Chapter 1299: 57. Symbol

"Love you..."

"I love you..."

"Muen, I love you..."

Those intimate, tender cries, like the mewing of a little kitten, echoed through the alluring morning light.

Twisting and turning, soft enough to wind around one's fingers, the snow lotus atop the icy mountain finally blossomed toward the sun under alcohol's influence. Every frown and smile, every soft and lilting moan—even the few streaks of light that accidentally slipped through the cracks around the window seemed as beautiful as something out of a fairy tale.

But on the other side of that fairy tale, a fiery-red figure stood in a shadow where the sunlight could not reach.

Her long hair scattered in the breeze, her ornate thorn-covered dress melting into the darkness, making the exposed wrists and arms seem especially pale by contrast. Her deep-red eye shadow was illuminated by the light, and for the first time, its color overwhelmed even those flickering golden pupils.

Her brows sometimes knitted, sometimes relaxed.

Her pupils sometimes contracted, sometimes burned brightly.

Her feet shifted slightly.

She stepped forward, seemingly about to push open the door that was right before her...

Yet the instant her fingers touched it, she recoiled as though shocked by electricity.

The sky was clear as a mirror.

Her heart, however, was a tangled mess.

She could not even understand why she was standing here, or what exactly she intended to do next.

"What exactly is wrong with me?"

Hamreign looked down at her own hand.

For the first time, confusion appeared within those golden pupils that could kill the overwhelming majority of beings in this world with nothing more than a glance.

She felt that she was becoming stranger and stranger.

From that small human city whose name she had not even bothered to remember, to the forest where the carriage had stopped, and finally to this greatest city of humanity.

All along the way.

The night market, fireworks, carriage, forest, old man, stories, inn...

All sorts of trivial things that should have been utterly meaningless flashed through her mind one after another, fighting for her attention.

All those voices.

All those images.

Even for a dragon who had lived for a thousand years and experienced countless momentous events, it was difficult to sort them all out.

So much so that, without even realizing it, she seemed to have almost forgotten the reason she had come to the human world in the first place.

At first...

Right.

At first, it had also been because her companion—the fellow currently working so diligently inside that room—had invited her here.

That was why she had come.

And in her daze, she once again remembered the things her companion had said to her earlier.

Those words were like a fuse, making her...

"Hah..."

No.

No.

Hamreign took several deep breaths and relied on her formidable state of mind to forcibly suppress those chaotic thoughts.

She was a Calamity.

She was the Dragon of Death and Doom.

She was a creature that had survived for a thousand years, the strongest being beneath the heavens.

Even when confronting a true Evil God, her heart would not waver.

And what was happening inside that room was not even something she was seeing or hearing for the first time.

How could it possibly make her...

"Muen, do you love me?"

"Of course I love you, my dear Your Majesty."

"Don't call me Your Majesty!"

Amid their passionate entanglement came a blurred murmur:

"Call me Cia..."

"Mm. I love you, my dear Cia."

"..."

"..."

The wind blew again.

It stirred the bushes not far away, making them rustle irritatingly.

Mixed together with the various **indecent sounds from inside the room, those base noises of people surrendering themselves to instinct, Hamreign suddenly felt the state of mind she had only just managed to calm begin wavering once more.

At the same time, an inexplicable wicked heat also began to burn slowly within her body.

Her thorn-covered dress swayed gently, occasionally outlining the long, slender contours of her thighs.

Hamreign took another deep breath.

In the end, she still did not push open the door and interrupt them.

She merely began to hate this place and decided to leave.

However...

Perhaps it was also because those irritating sounds had allowed her to somewhat identify the source of what had been wrong with her lately.

Love.

In the end, it still came down to that word.

A word she should already have understood completely, one whose definition should have long since been "set in stone," yet for some reason it continued to disturb her state of mind.

It was like a defeated opponent she had thought had already lost to her, only for it to keep challenging her again and again.

It was infuriating.

Did it have any meaning?

How could such a ridiculous emotion born from human instinct possibly defeat her?

Her feelings and the feelings of these humans had to be fundamentally different...

Were they really different?

Hamreign suddenly became confused.

Just as that old human man had said, her emotions, her thoughts, her reactions—even if they were directly applied to a human woman, one of the many human women she had seen recently who were controlled by the so-called "", they would still...

"No!"

Hamreign suddenly jolted and directly strangled that terrifying thought before it could fully take shape.

No.

That was wrong.

It had to be wrong.

She was a Calamity, the Dragon of Death and Doom, the strongest creature beneath the heavens.

She had lived for a thousand years.

Even the vast river of time itself was merely an ordinary thing beneath her gaze.

Joy and sorrow, meetings and partings, love and hatred—she had personally witnessed them countless times.

Although she had spent the past several centuries far removed from the human world and was somewhat unfamiliar with modern human society, she could not possibly be ignorant to such an extent.

A sacred relationship of eternal companionship, unmarred by anything filthy.

A dirty relationship driven by instinct, submission, and the entanglement of flesh.

She still understood perfectly well which one she sought.

Which one she wanted to possess.

"Wrong. It has to be wrong."

She kept muttering, as though trying to convince herself.

Yet no matter how many times she whispered it, she could not dispel the irritation in her heart.

So much so that even her departing steps...

Looked slightly flustered.

...

...

"Oh, what beauty! What craftsmanship! What an expression of emotion!"

The ducal estate.

The courtyard.

Lorne ran his rough fingers over the marble statue before him, his entire body practically wanting to press directly against it, his aged face filled with intoxicated delight.

"As expected of a statue personally gifted to me by Her Majesty. A masterpiece by the Kingdom's great artist Josh Jory. Tsk, tsk. All that time I spent feeling guilty wasn't wasted after all. A master truly is a master. The spirit and posture of this sculpture are simply astonishing."

Lorne admired it while clicking his tongue in wonder.

His former collection had turned to ashes overnight.

He had grieved.

He had raged.

He had been lost.

But in the end, all of that had become nothing more than bubbles of the past.

Nearly half a year had already passed since that hellish day when he returned to the ducal estate and discovered that almost half of it had practically been razed to the ground, with his entire collection reduced to rubble.

The pain belonged to the past.

The old had to go before the new could come.

Take this masterpiece by Josh Jory, for example.

Although its reputation in artistic circles was not particularly prominent, to him, a masterpiece of abstract art like this was something worthy of spending an entire lifetime appreciating!

"Most people in this world are vulgar fools. If anyone wants to understand the true essence of a master, it still has to be cultured people like us..."

"It's just that the deeper meaning contained in this sculpture really is difficult to grasp..."

Lorne calmed himself, stepped back two paces, stroked his beard, and carefully examined the stone sculpture in its entirety.

There was no doubt that the sculpture had been carved from a single block of marble.

The whole thing possessed a seamless, naturally unified quality.

Yet although the sculpture vaguely appeared to depict two people, the lower halves of those two figures abruptly merged together, like two hemp ropes twisted around each other, becoming a single whole.

"What exactly was the master trying to express?

"The poses of the two people carved above show mutual disgust. They're pushing each other away, clearly expressing a desire to separate.

"But their lower halves are one.

"Separated above and joined below. Parting and reuniting. Seemingly apart yet seemingly together. Openly divided but secretly joined...

"One sculpture expresses two completely opposite meanings, yet those meanings are intertwined with each other.

"What exactly is it...

"I understand!"

Lorne muttered to himself before suddenly having a flash of inspiration.

He clapped his hands in realization:

"What this stone sculpture symbolizes is... Love!"