Chapter 1: Seventy-Eight Points, Excellent

“Boom!!”

Pure white flame blasted apart in a thunderclap. The third alloy bulwark bent, fractured, then shattered under the searing heat, and chunks of red-hot metal rained down like a storm, splashing billows of burning dust across the floor.

Deep inside the Qionglan base, scarlet alarm lights flashed in mad bursts while a shrieking siren cut through corridor after corridor.

Veteba trod over the melted carcasses of gun emplacements, savage fire wreathing his body.

He was panting hard, his gaze welded to the far end of the corridor. Each stride carried the desperate violence of a man with nothing left to lose as he charged toward the deepest core of the base.

‘The presence… deeper still… just one more push… I have to find her.’

If he could seize that sacred relic, the Holy Snow Lotus that had taken on human shape, he could save his dying people in the Royal Spirit Desert.

He was the hero of his whole tribe, the one who had passed the Goddess’s Trial, the last hope of the Royal Spirit Desert.

This time, he could not fail.

Aila, wait for me to come back.

“Stop him! At any cost! Do not let him reach the Holy Maiden!”

The soldiers howled and threw themselves at him. Energy cannons boomed, alloy blades swung, and a dense tide of attacks crushed down, only to scatter and collapse against Veteba’s monstrous shockwave.

****

Command Center, the same moment.

A panicked voice came through the communicator: “Lord Mochen! The foreign invader has broken through the seventh defense line! His speed is still climbing! At this rate… he will reach the Holy Maiden in moments!”

Standing at the middle of the command platform, Mochen, an elder with silver-white hair, silently bit his lip. He did not glance at the surveillance screens; his eyes stayed locked on the mural of the snow lotus on the wall, and his fingers curled shut without him noticing.

A figure surfaced in his mind, pure white, so immaculate it hardly seemed real. The image came to him with terrible clarity.

For an instant, Mochen’s throat bobbed hard. There was no simple worry in his eyes like that of the soldiers, only a dread with no visible bottom.

“Lord Mochen?!”

The aide beside him was frantic, his voice cracking. He had forgotten all rank and formality, his face pale as paper.

Everyone knew the Holy Maiden was the Holy Snow Lotus incarnate, humanity’s last trump card against the alien races. She could bestow power on humans, yet her own body was delicate as the most precious flower in a greenhouse.

If that monster got in there… this would be a disaster.

“What are you waiting for? Call for reinforcements!”

Jolted by the desperate plea, Mochen came back to himself.

Even so, he did not give the order. He took a slow breath, his voice pressed out from his throat: “It’s too late.”

No. Or rather, perhaps there was no need.

Mochen pressed his lips together so hard he tasted something thin and metallic. In the next moment, to the stupefied horror of every soldier watching, the old man raised his hand and cut all surveillance feeds himself.

“Lord Mochen! W-what are you doing?”

“That’s the Holy Maiden! How could you…”

Anxiety and bewilderment spread at once, echoing in a barrage of questions. Mochen remained silent. He just stared at the lotus mural, his eyes impossibly complicated, holding awe, unease, and something close to a resigned acceptance.

Some things were better left unseen.

****

Deepest floor of the base.

Another boom shook the corridor. Veteba’s soul was more than half burned away. His thoughts were foggy, his vision going dark between pulses of haze, yet a single wild obsession propped up his swaying frame.

The final gate of alloy shattered beneath his fist. The last guards were flung back, coughing blood onto the floor, too broken to rise.

He had reached the end. The sealed chamber of the Holy Maiden, Luoxue.

Behind the door lay a calm that stood against the war outside.

A cold, soft light hovered in the air, threaded with a faint scent of blossoms, so clean that it seemed isolated from every noise.

“Found it… finally found it!”

Veteba’s voice trembled with joy. His bloodshot eyes fixed upon the bed.

On the soft wide bed sat a white-haired girl, idle and unhurried, her fingertips tracing over the plush bear in her arms. The gesture was slow and mechanical, like a doll carrying out a set sequence.

The gate had exploded with a deafening crash, yet she showed not a trace of disturbance. She only turned her head slowly, in a calm so absolute it bordered on strangeness.

The instant he saw her face, Veteba forgot to breathe.

He had witnessed dazzling beauties across countless species, but this flawless image struck him like a hammer and closed a giant hand around his heart.

The girl wore a pure white dress, light as drifting smoke. Her feet were bare, slender and pale, and her snow-white hair spilled across her shoulders and over the side of the bed like moonlight. A clean white blindfold covered her eyes, giving her a saintly, untouchable coldness, yet also a brittleness that could shatter at any moment.

She looked like a saint descended to the world.

And like a spirit hidden beneath thin gauze, made to steal away a man’s soul.

After a scattered moment, the wild white flames around Veteba died. All the killing fury drained from him. Obsession, frenzy, and delight flooded his eyes instead, washing away pain and exhaustion, leaving only reverence and hunger.

He stumbled to the bedside and dropped to his knees with a dull thud. “Holy Maiden! I am Veteba, Veteba Shokbolira, Lord of the Royal Spirit Desert! I am a Chosen One who passed the Goddess’s Trial! I have the right to inherit the Creator’s authority! Please… please let me try! I will not fail you!”

She remained silent.

To his surprise, not a single word came back. The stillness was terrible, as if she were a fine sculpture with no life in it.

Veteba’s heart hammered. Holding the guidance of his intel, he stretched out a trembling hand, careful and impatient all at once, and gently slipped the white blindfold off her face.

The next moment. Her long, pale lashes fluttered like butterfly wings, and slowly she opened her eyes.

A pair of mismatched pupils was laid bare before him.

One was molten gold, bright as the midday sun; the other crimson, strange as demon fire.

It was a beauty that stole the heart.

And cold… with no depth one could reach.

The eyes held no emotion, no ripple, no warmth, only a dead hollow calm that sent a chill creeping up the spine. Nothing like the merciful saint of legend who had compassion for all.

Yet Veteba, to no account of his own, sensed nothing strange. He only felt those eyes’ lethal pull, and would have sunk into them contentedly.

The instant their gazes met, a strange force wrapped about him. He turned hot as an oven, sweat bursting out, his heart nearly shattering his ribs. The blood in his veins boiled violently, as if to tear through his flesh.

“I can do it… Holy Maiden, believe me!”

It wasn’t a matter of can.

It was a matter of must.

Only with this power could he drive back the invaders, rescue his clan, and rescue his wife, Aila.

Obsession grew like venomous ivy twisting around his heart.

At last, the girl came to speak. Her voice was cold and bright, pleasant in the ear, but flat as a machine reading a number: “Seventy-eight points. Excellent.”

Five simple words. Veteba shook with wild delight.

Excellent! He was approved! He truly could inherit the sacred power!

“Holy Maiden! You mean… you approve of me? I can inherit…”

He did not finish.

Her gentle voice, cutting cold as winter wind, struck him like a bolt of cold thunder, locking his body in place and freezing his blood.

“I’m very sorry, dear Mister Veteba.”

“But you are not the master I want.”

!!!

“What?! No, that’s impossible!”

Veteba roared, losing control at once. His face, wrapped in gladness only a second ago, twisted into a snarl. “I am a Chosen One! I passed the Goddess’s Trial! What reason is there that I can’t become your master?!”

“Chosen One?”

Luoxue tilted her head a little. A look of amused madness flickered in the hollow gold-and-crimson irises.

She watched the wide-eyed, uncomprehending alien king before her, in a placid tone laced with sarcasm: “Mister Veteba, you are not the first Chosen One to find me.”

“W… what?”

“But don’t worry. You are not going to be the last Chosen One to die in my hands either.”

In the instant she finished, Veteba felt invisible gazes pressing on him from all around, from every direction, even though there was not a soul in the room.

A horrifying power he could not resist descended and bound him in place. His flames winked out at once, his strength crumbled inch by inch, and his consciousness was dragged bit by bit into an endless abyss.

He crumpled to the floor like a broken marionette, unable to lift his head, his limbs twitching with a will of their own.

In the last approach of death, a waking clarity surfaced in Veteba’s frenzy, like the final flare of a guttering candle.

He raised his head weakly, as if he finally understood the truth, and with the last of his strength, asked in a hoarse whisper: “You… just what are you?”

Luoxue leaned forward lightly. She reached out her cold fingertips to cup his fragile face, a meaningful smile on her lips. The smile did not reach her eyes; it was merely an imitation of feeling, a mimicking of emotion.

“Let’s say… an aberration that the Goddess failed to fully refine into a Holy Maiden.”

Wh-what? Refined?! Refined…

Did that mean… the legend was real?

The thing that was forbidden had never vanished at all?

“No… you… you can’t be…”

In an instant, fear crawled over his entire body. Veteba trembled violently but no longer managed a sound.

The Lord of the Royal Spirit Desert’s soul burned out entirely. He pitched forward to the floor, dead still.

At the very last moment, his gaze fell upon his wife’s photo inside the locket on his chest.

I’m sorry, Aila. In the end… I didn’t get to come back.

****

With Veteba fallen, the bedroom fell into a dead hush.

Luoxue cast one indifferent glance at the body on the floor, then slowly sat back at the bedside and let her eyes fall. The white blindfold had somehow slipped back over her eyes, hiding the mingled gold and crimson, tucking everything beneath that pure white.

She idly stroked the plush bear in her arms, and a faint, cold smile curved the corners of her lips.

“Goddess… I am tired of acting in your play.”

As for those carefully selected Chosen Ones of yours?

I will send them, one by one, to keep you company.

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