Silent Crown

At the moment, above the ruins, Ye Qingxuan looked at the middle-aged stranger, stunned. “Bro, who are you?”

The figure projected by the Holy Cauldron tilted his head to one side and looked at Ye Qingxuan, then asked back, “It shouldn’t be hard for you to guess the answer?”

Ye Qingxuan looked at the sky subconsciously, then looked down at the projection in front of him, and asked cautiously, “The King of Yellow?”

The person shrugged slightly. “The one and only.”

Ye Qingxuan was silent for a long time, then said flatly, “I thought the King of Red would be the one to come.”

“It should have been him.” The King of Yellow looked around and said calmly, “He should have come here 15 minutes ago. By trying to split the physical world, Asgard has defied the principles of the Sacred City. He would never sit aside and watch it happen.”

Ye Qingxuan understood what he meant. “You had a way to stop him?”

“His long-distance transmission is based on the aether cycle of the human world. Coincidentally, I’m in charge of this aspect,” the King of Yellow replied, not bothering at all to disguise the fact that he didn’t get along with the King of Red. “By the way, the King of Blue has also given up on interfering in the changes taking place in the human world. His overly strong power has become a barrier between him and other humans, and the Kings of Blue of each generation in the past eventually chose self-exile as well.

“So, you don’t have to worry about him becoming your enemy. Even if he makes up his mind to act, his enemy will not be you.”

Ye Qingxuan took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. No longer paying attention to the thoughts going wild in his mind, he looked at the supreme king, whose intention was unclear, and asked directly, “So, have you come here to fight?”

“Tasks like destruction have always been the job of the King of Blue. I am only responsible for wrapping up and making amends.” The King of Yellow did not care about the New Testament Sword aiming at him at all, nor did he show any hostility. He simply looked at Ye Qingxuan. “So, you need not test the water so boringly anymore. Why don’t we have a chat openly and honestly??”

“Sorry, I don’t have the time to.” Ye Qingxuan responded indifferently, “If you don’t want to fight with me, then remove the blockade in the space around, I still have matters to attend to.”

The New Testament Sword was flipped, and the metallic gleam on the ridge of the sword reflected the void around the two. The sound of steel scraping against each other was heard. Before Ye Qingxuann had realized it, the two were in a cage.

“I’m sorry about it.” The King of Yellow sighed. “Although I don’t want to fight, I can’t let you go to the Golden Palace. If you insist on taking up arms against me, I can tell you the result—if I focus solely on defense, you can’t kill me. Although you will win, if I don’t die, you can’t leave. I won’t give others a chance to stick a finger in the fight at the Golden Palace. Its results are crucial to me.”

Ye Qingxuan’s gaze became colder. “That’s your reason?” he snickered. “I thought everything on the ground has got nothing to do with you.”

“Times have changed,” came the reply.

“No, since you have made up your mind at the start to let go, don’t step in again as things progress because of such a ridiculous excuse.” Ye Qingxuan lifted his hand and pointed to the sky. “Don’t you want unfettered freedom? Go back to the sky, go back to your iron cage. The King of Yellow, the freedom you seek is not here.”

“You are right indeed, but this place has a meaning equally important to me. This is the last time I appear in the world as the King of Yellow.” The King of Yellow softly laughed self-mockingly. “Or to be more exact, I’ve come here to retire from my position.” He paused and looked at Ye Qingxuan. “How about you make a bet with me?”

“Do I have the liberty to reject?” Ye Qingxuan asked coldly.

“Although it is not fair to you, aren’t you going to at least hear me out on what it is about and what I’m willing to bet?” The King of Yellow withdrew his gaze and looked in the direction of the Golden Palace. Through such a far distance of thousands of miles, he could still see the fierce lights flickering in and out of existence one after another and hear the nerve-wracking rumble.

He suddenly asked, “Ye Qingxuan, who do you think will win?”

“What about you?” Ye Qingxuan looked at him, his tone harsh. “Who would you like to see emerge victorious? The church you cast aside like an old shoe?”

“No, on the contrary, I hope that the Sacred City will lose, but I don’t want Charles to win either.” The King of Yellow said calmly, “To be exact, I hope that both sides suffer immense losses.”

Both sides suffer immense losses…

Ye Qingxuan was surprised. “What do you mean?”

“All along, everyone says that only you are the most similar to me out of all the people in the world. But can you understand what I feel, Ye Qingxuan? That sort of,” after a moment of thinking, the King of Yellow sighed softly and uttered the term, “that sort of… ‘disappointment’ in all this.”

Ye Qingxuan was silent.

In the silence, the King of Yellow found some broken steps to sit down by himself and continued, “I have been confused over one thing all along, namely, how should I look at all this?

“From the perspective of the King of Yellow, I don’t want the order of the increasingly distorted world to be gradually lost, and eventually fall apart because of the original sin human beings are born with, but I can’t do anything about it.

“From the perspective of a musician, I also don’t want everything in the world to be locked up in their cradle by a particular organization in the name of justice and righteousness. I can’t even breath carefreely, but at the same time, I have no courage to overthrow it all.

“From the perspective of a mortal, I long to throw away all the restraints and obtain freedom, but I can’t cut myself off from it all. I am destined to be the least free person in the world.

“Such is the most ridiculous part. Regardless of the perspective you look at it from, I can’t possibly get what I want.”

He toyed with his scepter and laughed mockingly. “From the moment I put on the crown, I have been destined to forever be unable to obtain what I have been seeking my whole life.”

“In a nutshell, what you hate the most, is still yourself, no?” Ye Qingxuan looked at him coldly. “You are just hiding from yourself, running far away, pretending that none of it has happened and that you have not seen anything. You seek illusory peace and freedom, in an iron cage floating in low earth orbit.

“You are here now only because you hope that someone else will rush out and smash the stall up completely [1], giving you an excuse to abandon all this and continue seeking and hiding!”

The King of Yellow was stunned.

After a long time, he laughed loudly.

“Yes, that’s it.” He did not conceal his ugly nature and insignificance, and calmly faced Ye Qingxuan’s ridicule, undisturbed. “As the King of Yellow, I must guard the balance, but now, the balance that guides everything towards kindness has ceased to exist, and what I can get is only an evil balance.

“So it leaves me no choice, as an evil balance is still better a kind destruction.”

He paused for a moment, his gaze becoming serious. His tone left no room for questioning and resistance, as he actually behaved like the King of Yellow. “Cruelly speaking, I hope that Charles will die in the battle and that the Sacred City will be badly damaged. So, I need you to stay here.”

“Everything may not be as you wish.” Ye Qingxuan clenched the hilt of the sword tightly, murderous intent in his eyes. A piercing sound burst out from the void, and it was the loud bang of the iron gleam of the New Testament striking the cage.

The embodiment of the King of Yellow fell apart before the New Testament Sword. The next moment, his figure gathered again, was destroyed once more, and gathered again. It was as if he had undergone endless cycles of life and death, and achieved eternity.

His breath suddenly became erratic and weak, and even the projection of the Holy Cauldron disappeared. His whole person was like a phantom about to dissipate in the next moment. Yet the cage did not shake in the slightest and was even more stable than before.

It was something that surpassed the domain created by Holy and all the domains and wonderlands in the world. It was a sort of wall that had abandoned everything else only for the sake of firmness and isolation!

“Surely, you don’t think that I have been closing my eyes and sleeping while being in ‘confinement’ for so long?” The King of Yellow turned and looked at him, revealing a complicated smile. “After all, I can still be considered as having come to some realizations. Welcome to my world, Ye Qingxuan.”

“This is the product of what you realized? A cage that keeps the whole world out? You should find a psychiatrist to cure your autism!” Ye Qingxuan retorted.

“Is that so? After I’m done with all this, I will.” The King of Yellow said calmly, “So, now, let’s go back to the original topic.

“Do you want to make a bet?”

He said, “The war over at the Golden Palace, who will win and who will lose?”

Ye Qingxuan did not respond, but the King of Yellow continued speaking without caring about his response, or lack thereof. “My bet is on Charles winning, what about you?”

“Charles?” Ye Qingxuan only felt like snickering after hearing his words.

Regardless of the stance of the King of Yellow, no one thinking with their brain would believe that one person would have any chance of winning against the Church that had ruled for centuries for the entirety of the old era.

“Ye Qingxuan, you have been refusing to admit something from the very beginning.” The King of Yellow said unhurriedly, “Namely, Charles is by no means the kind of human you imagine him to be.”

“He far surpassed humans in nature from the start, and he is something non-human.

“He may be able to wear camouflage and hide in the weeds before, but after Gaius awakened him, he will never be able to return to the world of mortals.

“He is different from you. He is the Son of God, literally.

“Everyone has understood it all along, only you are not willing to admit it.

“You would rather see him lose and die here like a human instead of seeing him win, right? If the friendship between you two is like this, I think I need to help you register as well when I go to see the psychiatrist.”

Ye Qingxuan was silent. After a long time, he looked up. “You are right, I would rather see my friend die as a human than watch him become something he does not want to be…

“Even if everyone in the world thinks that he is omnipotent, and no matter he is a god or a monster, in my heart, he is always Charles, my senior and my friend.”

Ye Qingxuan would never be willing to admit the prophecy said by the King of Yellow.

Even though in this case, Charles would die there.

Even the Sacred City would have the final laugh.

“So, the bets have been made.” The King of Yellow whispered softly, the laughter mocking both himself and Ye Qingxuan. “A gamble that neither side is willing to win.”

The King of Yellow hoped that Charles would win, and Ye Qingxuan hoped that the Church would win.

If the King of Yellow was to win, then the Order would completely lose the power to conduct a final counterattack, and the old world he had been maintaining would be destined to disappear in the faraway future.

If Ye Qingxuan was to win, then he would lose his most important friend.

Neither side hoped to be the winning side in the end, but they were unwilling to face failure either. The winner would not be redeemed, but the loser still had to face the bitter outcome.

It was just like what the King of Yellow had said.

It was an evil balance.

In the silence, the King of Yellow stared into the distance, watching the broken skies and the world ignited by war.

“So, as a punishment for failure…”

He announced the bet, “The loser will have to take on the position of the King of Yellow.”

[1] The author is referring to a Chinese saying that literally translates as “tidying up a messy stall” and means “cleaning up a mess.”