The ghost's expression froze as she stared at the wings on Ren Yifei's back.
"Eighteen years ago... it was a worker... his name seems to be related to water..." The words of the old soldier who managed the household registration came to his mind.
"Jiang, it's actually Jiang?"
No one else could have made her feel this way. She was dazed, unable to distinguish between reality and illusion: "How could it be you? You killed them…you killed so many nobles, and you killed me…"
The scene before her death replayed over and over again; she always remembered how this person coldly killed her, killed the Queen, and then committed suicide.
The anthill was set ablaze, and the raging flames engulfed everything.
Suicide? She remembered that, in her earliest memories, Jiang did indeed commit suicide.
She still doesn't understand why he committed suicide.
"I see. You're terrifying."
She pointed at Ren Yifei, her eyes bloodshot: "Are you a monster?"
How could someone continue to carry out their plan after discovering they were a noble, even to the point of sacrificing themselves and their secret to perish in a fire for that purpose?
"I don't understand what you're saying." Ren Yifei stepped out from behind the golden-armored guards. "You say you're a nobleman, but I've never seen a nobleman like this before."
"You know... never mind, you know nothing." She wanted to ask: Do you know we are twins?
But asking seems pointless; their positions differ, and whether they are twins or not won't change anything.
"Didn't you want to know who I am? I am Shengchun," Gui said seriously.
Ren Yifei frowned, his face showing anger: "Don't joke about dead people."
Seeing his reaction, the ghost made a guess: "So, you know we're twin brothers?"
"I told you not to joke about the dead!" An arrow grazed the ghost's hair and shot into the back wall. Ren Yifei took another arrow from the quiver and aimed it.
You could tell from his expression that if the 'ghost' continued talking nonsense, the next arrow would be aimed at his heart.
"Hahahaha." Looking back at the arrow that had pierced the wall, the ghost actually felt a sense of joy, an indescribable joy. "You know? You know! You know, don't you?"
She squinted: "Let me think, you only found out after you became a nobleman, right?"
When nobles marry, that's when he discovers he's become a noble. So when he came to kill in his previous life, he already knew he was a noble, and even knew they were twins.
The ghost's smile grew fainter and fainter until it disappeared completely.
She looked at Ren Yifei and took a few steps forward, as if to get closer to him.
"Stop!" Ren Yifei didn't move, but his eyes turned dangerous. "If you don't want to die, stay away from me."
The ghost stopped: "When you were five years old, you lit the first fire."
Before Ren Yifei could react, she began to speak to herself: "Lightning left sparks in the grass, and you, hungry, found two thick roots in the mud. That was the first time you ate food that had been roasted by flames, food that wasn't distributed."
The ghost stared intently at him, not missing the bewildered look in his eyes when his dream was exposed.
"How do you know?" Ren Yifei's expression was no longer as firm as it had been at the beginning; he began to waver.
"Because I saw it with my own eyes!" she emphasized.
"But I thought it was just a dream, and I still wanted to try it after I woke up. But I didn't expect that I would fail and the flames burned my face."
The ghost reached out her left hand and touched her face. There were no burn marks on her face. She didn't even know what she looked like. Would she look like Jiang?
"However, what is painful is not the disfigurement, but... the unexpected discovery of a letter left by someone else in the library. A letter that was not destroyed."
"Do you know what nobles are? They're just livestock that's been raised for eighteen years."
She recalled the situation at the time, a half-smile on her face: "At first I was in great pain, hating my identity and not wanting to accept this fate."
"I am no longer happy, because my life is finite; every day that passes is one day less. But, more than the soldiers and civilians, I hate you!"
Ren Yifei's expression froze, and just as he was about to say something, the ghost once again became engrossed in her own world:
"I could have died like other nobles, in a beautiful dream like springtime, in the wedding procession, or later killed by soldiers and civilians. In the end, I was a stupid fool who knew nothing and did not know what pain was."
She suddenly raised her head and looked at Ren Yifei.
"But you, you showed me another world. I watched you every day, running in the grass, playing with others, things I never had. You were like desire, enticing me to see the world outside the window, but not giving me the door to go out."
"You don't know what that feeling of despair is like!" So close, yet so far away.
When Gui recalled those days, she was like a madwoman. Sometimes she wanted to destroy the books, to destroy the things she had found in her dreams, as if burning away her unnecessary desires.
Perhaps after it's burned, she can be like the other nobles, carefree, without having to think about anything, and party all night long before the predetermined end arrives.
However, in the end, I couldn't bear to part with it. What I couldn't bear to part with was not just the books, but also a sense of clarity amidst the pain.
"Oh."
She suddenly raised her head, looked at Ren Yifei who was chuckling, and her expression twisted: "What are you laughing at?"
Ren Yifei smirked, "You think this is despair? Do you know what it's like to die a slow, painful death? Do you know what it's like to be driven out of your nest and left to fend for yourself because you can't find the Black Stone?"
"Even if you don't know any of these things, you should at least know what hunger feels like, right?"
Forcing a five-year-old child to start a fire and cook food, guided by their survival instincts, must be an unforgettable experience of hunger.
That young face must have been distorted and discolored by the hardships of survival.
But she didn't notice all the suffering that bound the workers' legs; she only noticed the distant freedom!
The ghost choked, her pain stemming from her predetermined fate. But to be honest, the nobles had never lacked resources, and she had never experienced hunger.
As if to compensate them, the soldiers and civilians granted the nobles' every request, and the nobles enjoyed the best of everything in the world.
This wonderful feeling only intensified her fear of the future.
"But, but you can go out." She found a point of contention.
"Yes, go out, go out and find black stones, or secretly obtain food. This is not play, not like the beautiful world you remember; this is survival," Ren Yifei said coldly.
"Jiang, if—and I mean if—you didn't know the significance of the existence of nobles and queens, would you kill them all?" she said, returning to the initial topic.
This question had been weighing on her mind for years. She had tried her best, but in the end, she still didn't survive. She was so unwilling to accept it.
"meeting."
"What did you say?"
"Yes!" Ren Yifei answered without any hesitation, shattering the last shred of Gui's illusion.
With a crash, she overturned everything she could find nearby, her eyes like those of a vengeful ghost as she glared at Ren Yifei: "So many people in this world can live, why can't I?! Just because I'm a nobleman?!"
The scene was completely silent; no one could join in. It was a clash of pheromones between two nobles. She wanted to resist, but she was still firmly suppressed.
"The fault lies not in your noble status, but in your actions. Nobles who take pleasure in humiliating others are like flies buzzing around a cesspool, or rotten flesh on a wound. If it is not cleaned up, evil will continue to fester."
Ren Yifei watched her madness with almost indifference: "You asked me if I would kill you if I didn't understand the roles of nobles and the queen, and this is the answer. In fact, if the old queen were still alive and capable of bearing children, I would choose to kill all the nobles."
"Someone in this world has to be the knife, and I am that knife. Only by cutting away all the rotten flesh can the wound heal. This rotten flesh includes you, the other nobles, and even more so those stubborn and self-righteous soldiers and civilians."
"So you're dead!" She pointed at him, gritting her teeth, each word dripping with blood. "How ruthless are you? You didn't even spare yourself!"
"If that's really the case, and I'm in this situation now, then I deserve to die." Ren Yifei remained calm, forming two extremes with the crazed ghost: one was a scorching flame, and the other was unmelting ice.
"If I, as a nobleman, survive, then my will and determination will not be enough to convince people, and they will be even less willing to heed the guidance I leave behind. If only one of me and my beliefs can live, then I 'deserve to die'."
Judging from what Jiang left in the tree hollow, he lived each day with the mindset that there was no tomorrow. His determination was so strong that he was willing to risk his life.
"Jiang!" Shu Ye slapped Ren Yifei on the back, and Ren Yifei coughed a few times.
"Don't talk such discouraging things! What's with all this talk about dying? We'll all survive, and not only will we survive, we'll send those damned gods back to their homeland!"
Although Jiang is a nobleman, he is completely different from other noblemen. He has never enjoyed the benefits of this status for a single day. Why should he be questioned and belittled because of this status?
Ren Yifei smiled: "However, from the ghost's words, we can know that Jiang did indeed make such a choice. His words are Jiang's words. If he could only choose between faith and life, he could abandon life."
"After all the workers and soldiers have evacuated, the anthill can be set on fire."
At this point, he looked at Saman, who was smiling at him, and said, "Our manager gave us a very big surprise."
Separated by soldiers, civilians, and golden-armored guards, Saman and Ren Yifei exchanged a glance. They didn't speak, but they both understood each other's meaning.
Saman stood up: "Let's go downstairs."
The ghost was naturally unwilling, but her pheromones were suppressed, so she had no choice but to go, no matter how unwilling she was.
Once outside the anthill, Saman realized he was among the last group. The other workers and soldiers had emerged from the anthill much earlier, all lined up neatly in rows.
The only jarring elements are a comatose gorilla and a giant flying saucer; their style clashes with the rest of the world.
"How are the people inside?" Saman asked, pointing at the UFO.
"Dead." Ren Yifei had a faint smile on his lips. He looked quite weak when he coughed with his head down, but his style of doing things was unexpectedly sharp and forceful.
"We found a lot of blue liquid inside, as well as some wings that had been cut off while the person was still alive." Shu Ye couldn't help but explain, worried that Saman would think Ren Yifei was ruthless.
"They cut off the wings of living nobles and made them into handicrafts, which are said to fetch extremely high prices in their world. These people deserve to die."
Starting from the first layer, flames burned along the walls, and when the wind blew, the anthill quickly caught fire, like a torch.
The firelight illuminated the faces of the workers and soldiers surrounding the sacred tree, and even those under the tree came out to watch. No one spoke; they simply watched silently, tears streaming down their faces.
"There will be no more anthills." Saman said, making a double entendre.
Everyone present looked up, bidding farewell to the past. Saman also looked up, but his hand quietly reached out, fingertips touching. Ren Yifei's hand withdrew, but was caught again, grabbed, and hooked together.
Both of them looked serious, but their hands were not behaving properly. Finally, Ren Yifei couldn't help but look at Saman: Stop messing around.
Suddenly, with a loud rumble, something went wrong inside the anthill, and the massive structure cracked open, breaking into several pieces. Burning fragments rained down, nearly hitting the people at the front.
Samantha pulled Ren Yifei back a few steps until they were at a safe distance.
"Heavenly... divine punishment?" There was some commotion in the crowd.
"Quiet down!" Shuye spoke up. "These are the things we buried before. Remember the charcoal and the soil from the cesspool that we asked you to collect?"
Burning alone wasn't enough; the coordinate point had to be completely destroyed. Saman then conceived of gunpowder. Charcoal and saltpeter collected from the soil near the cesspool were the main raw materials for making gunpowder.
When Ren Yifei heard Shuye say that they were ordered to collect these things, he immediately guessed Saman's intentions. Therefore, before going up to the fourth level, he took it upon himself to have everyone leave the anthill.
If you're going to play, play big.
"Hahaha..." The ghost next door laughed, his eyes reddening as he laughed. This anthill not only restricted the laborers, but also the nobles.
Of all the instances, this was the only one where the anthill was burned and destroyed.
She felt unexpectedly relieved, as if something that had been weighing on her had disappeared along with the anthill.
"It's about time." Ren Yifei walked to the ghost's side.
The ghost turned to look at him, sensing a subtle change in his demeanor: "Jiang?"
Ren Yifei smiled slightly, and Jiang's feelings faded: "Let me formally introduce myself. My name is Ren Yifei, the Ren Yifei who soars freely in the vast world. Although the process was not very pleasant... Hello, Shengchun."
Shengchun: "...?"
Author's Note: The character is a soldier/civilian, a girl, who was previously pursued by a male nobleman.
However, his true identity is that of a male nobleman, the one who was disfigured, and he is Jiang's twin.