MCDWTBS Chapter 64

“But this is a Chong child’s love for their male parent…”

“I don’t understand.”

Edwin’s voice was very soft, but also very sincere. The black-haired Female Chong was not good at hiding his emotions, and even his confusion was endearingly frank, causing Serra to feel a tremor ripple from his heart to his whole body:

“But… thank you, Young Male Master, for telling me this.”

Edwin’s fingers gently lifted a stubborn curl of Serra’s hair that had escaped the control of hairspray, tucking it behind Serra’s ear, just as Serra had done to him countless times. The Female Chong’s movements were so earnest, his lips pressed tightly together, which naturally sent Serra into another round of accelerated heartbeat.

How could he remain unmoved? The Female Chong he loved was carefully adjusting his hair, those clear and stubborn azure eyes that frequently appeared in Serra’s dreams were all his—all for him. The Female Chong, whose emotions were like a blank sheet of paper, was drawn into this emotional relationship that was, even for an Earthling, immoral and twisted, like an innocent lamb being placed naked on a bizarre altar.

At this moment, Serra vaguely realized that no matter how he deceived himself or misled Edwin, no matter how he coaxed the system into believing that he had no malicious intentions to subvert the mission, he could not do as he had expected, simply staying by Edwin’s side as an innocent and pure Male Chong.

He loved Edwin, and this love was mixed with many elements that Edwin could not understand, and would even frighten the Female Chong, but even if Serra tried his best, he still had moments of losing control.

He couldn’t stop loving Edwin.

“Male parent, you don’t understand,” the Male Chong said, bitterly and frustratedly. He broke the long eye contact with the Female Chong, even though he knew that even if the Female Chong was given a hundred years of evolution and the assistance of ten emotional mentors, the black-haired Female Chong would not be able to detect the complex emotions in his eyes, but as a former adult, he still had a sense of shame.

“You don’t understand what I can do to you, what kind of power I have over your body and will. The power of Male Chong over the Female Chong and Yaci they mark makes my skin crawl. More than a male parent, I’m more afraid of myself—you can never imagine how easy it is for a Male Chong’s desires to get out of control.”

“This is too unfair, male parent, too unfair to you. There are so many thoughts in my head, believe me, you never want to know what those thoughts are. Telling you a lie is just the most basic violation. I can force you to believe the most boring and absurd lies in the world, and firmly believe them. I can make you do things you would rather die than do, manipulating your body. I can control your emotions, turning your sweetest memories into your deepest nightmares, and vice versa. I—I really don’t know, male parent.”

The Male Chong trembled as he took a breath, the tip of his nose touching Edwin’s finger bones:

“I don’t know why you would be willing to stay with me. To you, I’m a monster. I can do things ten thousand times worse than killing you. My power isn’t the kind of power that life in this world should have. If I were in your position, I would turn around and leave without hesitation, while I still had the chance. But male parent, how afraid I am of you leaving me.”

Serra didn’t want to cry, please, he wasn’t a Chong child anymore. Even in his Chong child days, he could use the lame excuse of having well-developed tear ducts to cover up the fact that he was always emotionally unstable and overly dependent in front of Edwin. Now, he didn’t even deserve that excuse.

But he still couldn’t change his habit of being anxious about gains and losses. Edwin could easily provoke all of his emotions, and just thinking about Edwin could make him repeatedly indulge in the whirlpool of emotions.

The Male Chong’s tears soaked the back of Edwin’s hand, the scorching temperature seeming to burn the Female Chong’s hand, causing his fingers to tremble slightly, while the hand that wasn’t occupied by the Male Chong hesitated, patting the top of the Male Chong’s head.

“Young Male Master, what are you thinking about?” the Female Chong asked, his voice filled with confusion. Even without looking at him, Serra could imagine Edwin tilting his head slightly, looking both confused and perplexed:

“A male parent who still has the ability to fight is impossible to leave a Chong child.”

He said firmly, the few short words encompassing all his beliefs of protection, which made Serra’s heart churn in his chest, and his stomach twisted unnaturally.

This was far from what Serra wanted to hear from Edwin. He was grateful for Edwin’s male parent-like love for him, he really couldn’t cherish every bit of genuine affection from Edwin more, but whenever he was wrapped in this almost blind love, he couldn’t look directly at himself in the mirror.

Edwin’s sincerity and bottomless tolerance made Serra more certain of what exactly he was.

He was a little beast sucking on Edwin’s warm blood, filled with immoral thoughts. He was not worthy of Edwin and his noble, pure love.

The young Male Chong’s body knelt before Edwin, the Male Chong’s noble, inviolable power permeating the surrounding air, while the tears falling on the back of Edwin’s hand were so soft and harmless.

Deep down, Edwin clearly knew that Serra wasn’t lying. If Edwin had even a shred of rationality left, he should have left the Male Chong who marked him after being marked. This Male Chong controlled everything about him, and every concrete representation of his existence in this dimension was in the Male Chong’s palm. The only thing that could escape the Male Chong’s control was his soul.

But Edwin didn’t think that the soul could survive after leaving the body and betraying its memories.

The instinct for survival screamed in his body countless times, half urging him to flee, the other half urging him to submit, like a docile female deer, obediently wagging its tail under the Male Chong’s palm. Other Female Chong and Yaci all did this, didn’t they? His body had already obeyed, there was no need for his soul to resist stubbornly. He should be afraid—the military Female Chong were strong, yes, but this universe was full of powerful creatures, even elusive gods, and unfathomable laws of life. In front of Serra, the marked Edwin was like being nakedly exposed in front of interstellar behemoths. The marked him could no longer harm the Male Chong’s fragile body, and outside of the advantage of 정신력, he was nothing more than a dish on the Male Chong’s table.

He should be afraid, like Sison feared their Male Master. When his own Female child was violated by the Male Master, the powerful Sison could do nothing but wander helplessly outside the Young Male Master’s bedroom.

But he wasn’t afraid of the Young Male Master, at least when he was conscious, he wasn’t afraid. This almost arrogant certainty made the intuition he had honed on the battlefield constantly warn him, but his soul remained indifferent.

From the bottom of his heart, he didn’t believe that the Young Male Master would harm him. That wasn’t because of any male parent, Male Chong child nonsense. There were not a few Male Chong who harmed their own male parent together with their Male father. Edwin just—he just didn’t believe that Serra would harm him.

Because he was Serra. Edwin sometimes felt that Serra simply didn’t have the ability to harm other lives. On very rare occasions, Edwin would also indulge in his own fantasies, wondering if Serra could defend himself in front of the enemy if he went to the battlefield. He didn’t think Serra could, because he was the most gentle, rational, and empathetic Chong Edwin had ever met.

Even if he was no longer a cub, his heart was as pure as a cub’s, untainted by power and status.

Of course, everything that happened later made Edwin know that his Chong child fully possessed the will and ability to fight, but forgive a male parent’s blindness, he still hoped that his Chong child would stay away from the flames of war, away from the battlefield that didn’t belong to him.

In this regard, his selfishness and Serra’s might be the same.

“I don’t want you to be in danger either, Young Male Master. You want to protect me, and I also… want to protect you to the best of my ability.”

Edwin’s fingers slid across Serra’s hair that was fixed with hairspray. The texture wasn’t very good, but texture didn’t make much difference to a thick-skinned Female Chong. A few strands of Serra’s hair were extremely stubbornly sticking up, looking like a hedgehog with curled thorns under the fermentation of hairspray. His dress was wrinkled and unsightly, his nose and eyes were red and swollen, which was really lacking in demeanor, but in Edwin’s eyes, he was no different from before.

“You want to hide it from me, but you won’t let the royal family’s plan run, will you? You don’t want the Female Chong and Yaci to become mindless machines. You issue wristbands, tamper with the robots’ instructions—perhaps I couldn’t understand it before, but I understand it now—you won’t allow Colean to do things more evil than the church. You don’t want me to participate because you know Colean’s danger. You want to face it alone, just like you didn’t want to wake me up at the beginning, but faced the church’s Chong alone.”

Edwin’s voice was still gentle and calm, but Serra had been his Chong child for so long that he could hear the disappointment hidden in that voice—the disappointment from the male parent was not something anyone could bear. Serra instinctively flinched, wanting to refute—but in fact, he couldn’t refute Edwin’s words.

When he was in the palace, he had already diverted some of his attention to thinking about countermeasures. The preferred plan was of course to crack the royal family’s research institute and find Colean’s plan and a way to crack it. He couldn’t allow Colean to turn the Yaci and Female Chong into his power machines. That would be a consequence that he, Edwin, the entire Chong race, and even the Life Tribunal, couldn’t bear.

So, if the ideal method didn’t work, he would take extreme and even dangerous measures. Serra’s biggest bargaining chip now was actually his power, the gift from the Mother Goddess—or his student Yun Jiarang. This was the reason why Colean and the Pope were really willing to negotiate with him, and it was also the trump card he would eventually have to use.

He must destroy Colean’s plan, turning his power into a Chong body bomb and detonating energy to destroy everything, even at the cost of his own life.

And these things, Edwin didn’t need to know. He didn’t want Edwin to worry about him, because he wasn’t worth it.

“Male parent, I…”

His voice was tight, and he half-knelt on the ground, carefully peeking at the Female Chong’s expression, his soft amber eyes the same as when he was a guilty or uneasy Chong child. There was a helpless anger in Edwin’s chest, but he would never lose his temper with his Chong child.

“Why don’t you protect yourself, why don’t you let me help?”

He asked, but before Serra could answer, he heard Edwin continue:

“You always seem to think that the root of all the misfortunes and dangers that happen to me is your fault, Young Male Master.”

The Female Chong’s voice contained a hidden fire that made Serra not dare to quibble, and the Female Chong’s blue eyes were a bit deeper in color, and his soft and delicate face also became distant and cold. The characteristics of the Chong race gradually emerged on his human-like appearance, and Serra’s heartbeat was extremely fast.

For the first time, Edwin showed him the appearance of a general, shedding the gentle coat of the male parent, and his bones were soaked with the danger and decisive coldness of killing.

“You act like you don’t care if you keep your own life after this inevitable battle. You act like you don’t care about tomorrow. I always hoped that it was my illusion. You were still a Chong child at that time, and your brain just hadn’t fully developed, and I also had a bad influence on you—but I was wrong. You have always thought very clearly that you can die at any time for what you want to do, die for the battle that belongs to the Yaci and Female Chong, or even—just for me, you would choose to die. This is too absurd. Since ancient times, no Male Chong would—”

“—I would.” Serra couldn’t help but interrupt Edwin’s words. He didn’t understand why Edwin still wasn’t willing to believe that he was willing to die for Edwin—a thousand times, ten thousand times, because Edwin was worth it, and Edwin never understood this.

The long silence made Serra know that he had hastily stepped into a trap again. Edwin looked at him silently, his eyes brewing with anger, and Serra stiffened his neck, carefully arguing—he really hated that his mind was always unclear in front of Edwin, and the transformation that had just passed obviously made his body in puberty and his emotions extremely unstable:

“Why wouldn’t I, male parent? I love you, and lives will die for those they love. This is an unchanging truth. Besides, you are the only thing I miss in this world. I don’t see a reason to stay in a world without you. This has nothing to do with Female Chong, Male Chong, or Yaci, it only has to do with you and me.”

“But is this a Chong child’s love for their male parent, Young Male Master?”