Xu Guangming was silent for a moment.
That silence was not surrender; rather, it was as if he were gathering some kind of strength, or perhaps peeling away his final layer of disguise.
He slowly raised his hand.
His knuckles whitened from the force, but his movements were steady as he removed the black-framed glasses that had accompanied him for years, the arms of which were already fading.
He didn’t discard them.
Instead, he carefully folded them and solemnly placed them into the inner pocket of his jacket, close against his heart.
When he looked up again, those eyes, no longer veiled by the lenses, had shed all the gentleness and weariness belonging to “Teacher Xu Guangming.”
All that remained was the obsession, madness, and unfathomable grief of “Xu Zhiwu.”
“…..That year,”
He spoke, his voice hoarse yet oddly even, as if lost in distant memories, “My wife, Luo Jie, led the core experiment of the [Radiant Sentinel] Project, which I alone conceived and designed.”
As he spoke, he slowly began to take off the somewhat old coat that symbolized his identity as a teacher, draping it carefully over the dusty stair railing.
“The purpose of the experiment was to attempt to extract special chaotic factors from specific types of Temporal Variants and use them to assault and disrupt the stable structure of high-purity [Polaris a) crystals, intervening and reshaping them at the very moment before collapse…”
His words were laced with technical jargon, yet his gaze was empty, staring into the void as if seeing again that explosion which had changed his life forever.
“The theoretical model indicated that if the experiment succeeded, this fully-developed form of energy crystal could encapsulate the power of Oracles.”
At this point, his voice abruptly rose, filled with a feverish mania bordering on pathology, yet grief that had festered for over a decade also flooded his eyes.
“Do you understand what this means?”
“It means that the ordinary soldiers fighting the Temporal Variants on the front lines, those warriors who defend the borders of the city, would no longer be merely flesh and blood resisting the invasion.”
“Each of them might, at a critical moment, wield a power comparable to the Oracles!”
“The entire course of the war would be rewritten. How many needless sacrifices could be avoided? How many shattered families could be preserved? This was… a plan great enough to alter the fate of humanity!”
He gasped suddenly, as if burned by that grand yet ultimately ruined blueprint.
The fervor on his face faded, replaced by a deeper pain.
“I admit… I admit that Luo Jie’s death stemmed from my arrogance, from my blind faith in the theoretical model. I ignored the warnings she repeatedly emphasized about the critical point of the energy reading…”
His voice dropped, filled with bone-deep regret.
“For that, I’ve hated myself… for over ten years. Every day, every night.”
Yet this remorse was like fuel thrown into a forge, instantly transforming into a more blazing, more twisted hatred.
He suddenly looked up, fixing his gaze on Chu You.
In those eyes, sorrow was burned away entirely, leaving only tangible resentment and coldness: “But! Have you ever thought about this?”
“Why did I painstakingly design the [Radiant Sentinel]? And why did Luo Jie, knowing the risks, still lead the experiment without hesitation?”
“Was it for fame and fortune? For a paltry bit of research funding and a hollow reputation? No!!”
He was almost howling, veins bulging on his neck: “We just didn’t want to see any more young people torn apart by Aberrants like trash!”
“Didn’t want the city’s borders to forever be shrouded in death and fear, with a chasm separating inside and out!”
“Didn’t want our descendants to only imagine, through yellowed textbooks and virtual images, what that old world without Wall-Posts, without Forbidden Zones, that wondrous and beautiful era, was really like!”
“We just wanted… to find a new way out for the future of humanity!”
His roar echoed in the empty stairwell, carrying a sense of desperation and madness at a dead end.
He was not just arguing with Chu You, but making a final, despairing statement to himself, to the experiment, to his deceased wife.
“But the experiment still went awry. Luo Jie… died because of it…”
Xu Guangming’s roar gradually faded, transforming into a painful murmur that penetrated to the bone, “I suffer, night after night I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, all I see is Luo Jie that morning, smiling as she left, telling me that when the experiment was over, we’d celebrate our son’s birthday together that night…”
A murky tear slid down from the corner of his wrinkled eye, and his voice began to tremble uncontrollably: “That day… I was supposed to be in the lab too, with her. But Chen Director… he insisted I go to his office at once, to report the work plan and budget for the second half of the year in person.”
“I couldn’t refuse, so I thought I’d just go quickly and come right back, half an hour at most…”
Xu Guangming’s head slowly lowered.
In the moment he bowed, Chu You keenly noticed a barely perceptible, almost living black vein creeping up along his carotid artery, like a sinister vine, silently clinging to his jawline, looking especially eerie in the dim light.
It was as if he had been deafened once again by that explosion; his body swayed imperceptibly, his voice echoing with a nightmare’s timbre, “That explosion… still rings in my ears, every moment.”
He closed his eyes slowly, as if unwilling to see that blinding flash and his wife’s phantom again, letting his tears drip onto the stairs with a steady patter.
“Luo Jie died, and my life was destroyed with her…”
“If it wasn’t for that man named Chen insisting on calling me away… at the very least, at the very least…”
His voice choked, laden with endless remorse and hatred, “At the very least, Luo Jie wouldn’t have died so alone… right? I could have been there with her…”
“They started to avoid me, exclude me, gossip about me behind my back… I remember those looks, full of pity, disgust, fear…”
“I remember those whispers, those nasty words! They treated me as a criminal, as an irrational madman! In the end, like sweeping out garbage, they kicked me out of Hu Residence and sent me back to Binhai!”
At this, Xu Guangming suddenly opened his eyes.
At that moment, his whites were rapidly being swallowed by the spreading black veins, his eyes now twin bottomless black whirlpools radiating ominous energy.
“I kept telling myself… I gripped the last thread and told myself–“
His voice was rough as if a thousand gravels grated his throat, “No matter what, I had to watch Yuanzhou grow up, marry, have children… only then… could I dare, dare to face Luo Jie…”
“But–“
The spreading black veins now covered almost all of Xu Guangming’s exposed neck and arms, draping him in a bizarre black grid.
His tone plunged to absolute zero, devoid of any trace of human emotion, only bone-chilling coldness: “Yuanzhou is dead too….”
“People from the Law Enforcement Bureau told me it was an accident, that it was a random attack by an Aberrant….”
He snapped his head up, his pitch-black eyes boring into Chu You, brimming with boundless hatred and suspicion, “But I know! That was no accident!!!”
Upon hearing this, Chu You’s pupils contracted sharply.
Xu Yuanzhou’s death is suspicious?
In all the dossiers and materials she’d accessed about the Xu Yuanzhou incident, there wasn’t a hint of this!
The official record was crystal clear: “tragically killed in a Temporal Variant attack.”
“Yuanzhou was a genius, an out-and-out genius–“
Xu Guangming’s tone carried a twisted pride, soon drowned out by deeper pain, “In his first year of middle school, he awakened to the Oracle… it was an A-rank Oracle—[Within a Square Inch]!”
“The Law Enforcement Bureau’s report stated that Yuanzhou and Lu Ran were attacked by multiple Aberrants near the flowerbeds in front of the school.”
“In the end, Lu Ran miraculously survived, but my Yuanzhou… died…”
At this, Xu Guangming suddenly grew agitated.
The black veins on his body rippled faintly with his emotional swings.
He all but screamed at Chu You.
“Chu You! Tell me–“
“One is an Oracle able to refract small pockets of space, able to perform near-instantaneous movement over short distances.”
“The other was a completely ordinary person, without an awakened Oracle, powerless and untrained…”
“So why?! Why, in that hopeless situation, was it my son who died, and not Lu Ran?!”
“Tell me, does that make sense?! Huh?!”
When his words fell, Chu You’s brows furrowed tightly, her palm around the military blade slick with cold sweat.
Xu Guangming’s current half-human, half-spectral appearance didn’t really surprise her; she’d long been prepared for it.
But what really caught her attention was Xu Guangming’s clear and logical interrogation.
If what he said was true—the Law Enforcement Bureau shouldn’t have closed the case so carelessly, especially since the deceased was an A-rank Oracle.
Yet, every dossier seemed to show a blurry, watered-down account of Xu Yuanzhou’s death.
Looked at this way…
Maybe Xu Yuanzhou’s death really wasn’t an accident after all.
On the steps, the increasingly strange and cold Xu Guangming continued, “Afterward, I went mad, running to the Law Enforcement Bureau, to the city government, even to your Swordbearers’ Binhai Branch, again and again filing appeals, again and again begging them…”
His tone was frozen after despair, “All I asked was to see the detailed investigation report of the original scene, but they wouldn’t let me! All they did was brush me off!”
“…Fine, no one in Binhai would help, no one was willing to give me the truth, so I went to the provincial capital!”
A twisted sneer appeared on Xu Guangming’s face.
“But as soon as I got on the long-distance bus out of Binhai, people from the Law Enforcement Bureau dragged me off.”
“They said I was mentally ill, emotionally unstable, that I posed a safety risk on the bus, that I’d threaten public security?!”
He snorted, that laughter overflowing with boundless sorrow and anger: “Listen to that! What a joke, what a clumsy, desperate cover-up!”
“Chu You.”
Xu Guangming’s facial muscles twitched uncontrollably, his voice low and hoarse–
“If you were me, what would you do?”
“Humanity stripped me of the ideal to build a better future—so… I’ll strip every last person of hope.”
Upon hearing this, Chu You was not moved by his tragic lament.
Instead, she suddenly curled her lips in a cold, mocking smile.
“The world wounds you, and your answer is to moon the whole world?”
Her voice was crisp, brimming with undisguised contempt.
“Making yourself sound so pitiful and miserable, Xu Zhiwu, do you really see yourself as a pure, innocent victim?”
Before her words faded, a bewitching, peach-pink light suddenly burst forth in her pupils, twin fires illuminating her cool features with a dangerous, seductive aura.
She raised her military blade, adopting a stance that was both offensive and defensive, the trembling blade tip locked onto Xu Guangming’s vitals.
“There may have been injustice in the judicial process, and the agony of losing wife and child is indeed searing…”
Chu You’s voice came through that bewitching glow, each word like a blade stabbing into the tragic fortress Xu Guangming tried to build, “But that has never, ever been a reason for you to vent your twisted hatred, to drag the innocent into the abyss in crimes against humanity and society!”
She tilted her head slightly, eyes sharp as a scalpel, slicing straight into the most hypocritical part of Xu Guangming’s narrative, “Old Xu, stop wrapping yourself in that noble mantle.”
“If you truly, as you say, cared nothing for fame and fortune, and devoted yourself only to research and humanity’s future…”
Her tone suddenly sharpened, its edge cutting through all pretense: “Then when your [Radiant Sentinel] experiment reached its most critical stage, why did you so easily leave the core laboratory just because of a work report from that so-called ‘fame-seeking’ Chen Director?”
“Would a researcher truly above the fray, heart wholly on his work, let himself be tripped up by something as trivial as an annual work plan?!”
These words, like invisible needles, pierced directly through the carefully maintained illusion around Xu Guangming.
His body visibly stiffened, muscles twitching unnaturally beneath the black veins on his face, as if this truth had scalded his soul.
Yet Chu You gave him no chance to catch his breath or explain.
Her assault, as fierce as a storm, kept hammering his faltering mental defenses: “…Someone truly free from the chains of fame and fortune, truly above the rules, would do everything to protect what he cherished most—not walk away just because of a report!”
“And someone who would let the rules of the power game bind him, someone who would leave the scene of a lifelong pursuit because of an order from a superior—”
Chu You’s voice suddenly rose, final judgment ringing out: “What right do you have to paint yourself as noble, as great? What right to dress your madness and your crimes as the grand, helpless tragedy of being failed by the world?!”
Chu You’s body tensed, like a leopard ready to pounce, those peach-hued eyes flaring as they locked onto Xu Guangming.
“You think I want to hash out these ancient grievances with you?”
She scoffed coldly, her voice brimming with murderous intent.
“There’s an old saying—villains die from talking too much!”
“Lin Mo!”
She snapped out suddenly, like the crack of a starting pistol, “Take him!”
The instant her words fell—”Boom!!!”
The wall behind Xu Guangming—the solid concrete structure—shattered as if struck by an invisible cannon!
Debris and bricks rained inward like a storm.
Amid the billowing dust, Lin Mo strode in with a long gun aimed squarely at Xu Guangming’s back.
Golden eyes blazing, his presence in full force.
Lin Mo’s gaze flicked past Xu Guangming to Chu You.
He spoke only two words, but his intent was unquestionable…
“Understood.”