"Yes."

"But he doesn’t remember you."

Leng Yan was silent for a moment.

Then she burst out laughing.

This time the smile was very light, not sharp, not teasing. It was much softer, even giving this dead and deadly place a hint of strange color.

"He was only seven at the time."

Otrix looked at her.

Leng Yan said: "A seven-year-old child not remembering someone who appeared very briefly in his life is normal."

"So you don’t mind?"

"No."

"You’ve waited for him for so long."

"Yes."

"Without needing him to remember you?"

Leng Yan looked into the fog.

"No need."

The answer was very short.

But heavy enough to make Otrix fall contemplative.

Leng Yan lightly stroked the lantern beside her.

"It’s enough that I remember."

The fog outside the ring of light slightly stirred.

In that moment, Leng Yan’s gaze became very distant.

"I remember him when he was still a child. Remember his eyes. Remember the way he looked at the world as if he wanted to understand everything yet didn’t want anyone to see that he was afraid. By the time he grew up, many things had changed, but some things didn’t change."

Otrix asked: "What things?"

Leng Yan smiled.

"The way he looks at rewards."

Otrix: "..."

For a moment, even Otrix didn’t know how to react.

Leng Yan smiled a little more cheerfully.

"Don’t look at me like that. I like that about him. Greed isn’t a flaw. Someone who wants nothing is what’s truly frightening. Rover wants to live, wants to grow stronger, wants resources, wants the women around him to live better. He’s greedy, but he knows what he’s being greedy for."

She turned her head to look at Otrix.

"That’s enough."

Otrix breathed out.

"I still feel that Lamp-Bearers are all a strange bunch."

Leng Yan smiled.

"Of course."

She picked up the lantern.

Right after, the deep red flame within the lantern blazed brighter.

Deep red light spread outward.

At first only a ring of light spanning several dozen meters, then quickly expanding outward. The fog was pushed back layer by layer, like a white curtain being torn by an invisible hand. One hundred meters. Three hundred meters. Five hundred meters. Finally, the light from the lantern covered an area with a radius of over a thousand meters.

Otrix stood still.

He was no longer looking at Leng Yan.

He was looking down at what lay beneath her feet.

The "boulder" Leng Yan had just been sitting on began to reveal its true shape.

It wasn’t a boulder.

It was the head of a massive creature that had died, or at least something that should have died a very long time ago.

Its head was so large it resembled a collapsed tower lying sideways on the ground. The skull stretched forward, both like the head of an ancient whale and the head of a sea monster dragged up from the deep. Its two eye sockets were empty and dark, but just looking at them still gave one the feeling that something inside was looking back.

Its mouth was open wide, revealing row upon row of jagged fangs, dense and irregular like rotten wooden stakes hammered into the darkness. From between the teeth dripped streams of thick black fluid, dropping onto the gray-white ground below, making a very small sound that still made one feel deeply uncomfortable.

On the crown of the creature’s head was a ring of golden radiance.

Not pure holy light.

It resembled a shackle.

That ring of light floated above the massive skull. Ancient runes circled around it, flickering like imprisoned sparks. Each time the halo wavered, the body of the creature beneath Leng Yan’s feet would twitch very slightly, as if something was being pressed back inside the decaying bones.

Behind the head was an enormous elongated body, coiling in the fog like the carcass of a sea dragon dragged ashore. Its body was more than sixty meters long. Along its back, segments of curved spine jutted out, large as collapsed arches. Ribs rose in rows, dark gray and dried, stretching through the fog curtain like the ruins of a dead palace.

But it wasn’t entirely bone.

Between the gaps in the bones still clung patches of dark flesh, dried and shriveled, as if gnawed upon by time and curses together. Some sections of old hide covered its body like torn cloth. Beneath it, faint traces of dark red veins could be seen still beating very slowly.

It was still alive.

Not alive in the way an ordinary creature was.

But being held at the boundary between life and death, forced to exist in a nightmare with no end.

Countless sharp stakes pierced through the creature’s body, pinning it to the ground like a specimen nailed down in a deity’s laboratory. Those stakes were uneven in size. Some were only slightly over a meter long, but others were over ten meters tall, as thick as ancient tree trunks, piercing through ribs, through the spine, through the remaining patches of flesh on its body.

On each stake were golden ancient runes.

Those runes weren’t still.

They were moving.

Small symbols crawled along the length of the stakes like glowing ants, sometimes gathering into circles, sometimes dispersing into strange patterns. Each time they moved, the halo on the creature’s head would brighten slightly, while that massive body would tremble as if being dragged backward by an invisible pain deep into its soul.

Otrix looked at the sealed creature beneath Leng Yan’s feet, his voice dropping.

"You’re still keeping it here."

Leng Yan stood on the massive skull. The deep red lamplight covered her body, making her silhouette resemble a queen standing atop the carcass of an executed divine beast.

"Of course."

"You’re not afraid it will wake?"

"It won’t wake."

Otrix looked at the golden halo on the creature’s head, then looked at the stakes piercing its body everywhere.

"Those things can’t hold it forever."

"I know."

"And you’re still this calm?"

Leng Yan lowered her head to look at the massive creature beneath her feet.

"Because before it breaks free, Rover will come."

Otrix was contemplative for a moment.

Then he said: "You place too much faith in him."

Leng Yan smiled.

"No. I place faith in my own choice."

Otrix said nothing more.

He looked at Leng Yan for a moment, then turned and walked toward the fog.

Before his silhouette was completely swallowed, he left behind one sentence:

"Lamp-Bearers truly are a strange bunch."

He paused for a moment.

"Including me."

Leng Yan watched his retreating figure, the smile on her face unchanged.

"You’re only realizing this now?"

Otrix didn’t answer.

The fog closed behind him.

The open land was left again with only Leng Yan, the deep red lantern, and the massive creature pinned beneath her feet.

Leng Yan bent down, her fingers lightly touching one of the nearby golden stakes. The runes on the stake immediately lit up, as if sensing her presence.

The massive creature beneath her feet twitched slightly.

Very gently.

But enough to make the ground shudder for one breath.

Leng Yan wasn’t afraid.

She only looked toward the fog in the direction the apartment complex existed, her eyes gradually becoming softer.

"I’ve been waiting for a very long time."

Her voice was very soft.

But in this quiet world, it still rang out clearly.

"Rover..."

"You’d better not make me wait in vain."

The deep red lantern flickered.

The fog surged back, slowly swallowing that massive body.

But before everything completely disappeared, the golden halo on the creature’s head suddenly flared up one final time.

In that moment, the two dark empty eye sockets seemed to also light up.

Very faintly.

Very briefly.

But as if something ancient, buried for a very long time in a nightmare, had finally heard the name of the person it was waiting for.