"Ugh—!"

The breath tore from Lin Xue's lungs as her body folded, sizzling pain rippling through her burning skin. Above her, Wang Xiao stood silent, lips tugged in a quiet curve, not a smile, not quite.

"Got anything to say?" he asked, voice calm as winter rain.

She glared up, teeth bared.

"…Little prick."

Even now. Even broken and aging, she refused to kneel.

Why did he come back crueler than before? He was supposed to die.

Not grow into this.

Crack!

A boot slammed into her abdomen. Her body jolted, eyes wide, limbs weightless for a moment, before crashing against the far wall with a dull thud.

"!!!"

Zhang Sisi gasped, hands flying to her mouth.

"Stop, she'll die!"

Wang Xiao turned, slowly.

"…Does it matter?"

His voice was gentle, far too gentle.

And somehow, that chilled her worse than a scream.

Zhang Sisi's legs weakened. Her mouth opened, then closed. She couldn't explain it, but in that moment, he felt... no longer a human.

No. Worse.

He felt beyond human.

Tall… taller now. Like even gravity had stopped trying to hold him down.

"Does it matter…?"

The question echoed again.

Of course not.

Not to him.

Zhang Sisi had forgotten, he could raise the dead. As long as the soul remained, he could pull them back. Again. And again.

What was death… to someone who had stepped over it?

A god, she realized, not in name, but in consequence. And gods had no need to explain themselves to insects

Bang!

Lin Xue hit the ground, coughing, a smear of red across her lips. Her body curled, not in submission, but reflex. Instinct, and pain.

No cries. No begging.

Only silence.

And then… a breath.

She looked up.

Eyes bloodshot. Mouth twisted in scorn.

"…So you've grown."

Her voice trembled, rough, but sharp.

"Into the monster I always feared."

She had known. Even back then, before his name meant anything, there was something wrong in him. Something too calm when chaos, too quiet when he should've cried.

A child who could laugh at blood, and forget it the next morning.

She thought she had escaped that shadow.

She hadn't.

Wang Xiao's gaze stayed fixed. He said nothing, until, "A monster still believes there's a human inside," he murmured.

"I lost that illusion a long time ago."

"!!"

Humanity has always feared monsters.

Feared demons.

Painted them as the villains in every story.

But what is fear, really?

A demon still belongs to something.

To Hell.

To myth.

To meaning.

He isn't terrifying to what he belongs to.

He is only terrifying when he strays from his place.

A monster still has a heart.

Twisted, maybe. But it beats.

What humans truly fear…Is not the fangs, or the claws... But indifference.

That gaze which looks at you, bleeding, screaming, and feels nothing.

It's not the creature that is terrifying,

But the fact that you do not matter to it.

Yet even that… is still within definition.

Demon. Monster. Human.

All labels. All roles in a story.

But what happens…

When something no longer fits any of them?

No longer demon.

No longer monster.

No longer kind.

No longer cruel.

Not longer human.

It's when someone becomes nothing.

When it exist beyond categories, when the world no longer defines them, and they no longer care for the world…

That is the thing all beings, in all realms, should fear.

Because it does not belong.

It reigns.

Wang Xiao crouched.

The cigarette clicked to life with a soft spark.

Lin Xue flinched, the ember was close, too close.

He was in front of her now, silent, unmoving.

But those eyes…

No mockery. No playful smirk.

He wasn't joking.

"You…" Her voice cracked, then, strangely—she laughed. A hollow, trembling thing.

Tears streaked her face as she wiped them away with the back of her hand, almost reverently.

"Ha… haha… Look at you…"

As if seeing a ghost that grew up.

Wang Xiao exhaled, bored and irritated.

Of course she'd laugh.

This woman…

She laughed because he was serious.

Because in her mind, he was always the joke.

The stray dog biting at shadows.

The little boy howling at night, pretending to be God. Uploaded by the NovelBin team.

She never understood what she feared.

But she missed the most dangerous part.

When a being sees another as *himself, he protects it.

When he despises himself, he destroys it.

That's why so many parents ruin their children, not out of cruelty, but because they never learned to love their own reflection.

But Wang Xiao?

He was different.

He placed his desires above all.

Yet his daughters, he did not see them as separate.

They were extensions of his will.

And so, he treated them with the same obsessive precision he treated himself, with care, control, and weight.

There was a line.

Unspoken, absolute.

Every woman around him knew it.

They could work beside him, sleep beside him, kill beside him, but they could never cross that line.

No one could compete for his affection.

Because it belonged elsewhere.

Not to lovers.

To daughters.

To himself.

As Wenxi once said, cold and truthful:

"To become his lover… is a demotion."

And as for anything else?

There was no need to change the labels.

Just because his daughters chose to sleep with him…

He didn't need to call them lovers. Or wives.

They were his daughters.

They would always be his daughters.

Society worships labels.

He discarded them like old clothes.

Let them call it what they wanted.

It didn't matter.

They weren't part of his world anyway.

He didn't fight his way to the top just to be told how to live.

He didn't crawl through death, tear out his soul, offer his sight to the void, just to mimic the lives of the weak.

Power wasn't freedom if it came with obedience.

In his eyes, there was nothing strange about it.

To share a bed with someone he desired.

To feel their warmth against his skin.

To hear their breath, soft and real.

If he wanted it, why shouldn't he?

Wasn't that the meaning of power?

He desired.

So he acted.

There was no need to speak it aloud.

They were all clever enough to understand.

Some, perhaps, preferred distance.

Sought a cleaner, platonic love.

But that wasn't theirs to decide.

Until now, Wang Xiao had respected the boundary.

He walked the line, never crossing it.

He could've taken what he wanted long ago.

He didn't.

Because he chose to act within his position.

And they knew that.

Which meant… they, too, had to act within theirs.

Because if they ever broke the rules... So could he.

And if he did…Could they resist his will?

Could they face him, not as their bond, not as their warmth, but as him?

How many in this world would dare face him, directly?

Even beings like Maliketh, Yuriko, and Athene…

They never tried.

Because they lacked protection.

The kind of protection his daughters had,

that fragile veil that turned wrath into tolerance.

To let go of that…

To face him without it…

Was suicide.

Where others drowned in the morality of such thoughts, he floated in still clarity.

To him, it was natural.

If nature bowed to him, why should he bow to man-made lines?

What was abnormal to the world…was ordinary to him.

What felt ordinary to him… terrified the world.

He understood why rules existed.

Weak things needed fences.

But he was not one of them.

He was a God forged by sacrifice.

Each scar a sermon.

Each loss an offering.

And Gods don't follow commandments.

Possession is selfish.

But selfishness is not a sin.

Incompetence is.

That was his truth.

To fail to protect what is yours…

To chase power and then hesitate to use it…

To hold desire, and fear its judgment...

That was the real blasphemy.

Lin Xue, unaware of the depth behind his gaze, looked down.

Her fingers trembled, then steadied.

"I sent her away…"

The words came low.

A confession.

"I didn't want her to grow up like me. I wasn't fit to raise anyone… I knew it."

She exhaled, slow and cracked.

"So I gave her to Chen Meili. Everything I had. Every scrap. With one condition, never let her know this life. Never expose her to what we were."

Her voice wavered.

"I shut it all down. Velvet Shadows. The accounts. The names. Everything."

She paused, but Wang Xiao didn't need the rest.

He already knew.

His breath stilled.

So this woman, smiling just enough to pretend, her eyes hollow with years, she was…

She was Zhenxi's mother.