OVPBM 22

Chapter 22 – “Goodbye.”

The rose-colored flames of Planet L-6409 illuminated the entire cockpit.

Lu Yunwan lowered his hand. A faint curve graced his lips as he quietly awaited fate’s final mercy.

The universe was soundless.

Everything was unbelievably still.

As if bewitched, Chu Xuanzhou followed Lu Yunwan’s description and imagined the final scene.

The Regent lay sleeping peacefully beneath the ground, his eyes gently closed, having escaped time itself.

Freesias pierced through his flesh and soil alike, breaking through the ground and blooming in wild abandon… like stars blanketing the open wilderness.

Everything was as beautiful as a fairy tale.

“Cough, cough, cough…”

Lu Yunwan suddenly began coughing in a muffled fit. He frowned in pain, and before long, blood stained his lips red.

The glaring crimson jolted Chu Xuanzhou back to his senses.

He realized that the thoughts he had just entertained were dangerously absurd.

Chu Xuanzhou’s fingers trembled slightly.

As if noticing his hesitation, Lu Yunwan forced himself to steady his breathing and smiled gently as he said in a soft voice, “Cough, cough… Your Highness, kill me. You can integrate into the royal family, be accepted by the merfolk. You could even avenge humankind and become their hero.”

His voice was weak and his gaze unfocused, yet his words were filled with longing and yearning.

“Pull the trigger. End all of this…”

The bewitched merman slowly lowered his gaze to the quantum gun.

His heart pounded wildly like a drum.

At that very moment, the mecha across from them finally lost their patience and launched an attack.

A blue particle beam shot toward them. With a thunderous boom, the starship began to shake violently.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lu Yunwan saw that the other side of the starship had already been engulfed in flames. Large sections of it broke apart and fell into the universe like meteors.

The soldiers in the cockpit sat before the viewing window, doing everything they could to control the starship, yet they still could not stop it from drawing closer to Planet L-6409.

The fierce assault sent the starship spinning. Outside the enormous window, one moment there was the empty universe, the next the rose-colored flames of Planet L-6409, flickering in and out of view.

“Warning! Warning!”

“Starship damage at 37%.”

“Starship damage at 44%.”

“Direction system restarting…”

Amid the piercing alarms, the burning pain in Lu Yunwan’s chest grew sharper. He took half a step back, searching for balance within the violently shaking starship.

In the next second, Chu Xuanzhou unexpectedly threw away the quantum gun in his hand and stepped forward, biting down hard on Lu Yunwan’s shoulder.

“Ah…!” Lu Yunwan could not hold back and cried out.

The threat of death awakened the madness carved into the merman’s DNA. In an instant, his sharp fangs pierced through the black military uniform and struck against white bone.

—Lu Yunwan was far too calm, far too composed.

So calm that Chu Xuanzhou could not help but doubt.

Perhaps “living” no longer held any appeal for Lu Yunwan. But could the Regent, who had lived so intensely all his life, truly accept dying beside Planet L-6409, carelessly drawing a period at the end of his story?

The Regent raised his hand and pressed it against the young man’s shoulder.

Under the excruciating pain, Lu Yunwan’s vision blurred. Amid the violent shaking of the starship and the distant flames, several fragmented memories flashed through his mind.

Lu Yunwan’s eyes slowly widened.

As expected of the ultimate villain! The original host had indeed left a backup plan aboard this Z-type starship!

This starship itself had been assembled and transformed from several small-scale mecha.

Not only that, escape pods had been installed in every corner of the vessel.

Damn, that really is just like him.

The starship spun as it hurtled toward Planet L-6409. In that brief interval, Lu Yunwan’s gaze suddenly fell upon the three mecha ahead that were besieging them.

GR-V model mecha. The words surfaced in Lu Yunwan’s mind.

…GR-V units were products of the interstellar black market. The original host had once received intelligence that the Empire’s Fourth Prince, Chu Zhengxu, had purchased three of them several months ago.

Chu Zhengxu was an important cannon fodder character in 《 The Merfolk Empire 》, someone who regarded all his siblings as thorns in his side and had attempted to assassinate Chu Xuanzhou several times.

In other words, their true target was actually Chu Xuanzhou, not him!

Lu Yunwan’s heart went cold in an instant. Damn it. The protagonist probably would not be able to escape either.

But in the very next moment, the instinct to survive surged up like a tidal wave.

…Since he was not even afraid of dying, he might as well make a grand gamble.

Lu Yunwan decided to bet on it!

He saw the suspicion in Chu Xuanzhou’s eyes and resolved to get the protagonist out of here. At the same time, he would seize this opportunity to make the other party trust him completely and utterly.

Sometimes something has to break before anything new can be built.

First, Lu Yunwan would follow along with Chu Xuanzhou’s assumptions and make him believe that he truly was playing him for a fool.

And in the end, he would give him a surprise.

Chu Xuanzhou had shown no intention of loosening his bite. Yet under the intense pain, Lu Yunwan instead began to laugh, his lips growing even redder because of it.

He raised his hand and, full of lingering affection, stroked Chu Xuanzhou’s hair, whispering softly, “Your Highness, your heart has softened.”

Chu Xuanzhou paused and slowly released his teeth.

The flames of Planet L-6409 reflected perfectly in Lu Yunwan’s eyes. As though he had encountered something amusing, he leaned closer and said by Chu Xuanzhou’s ear, “A soft heart gives others the chance to deceive you.”

Lu Yunwan’s words were like a massive stone crashing straight into Chu Xuanzhou’s heart.

“Your Excellency… What do you mean by that?”

A chill suddenly rose from the depths of the merman’s heart.

…So everything Lu Yunwan had just said had indeed been a lie?

How could he have forgotten that the Regent had always delighted in manipulating people’s hearts?

Lu Yunwan was ruthless and merciless, his humanity long since extinguished.

He had always been the most skilled hunter in this world at toying with his prey.

Chu Xuanzhou slowly clenched his fist. His fingertips pierced the flesh of his palm, staining it with a faint red.

He could be deceived by anyone in this world except Lu Yunwan.

Under the dual catalysis of disappointment and despair, unease spread wildly through the young man’s heart.

That feeling battered him in relentless surges. His mental core, stagnant like dead water, jolted to life, accompanied by hatred and anxiety. 

If there had been a detector present, Lu Yunwan would have heard the alert for abnormal mental power fluctuations.

The merman’s violet eyes deepened into an abyssal bruised hue, his pupils gradually contracting into needle-thin slits.

Still unaware of what was happening, the laughter in Lu Yunwan’s throat collapsed into a jagged fit of coughing. He gently pushed the young man away and leaned against the starship’s cold silver inner wall, tilting his head back as he struggled to regulate his breathing.

A chill spread from his back throughout his entire body.

A few seconds later, accompanied by another violent jolt of the starship, great gushes of blood poured from the corner of Lu Yunwan’s lips.

A trace of madness crept into his smile.

Panting and laughing at the same time, Lu Yunwan beckoned lightly to Chu Xuanzhou and said, “Your Highness… Cough, cough… This is the third lesson I’m teaching you.”

The starship’s spiraling descent quickened with alarming speed. The rose-colored light on Lu Yunwan’s face flickered in and out as his body swayed endlessly between brightness and darkness.

Lu Yunwan was like a beam of light, impossible to tell whether he was real or an illusion, even more impossible to grasp.

At that very instant, the starship’s rotation shuddered to a crawl. The viewing window beside him happened to turn its back to Planet L-6409.

The rose-colored glow vanished without a trace, and the world fell silent in an instant.

As if bewitched, Chu Xuanzhou slowly moved forward in tandem with Lu Yunwan’s motion.

When less than half a meter remained between them, Lu Yunwan collapsed weakly against Chu Xuanzhou’s shoulder. He let out a soft laugh first, then spoke in a voice as faint as a mosquito’s hum beside the youth’s ear.

“Never soften your heart.”

A soft heart was the first step toward being deceived.

“No matter when, no matter where, never soften your heart toward anyone… Do not listen to pleas for mercy, and do not be misled by blood or tears.”

Chu Xuanzhou’s body swayed without warning. His long silver-white hair accidentally brushed against Lu Yunwan’s lips, and the tips were stained with a startling crimson.

Every sentence, every word Lu Yunwan spoke was carved deeply into Chu Xuanzhou’s mind.

Accompanied by the sharp pain transmitting from his mental core, the merman lowered his eyes, completely concealing the complicated emotions within them.

“Be careful!”

The starship lurched again. The young man suddenly reached out to steady Lu Yunwan.

He heard the Regent sigh softly by his ear, then say with what seemed like faint helplessness, “Especially do not soften your heart toward me.”

Another violent impact came from the other side of the starship.

The soldier who had been struggling at the controls was thrown heavily backward from the pilot’s seat.

At that point, the massive starship completely lost control.

After a few seconds of stillness, it hurtled toward Planet L-6409 at an unimaginable speed. The volcanic crater that had once been nothing more than a black dot was now enlarging at a terrifying rate, its size multiplying rapidly before their eyes.

This is the moment!

Lu Yunwan drove his mental power with reckless abandon.

The enormous starship began to shift and transform. The escape pods hidden within the inner walls all ejected at once.

Using the force generated by the starship’s violent shaking, Lu Yunwan gathered all his strength and shoved Chu Xuanzhou toward the other side of the cabin.

Chu Xuanzhou was pushed into an escape pod.

“Your Excellency, what are you doing?!”

Not far away, the three mecha had encircled the starship.

In an instant, flames surged skyward within the vessel.

The gravity simulation device was completely destroyed by the impact, and the interior of the starship reverted to a state of weightlessness.

Blazing fire and smoke nearly swallowed Lu Yunwan, who remained suspended alone in the cockpit.

He was as fragile as a fallen leaf drifting through the universe.

Under the blinding light, even the merman could not clearly make out the distant scene.

Through the glare, Chu Xuanzhou could only vaguely see that the cockpit of the starship had been restructured and transformed into a mecha.

Lu Yunwan did not board an escape pod. He remained inside the mecha.

Seated alone at the controls, he gradually disappeared into the towering flames, steering toward Planet L-6409 and the three giant mecha.

—Lu Yunwan intended to block them and prevent the mecha from capturing the escape pod.

In the final moment, the Regent of the Empire smiled and turned his head back, looking in Chu Xuanzhou’s direction.

Before he was completely swallowed by the fire, Lu Yunwan raised his hand and gave him a small wave. His lips moved slowly.

“Goodbye.”

Lu Yunwan said goodbye.