Chapter 105#
Distant Star Reflection 13#
Tan Per raised his head, eyes plainly stating “I don’t agree.”
Yu Feichen received Tan Per’s feedback yet gave none in return. He meticulously poured alcohol over his right hand. The environment dimmed, cold breaths spread through air, transparent liquid flowed from fingertips downward, seeping into white carpet without trace. The atmosphere was crafted like horror film opening—as if he didn’t extract blood but dissected flesh.
Yet the fragile sensitive omega showed no reaction. Not only felt no danger—even watched the half-empty alcohol bottle with faint helplessness, sighing at wasteful resources.
So Yu Feichen poured the remainder, leaving only negligible dregs.
The cathedral personnel quickly arrived outside. The side door’s transparent area opened. The quarter-sized reluctant opening made the priest clearly sense rejection. After confirming Tan Per showed no overreaction, Yu Feichen wiped the posterior neck vein with remaining alcohol, piercing the needle.
The test required minimal blood. The thin needle showed just a bit of red before Yu Feichen withdrew. Yet the puncture slowly seeped a blood droplet.
Yu Feichen stared directly at the bright red drop. He’d tasted this blood already.
He recalled at the temple—the frenzied reptile ate blood flowing from Ludwig’s heart, greedy and savage.
Seemingly distant, yet barely a month passed. The thought appearing then surfaced in his chest again, accompanied by cravings seemingly from soul’s depths.
Though compared to the reptile, he at least wore somewhat presentable outer skin.
Alpha’s supposed instinct provided legitimate excuse.
—He leaned, licking the droplet with his tongue. Tan Per beneath hadn’t anticipated this action. Posterior neck skin trembled faintly.
Yu Feichen pulled the collar proper. Exiting, he handed the blood sample to the secretary, who transferred it to the priest. Yet the priest and attendants’ scrutinizing gazes hadn’t left Tan Per.
Yu Feichen: “Not escorting you out.”
The priest hadn’t reacted before the secretary startled, shoving them: “Go, go, my lord.”
Escorting them to the corridor entrance, the secretary suddenly returned.
“You seem truly about to go frenzied, Duke. Alpha’s maturity threshold is high-incidence mania period,” he said.
Yu Feichen felt fine, felt quite lucid himself, saying: “I’m not.”
“Seems unavoidable,” the secretary sighed. “But there’s another problem. I felt the bishop’s mental state tonight was too normal. I suspect something. Before complete alpha mania comes lucid interval. Omegas too. I suspect you two will soon be checking into the sanatorium together.”
Yu Feichen watched him, then said: “Why are you looking at him?”
The secretary swiftly turned, rushing after the priest’s retreating figure: “I’ll escort you further!”
Yu Feichen closed the side door’s transparency mode, standing before the firmly shut bedroom door a moment before entering. Upon entering, he found Tan Per sitting in the armchair, looking down at him while contemplating something.
Yu Feichen: “Do you also think I’m experiencing mania?”
Tan Per shook his head: “I think the opposite.”
Finishing, he settled his gaze, seeming preoccupied. The person was unusually normal tonight. Yu Feichen sat on the sofa, discussing Windsor’s odd behavior.
The world possessed no inherent appearance or voices. Each person was a self-contained force system, outer form merely mutual recognition of “appearance.” Even alpha-omega pairing could be explained as correspondence between two forces. Windsor’s peculiar ability—“whoever he looks at gets married”—and perceiving they’d switched persons suggested he wasn’t ordinary but some external entity, possibly a high-ranking outer god.
This suspicion had one doubt: he displayed his special talent openly.
Tan Per, however, shook his head.
“When I first met Murphy, he was also quite odd,” Tan Per said.
This was the supreme deity’s and time god’s initial origins. Yu Feichen simply listened.
The deity spoke: encountering Murphy in an ordinary world, Murphy was only fifteen or sixteen, solitary in character.
This was because his perception differed from ordinary people’s. Some thought him blind, others thought him delusional. Nobody approached him. Murphy himself lived in bewilderment—he’d never clearly seen even one tree leaf nor understood any complete sentence.
Yet seeking the problem’s root, he picked up a brush, placing his perceptions on canvas, scribbling many paintings with unremarkable talent. Those paintings were abstract, incomprehensible, belonging to no existing school, gaining mysterious color from the author’s apparent mental illness. They didn’t help doctors diagnose his condition. Rather, art dealers treated them as gimmicks, circulating through salons, exhibitions, and auctions.
The supreme deity saw one painting when a collector bought it, showing him.
They both stared at the colorful oil painting half the night, finally detecting threads within dense rainbow overlays. The artist painted not things themselves but time’s flow.
All people, all objects in Murphy’s eyes were past, present, future’s heavy layering. He was fish living in a long river, yet overlooking the entire stream’s form.
Later, the supreme deity took Murphy’s one eye, igniting flames, constraining those tangled phenomena with eternal day’s laws. They no longer troubled him. Murphy followed them through endless eternal night, becoming the god holding time. The removed eye was embedded in Truth’s Arrow’s bow hilt, returned to him.
The one thing unchanged was probably painting skill—only painters appreciated it.
When Tan Per recalled old memories, eyes held gentle smiling warmth.
Yu Feichen thought the deity seemed living well those days—at least surrounded by painters, unlike himself, surrounded inexplicably always by cross-talk performers.
Returning to Windsor.
“Some people’s power originally possesses structures differing from others,” Tan Per said.
Yu Feichen: “I’ve noticed you always view others with maximum kindness.”
—Including me.
“Otherwise?” Tan Per smiled faintly, saying: “Even if he’s an outer god, what can he do to me?”
Like soothing Yu Feichen, he added: “Complete worlds have no gaps requiring tremendous force to open. Only the Creation Tower can send people inside.”
Here we go again. Yu Feichen couldn’t help playing with his hair once more.
So supreme deity wasn’t remotely omega. They’d never feared anything external.
Yu Feichen asked: “Do you have naturally special aspects?”
“I…” Tan Per considered a moment: “Not really. Do you?”
Yu Feichen seriously thought—indeed he did.
He still couldn’t discern Tan Per’s appearance differing from paradise deity-form.
Originally believing face-blindness was minor harmless flaw, now it seemed more like insensitivity to appearances.
Conversely, he discerned force quite accurately.
After realizing the gap, Claros’s mindset turned highly negative—wanted burning books and retiring—until hearing the neighboring time god had miscalculated something, taking a day off, finally finding bitter satisfaction regaining balance.
Tan Per watched, awaiting response.
“Yes,” Yu Feichen said, “I can recognize you.”
Tan Per became preoccupied again. Strange—the supreme deity was dismissive of fierce-baring outer gods, yet toward him seemed anxious like owing debt.
After a moment, the deity raised his left hand back: “Can you see here?”
Fine-white hand skin, beautiful form, faint blue veins showing faintly. Beyond that, nothing else.
Yu Feichen’s expression resembled a smile yet held icy coldness in his voice: “Why show me your marking with others?”
Recalling how Murphy repeatedly checked Anphiel’s hand back in the gear world for identity confirmation, he showed no reaction. Even if their marks were his name, Yu Feichen wouldn’t harbor slightest interest.
Night had deepened. Yu Feichen felt Tan Per staying awake scattered his attention, preventing consideration of what he wanted considering. Forcing him into blankets over objection, turning off lights, calling it done.
Leaving himself alone to ponder indefinitely—after all, it was future matters.
Midnight, Yu Feichen suddenly sensed Tan Per’s breathing seemed as the secretary said—excessively peaceful. Seemed not asleep but unconscious.
Calculating the person’s complete triggering deadline hadn’t arrived. He turned on light, leaning to pat Tan Per: “Bishop?”
Tan Per remained peaceful, like the sleeping deity within crystal coffin, even eternal sleep flower scent resembling that time.
Referencing materials, this state was the calm period before complete triggering correct. Yet coming early by two days. Even temporary marking couldn’t suppress it.
—The deadline advancing had one cause: omega experienced extremely critical stimulation, producing significant emotional fluctuation or psychological pressure. Yet Yu Feichen couldn’t imagine suspicious reasons—like when Tan Per was speaking then suddenly triggered.
Cause first disregarded, he tried various names calling Tan Per, receiving no response.
After all, all were fleeting false names. Icy irritation suddenly welled up. He pulled Tan Per from bed. Golden hair brushed his neck. Tan Per’s head rested loosely on his shoulder, only unconsciously following pheromone direction, slowly moving toward his neck.
Yu Feichen undid two buttons of Tan Per’s collar, pulling it down. Under light, porcelain-white skin was so delicate it gleamed. Needle marks and bite breaks showed. Surrounding area blushed faintly.
Calling names couldn’t rouse. Markings always could. The gland’s location was invisible to eyes, but he remembered positioning. Fingertips pressed several times that hidden nodule. Tan Per gasped sharply leaning on his shoulder. The touched area flushed pale red.
Yu Feichen turned the shoulder, checking his face—still space-vacant dreaming, yet passively submissive, entirely unresisting. Not because of who he was, but because of compatible value alpha.
The throne flew away—certainly not to watch Tan Per become an irrational triggered animal. Yu Feichen again bit the gland location, through skin layer pressing the half-soft nodule between canines, grinding.
Tan Per’s body trembled in his embrace. Waist was supple, thin—no effort required to restrain. Like those nights outdoors, building fire, pulling a live rabbit with soft fur from grass.
All changes perceptible. The gland flushed, changing under pheromone invasion, sensation becoming clearer. Tan Per’s breathing accelerated. Temperature gradually disappearing from this body. Trembling, he leaned against Yu Feichen, yet as Yu Feichen gradually bit down, suddenly convulsing backward.
—As if physiologically fearing and resisting him.
Looking at Tan Per’s state now—originally closed eyes opened slightly, eyelids half-drooped, pupils pure black desolation, roused from peaceful period by pheromone yet plunged into intense triggering.
Yu Feichen turned his face upward, those sightless eyes showing no change.
Tan Per no longer recognized him. The book’s description echoed in Yu Feichen’s ears.
For omegas whose hearts couldn’t easily heal, brief pheromone contact plunged them into triggering instead.
Triggered omega, trapped in their lifetime’s most terrifying memories.
Yu Feichen reached to grip Tan Per’s shoulders, receiving a shudder, Tan Per shifting away.
Heavy heartbeat echoed through Yu Feichen’s mind, the twice-rebuffed directly jarred his counter-nature, evoking his mania.
He took a deep breath, knowing this emotion was wrong, forcibly suppressing it, preparing to offer lifetimes of gentleness and patience. Looking up, he saw Tan Per standing at the bed’s edge, staring blankly, right eye bearing a teardrop barely clinging, sliding down from the tear mole.
Yu Feichen instantly knew this person was contemplating some sorrowful memory from thousands or ten-thousands of years ago. The barely-assembled tenderness instantly collapsed completely.
Pheromone wrapped his heart aching.
“You,” his voice very hoarse, “come here.”
Tan Per not only didn’t return to bed, but tearfully looking at him, retreated another step.
Three times wasn’t too many.
Tan Per was forcefully thrown onto the bed, back against headboard, trembling like convulsions. This appearance—as if without remaining sanity to collapse, he’d already collapsed thousands of times.
Pheromone soothed. Temporary marking already ineffective. Inhibitors at this point even poured fuel on fire—already in overuse rebound period.
Yu Feichen pressed Tan Per back into his embrace. Yet only now did he discover having zero confidence in soothing Tan Per.
Because he faced not merely fractured heart of triggered omega, but thousands of countless eternities of eternal day’s supreme deity’s all shadowed gloomful times.
Tan Per still retreated toward corners. Yet the gland’s location was already deep pink. The only part of his body still retaining warmth.
Pheromone seeping through skin into gland was temporary marking’s step. Biting through skin, directly injecting pheromone into the gland was permanent marking’s phase.
Yu Feichen lowered his head, biting there again.
Wasn’t quite reluctant, but teeth slowly piercing skin’s instant, pheromone like vortex wrapped his soul toward abyss’s depths. He bit deeper. Fresh blood welled. Swallowing, eternal sleep flower scent carved into his every inch—deep, dense as dream.
Yu Feichen’s vision suddenly swam. If value compatibility reached perfect matching, final marking connected alpha with omega’s senses, seeing all they saw, felt all they felt.
Yet now… Tan Per was trapped within deepest fear.
Yu Feichen sank following that dream-like sensation. In half-consciousness, all his perceptions disappeared. Everything around suddenly transformed.
Sky bright, sunlight warm brilliant.
Eternal sleep flower scent everywhere.
He walked through eternal sleep flower sea, flowers blooming lovelier than Twilight Temple’s field, swaying in wind. Highest flowers passed his waist.
A cloud drifted before the sun. Under even brighter rays, he pleasantly squinted.
Is this the nightmare deity found hardest escaping? Didn’t seem so. Everything so serene, peaceful. If this were memory most relaxed and joyful, somewhat believable.
Gaze turning, Yu Feichen saw himself wearing an exquisite flowing white robe, golden thread embroidering elegant mysterious decorative patterns.
Not him—that memory’s supreme deity itself.
A slender wrist showed in the sleeve—a youth’s hand, sixteen or seventeen years old.
Still walking but not alone. Footsteps behind, at moderate distance in the side-rear, yet the youth never turned. Yu Feichen couldn’t see who.
They didn’t speak. Simply moving through eternal sleep flowers until reaching the flower sea’s center.
They stopped.
The last clouds around the sun dispersed. Everywhere blazing brightness. Distant white temple building, clustered structures stretching like mountain ranges, gleaming under sunlight.
Looking there, within sacred buildings stood many obelisks.
Seeming ruleless, scattered throughout the temple. Bathed in daylight, yet each stood quiet solemn, pointing toward the sun.
Then slowly withdrawing gaze, filled with inner peace.
Returning gaze to surrounding flowers.
“I like here,” the youth’s voice said.
The person behind said nothing. After a moment: “What about you?”
The tone was gentle sincere, yet not quite familiar. They hadn’t spoken much. Yu Feichen’s mind surfaced this notion—what the deity was thinking then.
That person said: “Why ask that?”
Also young voice, only several years older than the deity then, asked about liking, carried sort of indifference.
“Because I want standing gravestone here,” they said. “The priest said when I die, if you also depart then, you’ll be buried under the gravestone with me. If I die before you, you guard my tomb until life’s end.”
That person behind asked: “If I die before you?”
“Don’t know. Perhaps I’d have another knight commander,” they softly said. “But I can’t live long. You won’t.”
That person didn’t answer. They continued: “So I ask if you like this place. If you don’t like it…”
—As if I’d have anywhere specially to like.
They hesitated slightly, nervous a moment.
That person behind answered.
“Yes.”
As the voice fell, they smiled like receiving lovely flowers or lovely gifts, and turned back to look within the flower sea, carrying that smile.
Behind suddenly nothing.
No flowers, no sun, no return path. Only grey-clouded sky.
The memory abruptly ceased.
Yu Feichen felt Tan Per’s body violently trembling, shoulders dampened. Silently weeping.
Yet this is all?
He’d imagined deity’s nightmare, conceived all memorable known scenes, even paradise’s shattered appearance, yet never imagined it as only peaceful flower field, several tentative words.
Was such a thing worth eternal lifetime’s attention?
Yet Yu Feichen couldn’t escape inexplicable emotion. His heart ached like shattering. Hands holding Tan Per’s shoulders trembled faintly.
Teeth grazing gland’s surface, more scenes flickered through his mind—yet no longer as distinct. Heavy phantoms held many blurred distant views, crying and laughing streaming together.
Cold wind. Desolate bleak.
Walking forward again.
He possessed no long sword, no dagger, no scepter. Simply held something icy, walking endless pathless road. Yu Feichen unconsciously looked down—seeing the broken knight helmet, dust-covered, traces of undried blood within.
Behind came sounds of massacre, shouting—like ten thousand troops pursuing.
Whenever those shouts neared, gripping the helmet tightly, continuing forward without turning.
No return path.
Yu Feichen thought this more like nightmare. Yet earliest surfacing burned strongest—this segment wasn’t.
He bit down. Teeth pierced gland surface. Pheromone completely fused. Consciousness suddenly cast skyward, blank whiteness.
Tan Per struggled live-fish-like in his embrace, throat choking, breathing violently, heart pounding fiercely.
Yu Feichen swallowed remaining blood, raising his head. Tan Per watched him, awaking from great dreams—clarity yet confusion.
Yu Feichen: “Awake?”
Alpha’s pheromone pervasive. Tan Per’s eye confusion gradually fading. Triggered-emotion gradually soothing. He nodded. The strangeness at posterior neck made him want touching there, yet Yu Feichen gripped too tightly, wrists couldn’t lift.
His voice slightly hoarse: “You…”
Yu Feichen: “Still recognize me?”
“Yes,” he said. “You…”
The question about what Yu Feichen did at tip of tongue suddenly swallowed.
Yu Feichen’s position unchanged, still confining the person in the bed-corner, watching Tan Per again unclear, originally pushing hands sliding downward, fingers trembling weakly. Within mere minutes, the once-icy body suddenly warming.
After absorbing sufficient alpha pheromone, triggering period passed. Next phase arriving. However intensely this person’s triggered episode, next would match proportionally.
In summary, inhibitors truly weren’t good things.