Chapter 52 There is No Love in the Star Realm

Chapter 52: There is No Love in the Starlight Realm

On the second day in the Starlight Realm, when the stars in the night sky stopped flowing, men and women formed long, endless queues outside the castle.

The guards at the gate blocked them from entering. Fang Xiaoling walked out, stretching lazily, and asked, "What kind of trouble are you making this time?"

"We've made up! We're very much in love now." Yu Ji linked her arm through Xiang Yu's, pressing her cheek against his arm. "Lord of Light, we are the first couple in the Starlight Realm to make up. Can we go experience the real world now?"

"That's right, we're deeply in love!" Xiang Yu chimed in with a grin.

Fang Xiaoling narrowed her eyes, studying the two of them for a moment before looking out at the endless queue in the distance. She thought for a bit.

"Oh, wonderful... Everyone made up overnight." After saying this, instead of telling the guards to let them through, she turned around and went back into the castle. A moment later, she poked her head out from a window several meters high and shouted, "Do you take me for a fool? What are you pretending for? Disperse, all of you! I've changed my mind. From now on, you must live together for three years, and if you don't quarrel for three whole years, it counts!"

The spirits began to murmur, most of them complaining that the Lord of Light was untrustworthy.

"What are you arguing about? Let me tell you, I can tell at a glance whether it's true love! When the time comes, I'll naturally let you experience the real world. But if I catch anyone trying to take shortcuts and acting in front of me..." Fang Xiaoling seemed to have mastered the Lion's Roar in the Starlight Realm. She took a deep breath and roared, "Your qualification to experience it will be permanently revoked!"

Hearing this, the spirits lost interest and separated from their partners. After a year-long war, true love seemed like an absolute impossibility to them.

Finally, a daring spirit shouted, "There is no love in the Starlight Realm!"

This single cry resonated with almost all the spirits. In unison, they shouted toward the castle, "There is no love in the Starlight Realm!"

However, Fang Xiaoling's single voice instantly overpowered them all. "There is no daytime in the Starlight Realm either!! And isn't there now?!"

Dead silence.

The Lord of Light's words seemed to make sense, but as the spirits looked at the opposite sex in the distance, a sense of hatred still welled up in their hearts. They all felt that the other person was the one who had first broken their originally harmonious lives.

At night, the river of stars in the night sky began to flow once more. Fang Xiaoling rested her chin in her hands at the window, listening to the incessant arguing from outside the castle, and let out a slow sigh, "Aah—"

"Why is the Lord of Light sighing so deeply here?" Master Yideng offered her a palm-to-palm salute, then stood beside her, gazing out the window as well.

"Master Yideng, what on earth is love, and how does it come to be?" Fang Xiaoling's gaze dimmed. "Actually, I'm not doing this entirely for the fairness of the Starlight Realm... I'm also using the spirits. I thought perhaps the process of love developing among them could help me find the answer to this question."

"When conditions align, they gather; when conditions end, they scatter. Since it is born of the heart, how can it be forced? Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Coercion and temptation make it truly hard to achieve..."

Before Yideng could finish, Fang Xiaoling raised her hand and smacked him on the forehead. "Speak properly, I'm already annoyed enough!"

Yideng didn't feel any pain, but he rubbed his head anyway and said, "My point is that with you meddling like this, love has become something profitable. How can the gathering and parting of affinities be something artificially manipulated by humans?"

"That's why I'm struggling because I can't figure it out! Why could Roland manipulate it? She could even use techniques to make other men fall in love with her... Those beings in the higher dimensions, forcing us to complete missions, seducing targets into falling in love with us, but... can things like that really be considered love?"

"All conditioned phenomena are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, shadows, like dew or..." Seeing Fang Xiaoling raise her arm again, Yideng hurriedly sped up his speech. "I don't know! I don't know, alright?"

"Get lost!"

"Right away." Yideng trotted back to his room.

Fang Xiaoling continued to look out the window. After a long while, the quarreling of the spirits gradually grew quieter. In the boundless desert, besides the many broken walls and ruins emitting rolling smoke, brand-new bonfires began to rise once more.

Just like the stars in the night sky igniting the desert one by one, the spreading momentum was like a prairie fire. Before long, tens of thousands of flames flickered and danced, seemingly uniting in a joint protest against the leader of this world, expressing the shared sentiment of all the spirits—there is no love in the Starlight Realm.

"Perhaps this is the eternal future of the Starlight Realm," Fang Xiaoling murmured to herself. Yet no matter how she looked at it, the Starlight Realm seemed more like it had returned to the past... The only difference was that the bonfires of the past were meant to seek warmth within the spirits' hearts, whereas the bonfires of now were meant to express the coldness within them.

Fang Xiaoling gripped the window frame tightly. From the moment she accepted the title of "Lord of Light," she had imagined countless terrible futures. Whether the spirits wanted to strip her of her leadership or collectively destroy this high-and-mighty castle, she had long been mentally prepared.

Yet the spirits did nothing at all. Their silent protest left Fang Xiaoling somewhat at a loss. Gradually, a strong impulse to escape completely filled her heart. She stopped looking out the window and retreated back into the real world with all her consciousness.

The effects of the anesthesia made it impossible for her to open her eyelids. Aside from vaguely hearing the sound of pacing, she could do nothing. Fortunately, time in the real world passed like a white horse galloping past a crevice.

The morning light illuminated the clinic's courtyard. Fang Xiaoling slowly opened her eyes, and the first sight that met her was Tao Yaozhen holding a POS machine, grinning as he said, "Awake? Card or cash?"

"What is wrong with you?!" Fang Xiaoling sat up abruptly, wanting to scold him, only to find that she didn't feel even a trace of pain in her body. "Has the anesthesia not worn off yet? Why don't I hurt at all?"

As she spoke, she instinctively touched her lower back. There wasn't even a surgical incision.

"Don't be nervous, kiddo. It was just a minimally invasive surgery, no scars." Tao Yaozhen stood up, hiding the hand holding the POS machine behind his back. "Alright, I was just teasing you. I know you have no money. Just pretend you were never here, and hurry home."

Fang Xiaoling jumped off the bed and tested walking a few steps. She even doubted whether she had failed to bring the sensation of pain back to the real world.

"Your fingers were injured before too, weren't they? Although they were forcibly reset, the damaged muscle tissue was still inflamed internally." Tao Yaozhen walked toward the door as he spoke. "Don't worry, I cured that for you along the way."

"Just who are you?" Fang Xiaoling followed him, her tone carrying a bit more respect.