The double doors of the governor’s office extended to either side, crafted from aged maple felled three hundred years ago and carved with meticulous care. Their frames were inlaid with delicate silver tracery, radiating noble dignity and the weight of history.
Inside, the office was eerily quiet. Even Anello’s desperate, hoarse shouting had ceased abruptly, no longer echoing across the expansive third floor of the Governor’s Mansion.
"Loren...!!"
Bound from head to foot by magic-suppression ice spikes, Anello felt sharp waves of stinging pain shoot through his body from being moved, but physical suffering was insignificant compared to the terror seizing his soul.
Seeing Loren with his own eyes once more, Anello’s breathing turned ragged. Each inhale brought a faint, choking cough, as if the very air were congealing in his throat.
The ambient noise faded into a blur, his eardrums swallowed by a dead silence where only his own heartbeat echoed—a rapid, chaotic rhythm. His limbs were utterly paralyzed; the distance between him and Loren was a chasm he could never cross.
The dread in his eyes, a terror that chilled him to the marrow, bound him tighter than any physical chain.
Meanwhile, the two figures on the sofa—Lanqi and Sigrid—sat at their ease, composed and serene.
Lanqi sat on the left, poised and proper like a chess piece, gently stroking the pitch-black kitten in his hands.
Beside him, Sigrid leaned back against the sofa cushions, resting her chin on one hand while her other palm lay draped across the armrest. Every knuckle radiated power, as if a mere wave of her hand could make the entire empire tremble. She cast a cool glance down at Anello sprawled across the floor, scrutinizing him from on high.
Their temperaments and postures were night and day—one gentle and refined like a poet, the other majestic and domineering like an empress—yet between them existed an unexpectedly harmonious accord.
Witnessing this dynamic, Anello looked on with a mixture of fury, despair, and sheer disbelief.
He had assumed that once he fled, High Priest Loren would first subdue the weakened Bishop of Domination.
He had never imagined this woman would appear to share mutual trust with the High Priest.
Could the Bishop of Domination have betrayed the Protos Empire long ago, forging an unspeakable alliance with High Priest Loren...?
Anello was utterly unable to comprehend the scene before him, a tempest of emotions surging within his chest.
That feeling of losing everything, of plummeting into an abyss, was more than he could bear.
His breath came in gasps, his vision skewed, desperate to find a way out, yet every shred of remaining reason told him there was nowhere to run.
He suddenly roared, "Loren!! You sanctimonious, despicable hypocrite! Didn't you promise to let me go?!"
Anello's voice was as shrill as a night owl's shriek, thick with all his resentment and indignation.
"..."
Lanqi kept the corners of his mouth upturned in a slight smile, which, under the circumstances, only made Anello's blood run colder.
"I really didn't kill you, did I? Aren't you living just fine right now?"
He spoke with utter innocence, as if all of this were perfectly natural.
The brief retort pierced Anello even deeper, sending violent shudders through his frame once more.
He could not fathom why High Priest Loren, renowned for his noble purity, was so callous, deceitful, and fond of toying with others—surpassing even the most sadistic Cardinals of the Resurrection Church.
Anello drew a deep breath, mustering the last dregs of his strength.
He turned his gaze toward Viscount Chinston, his voice splintered with bitter struggle. "You've been deceived by him!! He's Loren, High Priest of the Church of the Goddess of Fate from the Southern Continent! He is the empire's mortal enemy! Doing this makes you traitors to the empire!! You... you have no idea what catastrophe you've brought upon yourselves!!!"
And yet.
Neither Viscount Chinston nor any of the elite guards stepped forward. Not a single soul expressed agreement with Anello's claims, or perhaps they simply didn't care in the slightest. They remained terrifyingly indifferent, watching Anello without the faintest ripple of emotion.
If anything, they seemed to have grown even more certain of something.
It was the sort of look reserved for someone utterly deranged, a lunatic who had lost all touch with sanity.
Viscount Chinston shook his head with a faint chuckle. Stepping quietly over to Lanqi's sofa, he bowed his head respectfully. "Lord Governor, you truly foresee everything like a god. Every single thing happened just as you predicted."
At that moment, Anello shattered completely.
Despair enveloped his entire being like frost, biting colder than even the ice that paralyzed his flesh.
The meager remnants of hope in his eyes crumbled. He felt himself on the verge of losing everything.
"He's a fraud! You've all been fooled by this swindler!!!"
Anello screamed through tears and laughter, as though the sheer absurdity of it all had finally driven him mad.
His heart-wrenching, bitter cries carried every syllable like the dying gasps of a ruined man.
Everyone else in the room turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. Not one person showed the slightest sympathy or understanding, let alone stepped forward to defend him.
They merely watched Anello in silence. His madness and delusions unfolded so vividly before them, yet they observed it as if gazing upon a distant desert landscape—remote, uncaring, cold.
Finally, Lanqi let out a soft sigh.
He looked down upon Anello, those compassionate eyes seeming to see through everything, stripping Anello's soul bare.
Yet he did not look down on Anello with haughty superiority, unlike the way Anello had once looked upon him out on the snowfield.
There was not the slightest trace of cat-and-mouse mockery.
Only pity and regret remained, like an earnest old headmaster looking upon a student about to be expelled.
Anello braced his trembling hands against the floor, struggling to steady his body and composure.
His eyes held utter confusion and terror as he stared unblinkingly at Lanqi, trying to unearth some genuine answer—or perhaps a glimmer of hope—from those unfathomable depths.
No matter what, the man who had captured him was High Priest Loren. As a devotee of the Goddess of Fate, he had to be benevolent, right?
He had said he would reform him with love, and he had promised not to kill him!
"Loren, spare me... Someone of your status shouldn't stoop to dealing with me."
Anello's voice grew louder, tears spilling down his pale, rigid face, bearing a desperate repentance as though facing death, yet pleading for Loren's compassion.
In this moment, he seemed like a misunderstood child, unable to comprehend why everything around him had become so alien and cold.
"Holy Son, don't listen to his..."
Sigrid began to speak with a trace of anger, but Lanqi raised a hand to stop her, signaling for her to trust him and leave it in his hands.
Lanqi continued to gaze upon the Holy Son of Extinction, that saintly benevolence never fading from his face.
"In your view, what is the primary purpose of rules and laws—prevention, or retribution?" he asked.
"Prevention! It's prevention! I swear I will never oppose the Church of the Goddess of Fate again! I swear to the Goddess of Fate!"
Anello answered Lanqi as though seizing a lifeline.
Yet Lanqi merely smiled, then shook his head with a trace of regret and mild sorrow.
"It is retribution. Deterring or rehabilitating criminals is secondary; those who do evil must face retribution, and those who do no evil should suffer none. That is the cornerstone upon which punishment and justice are built, and retribution is its paramount purpose."
Lanqi's expression turned uncharacteristically solemn as he gave Anello the correct answer.
Hearing Lanqi's words and seeing his demeanor, Anello's parted lips trembled, his hollow pupils seeming to foresee his grim future.
His body grew even colder, everything around him blurring until even his own sense of existence felt utterly hollow.
"Spare me... Otherwise, Lord Askesan won't spare those innocent priests of the Goddess of Fate..."
Anello repeated the phrase over and over, weeping as though it were the only anchor keeping him afloat, yet with every repetition his voice grew weaker and more powerless.
"Why? I don't belong to the Church of the Goddess of Fate."
Lanqi blinked, looking slightly perplexed.
"...?"
Anello froze on the spot.
He had no idea what Loren meant.
Was Loren still playing dumb and acting shameless even now?
"I am Luoqi McCarthy."
Lanqi lifted a hand and stated clearly.
"No!!! You're Loren! If you kill me, Askesan will find out sooner or later that it was you!"
Anello shrieked, terrified of confronting the truth. He could no longer distinguish between truth and falsehood in this city; ever since stepping into this office, the entire world felt like a living nightmare.
Yet the only thing he had to believe, his sole surviving scrap of hope, was that the person before him was High Priest Loren!
"Sigh..."
Lanqi sighed helplessly.
"Why won't you believe me? Every word I've told you has been the absolute truth."
Lanqi took out the [Counterfeit Slate - Wind], along with his imperial identification document, and presented them to Anello.
The document clearly read: Luoqi McCarthy.
"See? I was only joking with you back on the snowfield."
Lanqi smiled sheepishly. No one could tell whether he truly felt a pang of guilt or simply couldn't keep a straight face any longer.
Beside him, Side finally collapsed back against the sofa, clutching her stomach with laughter. Seeing Anello's utterly foolish look was too much for her to bear, and she slapped Lanqi beside her again and again.
In that instant, Anello's eyes went wide. Everything—every single puzzle piece—finally fell into place in his mind.
"Ah... ah..."
Only after becoming a complete captive did he realize that back then, he had possessed the power to kill both the Bishop of Domination and the Holy Son of Domination.
And yet, consumed by terror, he had allowed himself to be played like a fool.
Step by step, he had been tricked from the gates of heaven straight down into this inescapable abyss.
His eyes turned blood-red, like two gems submerged in blood on the verge of shattering. A flame of fury, once extinguished, roared back to life within them, threatening to burst from his sockets and tear everything to ash.
Every cell and every inch of his skin trembled. Anello's lips twitched, his teeth grinding audibly. Droplets of dark-crimson fluid rolled down from the corners of his eyes—not tears, but blood, the physical proof of a hatred so fierce it threatened to tear him apart.
"Luo—qi—!!!"
The Holy Son of Extinction's shrill, heart-wrenching roar was the death knell of his utterly ruined spirit.
Chapter 351