Falling into the Abyss

Tanisiel drew Ethan’s blood and discussed possible countermeasures with him. He would first secretly conduct another blood sample test to check for any abnormalities. If the blood sample still contained abnormalities, then they would think of other countermeasures. However, one thing was certain. The matter of him being mutated could not spread to the Forbidden City, especially to Gray Fur.

Tanisiel had previously used his control access to turn off the camera and monitor on Ethan’s collar. However, Gray Fur could still track Ethan’s location. Ethan deliberately messed up his hair and pulled down his shirt’s collar to avoid Gray Fur’s suspicions. At the same time, Tanisiel left some noticeable kiss marks on his collarbone and neck. Then, Tanisiel sent Ethan back to his room.

After he regained control of the collar, Gray Fur looked Ethan up and down with a serious look of contempt, but Ethan didn’t care at all. As long as he thought of Tanisiel’s golden hair and smiling face, he no longer felt afraid, and he instead felt like he had been injected with a stimulant. No matter what kind of disaster he would face in the future, he felt that he would pass through the hurdles safely in the end.

He even rekindled the hope that he might one day be able to leave the Forbidden City.

After Tanisiel left, Gray Fur pushed Ethan into the room, and Ethan staggered a few steps because of the inertia. Before closing the door, Gray Fur said idly, “I don’t know which temple he belongs to, but I know that he goes to bed with you casually and unceremoniously without handing in an application. It’s like he’s an ordinary low-class Alpha who’s dominated by desire. What’s with the expression on his face?”

When Ethan heard what he had said, his anger gradually surged. He probably would not say much in the past, but today, he probably had experienced too much and was unable to control his emotions. He also coldly replied, “If the Omegas petitioning for equal rights outside the Forbidden City came to know of how you abuse Omegas like Typhoeus using your rights as a legal citizen, I don’t know what expression they would have either.”

Gray Fur suddenly took a few steps forward and struck his neck with one hand. Ethan wanted to resist, but the other party kneed his stomach. The air in his lungs was squeezed out, and he couldn’t breathe in fresh oxygen. Ethan’s face began to turn red and blue, and his hands tried desperately to break free from the other party’s grip.

“Do you think that I can’t punish you since you have someone to support you? Don’t forget, as long as you are still in the Forbidden City, you can’t escape from me. I’ll let you die a miserable death,” Gray fur whispered in his ear, “You hypocritical people from the upper-echelons make me sick!”

He flung Ethan to the ground, wiped his hands on his trousers like he had touched dirt, and strode out of the room before locking the door.

Ethan was baffled. He felt that the reason why Gray Fur hated him was not just because of the matter with Typhoeus, but also because of what Gray Fur said in his ear just now. He had become a thorn in the guard’s eyes way before he entered the Forbidden City.

Ethan regretted talking back to him, but compared with the fear of not knowing when he would mutate, the threat Gray Fur posed wasn’t worthy of his attention. He rubbed his sore neck with an exhausted expression. At this time, the clock showed that it was past ten o’clock at night now. The virtual window projected on the wall had already changed to the scene of a moon floating in the sky as a nightingale croaked. Ethan didn’t even take off his clothes, and he merely laid on the bed before he was sent into the deep recesses of dreamland.

In his dream, he found that he was walking on the streets of the huge city, surrounded on both sides with weird and twisted buildings that were too tall for him to see the roof. Every tile under his feet was as wide as a basketball court, which made him feel that he was just a tiny insect, crawling around slowly in a world that did not belong to him. As the hollow, emerald sun glowed with a hot and gloomy light, it dyed the rust-colored sky into a disturbing and confusing color. Several slender gelatinous bodies passed through the rigid, meat-like clouds, their body emitting a yellowish-green fluorescence.

However, even though she was so huge, she was still acting submissive in front of the tower, seemingly trying to please it as she used her limbs and tentacles to rub against its sharp horns. A shrill sound of metallic friction emanated from her body and echoed throughout the whole city, but Ethan strangely understood its meaning.

She was praising the tower and called it the palace of chaos in the center of the universe. She was also praising the ancient kings who lived in the tower, the foolish gods who held no reason, thoughts, morality, or souls. Accompanying her flattering ‘singing’ voice, a burst of frenzied drums roared as loud as thunder, and harsh and crazy flute music surged out from the tower, causing the ground and buildings to quake. The music’s rhythm was so messy, weird, and monotonous, like a symphony played by madmen. It carried a strange tone that the human mind could not withstand, and even the most rational mind would fall into a frenzy after hearing such music.

It was strange that Ethan doesn’t feel scared in his dream. The music didn’t sound strange, and he even felt very comfortable. It was like he was an ice cube thrown in the ocean, melting to rejoin his original home. Ethan felt comfortable, as though he had just climbed to the peak of pleasure, and he closed his eyes and couldn’t help moaning with relief. The ground under his feet felt as soft as flesh as it enveloped his feet. He felt that he had become part of the city and had transformed into one with the center of the tower.

He suddenly realized that there was a tall, thin man in a black robe standing about ten steps away from him, appearing like a shadow. His face looked vague, as though it was rubbed off by an eraser.

Ethan vaguely remembered meeting him in his dream before, but at the moment, he was fearless. He asked, “Who are you?”

The man in black made a sound, but Ethan didn’t know which organ it came from. “I have many names. People call me the God of Crawling Chaos or the God of a Thousand Forms, but I’m just a messenger for the core of the universe.”

Ethan asked again, “Where am I?”

The man in black said, “You are where you should be, the other side of the universe, where you belong.”

Ethan shook his head. “No, I don’t belong here. I want to go home.”

“Poor lost lamb, you have forgotten about your origins.” The man in black moved closer to him. Instead of moving his feet like a human, he moved on the ground as though he had no feet. His long robe swept over the deformed land, and he said, “The blood of disorder flows through your body, but it has become a slave to order.”

The man in black stood in front of him, a head higher than him. Ethan had to raise his head to see his blurred face and saw the face slowly morph before his eyes into a beautiful face with golden irises.

“Tanisiel……” Ethan murmured and looked at him in a daze.

The black-robed Tanisiel stretched out a thin hand. He stroked his cheek like he was pitying him and chanted, “The ancient’s rule is coming to an end, and the era of disorder is arriving. The real terror is about to break out from the tower where he was imprisoned to reclaim the abyssal universe that belongs to him.”

Ethan said, “I don’t understand. I just want to go home.”

Empty eyes filled with pity lowered amid the dark chaos, and he spoke words as tempting as honey, “I can see your deepest desires and fears. You are afraid of loneliness, of being forgotten, of no longer existing. I can help you dispel all these. You want to go home, to be loved, and eternal peace, all of which I can give you, so long as you’re willing to do one thing.”

Even though he knew that this tempting promise was akin to a devil’s act of deceiving humans to sign a contract with it, Ethan couldn’t help asking, “What must I do?”

Just as the God of Thousand Forms was about to answer him, a blue light suddenly fell from the sky like a sword and split the scene of the vast city in front of Ethan in two! The God of Disorder before him uttered an angry hiss, but in an instant, he turned into smoke and dust, along with the huge city.

The ground under Ethan’s feet suddenly disappeared into a bottomless abyss. He wanted to cry out, but he couldn’t make a sound. He stayed in suspension for an instant before beginning to fall towards the endless black hole.

Ethan fell off his bed due to his fear of weightlessness and woke up. For a while, he could not determine where he was until a sudden knock on the door pulled him back to reality. He awkwardly got up from the ground and looked at the clock. It was five o’clock on Mars.

The door opened to the sight of Tanisiel frowning at him.

His pale face suddenly coincided with the dark face from the dream, and Ethan was caught in a trance, confusing time and space.

“The Project Zero experiment has been suspended.” As soon as Tanisiel entered the room, he closed the door and said frankly, “Bruno and I have just received the news that something happened with the previous Neptune experiment. The military wants you to go back to the Forbidden City for investigation.”

Ethan’s reflexively felt goosebumps emerge when he heard the word Neptune. He asked, “Hasn’t that experiment already ended?”

“It ended, but recently the military found a space-time leak at the place where you conducted the test.” Tanisiel entered a series of access codes into his ten-thousand function sphere, temporarily blocked the monitoring system on Ethan’s collar, and continued, “That is to say, the gap they opened to the second universe may not have been completely closed off, and the infection of the second universe’s laws has also infiltrated. The Tenth Space Station is now closed off, and no one is allowed to approach it.”

Ethan immediately understood what Tanisiel meant.

The second universe’s laws had begun to infect the first universe that they belonged to.

The fragmented space, the jelly-like steel, the liquefied brains…… It was going to spread all over their galaxy…….

“How could that be…” Ethan murmured. He didn’t understand how he could receive bad news one after another, not allowing him any time to breathe. He felt that he had fallen into a great whirlpool and was being sucked deeper and deeper into the sea by its destructive force, but he had no idea where it had originated from.

“Listen, I suspect that one injection will not be enough to suppress the mutation in your body. However, you obviously can’t bring the injection into the Forbidden City, so I’ll keep the remaining four injections for you. Now, the problem is that I don’t know when you will have symptoms of mutation again. Even if I can inject it into you when you assist with this experiment once a month, if you experience symptoms before the one-month deadline, I won’t be able to help you.”

Ethan studied his face and asked, “It looks like you’ve come up with a solution?”

Tanisiel coughed and turned away for a moment. He looked like he wanted to say something, but decided against it after thinking about it.

This kind of behavior was unlike his usual reaction, and Ethan grew more anxious. “What’s the solution? Say it!”

“Have you ever heard of the Eve’s ritual to temporarily bind two people who have not naturally formed a soul bond?”

The author has something to say:

About the ABO soul binding setting, I will talk about it in the next update~