Extraordinary Pedigree.

Chapter 1005 [Perfect Embryo: Lupercal (The Son of the First Return?)]

Xia Xiu's hand slowly tightened, and the mental fluctuations emanating from the [Black Seal] surged into his consciousness like a tide. It wasn't a cold signal, but a rhythmic resonance, clear and rhythmic, as if heartbeats were superimposed on each other.

An indescribable thrill stirred within him, an echo of the perfect embryo.

Xia Xiu knew very well that this unique mental signal was the result of his collaboration with the Four Monarchs.

Those embryos that He took from Heaven and reshaped, through His shaping, will no longer be merely anomalous weaponization projects, but beings capable of resonating with Him.

Whether the embryo is successful or not, they all have a telepathic relationship with him.

The embryos created by the four monarchs can resonate with themselves, and the higher the compatibility, the higher the resonance frequency.

Xia Xiu's fingertips slowly pressed against his chest, and he could clearly feel the resonant frequency rising higher and higher, as if it were echoing the beating of his heart.

Based on the terms of his cooperation with the four monarchs, he was well aware of this: as long as his genes and the imprint of his avatar [Metatron] were engraved on the perfect embryo, those beings would be completely molded into—his true offspring.

Not just followers, but true extensions of blood and soul.

They will inherit the glory of his crown, carry on the so-called [perfect prosthetic body] and the future power of some [miracles], and leave an indelible mark on the benchmark world.

They are, in the truest sense, the sons of Abraham.

However, all five perfect embryos he has encountered so far have failed.

Every perfect embryo has its own flaws and its own madness.

And now, this stirring in my heart is unlike any signal I've ever felt before.

"A successful embryo..."

Xia Xiu murmured softly, his golden pupils gleaming with an obscure and enigmatic light. The resonance signal carried a distinct sense of "new life," clear and sharp, clearly indicating a newly awakened embryo.

And the timing of its appearance was so coincidental—at the point when it was in conflict with the Fifth Church, and at the very moment when it had just begun to build the Wolf Pack.

Everything overlapped, like a chess piece pushed out by fate itself.

Xia Xiu's eyes narrowed slightly, and a barely perceptible smile appeared on his lips.

"I need to go and see... what it's really like."

He murmured to himself, and the next instant, the Möbius strip beneath his feet suddenly burst open.

The toroidal surface rotated, and the layers of space flipped and folded like a sliced ​​membrane, with surging bands of light entangling his figure.

With a final, deep tremor, Xia Xiu's figure disappeared into the ruins outside Far East City, speeding towards the unknown direction guided by the resonance of their souls.

……

……

The Kingdom of Peace - Ksonia Mining Area.

As day turns into night, the arc of light on the day-night sphere slowly slides, like a hand lifting the curtain of the sky.

A handsome young man was staring blankly at the day and night sphere.

He recounted his origins in his mind.

My name is Lupercal, and I don't think I'm a native of the Peaceful Kingdom.

who am I?
Where am I from?
What is my mission?
The people of Krona say that I landed in this desolate mining area through a crack between night and day.

"A man sent from heaven."

This is what the miners often say behind their backs.

Their voices, a mixture of coal dust and iron filings, were rough like picks striking a stone wall. But the way they looked at me held a strange reverence, as if I were not one of them.

They also called me "angel".

...But I don't think I'm like an angel.

I have an overly refined face, even my eyelashes are disproportionately long. The eyes in the mirror are as bright as polished ore, and my skin is so clean it's spotless.

But the "father" and "mother" standing beside me were completely different.

My father, whose name was Kragg, had a face as loose as chaff, tufts of beard drooping down, and cloudy eyes, like water about to dry up in a deep well.

My mother, whose name was Ina, had a face wrinkled like a piece of copper that had been repeatedly hammered, yellow teeth, and lips that always trembled.

Their figures beside me were like two uneven stones, rough and heavy.

But I am a piece of jade that fell from the sky, so smooth and shiny that it's blinding.

I've grown from a baby to twelve years old in just one year.

Almost every day, I change: yesterday I was babbling, today I can walk normally, and even recite the old songs that miners sang when they were drunk.

My growth was unusually rapid—at least in terms of the knowledge I had access to from the outside world, a child's growth trajectory shouldn't be like mine.

Every morning, I would see my father bring me miners' porridge and my mother tidy my coarse cloth clothes.

With their cracked hands, they helped me fasten each wooden button.

Our days passed peacefully like this.

Until recently.

I remember that day, the wind blew out of the mine, carrying the smell of blood and coal dust.

Their eyes changed.

It wasn't kind, nor was it weary; it was as if he were staring at a stone that had to be smashed.

They... are not my parents.

Yes, my parents are dead!
And now, they're going to kill me!

……

The Kronya mines closed as usual.

The sound of pickaxes faded away, miners' lamps went out one by one, and weary figures went home in groups.

As usual, Lupercal sat quietly at the wooden table in the room. Like a well-behaved child, his back was straight, his hands on his knees, waiting quietly—waiting for his parents, or rather, waiting for those two people.

Soon after, Krag and Ina entered, looking exactly the same as before.

The father was hunched over, his beard like a dusty hemp rope, and the mother's face was still wrinkled, her smile tinged with weariness.

As usual, they asked with concern:
What did you do today?

"Tired?"

They even prepared meals for Lupercal as usual, with coarse miner's porridge cooking on the stove, emitting thin steam.

Everything is the same as before.

However, Lupercal sensed that something was wrong.

Their eyes were still gentle, but in his eyes, there was an emptiness behind them, as if their souls had been hollowed out, leaving only their shells to speak.

Words of concern were uttered like old clothes, but in Lupercal's view, those smiles gradually cracked, and shadows crawled out from their faces, transforming into two vicious wolves.

Malice.

He can see malice that others cannot.

That malice had no shape, yet it spread silently, like teeth grinding together, like claws scraping against stone, ready to pounce and tear him apart at any moment.

The boy felt a tightness in his chest.

For the first time, he experienced an emotion that weighed him down so much that he could hardly breathe.

--mournful.

It was a strange feeling, like my chest cavity being roughly stitched up with needle and thread, and then forcibly torn open.

He lowered his head, his fingers gripping the edge of the wooden table.

Beyond the grief, something else quietly grew in my heart, like thorns growing in the darkness, piercing my chest inch by inch.

It wasn't called sadness, nor was it like fear; it was more dull and heavy, yet sharper. Lupercal didn't know how to describe it.

I felt as if a hard stone had been placed in my chest, pressing coldly against my heart, sinking deeper and deeper.

Deep down, he wanted to... destroy everything around him!
When did Lupercal discover that his parents were "dead"?

—It probably started with that book.

The book's cover was worn, its edges stained with coal dust and sweat, and it bore the words: "The Secret of the Stars".

When he first saw this book in his parents' hands, his heart suddenly skipped a beat, and he blurted out a sentence that even he himself didn't understand:

"Five...? Starfish?"

The air froze instantly.

He remembered it clearly. Krag and Ina's faces contorted in that instant, their eyes filled with undisguised terror. They stared at their child as if he were a piece of ore that could explode at any moment.

Then they shoved the book into Lupercal's arms.

"Look."

This is an order, not a request.

To get him to continue studying, the first thing they did was force him to do things he didn't like.

But... the original parents wouldn't have done this.

Lupercal was forced to finish reading the book.

Unfortunately, he did not undergo the transformation his parents had hoped for.

After reading it, he felt nauseous, his head was spinning, and he felt like vomiting.

He didn't feel the "revelation" his parents were talking about; instead, he felt a deep sense of nausea and disgust towards the book.

The parents were extremely disappointed.

They didn't speak, then suddenly burst into fury, raising their hands and venting their anger on him.

But this time, something even stranger happened.

Ina slapped him hard, but the boy's face didn't even have a red mark. Instead, her own face swelled up instantly, as if she had been slapped hard.

At that moment, looking at his mother's blank expression, Lupercal felt a vague doubt for the first time—had she hit him, or had he hit her?
Kragg was even angrier.

He picked up the miner's pickaxe and smashed it viciously down on Lupercal's head.

However, the blood that splattered was not the boy's, but his own.

The father's forehead was cracked, and blood flowed down his temples. He stared blankly at the pickaxe, as if he couldn't believe what had happened in that instant.

From then on, Lupercal finally understood—these so-called parents in front of him might still have familiar faces and hunched figures, but they were not the real parents in his memory. They had long since died, leaving only an empty shell, something hollow replacing their existence.

That emptiness was invisible, yet he could clearly perceive it, like the depleted wind deep in a mine, devoid of warmth and direction.

He loathed this emptiness!
After that, they resumed their usual attitude, still serving him meals, still asking him about his reading and writing progress late at night, and still acting like parents, as if nothing had happened.

Everything is business as usual.

But is everything really still the same?

A chill lingered in his heart, for that emptiness continued to spread, lurking in their words and in every gaze directed at him, like a disguise draped in human skin, ready to crumble at any moment.

But these past few days have been even more different.

In the past, Lupercal would often stare blankly to the north at night. He didn't know why he did this, but whenever he gazed in that direction, he would see something that others couldn't see.

A monster.

He didn't know what words to use to describe it; he could only say it was a monster.

It has no concrete form, yet it possesses the same hollow essence as its "parents," as if it were something extending from the same darkness. Only, compared to its parents, it is more greedy and more terrifying, like a bottomless abyss, ready to drag him down at any moment.

Lupercal was very careful, not daring to linger his gaze for too long, but the monster's presence never disappeared for a moment.

Until recently.

The monster suddenly disappeared.

The moment it disappeared, Lupercal should have felt relieved, but he didn't. He saw something else in his parents' eyes—fear.

Krag's eyes were bloodshot, and he was restless all day; Ina was like a madwoman, tearing at her hair and muttering to herself. The fear wasn't because of the monster's presence, but because of its absence.

They were terrified, frantic, and hysterical, as if losing the monster meant their own demise.

For the first time, a vague question arose in Lupercal's mind:
"What exactly is the connection between that monster and them?"

Tonight, the atmosphere at the dinner table was no different from usual.

The coarse mineral porridge and the burnt, hard bread remained silent as the parents occasionally exchanged glances.

In the past, after dinner like this, Krag would go out to sharpen his pickaxe, Ina would squat outside to wash her clothes stained black from the mining area, and Lupercal would be casually sent away to play by the nearby pile of stones or to read old books by himself.

However, things are different today.

After the meal, instead of leaving separately, they took Lupercal out of the house. The night wind was cold and harsh, the moonlight hazy, and a blood-red five-pointed star array had already been drawn on the open ground outside the mine. Dried mineral blood mixed with the remains of unknown animals, emitting a foul stench.

Lupercal gazed silently at the symbols at his feet.

On the father's back was a long object wrapped in sheet metal, its metallic shape faintly visible in the moonlight.

They were laughing.

Krag and Ina forced, stiff smiles.

“Child, stand there, go to the center of that five-pointed star.”

Their tone carried both command and deliberate gentleness.

Lupercal stopped and looked up. Those imperfectly clear eyes stared at his parents, unmoving.

His gaze was so pure, as if it were illuminating the most unbearable parts of their hearts. In that instant, Krag and Ina felt a chill run down their spines, and their smiles almost froze and crumbled.

"what happened?"

Ina couldn't help but speak, her voice weak.

Lupercal simply shook his head, his voice soft, carrying an indescribable reluctance:

"Do you really want to do this?"

The air suddenly solidified.

The parents' expressions visibly froze for a moment, but they quickly regained their composure and feigned confusion.

"What? What are you talking about?"

Before he finished speaking, Krag's hand had already silently moved to the gun behind his back, his fingers rubbing the metal buckle like a snake silently flicking its tongue.

Lupercal did not say anything more.

He simply withdrew his gaze and slowly walked towards the blood-red five-pointed star pattern. His steps were steady, without the slightest hesitation.

The night wind blew, and his shadow, elongated by the five-pointed star of blood, fell at the center point, as if destined to become a sacrifice.

As night fell, the area outside the Kronia mines was eerily silent.

The wind, carrying mining dust, howled past, making the wrecked rails clang. In the distance, the mountain walls lay prostrate like black beasts, with flickering lights at the pit entrance, only to be quickly swallowed by the wind.

The moon hid behind the clouds, leaving only a somber darkness in the sky.

The air was thick with a damp chill and the smell of blood, as if it were waiting for an inevitable act of violence.

at this time.

"Bang bang bang-!"

The sudden burst of gunfire ripped through the silence, bullets whistling through the night sky, carrying the sharpness of metal and the scorching heat of gunpowder, as if to awaken the entire mining area.

Immediately following were screams of agony from a man and a woman almost simultaneously.