"Actually, it’s you who’s hiding in the closet; Mom has always known."

"There’s no princess in the castle, only a monster wearing our father’s face."

"Brother, will he come back?"

"No more, no more..."

The three of them left the cave, heading down the mountain path, passing a mansion where they saw the phantom of a boy in a black evening suit crouching in the garden, his expression frantic, while the girl’s eyes were dim, weakly repeating the question.

"Brother, why are your hands shaking?"

"Do you remember the game we often played?"

"There’s a monster in the castle; he’s not our father, just has a face like our father’s. You must hide well, don’t let him find you."

"Brother will go and defeat that monster."

"Where did Dad go?"

"It’s he who killed our father; Brother won’t let him go."

"Will Brother come back?"

The boy stood and left, while the girl in the bushes reached for his hand, accidentally falling and cutting her palm, raising her head in a panic, her hands groping on the ground for something.

Su Sui noticed that Zhou Zhao, who had been chattering nonstop, suddenly fell silent, not saying a word.

Soon, the boy returned, lowered his head, numbly staring at the ground. Outside the mansion, a great fire burned, and angry shouts occasionally rang out. Many people broke in, all armed, but no one noticed the bloodstained boy because they were busy grabbing valuable things from the mansion; the statues they couldn’t take became their tools of venting.

The statue of the mansion owner was pushed over by the furious crowd, crashing to the ground, with a dent in its head, its murky eyes fixed on the boy standing still.

It was the struggling little girl who emerged, pulling the boy into the trees. She tightly embraced his body, her tender face pressed against his, sharing her remaining warmth with him. Her dim eyes lit up with a resolute spirit in the flickering firelight.

The siblings huddled in the bushes, surviving the night. When dawn broke, the angry crowd gradually dispersed, and the carefully constructed lie was shattered, turning the once-grand mansion into ruins.

Zhou Zhao said nothing.

That night, he had personally killed his father.

Years ago, the conflict between Alfas Sky City and the ground wasn’t as sharp, and the key to the future wasn’t fully in Sky City’s hands. His father held the position of Governor, managing the affairs of Zones N1–N9. Sky City’s government had promised his father that as long as he completed twenty years on the ground, he could move to Sky City.

In fact, his father always managed the governed area well. At least, no confrontations erupted within the area, and the respected managers there held his father in high esteem. His childhood was spent in relatively favorable conditions.

Until the promised time came.

The government’s promise was not fulfilled.

To be precise, it exceeded his father’s expectations, beyond everyone’s expectations.

The government allowed his father to ascend to Alfas in Sky City, but only him alone, leaving his mother, him, and his pregnant sister on the ground.

This was a promise that was destined to be unfulfilled; it was a long-crafted lie.

For this promise, his father always played the role of a black glove for Sky City, engaging in countless shady deals.

Everyone knew that the ground was like a rotten apple, shining on the surface but rotten inside. Its vitality and spirit would vanish the moment the genetic seed recovery project was completed. The so-called return-to-ground project was just a deceit; the rebuilt factories and houses were just for showing to the people on the ground, to cover up their true purpose.

They deceived everyone, including his father.

They were abandoned.

After questioning, anger, and rebellion, his father chose refusal, visibly declining, and from then on, he seemed to become a different person.

His father became silent, became unpredictable, no longer humble or kind, sinking into a daily life of drunkenness, ultimately turning into the monster in the castle.

His sister lost her sight under long-term mental stress.

The man thought it was his, his mother’s, and his sister’s fault, dragging him down, preventing him from reaching Sky City, leaving him to perish on the ground.

Finally, people learned the truth, learned they were abandoned.

An unprecedented riot erupted, angry people stormed into those grand estates, executing all the governors on the ground, all remaining government officials like his father were executed in the harshest manner.

Before that happened, he personally killed his father, the monster wearing his father’s skin.

His mother was defiled by the intruders that night, losing her sanity.

After that, he wandered with his sister and mother. In the following years, there was an attempt to build a united government on the ground, even voicing war against Sky City, but irreconcilable resource conflicts quickly caused internal fragmentation, splitting into countless forces, further subdividing, losing vitality and spirit.

That period was known as the Era of Turmoil. After the Era of Turmoil, there were no longer any capable armed forces for resistance on the ground. Sky City re-established control, but this time they tore off their hypocritical facade.

His mother and sister both departed during the Era of Turmoil, leaving him struggling in the End of the Earth, drifting like a lost soul until, by chance, he became a member of the Mayfly, and later joined Oasis, getting to know the people of Assassin’s Creed.

"Where is that seed really!?" Zhou Zhao saw himself, furious, grabbing a man’s collar and roaring.

"We don’t need the key to the future. Just give us some more food..."

He saw the dull-eyed people surrounding him, desperately pleading.

He had lost the seed, and shortly after Clair left the Woodpecker’s House, he was dismantled into scrap, and the seed vanished.

Before the competition started, while evading the assassins from Sky City, he tried searching but found nothing.

It’s very likely that those seeds were eaten by the refugees.

Accepting such an absurd truth was difficult, at times his anger reached its peak.

At the time, he seemed possessed, constantly swearing "damn it" while yelling at those refugees.

But he couldn’t bring himself to act like the scum from Sky City and cut open the refugees’ stomachs to verify. After the anger came cold despair, weak to the point of numbness, the days of fleeing made him so weary he could barely keep his eyes open, but he had to force himself to stay alert, only finding a safe place at the last moment and joining the competition.

"What a nightmare." Zhou Zhao clicked his tongue.

He hated having his past exposed, and also hated how Four-leaf Phoenix Tree kept calling him Young Master Zhou.

Because he hated who he used to be, exposed to everyone, with just a little force, it would peel off the skin, revealing the frail interior within.

Bloody, truly detestable.