A dazzling gold spear, it's luster so bright and divine, it could capture anyone's eyes. A maiden with beautiful and long silver hair, her smiling face, so pretty, that puts any other girl to Shame. And a man, clad in golden armour, his very being seemed like the embodiment of strength, his face so handsome that it could steal any maiden's heart. But now his face was filled with sorrow, confusion and mostly despair.
The golden spear he held, pearced through the maidens heart, who didn't seem to mind it at all, as if she was relieved. "Gu Yue, why?", the man asked, his voice trembling.
"This was the ending I planned. The best ending possible for me, wulin", the girl, no the women spoke with a smile.
"You..", tTang Wulin began, he couldn't find the words to speak. His mind was a complete mess.
"Will you listen to me first?", Gu Yuena sighed. She then immobilized Tang Wulin using the dragon core, and began to speak.
"Wulin, do you know that this is the moment that I can truly love you without any reservations? You asked me on multiple occasions if I love you. I've answered you before. Yet, now's the only time that I can truly announce before everyone as the witness and say 'I love you' aloud."
Her gaze was filled with love. She raised her left hand slowly and showed the ring which was wrapped around her fine, delicate finger and shimmering with a misty blue radiance.
"That day when you proposed to me, I was really, really touched. I became your wife the moment you put the ring on me. I, Gu Yue will only be the wife of one man. He's Tang Wulin."
"Na'er won. When she won, I knew I had sunk so far that I was completely involved. I attempted to extricate myself in the past. Besides, I tried to kill you on more than one occasion. Yet, I just couldn't do it. On the contrary, it made me sink deeper until I couldn't help it anymore."
Even I'd no idea when I fell in love with you. Perhaps, it was the moment where you spent a thousand days burying the dragon bones for my Dragon Clan. Or, it could be the time I called you 'Father'. Or, it was the moment you forced me to acknowledge my love for you with your irresistible confession during the Sea God's Fated Date Festival."
At this point, her gaze began to turn blurry. "Perhaps, everything that happened isn't right. This is because our fate has been destined from the first time we met. Whether it's the first time you met Na'er, or the first time you encountered Gu Yue, it's destiny. You and I are destined to this fate."
"Perhaps, this is a doomed love. Even so, I accept it too."
"I've no choice but to acknowledge the fact that your father is the most farsighted man I've ever encountered in my life. He truly lives up to his name of being the leader of God Kings. He planned a strategy which had been decided ten thousand years ago. He managed to rejuvenate the vitality of the Douluo Continent so that this world can enjoy peace for the next ten thousand years at the very least. He's a man of great wisdom and courage."
"We are barely significant when compared to him. I'm not as farsighted as him. Thus, I haven't figured a way to solve the issue between us and to resolve the enmity between our clans which has spanned over tens of thousands years."
"I'm the Silver Dragon King after all. I'm a part of the Dragon God's body and I'm the king of all beasts. I'm the first ancestor of the soul beasts. You can say that they're evolved from my aura into the clans they are currently. On the other hand, mankind has always been slaughtering them. This enmity cannot be resolved by virtue of our relationship. Even when we're standing at the pinnacle of our own clans, we still can't do it."
"For that, I've been ruminating for a very long time. I'm constantly searching for a way to solve this. I search for that ray of hope, hoping that it will appear before us and give us a way to be together for good."
"I've thought about ignoring everything else and being with you in the past. I even thought about abandoning everything of mine and my clan. As long as you love me, I'll disguise myself and be with you. I won't care about anything else but just to love you."
"Nevertheless, am I really capable of doing that? I can't. The soul beasts are already on the verge of extinction. If they lose me, they will truly cease to exist. The Azure Oxpython and the Titan Giant Ape are your father's close friends and they have even made an exception to stand by me despite being soul beasts that achieved Godhood. It is precisely because they share my concern. If we don't save the soul beasts, they will go extinct for eternity. I can't just stand and do nothing as I watch my clansmen get annihilated!
"I attempted to run away too in the past. I had amnesia that time because I gave my brain a concussion intentionally so that I would lose my memories. At the time, I had the idea that you will certainly remain by my side, protecting me at all times. On the other hand, I wouldn't be able to do anything for my clan without my memories. Perhaps, that would allow me to be with you all the time. Even so, you got the Velvet Skyreach Chrysanthemum to cure my brain injury that I refused to heal on my own purposely."
Gu Yuena smiled bitterly. "Even as such, I was still trying very hard to pretend that I still had amnesia. In fact, I was even hoping that I could fool myself with this. Nevertheless, how could I just sit by and watch when you faced a deadly threat when you were confronted by the abyssal Sage King? I could only save you by making a move and joined you to unleash the Dragon God Transformation.
"After that, I considered countless ways too. I was constantly struggling and hovering in agony, but I still couldn't figure out how. I still couldn't do anything. At last, I lost hope."
At this point, she closed her eyes in pain.
"Desperate, I stayed silent for a very long time. I tried to forget about you. In fact, I even considered marrying Qiangu Zhangting during the Joust For A Spouse Festival. I wanted to marry a man that I didn't love so that I could truly forget you or hurt you and make you stay away from me. Yet, you came. On the other hand, how could I make myself forget about you? Other than you, I wouldn't even let anyone lay a finger on me, so how could I possibly marry another man? I would only put on the ring given by you.
"I finally made up my mind after the Joust For A Spouse Festival. I knew that I could never defeat fate. If that was the case, I could only follow the path of destiny. From that time onward, I came up with this plan."
At this point, divine radiance was glimmering in her eyes once again.
"I don't have your father's foresight to come up with a ten-thousand-year plan to turn the tide. However, I came up with a plan that won't hurt you to the best of my abilities. It won't even increase the enmity of mankind while allowing my clansmen to stand a chance of survival.
"The past is the past. No matter how hard we tried to seek revenge on mankind, even if we were to kill all humans now, we can't resurrect our clansmen that died. On the other hand, I had transformed into a human being so I could integrate into your society. I wanted to understand human beings so that I could overthrow you.
"If not for me, how could Spirit Pagoda develop the ten-thousand-year spirit souls so easily? The ten-thousand-year spirit souls were already infused with my spirit seed. It was because of this that I spent a very long time recovering my abilities. Afterward, I relied on the Dragon God Core to discover the existence of the small world later known as the Ten Thousand Beast Platform. The Titan Giant Ape and the Azure Oxpython used a different method to save the soul beasts. They collected soul beast seeds so soul beasts could breed and multiply in that small world. Yet, the Ten Thousand Beast Platform was too small anyhow and they were also incapable of maintaining the location with their power. For that, I discussed with them and agreed to use the Dragon God Core to act as the core of the Ten Thousand Beast Platform. However, I needed their support to seek revenge on mankind. That was how the Ten Thousand Beast Platform came to be.
"By relying on ten-thousand-year spirit souls and Ten Thousand Year Beast Platform, we seized control of the vast majority of high-ranking soul masters. If you were to judge it from your human perspective, our scheme was already in full swing by then. We did it so we could launch our counterattack today.
"We just didn't expect that the Holy Spirit Cult would actually team up with the abyssal plane. The abyssal Sage King spared no effort in fusing with the Douluo Continent plane just so he could devour it. However, I didn't feel a burden in my heart at the time because we got to fight side by side again. If we were to end up losing in the end, I could join you to die together in a perfectly justifiable manner. The Douluo Continent being devoured by the abyssal plane would be an apocalyptic event for mankind as well as our soul beasts. It was also the first time we were bound by a common hatred for the enemy and fought together. What you didn't realize was that all our soul beasts that could take a human form had joined the battle and played important roles on the battlefield.
"Today, before the eyes of all mankind's powerhouses and my subordinates, I can say that I've never killed a human being that doesn't deserve to be killed since my resurrection. Thus, Wulin, your wife is pure and untainted by the slightest contamination."
At this point, she smiled sweetly, but her eyes were already glistening with moisture.
"The Sea God's appearance changed the ending that I planned originally. I thought that there wouldn't be another opportunity for me to use my plan anymore. The Sea God left, the lord of the plane went into a deep sleep, and the Eternal Tree evolved. All this created an opportunity for me to use my original plan. I was utterly incapable of rejecting my subordinates' urging. On the other hand, it was also time for me to implement my original plan too.
"When you came to propose to me, did you know that my heart hurt so bad? It was obvious that I wanted to accept your ring so badly and I even wanted to shout 'I do' loudly to you even before you proposed to me. Yet, I couldn't. I could only weep in my heart after watching everything that you did for me. Even as such, I still couldn't keep myself from accepting your ring. That was because only by doing so that I could make myself believe that I'm your wife.
"I did not initiate the war to destroy mankind. That would not benefit us. When humans decimated us, it resulted in disruption to the ecological balance. What difference would it make if we destroyed you? Moreover, I don't think that we are capable of destroying you. It is still possible for the sleeping lord of the plane to wake up. Even if I can defeat him, the entire plane will certainly be destroyed in the process. Thus, we can't adopt the life-and-death struggle.
"However, I will still need to initiate this catastrophe so your mankind can experience it. That is because I want to let mankind know that they will need to bear the consequences of the mistake they committed. I want to let mankind know that our soul beasts are capable of resisting too."
At this point, her voice started rising. Her dignity was fully revealed in her pair of pretty eyes. "Even if I have to die, the spirit seeds that I left behind will still exist. I will keep the Dragon God Core in the Ten Thousand Beast Platform to act as its core, and it will also be able to control these spirit seeds. On the other hand, the seeds that I planted through the Dragon God Core will be passed down to the descendants of mankind's soul masters continuously as well. Unless all the soul masters under my control are killed, these seeds shall remain always. If mankind attempts to destroy our soul beasts and hurt us, then we can seize control of mankind once again through the Dragon God Core and initiate the war that can annihilate humanity once again. This control effect will need ten thousand years at the very least to disappear."
Upon saying that, her gaze shifted back to Tang Wulin's face. Her eyes turned gentle once again. "This is my plan. Everything that I did was to ensure that our soul beasts and your humans can live together harmoniously. However, my decision to do this has also signified that I didn't fulfill everything that the king of soul beasts wanted to do. I am still standing on the opposing side of you anyhow. On the other hand, as the hero and king of mankind, how could you possibly marry a person like me? Even if you were to compromise in the end, we will still need to move further. I'm capable of controlling the entire situation so I will only be the one most feared by all of you. Perhaps, you're willing to abandon everything else to be with me, but so many of your thoughts will hold you back. You will always be unhappy. In reality, you can't possibly be with me anymore after learning about my identity. We will only be enemies.
"I don't want to see our soul beasts possess super-powerful abilities either. The imbalance signifies wild ambition. Thus, I left a restriction on the Dragon God Core. The spiritual control will never surface again unless the soul beast lineage is in a critical situation.
"This is my plan. Only my death will relieve the wild ambitions of the soul beasts. Only the initiation of a war like this can awake your mankind. Wulin, I can only hope that you will keep mankind within its bounds after my death and give our soul beasts a living space. Fulfill our agreement and promise to leave the Great Star Dou Forest to us at the very least. Da Ming and Er Ming are here. I believe that they will restrain the soul beasts too so that they won't hurt mankind. On the other hand, your mankind has already developed ten-thousand-year spirit souls so there is no need to hunt for soul beasts anymore. Let our two great clans live in peace, alright?"
The radiance faded. The Dragon God Core that immobilized Tang Wulin earlier had flown up and dove into the Ten Thousand Beast Platform in the sky. Tang Wulin regained his ability to move.
"Why? You know I can't live without you! ", Tang Wulin was having hard time coping with what was going on
"Will you say you love me?", Gu Yuena asked, the pain becoming irresistible for her.
"I love you"
"Hubby, I love you too".
Tang Wulin got up, " and so..",
All of a sudden, her eyes widened. She couldn't react when she saw the other end of the spear Pearce through the heart of her beloved.
"...I won't leave you behind"