Deviant: No Longer Human-Chapter 803: A Shadow Beneath the Golden Lamp: The Moment She Heard the Truth (2)
"Why don’t you want to meet me?"
The question hit like a spear.
Fu Yuxin’s stomach dropped.
Chen Meili’s eyes widened in horror.
Wang Mei covered her mouth.
And Lin Xue...
She staggered back a step, as if the tiny question had physically struck her.
She hadn’t expected this.
She hadn’t been prepared for her child to hear her self-blame and mistake it for rejection.
"I—I didn’t mean—" Lin Xue whispered, voice trembling uncontrollably. "It’s not that I don’t want to— I just— I thought— I’m afraid—"
Zhenxi cried harder.
"You said you don’t want to meet me..." she sobbed, wiping her cheeks with her sleeve.
"Did I do something wrong?"
"Am I not good?"
"Why... why don’t you want me?"
Lin Xue’s knees nearly buckled.
"No! No—never—"
Her voice breaking completely.
"I want to meet you more than anything... I was only scared I would ruin your life..."
But Zhenxi shook her head fiercely, her hair whipping across her cheeks, blurring her teary crimson eyes.
"Then why didn’t you come sooner?"
Her tiny voice cracked, splintering.
She took a shaky step forward, fists trembling.
"Why did you leave me?"
"Why did everyone leave me?"
Lin Xue’s heart stopped.
Zhenxi’s voice rose, breaking into a sob.
"You left... Father left... both of you just left me!"
The street went dead silent.
Lin Xue opened her mouth, no words came out.
Her throat burned.
Fu Yuxin quickly stepped forward, panic surging through her.
"Zhenxi! Don’t say it like that-she didn’t—"
But the girl jerked away, shaking her head harder.
She wasn’t listening.
Couldn’t listen.
All she knew, all her heart understood, was absence.
Adults understood timelines, reasons, circumstances.
Children only understood who was there...
and who wasn’t.
Zhenxi’s breathing grew uneven, her voice small and raw:
"Daddy left me for so many years... and I thought... I thought maybe he had a reason."
Her tears fell faster.
"But then... then I hear you didn’t want to see me either."
She wiped her face with her sleeve, tears smearing into the fabric.
"Am I that bad?"
"Why don’t any of you stay?"
Her chest rose and fell, small shoulders trembling.
"...Was it because of my eyes?"
She sniffled.
"Was it because I couldn’t see?"
Those words stabbed through all three women.
Lin Xue’s lips parted, trembled, but no sound escaped.
She had prepared explanations for Yuxin.
Excuses for society.
Justifications for herself.
But she had never prepared answers for the daughter who stood in front of her, crying and trying to understand a world far too cruel for her age.
Zhenxi’s voice came again, softer than a whisper, yet cutting deeper than any scream. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎
"Daddy gave me presents... and hugs... and he cured my eyes..."
Her fingers curled tightly into her clothes.
"But none of that fixes you two... not being here."
A tear slid down her cheek and dripped off her chin.
"Why weren’t you with me... even once?"
Lin Xue staggered forward half a step, breath breaking.
Her tears streamed freely now.
The child’s composure terrified her.
How can she understand so much...
and still be standing?
All she saw in those eyes was a single, painful desire...
Why was I abandoned?
Why did no one choose me?
The mist... heavy.
The streetlamp hummed faintly.
The world around them seemed to hold its breath.
None of the three women had an answer.
Not far away, on the opposite side of the street, a figure stood partially cloaked in shadow.
Hands folded behind his back.
Black overcoat flowing like a robe in the winter breeze.
Eyes reflecting swirling galaxies, quiet, endless, observing.
Watching.
The aura around him pulsed with a quiet wrongness, as if reality bent politely to give him space.
A soft voice rose behind him.
"...Why don’t you go help her?"
Wang Xiao didn’t turn, he simply smiled, a faint, rueful curve of his lips.
"You took your sweet time," he murmured.
"I didn’t expect to see you again."
"That wasn’t the question I asked," the voice replied, unbothered.
And the remarkable thing?
Nothing happened.
No flicker of wrath.
No casual annihilation.
No punishment.
Someone had cross-questioned Wang Xiao and lived another second.
Anyone else would never have seen the evening sun again. He had become too powerful, too temperamental, too easily annoyed to tolerate mortal insolence.
But this voice?
This presence?
Wang Xiao only chuckled.
"She doesn’t need my help," he said quietly, as if stating a simple truth. "If she needs me... she knows how to ask."
The mist swirled around his silhouette,
and for a brief moment, even the universe reflected in his eyes seemed to pause.
Watching.
Waiting.
Letting the child speak her hurt
before deciding what the world would become next.
The voice behind him was unimpressed, almost irritated.
"And she is asking," it pressed. "Why weren’t you there? How would you deal with that?"
Wang Xiao finally blinked, amusement flickering in his eyes.
"Is she, now?"
He tilted his head slightly, as though listening to an echo only he could hear.
"There’s a difference," he murmured, "between what people say, what they mean..."
"??"
The voice hesitated.
A faint ripple moved through the space as the speaker slowly began to take shape,
but Wang Xiao continued speaking as if nothing else in the world mattered.
"She’s not broken because I wasn’t there," he said simply. "She’s breaking... because she thinks she’s less."
His eyes softened, not with pity, but understanding.
"That girl grew up blind. Even after I fixed her eyes, the feeling never left."
He lifted one hand slightly.
"It became a shadow... A belief."
He wasn’t guessing.
He was stating facts.
"When she saw Eirene," he continued, "she didn’t envy her appearance. She envied her perfectness. Children know who they are. Zhenxi was never taught."
He let those words hang in the mist.
"She thinks she’s the least special... The easiest to leave behind."
The voice remained silent, caught somewhere between confusion and reluctant acknowledgement.
Wang Xiao breathed out a soft chuckle.
"So no... she’s not asking why I wasn’t there. She’s asking whether she’ll be abandoned again."
His eyes followed the small girl crying in the lamplight, tears streaking her cheeks.
And then he smiled, quiet, unhurried, and terrifyingly calm.
"She needs to learn to deal with that herself," he said. "Sooner or later."
The voice behind him fell silent.
Cold... but conceding.
Because he was right, and painfully so.
Among his daughters, not a single one ever fought over what they excelled in.
Fiona was the best at killing.
A cold, natural blade, sharp, silent, almost an extension of his own will.
But Selene, or Yanyan never once showed jealousy toward her sharp ’blade’.
Yue couldn’t fight at all.
Wenxi could, but rarely bothered to use her abilities destructively.
Selene had abandoned combat entirely, choosing instead to raise her sisters.
None of them argued over who should take which role.
None compared themselves.
Because they all understood one thing:
In his eyes, all those roles were meaningless.
When you looked long enough into his eyes, you saw it, spiraling universe drifting inside each pupil.
For someone who sees universes as dust motes... how could the talents ever be weighed on a scale?
So they never fought over strengths they had or didn’t have.
They simply lived.
If strength wasn’t a barrier... what would they pursue?
That was the question he’d allowed them.
Because deep inside, he knew:
If he hadn’t been chained by the concept of power, he wouldn’t be the creature he was now.
For someone like him, what purpose did children serve?
He could create them out of nothing.
Shape worlds, rewrite histories, crush gods with a thought.
Children should have been insignificant—
And yet here he was.
Watching them.
Studying them.
Letting them grow like fragile things.
They were a mirror.
A reflection of the life he never allowed himself to have.
A life untouched by power.
A life untouched by hierarchy.
A life untouched by that suffocating instinct...
To climb.
To surpass.
To destroy anything above him.
His eternal quest for power came from one origin:
He hated anyone stronger than him.
Not because they wronged him.
Not because they used strength against him.
But simply because... they had it.
And as long as someone stood above him,
he would claw, tear, rip his way past them.
A never-ending ascent.
A cycle that devoured itself.
But what if power didn’t exist?
What if, for once, life wasn’t measured in ceilings and floors, in realms and hierarchies, in who stood above whom?
His daughters were that experiment.
A miniature world where strength was optional, not compulsory.
Where existence wasn’t suffocated by power.
Where they could be useless, lazy, brilliant, violent, soft, whatever they wished.
A world where they never had to compare themselves to him.
A world where they could grow without becoming like him...
The freedom to pursue without limits!
A quiet, hidden project... that none of them had realized yet.
