horne forced himself to calm down and quieted the voices in his mind.