Silent Crown

They only parted ways less than half a year ago at the Sacred City.

Six months ago, Yunlou Qingshu walked around in the Sacred City, his posture elegant and graceful, and his every move was indescribably noble and solemn. But at the moment, he sat on the ground, looking unkempt. He reeked of wine, and a pool of vomit remained uncleaned in the corner. He was hungover, like a tramp who was about to die on the streets, and one could no longer find the slightest bit of grace or majesty on him.

When Ye Qingxuan saw him, he was sitting in a place resembling an ancestral shrine. Under his buttocks was the table where offerings were initially placed on, and the memorial tablets that were supposed to be enjoying the worshiping were all over the place at the moment.

The shrine that used to be solemn and dignified in the past was a mess at the moment.

A blanket was messily draped around the decadent old man. He opened his eyes and looked at Ye Qingxuan, who walked in. After a long time, he seemed to remember who the young man was, and a trace of realization flashed across his eyes.

“It’s been a long time since we last met, ‘Your Royal Highness the Prince’.” The way he pronounced the phrase “Your Royal Highness the Prince” was especially weird, full of ridicule and malice.

“You are Yunlou Qingshu?” Ye Qingxuan looked at him, his expression indifferent, trying to identify any familiar traces on his face.

“Oh, yes, it’s me, it’s me.” Yunlou Qingshu began cackling. He reached out and pointed randomly. “Sit wherever you want, wherever looks comfortable to you. Mind your step; you just stepped on my grandfather’s memorial tablet.” With the drowsiness and drunkenness of a hungover person, he glanced at Ye Qingxuan, his messy hair covered one side of his head, making him look very amusing.

“So, what brings Your Royal Highness here?” Although he asked so, his face still wore an expression that made him seem like he knew everything.

It was annoying.

Ye Qingxuan frowned. From the beginning, the situation was beyond his expectation. Although Yunlou Qingshu seemed dozens of times nicer than he was the last time they talked, it didn’t mean that Ye Qingxuan was willing to deal with a madman. It was especially so as God knew how far the current Yunlou Qingshu was from becoming a madman. Or rather, how big was the difference between him and a madman?

“Beacon.” Ye Qingxuan spoke and asked straightforwardly, “The beacon that leads one past the mist and the Great Wall, you have it, right?”

“Ah, yes, yes.” He did not shirk nor think about it, and he didn’t even show any intention to wait for a good price to sell his goods. Yunlou Qingshu nodded straightforwardly as if another tramp had asked him whether there were any fleas on his body.

Nowadays, Bai Heng had sealed off the Aurora with the Great Wall. Attempting to cross the mist with any means wouldn’t work, be it physically crossing the ocean or descending upon Aurora with one’s aether projection.

Aurora was completely sealed off all the way from the physical world to the high-level dimensions. Hidden behind the mist, even the ocean currents and sea regions had changed drastically.

As a result of the World of Dark and the long distance separating the East and West, unless Ye Qingxuan confronted the power of the Great Wall head on, he had little chance of making it across the mist. But even a fool would know that it was impossible to fight against the power accumulated by the entire East for centuries with the power of one person alone.

He had been blocked out by the Great Wall. No, he hadn’t even been accepted by the Great Wall before. Apart from the blood of the Deva, to the Great Wall, he had no residential permit, and naturally, it would not let him enter. Therefore, Ye Qingxuan could only come up with other methods, finding other ways to go to the East.

Other factors aside, he could conclude with confidence that even in the current situation, Yunlou must still have a beacon that could guide the way and enable him to pass the verification of the Great Wall. Otherwise, for so many years, where did the smuggled goods from the East come from?

Yunlou Qingshu knew his intentions from the first moment he arrived, and as a result, he felt all the more ridiculous and mocked.

He sized Ye Qingxuan up as if he was looking at a rare species of animal. “It seems that you really have deep feelings for my daughter, you are actually willing to abandon the Queen to find her. What do you like about her?”

Ye Qingxuan was expressionless. “It has nothing to do with you.”

“You are right.” Yunlou Qingshu laughed sharply. “After growing up, children have nothing to do with their parents. As a father, I can only watch as a man hold her hand and take her away. It is really saddening. Am I right, Lord Hand of God?”

Ye Qingxuan’s face suddenly turned pale.

He felt a bit like vomiting.

After a long time, he managed to suppress the heartfelt nausea.

“Sorry, I felt a bit nauseous.” He waved his hand and asked, “What on earth happened that turned you into this goddamn state right now?”

“It has nothing to do with you.” Yunlou Qingshu squinted and said calmly. “Please don’t bother about it.”

“What about the situation outside? How did the bodies come about?”

“Isn’t it clear at a glance?” Yunlou Qingshu spread his hands resignedly. “Speaking of it, I learned the tactic of hanging the rebels from you Anglos. The effect is not bad indeed.”

“In the end, you personally turned your City of the Cloud Tower into this goddamn state?” Ye Qingxuan asked.

“Is it not good?” As if he had been asked about something he was most happy about, Yunlou Qingshu laughed hard, bending forward and backward. “Isn’t it the price a usurper like me should pay?

“No, it is only right and proper this way. You see, I did everything in my power to snatch the position of the lord of the city, but ended up destroying the entire Cloud Tower. And in the end, everyone deserted me, and I would die from madness. The ending is simply so classic that it should be written into a novel. Or rather, one should say that it won’t be normal if this is not the case! ”

Ye Qingxuan said nothing and simply looked at him, his gaze becoming one of pity.

“You can’t solve the problem of the Black Tide, right?” He said, “For the sake of the position of the lord of the city, even though you did everything in your power, killed your father, sent assassins after your brother, even raped your own sister, and turned your daughter into a marionette… You paid every price that you can afford, in order to have a grasp on power, but in the end, power abandoned you.

“Without Bai Xi, you can’t resolve the problem of the Black Tide beneath the City of the Cloud Tower.

“The City of the Cloud Tower will be destroyed in the catastrophe, because of you, your incompetence, your desires, and everything you have done. Am I right, Yunlou Qingshu?”

Yunlou Qingshu said nothing.

Facing Ye Qingxuan’s relentless insults and ridicule, he narrowed his eyes and gazed at the man in front of him, his mad face convulsing because of rage. Under the pupils, webs of red blood vessels were spreading, like fire. After a long time, he lowered his head, as if he had lost all his strength, and laughed hysterically.

“Exactly!” He lifted his hands and applauded, not being evasive about all the evils he had done. He grinned and laughed, revealing sharp canine teeth, and an evilness like that of demons filled his eyes. Despite being so decadent and flustered, his face, he was still full of a glow of pride he felt from his maliciousness.

From the bottom of his heart, he was proud of all that he had done!

He exclaimed, “It is the achievement most worthy of praise and proclamation in my life as Yunlou Qingshu! Greatness that you ordinary folks can never achieve! A great evil that can’t even be redeemed by one-ten-thousandth even if its perpetrator is cooked in nine tripod cauldrons!

“You only got one thing wrong…” He paused, and the malice in his smile spewed out like a blowout. “Ye Qingxuan, if the father of the woman you love is going to marry her to another person one day, what will you do?”

Ye Qingxuan looked at him, expressionless. His fingers tapped on an incorporeal sword ridge, and a chill burst forth. “Do I have any other choice?”

“What a coincidence, I think so too, and I did so too…” Yunlou Qingshu whistled incredibly happily. “Look, you are like me! It is one of the things we have in common, and it is definitely not the only one! By the way, do you like your hair?”

Ye Qingxuan said nothing.

“You don’t, right?” Yunlou Qingshu understood his answer moved a bit forward from the table as if he wanted to have a heart-to-heart conversation with the young man. “Rest assured, I dislike mine more than you do.” As he said so, he pointed to his messy hair. “Look, this white hair. It’s not because of a pure bloodline, but merely because I am old.

“It is my greatest shame, proof of my lowly birth.”

Ye Qingxuan closed his eyes impatiently, and he was indifferent.

Yunlou Qingshu snickered. “It is your greatest fortune, Ye Qingxuan, to be able to grow up in Anglo from young. You have not become like me, even though everyone thinks that you are a ‘hybrid’.”

Disregarding Ye Qingxuan’s cold expression, Yunlou Qingshu lifted his hand and toyed with the messy hair hanging from his forehead, separating the hair that had stuck together in clumps, one by one.

“Before the age of 15, I carefully hid in places where others couldn’t see, escaping from their sight. I’m afraid of others looking at my face and seeing my hair…

“Their gazes would turn from that of pity to that of despise. Even the pariahs, when they look at you, their gazes can also be mocking. Ah, look, it’s the bastard living in the Marquis’ residence. It is said that he is the son of a wh*re, he’s more despicable than us.”

He paused in the middle of his actions and violently pulled the clump of hair out, together with a small, bloody piece of scalp. “Ye Qingxuan, you know what? Every time I see their gazes, I hate that I am alive.

“I hate myself with a passion, and I hate my mother with a passion, I hate that wh*re for giving birth to me. I didn’t visit her again, even on her deathbed.”

“But it isn’t until her death that I begin to regret… I regret not loving her. You won’t understand, Ye Qingxuan, you have never been lonely, so you will never understand…”

He lifted his eyes, and the dark eyes were full of a quiet calmness. One could see no madness in them, and his sobriety was frightening. “In the whole world, except for my mother, my sister was the only one who loved me. Maybe it was not the love between men and women, maybe she just felt pity for her b*stard brother.

“In the entire City of the Cloud Tower, she was the only one who had cared about me.”

In the silence, Yunlou Qingshu murmured softly, “I married her purely because I wanted to marry her.

“For this purpose, I killed my father, who never loved me, and expelled my brother who regarded me as an insignificant insect, and snatched all this. I don’t f*cking want the goddamn power, I just want to be with her forever… Like how you are now, Ye Qingxuan, I was willing to pay any price.”

Ye Qingxuan kept his eyes low, but his face couldn’t help but convulse.

It was because of fury.

It was because he could not tolerate being compared to such a thing.

He looked at Yunlou Qingshu coldly and glanced at Yunlou Chaoyue remaining quiet in a corner. The girl was like a marionette, sitting in the dust motionless, her gaze empty.

He asked, “So, you treat her daughter like this?”

“Would you love someone who killed Bai Xi?” Yunlou Qingshu snickered and asked, “Oh, you’re right, I don’t love them, of course not! Just looking at them makes me go crazy with jealousy and hatred. The thought of the only person who loved me having died because of them makes me wish that they have never appeared in the world!”

His face convulsing hysterically, he moved forward and stared at Ye Qingxuan’s face. “Can you understand the feeling? Ye Qingxuan… The kind of helpless anger, the kind of pain of watching your beloved die in front of you while you couldn’t do anything!

“Yes, I hate Chaoyue, and I hate Bai Xi even more, the tumor destined to kill her mother before even being born!”

Ye Qingxuan lifted his eyes and looked at the face that was close at hand. A substantial chill spread in the ancestral shrine, the sword of the New Testament whistled, and an incorporeal chill pressed against Yunlou Qingshu’s neck.

Facing death, which was close at hand, Yunlou Qingshu was still smiling, his smile twisted. “But what could I do? I used everything I had to exchange for a way for her to continue living. I used every possible method in my power to persuade her not to give birth to that vile spawn. I even went to the lengths of torturing and scorning her, but she remained unwilling to give up that piece of rotten meat in her belly!!!”

Disregarding Chaoyue in the corner, Yunlou Qingshu screamed in front of Ye Qingxuan in what was almost mad anger. “What could I do? I could only watch her die… watch her abandon me!”

At the moment, Ye Qingxuan finally glimpsed his true colors through the madness in his eyes, and thus felt like mocking and ridiculing him.

“Give me a break, Yunlou Qingshu.” He raised a finger and flicked away the speck of saliva suspended before his face, his gaze full of despise. “You just can’t tolerate the fact that she loved them more than she loved you.”

“So what?” Yunlou Qingshu looked at him as if he was describing the truth. “Is it not the embodiment of love?”

Ye Qingxuan had no interest in looking at him anymore. “Simply… disgusting.”

“Isn’t it the desire of mortals? How is it worthy of despise?” Yunlou Qingshu reached out and patted the young man’s shoulder. “Lord Hand of God, when have you ever kept aloof from it? Can you tolerate it if Bai Xi considers someone else to be more important than you? If she won’t hesitate to leave you, or to die, for that person’s sake?”

Gazing at Ye Qingxuan’s expression which had turned cold, Yunlou Qingshu laughed loudly and hysterically. The sharp laughter echoed in the dead city, infiltrating every corner. Combining with the stench from the corpses, it produced stinking echoes.

“Enough!” Ye Qingxuan used all of his rationality to restrain himself.

The laughter came to an abrupt end.

It was not because of Ye Qingxuan, but because of himself.

Yunlou Qingshu stood sluggishly frozen to the spot. He reached out and pressed a hand on his throat. As if it was struck by something, his limbs began convulsing involuntarily. His face was blue and it was difficult for him to breathe. In the end, he curled up into a ball in the filth on the ground.

Ye Qingxuan coldly looked at him as he curled up like a worm on the ground, watching him enduring the pain. It continued until Yunlou Chaoyue walked over from the corner, reached out, and helped him up from the ground. A palm pressed against his back, she helped him spit out the thick phlegm and vomit in his throat. Then, Yunlou Qingshu lay on the ground, painfully vomiting out stinking, half-digested food, tears and mucus flowing down his face. The ugliness made one feel like kicking him far away, never ever wanting to get close to him again.

“You should thank your daughter whom you hate. If she had not saved you, neither would have I.”

Ye Qingxuan’s cold eyes looked down at him. “Time for our chat to end, Marquis Yunlou, I am not interested in the twisted first half of your life. Now, let me repeat what I have come for: Give me the beacon to pass through the Great Wall, don’t let me take it from you myself.”

Yunlou Qingshu was finally done vomiting. “You want this?” He sat in his own vomit, not even wiping away the tears and mucus on his face. He reached out and took out the jade tablet that represented his identity, shaking it in his hand, his twisted smile full of malice. Then, he tossed it to Ye Qingxuan’s feet. He did not put forward a price, nor did he make any demands, just casually threw the item that represented the orthodoxy of his identity into the dust like that.

“Congratulations, you have gotten it.” Yunlou Qingshu smiled and waved goodbye. “Go, Lord Ye, go and pursue your grand dream!

“The truth will be waiting for you there.

“Go and let those beings that had decayed so much until not even their ashes remained sacrifice you to the so-called thousand-year fate, hahahaha… It’s all a bad joke!”

Until Ye Qingxuan walked out of the residence of the lord of the city, he could still hear Yunlou Qingshu’s mad laughter from the tall building behind him. “Bon Voyage!”

He finally turned back and took one last look at the dead city, then turned and left.

Without the slightest reluctance.

…

Half a day later, a man named Jiu Ying [1] walked up to the pavilion of the lord of the city. The man, who was so burly that he resembled a giant god, looked down at Yunlou Qingshu, who was soaked in spirits and vomit. “He has already left?”

Yunlou Qingshu kept his head low, minding his own business and singing songs. He said nothing as if he did not see the man at all.

“I see.” Jiu Ying nodded slightly.

…

That day, fire burned from the bottommost of the City of the Cloud Tower, consuming the corpses and bones, moving up layer by layer. The iron-like flames licked the city, shredding it inch-by-inch from the bottom to the top.

The fire burned for three days and nights, and all the magnificence and splendor it once had were buried in the brazier fortified by high walls.

In the end, the remaining ashes floated into the sky, blending into the rain clouds, and fell into the ocean.

Amid the ruins, no more luxurious scenes could be seen.

Only the souls of the dead lingered, the hoarse singing reverberating through day and night.

[1] The name literally translates as “nine infants.” It is the name of a vicious beast in Chinese mythology that has nine heads, makes a crying noise similar to that of an infant, and can spray out water and fire.