Chapter 766: Lip-Reading

After saying goodbye, things still weren’t over.

Muen suddenly raised his hand and activated the Myriad-Age Cycle branch on his wrist.

As star-ring-like runes circled a few centimeters around his wrist, the world in Muen’s eyes was instantly dyed with a hazy crimson.

Like putting on red-tinted glasses.

The world was still the same world, but on Zagu alone, something extra appeared.

Chains.

Chains of unknown length—one end connected to Zagu, the other passing through countless solid walls and stretching off into the distance.

These were chains hanging down from the true Myriad-Age Cycle, linking the souls of every demonman except Shenyi.

Clatter.

Suddenly, that chain snapped taut.

And it slowly dragged something out of Zagu’s body.

It was Zagu’s soul—its appearance not much different from Zagu’s physical body, only looking a bit older, and without any of those wounds.

But even without wounds, Zagu’s soul—just like every demonman soul Muen had ever seen—was covered all over with countless tiny cracks across its ethereal body.

His soul was broken too.

Only compared to the demonmen Muen had swallowed with black flame before, the shattered cracks on Zagu seemed much smaller, still far from the brink of collapse.

"From what it looks like, the lower the demonman, the more brutally shattered the soul is—so that’s also why they gradually lose their reason?"

Muen rubbed his chin, thinking.

"Even after death, a demonman’s soul is still bound by the Myriad-Age Cycle’s chains? But what happens to these souls afterward—are they collected?"

Wait. Collected?

A spark flashed through Muen’s mind.

It was like he’d finally caught hold of something... something extremely important.

If they were being collected, then in opposition to that, there would be something called reuse, wouldn’t there?

Otherwise, collecting them right now would be meaningless.

Collected.

Reuse.

Immortality.

Myriad-Age Cycle.

Muen’s thoughts spun faster and faster, searching through the vast tangled skein of his mind for the thread-end that could unravel the riddle...

"Motherfucker, how’d you die that fast?"

Off to the side, Ariel—temporarily not having to be troubled by any of this—kicked Zagu again in deep dissatisfaction. "I still had a lot of questions I didn’t ask yet."

"Please be a little more ladylike. He’s already dead..."

"Got a problem? I’m a feral brat who grew up in the Lower District. I’m not like you noble old men. So what?"

Ariel planted her hands on her hips and glared viciously.

"N-No... nothing."

Muen immediately swallowed the rest of his words. Somehow, after that battle, it felt like Ariel’s irritability had kicked up another notch.

What a shame. They’d coordinated pretty well before.

With regret, Muen toyed with the pure-white blade, flicked a gorgeous flourish, and was just about to go back to thinking about that question...

"Hm? Wait."

"Hm what hm?"

Ariel snapped impatiently. "So you finally willing to let me chop you to death?"

"No... whether you’re chopping me to death or not, we can talk about that later. What did you just say?"

Muen looked like he was finally about to catch something, staring straight into Ariel’s eyes.

"J-Just now?"

Even Ariel—who liked to boast she had steel bones and iron muscles—got startled by that hungry-wolf look. She covered her still-not-recovered chest and took two steps back.

"I said I’m a feral brat who grew up in the Lower District..."

"Not that. Earlier."

"How’d you die that fast..."

"Earlier. The very first sentence!"

"The very first...?"

Ariel thought hard for a moment. Then her eyes suddenly turned weird as she looked at Muen, and she tested the words out cautiously.

"Y-You... motherfucker?"

"Yes! That one!"

Muen slapped his palm hard.

The sudden intensity startled Ariel again, and she clutched her chest even tighter.

This guy... does he seriously like getting cursed at that much?

A dignified young master of House Campbell with that kind of kink?

What a freak.

"Mama... Mom."

Muen didn’t have time to care what Ariel was thinking that might damage his reputation.

Because as those two words slipped out, a certain memory buried in his head got turned over again.

It wasn’t an important memory—nothing in it had ever felt especially striking. Compared to all the life-and-death crises he’d survived on the way here, it was so ordinary it was almost abnormal.

So it took Ariel’s “reminder” for him to remember.

It was something that happened when he’d first entered demon territory and, for the sake of information, slipped into a small demon tribe.

In that little tribe, he’d met a small female demonman, and a dying high-ranking demonman.

The female demonman was only seven or eight years old. The mutation traits on her body were far more obvious than on that high-ranking demonman. By demon classification, she was already close to a low-ranking demonman.

A low-ranking female demonman, taking care of a high-ranking demonman who was about to die.

At a normal glance, it was just a very ordinary story: a weak daughter caring for her badly wounded father.

If the story ended there, it truly wouldn’t have been worth Muen remembering at all.

But that high-ranking demonman—whether from the agony of his injuries, or the fragile instinct every living thing shows at the edge of death—

right as Muen was about to leave, he suddenly called out a word.

"Mom."

It should’ve been a completely unremarkable word, because most people in pain will unconsciously call out the greatest support buried deep in their hearts.

Human or demonman alike.

Muen hadn’t cared back then. He’d assumed the man was calling for the mother he would never see again, even at the moment of his death.

But...

when he linked that ordinary-seeming incident to all the information he’d obtained now, and then dared to make a bolder guess...

What if... that dying high-ranking demonman wasn’t calling for a mother he couldn’t see?

What if he was simply—very normally—calling for the “mom” right beside him?

What if the “mom” he was calling was that tiny, powerless, frail... seven-or-eight-year-old demon girl?

In an instant, a violent chill tore up Muen’s spine, making him instinctively feel nauseated.

"So that’s it? That’s what ‘mom’ meant?"

An ordinary word.

A word no one would pay attention to.

And yet at this moment, finally—finally—it connected the chaotic scraps of information Muen had.

And from that, it derived the truth of the “immortality” the demon race spoke of.

"No wonder."

No wonder low-ranking demonmen didn’t fear death, because death truly wasn’t an endpoint for them.

And no wonder Zagu had said goodbye instead of farewell forever, because he really did have a chance to meet again.

What he feared wasn’t death, but loss—losing the strength he’d honed through a hundred years of hard training.

The demon race really could be immortal.

Myriad-Age Cycle. Myriad-Age Chaos-Turn.

Muen finally understood the rule contained within that name, and the law controlled by this ancient relic.

Immortality was reincarnation.

"Wait—let me catch my breath. This is a little too unbelievable."

Muen pressed a hand to his aching head, and his gaze unconsciously drifted back to his wrist.

Was the Myriad-Age Cycle really this terrifying?

Was this ancient relic really this terrifying?

Trapping several million beings in a cycle stripped outside the world’s rules, letting their souls wear down, their bodies mutate—this power... how was it any different from a god’s?

Then the question was: how much did this cycle affect memory?

It couldn’t be zero. Otherwise, several million old monsters with a thousand years of experience—even if they kept deleting their accounts and starting over—would still be horrifying. The demon race right now clearly wasn’t anywhere near that level.

And if you thought about it carefully, this wasn’t something to feel lucky about at all. The entire demon race seemed bound inside this turning cycle—die and live again, live and die again—dragging a normal human-like mind and lifespan through it, over and over, unable to escape for countless ages, until the soul gradually collapsed, until the body completely mutated, until reason...

vanished into nothing.

Rather than a blessing, it was more like...

a curse.

"No, no—this is only a guess. There’s no direct evidence at all, and this has nothing to do with how I’m going to save An."

Muen forced himself to calm down. In something that very likely involved a god, reckless speculation really could get him killed. And even a guess he believed was correct could still lead him down the wrong path.

No wild guessing.

"But then again—if death is meaningless, why did Shenyi start that war? What exactly is his goal?"

Muen lifted his head. If guessing wasn’t allowed, then he’d look for answers from the soul that was slowly floating up.

He looked over at it tentatively—

and unexpectedly, Zagu’s soul actually responded. Its lips moved, as if it was saying something.

Unfortunately, Muen couldn’t hear a soul’s voice.

"Ariel, can you read lips?"

Muen snapped his head around, asking for Ariel’s help.

He didn’t know why the fearless, heaven-defying “Soaring Phoenix” protagonist was currently wearing such a wary expression, hugging her chest and hiding ten steps away.

Like she’d run into a pervert.

"Lip-reading? Of course I can. It’s a must-have skill for causing trouble and stealing secrets in the Lower District. Why—what are you asking for?"

Ariel eyed Muen’s lips with even more suspicion. This guy had been muttering weirdly to himself the whole time, and now he suddenly asked something this strange.

Was he trying to use it as an excuse to do something weird to her?

"Then look. What is he saying?"

Muen hurried over and grabbed Ariel’s hand.

"Y-You—you—you! What are you doing—trying to molest me? Believe it or not, I’ll chop you to—huh?"

Ariel was about to explode and draw her blade, but the moment Muen’s hand touched her, she froze.

Because her field of view changed.

A hazy red layer covered the entire /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ world, like some crimson moon had risen overhead, pouring a sinister color over everything.

"What is this?"

"The soul-vision brought by the Myriad-Age Cycle branch."

"Soul-vision?"

"No time to explain. Hurry and see what he said."

"Huh? Zagu? He’s not dead? No—wait. That’s his soul."

Ariel reacted quickly.

Even with a bit of nervous tension in her head, her professionalism was still there. In the last moment before Zagu’s soul was pulled away by the chains, she swiftly began translating his lip movements:

"Muen Campbell... I forgot to say earlier... my steadiness... doesn’t miss..."

"So... the fight between us... should have awakened... that ‘existence’ at the bottom... right..."

"Next... enjoy it... properly..."

"..."