Chapter 198
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“Lou Yan, how could I forget you.”
Lou Yan looked at this sentence, wanting to curl his lips, but feeling his cheeks stiffening, so he coldly withdrew his smile.
So, Fu Xuezhou just found his expression amusing and wanted to tease him?
Count Grey concealed his complex emotions and asked with interest, “Is this a confession?”
“How could this be a confession,” Lou Yan said expressionlessly, “He clearly remembered my name, but just because he found my expression amusing and wanted to tease me, he nailed me to a tree and shot me with a few bullets. Do you think this is a confession?”
“This, this…” Count Grey wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. Did Fu Xuezhou really do such speechless things?
“But it’s okay,” Lou Yan turned to look at Count Grey, sneering, “Before that, I also fed him six bullets, then bit off his ear, and finally nailed him to the ground.”
“…,” Count Grey was speechless, and could only awkwardly chuckle twice. Never before had he felt so clearly that Lou Yan and Fu Xuezhou were truly made for each other, these two were just a pair.
Lou Yan lowered his head, looking at the words written by the Memory Pen, took a deep breath to suppress his anger, and felt a bit bewildered.
Would such a Fu Xuezhou really say something like “I’ll destroy the world if I’m bored”?
Even if he didn’t want to believe it, Lou Yan could still see from the answers written by the Memory Pen that although Fu Xuezhou was indifferent and didn’t care about the survival of humanity and the world, he at least had no intention of destroying the world.
So what’s the deal with that “I’ll destroy the world if I’m bored”?
Could it be that Fu Xuezhou also found his expression amusing and wanted to tease him, so he deliberately said “I’ll destroy the world if I’m bored”?
…This is too far-fetched.
…
Could it really be like this?
Lou Yan pinched his brow with the fingers holding the cigarette, still feeling that Fu Xuezhou couldn’t be so childish. Lou Yan still vividly remembered the expression on Fu Xuezhou’s face when he answered that question, that man wasn’t joking, his eyes and expression clearly indicated that his answer was the truth from the bottom of his heart.
So what exactly is going on?
Lou Yan fell into deep confusion, what was Fu Xuezhou thinking?
“…What curse did he receive when he took the lighter?” Lou Yan asked.
Count Grey sighed, then changed the subject, “Do you know about the Anisange people’s lineage?”
Lou Yan shook his head.
Count Grey continued, “I am an Anisange, from an extraterrestrial planet, and my homeland was destroyed fifty-six years ago by the anomaly power.”
Lou Yan looked at Count Grey in astonishment.
Count Grey smiled faintly, a layer of gray sadness shrouding his green eyes, he calmly said, “It was a peaceful day, and suddenly the sky was covered by dark clouds. The first anomalies appeared in our world, and from that moment on, blood and corpses became the most common things on our planet.”
The Anisange people were from the other end of the distant universe, tens of millions of light-years away from Earth. They had a home more beautiful than Earth, like a fairy tale kingdom, powerful and beautiful, possessing powers that humans didn’t have.
But their planet didn’t escape the invasion of the anomalies power.
The anomalies power ravaged their world, countless terrifying and horrifying things destroyed the peace of the fairy tale kingdom.
The Anisange people fought desperately against the invasion of the anomalies power, resisting it for seven hundred and seventy-seven years.
In these seven hundred and seventy-seven years, they lost countless compatriots and countless families. The superior lineage of the Anisange people played a role, to allow the race to survive stubbornly, to prevent them from despairing and dying in pain, the lineage of the Anisange people evolved generation by generation, beginning to diminish people’s emotions.
Friendship, kinship, love.
Compassion, sympathy, despair, sadness, joy, pain, fear…
The lineage of the Anisange people helped them become more and more indifferent, more and more like emotionless war machines. But ‘hatred’ and ‘defending their homeland’ were always the eternal themes of the struggle between the Anisange people and the anomalies.
But even the powerful Anisange people were eventually completely invaded by the anomalies and lost their homeland.
The fairy tale kingdom turned into a planet of anomalies, and the gloomy clouds of terror forever shrouded this planet. The stubborn Anisange people did not submit to the rule of the anomalies, they chose to destroy the entire planet. Count Grey escaped before the complete explosion of his homeland, and began to wander in the universe.
He appeared on various planets invaded by anomalies power, using various props from his shop to help various races that had the potential to destroy the anomalies resist the anomalies power. Before he came to Earth, he had been wandering in the universe for fifty-six years and witnessed the destruction of three planets.
Lou Yan listened to Count Grey’s words with a complex expression, feeling extremely oppressed. Was the power of the anomalies really so vast and terrifying?
Count Grey talked about his past, and a shocking hatred appeared on his thin, pale face, “Fu Xuezhou exchanged his heart with my lineage, and those who possess this lineage will have silver hair, pale skin, and increasingly indifferent emotions.”
“The lineage of the Anisange people helped Fu Xuezhou maintain his clear rationality among 291 worlds, allowing him to dilute various emotions to prevent madness, and also helped his brain contain the memories of all 291 world lines, constantly strengthening his body. Without the lineage of the Anisange people, Fu Xuezhou would have collapsed long ago. But the negative effects brought by the lineage also made him more and more indifferent and ruthless, less and less like a human.”
Count Grey smiled bitterly as he touched his silver hair, “The curse of the shop takes away the most valuable thing from the buyer, such as Lu Haixiu’s five senses. But for Fu Xuezhou, his five senses are actually the least valuable thing, his body has hundreds of ways to replace his five senses. So the shop took away the most precious thing from Fu Xuezhou, which was also the few emotions left after the lineage of the Anisange people evolved continuously.”
“So now Fu Xuezhou is a person without emotions.”
Lou Yan felt as if his heart had been struck heavily by a hammer, a sour feeling instantly invading his whole body.
He turned to look at the dim sky outside the door. The morning sun had risen, casting a faint golden light through the crack in the door, falling exactly at Lou Yan’s feet, about half a meter away from Lou Yan.
It seemed very close, but in fact, it was like a vast chasm, with no possibility of intersection.
“So why,” Lou Yan felt it was funny, so he chuckled and asked in a very light voice, “So why did he fall in love with me?”
Count Grey remained silent for a long time this time, looking at Lou Yan with a sorrowful and cautious gaze. His voice was equally soft, filled with a comforting tone. “I don’t know… but the things the shop takes away have never been wrong, and Fu Xuezhou… he has never… had his emotions taken away. I think… he, Fu Xuezhou, whether it’s the effect of the Anisangge bloodline or the numbness from cycling through 291 worlds, he may no longer know what ‘liking’ feels like. Perhaps he just mistook his interest in you or his patience for ‘liking.’ He might… he might…”
“He might not actually like me, he just thinks he does, is that it?” Lou Yan turned to look at Count Grey, his dark eyes filled with silence. He finished the sentence that Count Grey couldn’t bring himself to say, and Lou Yan heard his own breath shallow, slowing to the point where his heart felt a twinge of pain and suffocation.
Count Grey opened his mouth, awkwardly turned his head away without daring to meet Lou Yan’s eyes. “Actually, it doesn’t matter, Lou Yan, you can redeem his emotions. Once Fu Xuezhou has emotions, he will surely understand what it feels like to like someone, and he will truly like you.”
Lou Yan lowered his gaze, placed the cigarette in his mouth, took a puff, then reached out and let his hand bask in the golden sunlight streaming through the crack in the door.
His skin was tinged with gold by the sunlight, the morning sun not too glaring, not too intense, gently inviting tears. Lou Yan moved his fingers, and shadows danced in the golden light, causing the light to scatter into scattered dots, leaping and jumping on the ground.
Like golden, dreamlike butterflies.
“After an Anisange person’s emotions are gone,” Lou Yan said, “they won’t generate new emotions anymore, right?”
Count Grey said, “At least I haven’t seen Anisangge people who have lost that last bit of emotion and then regained emotions.”
Lou Yan leaned back, his waist against the edge of the counter. He looked down at the specks of light, recalling Fu Xuezhou’s drawing of the butterfly for him, recalling Fu Xuezhou’s transformation into the dream butterfly.
He also remembered Fu Xuezhou struggling to distance himself from him, but then stopping him in the car and confessing.
The guy bent over and panted against the car window, his clothes billowing in the sea breeze, then looked down and wrote seriously.
“Lou Yan, what is liking?”
He asked him what liking was.
He didn’t actually know what liking was.
So he wrote again, “I don’t dislike you.”
And then erased “I don’t” and changed it to “like you.”
Fu Xuezhou admitted with his own mouth, “I like you, Lou Yan.”
Lou Yan heard it clearly.
He heard it very clearly.
The dreamy whale that night, Fu Xuezhou’s gaze, the emotion when kissing.
Countless instances, all of them were evidence to Lou Yan that Fu Xuezhou liked him.
Lou Yan had been liked by so many people before, and he was convinced by his past experiences of being pursued that Fu Xuezhou had fallen for him. He forced Fu Xuezhou to recognize his feelings, forced Fu Xuezhou to admit his liking for him. But, did Fu Xuezhou actually have no emotions?
Was there really something that could disguise itself as “liking”?
Lou Yan opened his lips, wanting to say something, but suddenly didn’t know what to say. He lowered his head and chuckled twice, then turned to Count Grey and said, “So, it turns out arrogance isn’t exclusive to him alone, it includes me too.”
Count Grey didn’t understand what he meant, so he asked, “Do you want to redeem his emotions?”
“….” Lou Yan lowered his gaze, long and lonely shadows falling from his eyelashes. He smiled again and calmly said, “No need.”
“It’s better this way.”
“My sense of guilt can be a little less.”
Perhaps Fu Xuezhou was innocent, perhaps he had his reasons, perhaps he shouldn’t die in the extreme cold h*ll. If Fu Xuezhou really was important to this world, if Fu Xuezhou’s existence really could bring hope to end the resurgence of the anomalies, then Lou Yan would save Fu Xuezhou.
But he didn’t owe Fu Xuezhou anything.
Fu Xuezhou let him die in the fire three times, Lou Yan almost killed Fu Xuezhou once in Liushu Village, and then pushed Fu Xuezhou into the extreme cold h*ll. The future “him” even really killed Fu Xuezhou once. Considering all this, Lou Yan seemed to have suffered more, but in exchange for Fu Xuezhou destroying the world to give birth to a new one, in exchange for him helping Lou Yan retain his memories, Lou Yan felt that the debt between him and Fu Xuezhou was now settled.
Whether it was love or hate, affection or disgust, he wouldn’t give Fu Xuezhou any reaction anymore.
Lou Yan admitted that perhaps he had once had feelings for Fu Xuezhou. But this budding feeling should end here. He didn’t want to like a man who arbitrarily changed his life path without explanation, especially when Fu Xuezhou didn’t even have emotions.
The debt of life and death had been repaid. If Fu Xuezhou really was important to this world, then let them part ways from now on.
You walk your single-plank bridge, I’ll walk my sunny road.
This was the best peace for them.
…
Lou Yan’s heart gradually cooled down, and the chaotic emotions finally became clear.
And at this moment, it seemed that some question in his heart triggered the Memory Pen, and the Memory Pen began to move again. Lou Yan was lost in thought for a few seconds before slowly gripping the pen and placing it on the paper.
The pen wrote quickly, Fu Xuezhou’s handwriting becoming slightly messy:
“…I knew he wanted to kill me, but I didn’t care, and I couldn’t be bothered to explain. I always thought he would figure it out on his own, I always thought that even if he hated me, he wouldn’t truly betray me. Besides, he couldn’t kill me. As long as he didn’t interfere with me killing the Anomaly Lord, I wouldn’t kill him.”
“But I didn’t expect… I fell in love with him.”
“Suddenly, this world didn’t seem so annoying to me anymore, if this time I can kill the Anomaly Lord and live on.”
“I want to live with him.”
“It’s as if, without realizing it, I’ve fallen deeper than just… liking.”
As the writing reached this point, the ink of the Memory Pen ran out, and the pen fell with a “snap” onto the paper.
The author has something to say:
Fu: …?
Fu: Even my wife believes others saying I have no emotions but not my confession?
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