The Shattered Truth

Even today, twelve years later, she can still vividly remember the scenery of that meadow.

For it was Aile’s first gaze upon this world, her first time imbuing it with her own hues, her first moment truly owning a landscape of her own.

****

[The carriage was speeding across the plains.]

[Chris was seething with unspoken anger, yet ultimately, she could do nothing to stop you.]

Aile closed her eyes, but she could not halt the magic unfolding before her.

[She saw the Teacher, frequently entering and leaving the village and the royal capital.]

[Chris, gazing at the Teacher with tender eyes.]

[Occasionally, in places Aile could not see, she would also look at Aile with the same gaze.]

[The Teacher’s anxious voice, asking Chris how much longer they could hide.]

[The Teacher and Chris discussing the matter of faking his death.]

“This, this can’t be…”

“It can’t be…”

She realized that the man in the girl’s eyes… was both the Teacher and the Duke.

“His face! The Teacher never had a face like this! It’s a lie, this is all a lie!”

Her turmoil was so profound that Chris’s consciousness interjected, the girl speaking with chilling detachment:

“Can’t you even recognize a mask? Or perhaps, you never truly paid attention to his face?”

The Teacher’s face, the Duke’s face.

He condensed his magic source into a bottle, consuming it himself.

He, pacing outside the door when she was ill.

He, meticulously preparing her clothes, doing his utmost for her in places she couldn’t see.

He, expending all his effort and wealth for her education.

His bitter expression when sending her away, the heartache upon hearing that the cake he made for her was not good.

His figure, dragging his dying body on the city gate, waiting for her return.

His agony upon hearing of Noyu’s death, and his relief when she killed him with her own hands.

At the culmination of these revelations, Aile’s magic instantly shattered.

“Teacher…” Aile’s parched lips moved soundlessly, a hoarse whisper escaping them.

How could she believe it? How could she possibly accept it? She had killed… no, she had tortured her own Teacher to death with her own hands.

She abruptly raised her hands, savagely clawing at her hair. “No! It’s fake! It’s all fake! He deceived Chris! He misled everyone! Teacher… how could the Teacher possibly…”

“He killed the Teacher! Burned down my home! Turned me into a s*ave! He… he…”

Aile wildly destroyed everything around her, attempting to use the exhilaration of destruction to banish the overlapping faces in her mind—the Duke’s face, which she hated to her very bones, merging with the Teacher’s face, which had gently protected her in her memories.

Each act of destruction felt like tearing a piece from her own soul.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Aile stood amidst the ruins, where the monstrous hatred that had sustained her for years, burning through her very life, now found nothing.

From beginning to end, she had lived under the protection of the very same person.

Whom had she killed?

Whom had she… with her own hands… tortured to death with the cruelest curse?

She had seen all the truths, and she had shattered.

“Ah…” A broken sob spilled from deep within her throat, and Aile’s body began to tremble violently. She stumbled, wading through the widespread devastation, making her way towards the Teacher’s chair.

“I told you, you would regret it,” Chris’s cold voice resonated.

“Are you satisfied?”

Chris’s voice offered no quarter, no indulgence in her sorrow.

“You’ve seen everything, and now you’re satisfied?”

“I…”

She tried to speak, but her body abruptly seized with tremors.

In that instant, all her strength drained away; her lips turned pale, and her throat felt parched.

“It was you who killed him, you who stole his future, his life, his everything.”

Chris’s voice was as clear and cold as an icy spring.

“Rejoice, your revenge is complete.”

Aile squeezed her eyes shut, her eyelashes fluttering, her heart roaring. Several times, she felt as though she had been cast into the ocean.

She couldn’t breathe.

Chris must have harbored a bone-deep hatred for her.

If someone had killed her own Teacher, she would have done the same.

What’s more, the one who killed her Teacher was herself.

With the Teacher dead, she, too, had lost all will to live.

“Kill me.”

“Kill you?”

Chris looked at her with eyes full of hatred, then let out a laugh she couldn’t control.

“Kill you, and grant you release? Why would I?!”

The girl’s voice was sharp, and her words left Aile no room for rebuttal.

She refused to imagine… no, she dared not imagine.

To imagine how many grievances Mingqian had truly suffered.

She feared she would utterly collapse in an instant.

“Do you know how much pain he endured? Do you know how he truly lived all these years?”

“You never even considered it.”

“I won’t kill you. I will curse you, to live forever in atonement.”

“Don’t, Big Sister, please…”

Aile’s words of weakness only fueled Chris’s anger further.

What right did she have to regret it now?

“I am not your Big Sister! I never had a younger sister; you are not my family.”

“I will never forgive you, and I will not kill you.”

This was Chris’s weakest form of resistance, and also the words she had most wanted to say to Aile for all these years.

Her Master had granted her freedom, but who could truly comprehend her sorrow?

Her Master was dead.

The Master who softly called her name, occasionally stroked her head, and held her tightly during thunderstorms when she was little.

The Master who laughed and joked with her, completely devoid of aristocratic airs…

The Master who taught her how to survive, and how to feel emotions.

Dead.

Chris had witnessed death countless times, yet it was only when death truly arrived by her side that she first perceived its profound sorrow.

All along, her Master had always shown a cowardly expression after killing others.

Now, she finally understood.

She wished she could follow her Master into death right then.

However, she had been commanded to live on.

Thinking of this, she envied Aile immensely for being able to commit suicide.

If you truly loved him, then commit suicide, why ask someone else to kill you?

The chair’s back was wide, its armrests cold.

She reached out, her fingertips trembling, carefully tracing the smooth wooden grain of the chair’s back, as if touching a fragile phantom.

This was where he had sat. He had sat here, watching her kneel to clean up spilled teacups; he had sat here, ordering Chris to force an ugly smile from her; he had sat here… watching her, with those eyes she had never truly understood.

She had also lived here for ten years, yet she had never realized that the Teacher had been meticulously caring for her in precisely this manner.

“Why…” Aile murmured to herself, her voice as light as a feather, yet burdened with a thousand tons of despair. “Why didn’t you tell me… why in that way…”

She recalled his composure when facing the threat of death, that phrase, “Send me on my way.” That was the Teacher’s final indulgence towards her.

He hadn’t even blamed her excessively, or reprimanded her, or been angry with her.

Slowly, as if utterly drained of strength, she sank into the wide chair.

Trembling, she retrieved the s*ave collar from her spatial ring and clamped it tightly around her neck.

As if doing so would allow the Teacher’s warmth to embrace her once more.

She pulled open the drawer before her; besides a cheap necklace, there was also a spatial ring.

That necklace was what Aile had believed to be her only memory of the Teacher, stolen from her.

Inside the ring was a birthday gift Mingqian had meticulously chosen for Aile.

She picked up the necklace, and began to weep silently.

Beneath the ring was a diary.

Her pupils contracted sharply; she remembered this diary, something she had seen once before.

It was then, too, that she had first learned of the Teacher’s birthday.

Unable to control her trembling body, she opened the diary.

[X month X day, Aile seems a bit listless. Perhaps the prolonged abuse has dulled her. I must be mindful of this, and treat her as gently as possible.]

……

[X month X day, Aile has learned to act spoiled, which is good. She’s slowly drawing closer to being “human.” Soon, she’s sure to grow into a great beauty. Ah, if only I could take Aile back with me.]

[X month X day, on second thought, a child bride is too dangerous after all. Aile might not even like me. I should give up on that idea.]

[X month X day, Aile really likes cake. When have I ever done this kind of work? No choice, I’ll have to learn…]

……

Every line, every word, overflowed with one person’s profound care for another.

She had personally destroyed everything.

“I… it’s all my fault.”

Aile held the necklace, motionless and dazed.

She thought of nothing, merely sat there blankly, gazing expressionlessly at the necklace, as if trying to cradle something in her hands.

Yet the more she reached out to touch, everything scattered like dust, leaving behind only the diary and the necklace. These were the only mementos Mingqian had left her.

Her hand gripping the necklace felt as though it wanted to fuse it into her very being.

Aile remained in that dazed state. She had experienced the pain of the Teacher’s death before, but none had been as utterly heart-wrenching as this moment.

Though she refused to believe, refused to confirm, refused to think.

The agony of breathlessness that came with every thought, the regret that made her yearn to travel back in time and kill herself, all made Aile acutely aware of one truth: her Teacher, the one who had accompanied her from childhood, had been killed by her own hands, right here.

The Teacher who had saved her, who had brought her warmth in this world, was dead.

The Teacher who had raised her, given her meticulous care, the Teacher who gave her warm clothes in winter while he shivered, the Teacher who learned to bake cakes for her—he was dead.

The Teacher was truly dead, before her very eyes, because of her.

Who killed the Teacher?

I did.

Who am I?

Aile.

Ah…

Ah…

Ah…

I hate… whom do I hate? Myself.

She yearned in her dreams to see him again, to die alongside him. Her only sun had set.

What, then, was she living for?

“I… I lived for the Teacher…”

Aile could barely hear her own heartbeat; her head throbbed with a swollen ache, her trembling lips unable to utter a single word. Her eyes no longer held the satisfaction of revenge, but were filled instead with sorrow and despair.

She longed to commit suicide right there, yet even suicide probably wouldn’t earn the Teacher’s forgiveness. She wanted to kill herself with the most venomous, most cruel curse.

If she were to die here, in the same place as the Teacher, would he then forgive her?

Would he perhaps smile and say, “Aile, it’s alright”’?

Even such a fantasy had become a fervent longing in Aile’s mind.

Ah, I want to die, I want to die right here.

Midway through the diary, the language shifted to one she didn’t recognize. In Aile’s mind, this was proof of the Teacher’s utter disappointment in her.

“Don’t… don’t abandon me.”

Aile had lost all hope, and just as she was about to let this despair consume her, she saw the very last sentence in the diary.

Only this sentence was written in the script of this world.

[Aile, Happy Birthday, and also, I’m sorry.]

The Teacher had sacrificed his entire life for her; if she were to die like this, she would be unworthy of him.

She sobbed, tears falling silently.

“That cake, it truly was delicious. I just didn’t want to admit it…”

“Truly…”

It had been such a familiar taste, yet she had lied to herself, claiming it wasn’t delicious at all.

And yet, that had been the last cake the Teacher ever made for her.

She had discovered it too late; everything was beyond redemption. Even if she had become the strongest in the world, what good was it?

The Teacher could not be resurrected.

She was still so useless, so powerless; she still couldn’t do anything.

“Aile, Aile absolutely cannot be without you…”

“Without you, I can do nothing.”

“I was wrong, Aile knows she was wrong.”

The girl let out a sound of profound lament.

“I will see you again, no matter the cost.”

“I will change this world. No matter the cost, I must resurrect the Teacher.”

“No matter what!”

Her hollow eyes finally seemed to gleam with a sliver of light.

[Her magic source had fully recovered, and coupled with the profound impact of Mingqian’s death, her level soared to an unprecedented degree.]

[Chris and Eliza vanished from Aile’s sight.]

[The world did not understand the Duke, so she killed everyone who dared to insult him.]

[Her power was such that no one dared to resist.]

[Following that, Aile initiated large-scale reforms within the Empire.]

[She acknowledged the existence of witches, abolishing the millennium-old ban on them.]

[Her cultivation deepened further, and after several years, she finally broke through level 200. It was then that she discovered the Demon King residing within the forbidden lands.]

[The Demon King, with three millennia of cultivation, did not even deign to notice Aile.]

[Yet, it was said by all that, adorned only with a simple necklace, she single-handedly compelled the Demon King to surrender.]