Who left their last words here?

Chapter 29 The King of Gold!

"Tick tock..."

A crisp sound echoed in the quiet, small, dark room.

Water droplets fell into the water tank, creating ripples.

Bai Zhou approached and examined the crown of thorns up close.

This ancient and magnificent crown.

It's quite tricky.

—It's physically difficult, or rather, it's a real pain.

What does it feel like to hold thorns in your hands? What's it like to hug a cactus in your arms?
Bai Zhou winced in pain, and he really couldn't help but want to complain.

Does Empress Irina, who wears this kind of crown, not have any masochistic tendencies?
What's the difference between this and putting a cactus on your forehead?
"Om-"

Suddenly.

In Bai Zhou's destiny, the white sun suddenly became restless.

The next moment,

As if echoing the restlessness of [Chen], a sudden change occurred.

The iron thorns on the crown seemed to come alive, slowly growing and spreading, with the twelve sharp spikes gleaming.

"how……?"

Bai Zhou carefully held up the crown, observing the unusual changes on it with suspicion and uncertainty, ready to throw the crown back into the water at any moment.

Besides the "Chen" birth chart, would other birth charts elicit such a reaction from Wang Guan...?

The next second, bright red blood slowly flowed from the tips of the twelve spikes.

This blood of unknown origin slowly flows through ancient, intricate, and ornate patterns.

The winding bloodline bloomed, and wherever it passed, the patterns faintly glowed.

It was as if the crown was weeping blood.

Crimson tears of blood dripped onto Bai Zhou's fingertips, a horrifying sight.

In the dimly lit room, this is a chilling and eerie scene.

But Bai Zhou inexplicably felt a solemn, tragic, epic sense of ritual.

Bathed in blood and wearing a crown...

He suddenly realized something.

The riddle lies within its surface.

Now, there is blood.

The only one left is "wearing a crown".

Should I wear it?

Bai Zhou hesitated for a moment.

The main reason is fear of pain.

But in the end, he gritted his teeth.

What's wrong with cacti? If you don't want to eat people, you have to suffer!
His last words made it very clear: he would don his crown after dying a bloody death.

He believed the last words, and he couldn't help but believe them... Wasn't that what he came for?
Even the worst situation can't be worse than being trapped in a base and powerless to do anything about it.

—Since we're already here!
"..."

Thinking this, Bai Zhou looked around.

After confirming that it was quiet and no one was around, he slowly placed the blood-stained crown on his head...

Bai Zhou's movements were very slow, extremely slow.

He lowered his head, but his muscles were tense, and his eyes were raised, constantly observing the crown's movements in case of any unforeseen events.

Although he was willing to believe the contents of the last words, he was instinctively wary of every mysterious object.

...When the ancient crown was still a hand's breadth away from the white boat, another anomaly occurred!
The twelve spikes on the crown suddenly vibrated and hummed in unison, as if resisting the white boat's movements.

At the tips of the twelve sharp spikes, a faint golden light emanated.

"?"

The next instant, before Bai Zhou could react, his heart felt as if it had been struck by lightning.

The clear world before his eyes vanished, and in a daze, Bai Zhou passed through this small, dark room and this underground base, seeing a sky that did not belong to this place.

Twelve glittering stars appeared, moved, intertwined, and overlapped one another, upon which a slumbering golden giant awoke, and then his gaze fell.

Across a starry sky, across an immeasurably vast distance.

They, or rather, they themselves, are looking at themselves.

—This question is beyond the scope of the curriculum!

Bai Zhou's inner alarm bells were ringing wildly. Where did this golden giant come from?
How dare the Special Administration classify something like this as a mere F-level black box?
He now even has reason to question whether not only the organization, but even Raven, knows enough about the crown!
The immense pressure made it hard for him to breathe.

Just as Bai Zhou's back grew cold and his heart was pressed so hard it almost stopped beating...

Twelve grand and solemn announcements rang in his ears in succession—

"This is not the one to inherit the throne—he is not recognized."

"This person is not one who resists injustice—this is not acknowledged."

"This is not the person who once saved the world—he is not recognized."

"..."

This grand announcement seemed to come from the distant past, falling from the unknown heavens, echoing in Bai Zhou's ears twelve times in different tones. Bai Zhou had only heard the first three sentences when he felt as if he had been struck by a hammer, his mind reeling and his head buzzing.

The rest of the message was completely inaudible; all I could hear, no matter how hard I tried, was nine final "not recognized."

The next moment,

Bai Zhou felt those heavy gazes that had been falling on him, almost suffocating him, leave.

The starry sky he vaguely saw also dimmed.

The twelve stars fell into slumber once more.

They, or rather, they, seem to have remained forever in that night sky since an era that has existed for who knows how long.

Solemn and silent.

The waiting continues as always.

……

—What is that?!

Bai Zhou hurriedly opened the crown as if he had been electrocuted.

He finally breathed a sigh of relief once he was sure there was no more sound coming from his ear.

What do you mean by acknowledging someone? Do you have to be acknowledged by "them" to wear the crown?
Will wearing it make you a god or something? Do you have to go through twelve trials before you can wear it?
King of Gold...

Perhaps it's far more mysterious than Bai Zhou imagined.

"This crown..."

Bai Zhou cautiously gazed at the quiet and unfamiliar crown before him.

The ancient, indistinct last words hang silently in the air, as if they exist forever.

But looking at it now, I have a completely different experience.

A feeling of surviving a disaster welled up in Bai Zhou's heart.

Never before had Bai Zhou felt so insignificant and powerless about his life as he had just now.

He even had a feeling that even if the crow who had once cleaved stars and cleaved the moon stood here, it wouldn't be much better than him.

—Because it is clearly a transcendent existence that transcends human understanding, one that cannot be comprehended or defined.

It was as if even that suffocating oppression was merely a glimpse of their gaze from an infinitely distant place, devoid of any subjective malice.

Resisting injustice? Once a savior?
What are these requirements?
When Irina put on the crown, did she also receive the approval of "them"?
It's not that Bai Zhou looks down on the woman who pedals the spinning wheel... but he has reservations about it.

"pat..."

"Gululu..."

Something rolled off the crown and onto the ground.

Bai Zhou looked down and was surprised to find that it was the blood flowing from the top of the thorn crown that had dripped onto the ground.

The blood fell to the ground, deformed, and congealed into several round little golden beads, rolling all over the ground.

Bai Zhou carefully placed the crown into the distilled water tank, then bent down to pick up the gold beads one by one.

The cool, heavy golden beads were weightless.

No matter how Bai Zhou explored, the golden pearl seemed to be just an ordinary golden bean, except that it was a little rounder and there was nothing unusual about it.

9999 pure gold, it's genuine!

No one would have imagined that it would be formed from the blood of a crown.

"This is……?"

Bai Zhou, who was squatting on the ground studying the golden pearl, suddenly blinked.

My fingertips touched the unusual unevenness on the gold bead; the sensation was subtle, yet undeniably present.

With a slight stirring in his heart, Bai Zhou tilted his head back, raised the golden pearl, and brought it close to his eyes, so close that it was almost touching his eyelashes.

He activated a spiritual energy located near his brow, which greatly enhanced his eyesight.

Even in a dark room without any light, everything in front of you is clearly visible.

Even if a mosquito flew by in front of him, Bai Zhou could tell whether it was male or female.

—This is, of course, also the result of the special training for crows.

Mobilizing spiritual stimulation and significantly enhancing certain physical qualities are the most common applications of spirituality.

Even so, it's something ordinary people can't even imagine...

With his enhanced vision, Bai Zhou was finally able to vaguely see the pattern on the golden bead that was almost beyond the limits of human vision.

That was exquisite micro-carving, with extremely small engraving marks—

A well-defined shield occupies the center position, while in front of the shield, two longswords and swords of different shapes are crossed and locked together.

This is a pattern that is both powerful and cautionary.

This is a mark.

"Yes--"

Bai Zhou's heart skipped a beat, and his fingers tightened instinctively around the golden bead.

He recognized and was familiar with this mark.

—It marks the “Adventurer” path!

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(End of this chapter)