Chapter 135 Love and Peace

In the afternoon, the setting sun, like a dying ember, painted the sky in an orange-red hue, which was then sliced into narrow streaks by the buildings.

Dailin abandoned all pretense of personal image, sprawled carelessly on the cold steps, his clothes damp, a chill seeping into his spine.

“An imagined… life?”

Sirian savored his recent words.

His tense body relaxed, and he imitated Dailin, slowly lying flat. The sharp edges of the steps pressed against his back like a blunt, hard knife.

Sirian’s Adam’s apple bobbed, but he said nothing. The only sound in the alley was the steady drip of water from the eaves, like someone counting the moments slipping away in silence.

Minute by minute… “I recognized reality a long time ago.”

Dailin broke the silence, articulating his inner thoughts, “In this world, there are too many people more pained, more angry, and more unwilling than me. And the cruel part of reality is that it won’t change based on individual will.”

Dailin mocked himself mercilessly, “Yes, my anger almost burned my soul dry.

Then what?

I can’t hold a sword, let alone swing one. I don’t even have the right to stand before my enemies, and who are my enemies, anyway?

This era?

Haha… All my anger, pain, and unwillingness are as ridiculous as a child’s tantrum.”

Dailin suddenly turned his head to look at Sirian, who was lying beside him.

“I resigned myself to fate like that for a while, wallowing in self-pity. But one day, Anya told me about her past.

I thought she would cry to me about the indignities she faced or the injustices she suffered, but she spoke of something completely different.

Anya said that at the end of each midnight, when the guests had all left, she would take some leftover food to feed the stray cats in the back alley of the dance hall. After she became a Transcendent, she would find a way to make time each month to do some volunteer work, caring for homeless children.”

Dailin nudged Sirian with his shoulder, “Didn’t expect Anya to have such a side, did you?”

“Somewhat unexpected, but also somewhat within expectation.”

“There’s more than that.”

It was like this again. Just a moment ago, he seemed to harbor deep resentment, but as soon as Anya was mentioned, Dailin became animated.

“Anya is just too wonderful; you can’t imagine how charming she is.”

Sirian thought to himself, to be able to tame Dailin to this extent, he had already clearly felt Anya’s magic.

“At that time, I asked her if her series of good deeds were for atonement?

Anya, in turn, asked me what sin she had committed. Was it her identity as a dancer? But that wasn’t something she could decide, so how could she have sin? As for the reason for doing these things…”

He reverently repeated her words from back then.

“‘I don’t want to surrender to this messed-up era’… Yes, those were her exact words.”

Something in Sirian’s heart was stirred.

“Wow, I think that was the moment I completely fell in love with her.”

Dailin said excitedly, “As one of the insignificant beings, I can’t do anything. I can’t change this crazy era, nor can I kill those hateful enemies. But that doesn’t mean I have to bow to fate.

I can certainly do what’s within my power, even if it’s just a feeble strike against fate, it’s still my resistance.”

Sirian snapped back to attention and said clearly.

“That’s why you’ve been investigating The Formless One all this time, the source of your sense of justice.”

“Probably,” Dailin said uncertainly, “I don’t like to describe myself with ‘justice’; that’s too noble. I always feel ashamed. I just… don’t want to give up.”

Dailin described the truth he had always upheld, “Therefore, a perfect world cannot be imagined, nor can it be waited for. We must do something, no matter how insignificant.”

Sirian commented, “A spirit of dedication.”

“Who knows?”

Dailin, with an indifferent attitude, continued, “Sirian, just now at the gathering, when you looked at Wency and Paul, you unconsciously smiled.”

“It’s truly surprising. The last time I saw that expression on your face was when you brutally killed Tania.”

He suddenly lowered his voice.

“So, Sirian, when you saw the perfect completeness of Wency and Paul, what kind of feeling did you harbor? Was it envy, or jealousy, or perhaps an appreciative observation, drawing a wisp of beauty from it to comfort your own heart?”

Sirian remained silent.

“To put it another way, suppose, Sirian, suppose there was another person in the world living the life you’ve always dreamed of, what would you think?”

Dailin didn’t wait for Sirian to answer, speaking to himself.

“If it were me, I would be very happy, very, very happy. So, there really are people who can live such a life, that’s truly wonderful.

Even… even to say…”

Dailin’s voice was so hurried he couldn’t complete a sentence. After taking a few breaths, he spoke with longing.

“In this messed-up world, it’s truly beautiful that someone can find happiness.”

The two of them, in a shared understanding, tilted their heads back. Behind the gaps between the buildings, the setting sun had transformed into a beautiful golden hue, warm on their faces.

“Let’s go back to our previous topic, Sirian.”

Dailin jumped back to their earlier conversation, admiringly, “All your motives for killing stem from your love for beautiful things.

You love those brilliant human natures and beautiful glories too much. Even if you can’t experience them firsthand, just observing that beauty makes you unconsciously smile and feel redeemed.

That’s why you hate evil as if it were your personal enemy, vowing to eradicate all chaos evils.”

He affirmed.

“Sirian, you are not a murderer; you are a defender of beautiful things.”

Sirian was stunned, having never imagined that word would be associated with him.

Too many people had called Sirian a murderer, and even his own self-perception was infinitely close to that image.

But now, Dailin’s words were like a key, roughly prying open a forgotten corner of his heart.

Sirian was at a loss.

He blinked repeatedly, a subtle sense of dreaminess rippling through his mind, as if he were in a beautiful dream from which he couldn’t wake, no matter how hard he tried.

“By the way, there’s one more thing I need to apologize to you for.”

Dailin lit another cigarette. In the smoke, his eyes were hazy, and drunkenness intertwined with his thoughts, bringing waves of comfort and ease.

“That day I overheard your interrogation of Tania. Don’t worry, I only heard your final conversation.

You questioned Tania about what she had destroyed.

She couldn’t give an answer, but I think I know. And precisely because I know that answer, I spoke to you about my past after that day, and today I’m talking to you about so-called love and peace.”

Sirian grew somewhat interested, asking curiously, “Tell me about it, Dailin.”

“I think what Tania destroyed was another life of yours.”

Dailin spoke cautiously, as if revealing a terrible secret.

“Another imagined life that you constantly fantasized about, beautified day and night, and even indulged in before falling asleep.”

Sirian’s eyes froze, his face turning ashen.

He had fantasized.

He fantasized about his brothers also becoming Torchbearers, fantasized about embracing the girl he loved, telling absurd jokes in a morning restaurant, fantasized about White Cliff Town getting on the long-awaited right track, revitalized by their efforts.

He fantasized about everyone living stable lives, fantasized about all good things descending upon the earth.

Until that night, everything came to an abrupt halt.

“The chaos evils destroyed all my fantasies. This was no less than killing a world… a world shaped by me.”

Looking back, Sirian’s heart was unexpectedly calm, or perhaps, numb.

“So many beautiful expectations, vanished without a trace overnight. How sad.”

“That’s why you became so violent, using brutal methods, madly seeking revenge on them. But that’s a blood debt of a world; how can the suffering of enemies alone compensate?”

Dailin said with pity.

“But to kill enemies for a blood debt, even if you slay the last one, is too nihilistic.”

The narrow alley after the rain was still dripping, and the lingering light of the setting sun cut diagonally through a crack in the wall, shattering into a patch of orange-red in the puddles.

Sirian’s fingers were still damp and cold from the steps, but he suddenly gripped Dailin’s shoulder—the force wasn’t like a greeting, but like grabbing a lifeline.

“You’re right.”

His voice was a little hoarse, his Adam’s apple bobbed, as if swallowing something scalding hot.

“I used to think killing was the purest thing. When they lay bleeding, falling before my eyes, even the blurry, distant world became real.”

Sirian looked down at his hands.

These hands had once pulled triggers with mechanical precision. When the swinging blade tore through flesh, he could even count the crisp snaps of enemy bones breaking.

Sirian liked the suffocating feeling of being entangled in hatred and pain, but he couldn’t endure the disintegration that gradually crept from his flesh, bones, and the depths of his soul.

Before, Sirian thought this was confusion. Today, he finally saw clearly.

It wasn’t confusion, but a lack of self-existence.

Sirian filled existential anxiety with violence, confirmed “I am” with slaughter. But the more he killed, the more it felt like he was chasing and hacking at his own shadow—when the shadow shattered, he became an even emptier wind.

Dailin said nothing, just watched him.

“A life propped up by revenge is indeed too thin, too nihilistic. But if it’s for those beautiful things… that sounds pretty good.”

The gloom in Sirian’s eyes seemed to have a hole burned through by the setting sun, letting out a sliver of genuine light.

He raised two fingers, their tips trembling slightly in the air.

“If I can kill one more Walking Corpse, a new couple like Paul and Wency will appear in Heer City. Then another wedding will be held, with dozens of people laughing.

Then…”

Sirian began to fantasize.

“If I can kill one more Chaos Follower, one more Chaos Scion, or even one more Abomination, how many City-states would stand, and how many people would achieve complete happiness?”

He paused, his voice softening, carrying an unprecedented certainty.

“That’s great, Dailin. As long as I kill people, others will be happy. This deal is too good to be true.”

Despite all he had said, Dailin still couldn’t understand Sirian’s thought process, couldn’t comprehend his joyful, neurotic statement.

But Dailin could tell that Sirian’s pathological psychology was developing in a positive direction.

As for whether he had misinterpreted his meaning, or whether he had, through his own imagination, created some kind of positive yet strange twisted logic… it didn’t matter.

Dailin wasn’t aiming to correct Sirian’s values back to those of a normal person; he only hoped that the pathological psychology could become a little more normal, even just a little bit.

Once, absurdity was Sirian’s everything.

The world was a meaningless desert, yet Sirian insisted on finding meaning, so he could only run madly in the void. Until this moment, he suddenly saw the first flower in the desert.

Those “beautiful things.”

The so-called “everyone’s fantasies, the life they hoped for,” were no longer grand slogans, but the smile lines at Wency’s eyes, the wine splashing from Elton’s cup, Meifuni’s fingertips as she brushed her hair.

These concrete, fragile facts, imbued with the scent of everyday life, became Sirian’s anchor against the collapse of his self-existence.

“After saying all this, I feel like a preaching priest.”

“Then what am I, a lost lamb returning to the fold?” Sirian shook his head, “I won’t turn back. I like to wallow in the mire of hatred and pain, for…”

Dailin raised an eyebrow, his tone probing.

“For love and peace?”

Sirian smiled.

His smile was no longer the fragile shell he wore in the bar, but one that welled up from his chest, carrying a hint of self-mockery and a touch of genuine relief.

Thus, Sirian no longer denied it, affirming.

“For love and peace.”

He caressed the boiling sword, full of anticipation.

“So, we still have many people to kill.”