Gu Yin’s face was impassive. He said nothing. ’Hate him?’ He really didn’t feel a thing.
Snake Beasts were known for their weak familial bonds. He felt neither love nor hate for the father who had abandoned him.
If anything, he should have been grateful to Dannas. Had he not been abandoned near that tribe, he never would have been so fortunate as to meet his Jin’er.
The air fell silent for a moment. Then, a gloomy, cold wind whipped up from all directions, scraping at their skin like a knife. The multicolored Crystal Stones embedded in the walls flickered, their light waxing and waning.
Gu Yin was lost in silent contemplation. Ling Hong was struggling to process the flood of new information; he was still reeling.
Only Dannas was muttering to himself.
"What a shame. If I hadn’t abandoned you back then—if I had raised you by my side—you would have been a hundred times stronger than that mediocre fool, Chi."
"Gu Yin, you are exceptional. A worthy heir to my bloodline. But you broke our agreement, so I will not allow you to take the Beast God Fruit—"
Before Dannas could finish, a Beast Servant scrambled in from outside and fell to his knees with a THUD.
"R-Reporting, My Lord! The crazed female... she killed herself by ramming her head into a wall!"
The smile on Dannas’s face froze. He stood stunned as an icy chill coursed through his entire body. His blood-red, savage pupils constricted to pinpricks.
"Do you have a death wish? How dare you lie to me about this?!" Right in front of Gu Yin and Ling Hong, Dannas lunged forward and seized the Beast Servant by the throat, his expression so furious he looked as if he wanted to flay the man alive.
The Beast Servant’s legs gave out. His face twitched in terror as he whimpered, "M-My Lord, I’m not lying, I swear! The female... she really did kill herself against the wall! It just happened..."
"She must have been planning it for a long time. Her demeanor today was perfectly normal. She said her room was too stuffy and that she wanted to go out for a stroll."
"When we weren’t looking, she ran straight into the wall to kill herself. By the time we rushed over to try and save her, we discovered she’d already eaten poisonous herbs... She couldn’t be saved."
Dannas’s expression was utterly grim. The fingers digging into the servant’s throat trembled. Finally, he limply tossed the servant to the floor and staggered back two steps. "...Get out. Get out!"
’She had already heartlessly removed their mate mark, so why did his chest still throb with a dull ache?’
’Ah, my poor Marie... I suppose you’ll never understand. Some things, once they take root in the heart, can never be erased...’
Dannas closed his eyes in anguish.
’She was his reason for living.’
"M-My Lord, before I go, there’s one more thing I must tell you. Before she died, the female also said..." The Beast Servant was so terrified he wanted to bolt, but he knew that if he didn’t tell his master, his eventual death would be far more miserable.
"What... what did she say?"
Dannas’s chest heaved violently. His face was grim, and he clenched his fists as a suffocating pain seized his heart.
"She... she said... she said..." The Beast Servant faltered, his expression a mask of pain and conflict.
Dannas glared at him, his bloodshot eyes turning an even deeper red. The Beast Servant hastily bowed his head and, in a trembling voice, rushed the words out as if his life depended on it. "She said she hates you, that she never wants to see you again! She couldn’t stand the dark, inhuman imprisonment anymore, or the torment you subjected her to every night..."
"Sh-she also said that she wasn’t mad—that even if she was, it was you who drove her to it! That this was the only way she could choose to end her own life."
With every word the Beast Servant uttered, the color drained further from Dannas’s face. He looked as if he were being consumed by an immense agony, aging decades in a single moment.
He waved the Beast Servant away. "Give her a proper burial. Since she wanted to die so badly, I’ll grant her this one last wish." He had no intention of seeing her one last time.
’The Beast God Fruit could revive her, of course, but there was no longer any point. She had lost all hope in him.’
"Never mind. Take the Beast God Fruit. I don’t need it anymore."
Dannas gave a wan smile, turned, and walked away, leaving Gu Yin and Ling Hong to process the sudden, dramatic turn of events.
The Beast God Fruit plant had already borne a vibrant fruit that, just as the legends described, emitted a faint, reddish glow.
Gu Yin reached for the fist-sized fruit, but Ling Hong suddenly stopped him. Instead, he pulled the entire plant up from the ground, roots and all. "The journey back is too long. What if the fruit rots on the way? If we take the mother plant with the roots and soil still attached, it should keep for a while longer."