Although she was just following the other person's topic, Bernadette couldn't help but speak with a touch of melancholy and sadness.
Roselle was indeed a good father before he went half-mad. After he went insane, reaching a point where he could have a falling out with Bernadette, the crazed Roselle could no longer be called a good father.
"There's no need to be so wary. I have no ill intentions," the Angel of Secrets easily saw through Bernadette's caution. He smiled slightly and said leisurely, "I'm just here at someone's request to see how you're doing."
"At someone's request?" Naturally, Bernadette didn't lower her guard because of Lynn's words, but she was indeed puzzled. She couldn't think of anyone who would ask an angel to check on her, except...
Thinking of a certain possibility, Bernadette's heartbeat suddenly accelerated, but she didn't dare to be sure, fearing it was just her wishful thinking.
"He asked me to tell you not to look for him anymore," the Angel of Secrets said, gazing at Bernadette unhurriedly. "He also asked me to tell you that, as his little princess, you just need to live happily and wait for him to bring you home."
Bernadette opened her mouth but said nothing, her mind blanking out at this moment.
Even though she had a premonition earlier, hearing such an answer still left her at a loss.
The Angel of Secrets was not surprised by this outcome. He waited patiently for Bernadette to calm down. After about three minutes, Lynn finally heard Bernadette's dry voice.
"Why should I believe you?"
Obviously, the message from her father, though shocking and stirring her emotions, did not make Bernadette gullible enough to trust Lynn's words directly.
Even though she wanted to believe it, as she desperately wanted to find her father, Roselle.
Even Bernadette herself didn't know whether she wanted to hug her father or question him about his madness once she found him.
Bernadette undoubtedly hated Roselle for his late-life madness. She despised the crazed Roselle, the dictator he had become, and the countless deaths he caused.
Yet, Bernadette also deeply loved her father.
Before Roselle fell into madness, their father-daughter relationship had always been good. If not for that damn corruption, Bernadette and Roselle would have been model father and daughter, exemplifying true fatherly love, instead of nearly becoming a tragic irony.
"You might be familiar with a certain word..." Lynn said slowly, watching Bernadette's increasingly unstable emotions and uttered a Chinese word: "Homeland."
Bernadette's hand clenched at her side. At that moment, she knew that everything the person before her said was true.
"Homeland," this oddly pronounced word, belonged to Roselle's language and was a "secret" between her and Roselle.
Bernadette had been immensely curious about what "Homeland," this strange-sounding word, looked like and had asked Roselle, but her father never answered.
She clearly remembered her father's expression when he mentioned this word—nostalgic and sorrowful, as if he had lost something important forever, speaking only with regret.
Since then, Bernadette knew that "Homeland" was extremely important to Roselle. The fact that this angel could say this word meant that even if he didn't truly know Roselle's whereabouts, he at least had a deep connection with him.
And Bernadette was willing to believe that everything the person said was true.
Even if she knew it could all still be a lie.
But she had searched for Roselle for too long without finding any clues. At this moment, Bernadette was like a drowning person; even a straw was worth grabbing, let alone if this person might be more than a straw.
"Where is he?" Bernadette asked, her voice hoarse with emotion. She raised her head to meet the angel's gaze, her eyes, as blue as Roselle's, filled with turmoil.
"Sorry, where he is now is too dangerous, so I can't tell you his whereabouts for now," Lynn shook his head. Although the corrupted personality on Roselle had been eradicated, the place where he was was inherently dangerous, with the added corruption from the Primordial Moon, making it unsuitable for the Sequence 3 Bernadette.
"...So he's indeed still alive, right?" Bernadette bit her lip and kept her eyes on the angel, continuing to ask.
"He's certainly still alive, though not living particularly well. But the last time I saw him..." Lynn paused and then smiled, "He finally got rid of the madness and regained his clarity."
"Isn't that good news?"
Although he couldn't directly tell Bernadette about the outer gods, it was alright to hint that her father's madness was due to external influences, not his own will.
Just like in the original story, before Bernadette ascended to angel, she discovered Roselle's corruption. But as long as she didn't know it was from an outer god, she wouldn't be affected.
"He got rid of the madness, regained clarity?" Bernadette latched onto Lynn's words. She had always wondered why Roselle had become a mad tyrant in his later years and couldn't help but ask, "What happened? Was my father's madness influenced by something else?"
"He was corrupted by an evil god," Lynn said, meeting Bernadette's eyes and revealing the harsh truth:
"Your father was corrupted by an evil god long ago. That corruption grew with his ascension, turning him into a puppet of that god, unable to break free even after becoming a Sequence 0."
"He still loves you and still wants to be a good father, but his will was suppressed by the corruption, and the madness took over his personality, suppressing his true self."
"So he went mad. To prevent his fully crazed, out-of-control personality from wreaking greater havoc on the world, he chose to bind himself in a state of death."
"This is the truth behind your father's madness in his later years and the reason why he hasn't returned even after ascending to the Black Emperor."
(End of Chapter)
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