Chapter 168: Are you aware ...

After Kyrie places his head on Ian's shoulder, the headspace turns dark. Lin and Ian open their eyes and adjust themselves to a room showered in marigold. They have been inside Kyrie's headspace for almost an entire day, and the sun is setting on the horizon. 

Lin looks at Kyrie with words stuck in his throat. There are more memories that he wants to show his son. Suddenly, a thought enters his mind, making his eyelids twitch.

'Why do I want to show everything to Kyrie?'

Is it his guilt as his father? Is it due to his mother? A part of Lin does want Kyrie to know how much he loved Annalise and how sorry he is to treat Kyrie coldly for those last few years they spent on Earth. 

Back then, after Lin and Annalise have Kyrie, Lin has been waiting for the day that Yue would tell him to go back to his own world. However, Yue has never appeared again, and Lin is left counting the seasons. He has counted the number of times he saw the little green knobs on the bare branches, the luscious greenery spread under the sunlight, the leaves that fall once turned gold, and the rooftops covered by a cold blanket. He has wanted to ask the goddess about his people. If they are well, Lin wants to stay with his own family. He has wanted to stay at his new home.

A handful of years have passed, and Lin has remained with his mouth full of words. He has recited many times to make it more emotional and maybe even inspiring for those who would end up listening to his speech. He wants to move the goddess to let him stay. 

However, everything crumbles when Lin witnesses the atrocities caused by human hands. And all have started when he helps an old lady protesting in front of his company building—the lady sobs from the injustices done to her daughter. At first, Lin helps to the extent of just lifting the old lady off the ground and moves on with his day. 

The old lady never gives up and seeks to let everyone hear about the story of her daughter. Due to her constant passion for demanding justice for her daughter, she manages to catch the employees' attention. The topic finally gets whispered in lunch conversations, and the whisper grows louder to the point that the entire company is flooded with rumors that no one could distinguish what is true or false. 

Lin is living his best life with a thriving career. His superiors favor him since he is solid in leadership and gets the projects done with flying colors. Lin is meant to work by their side at the top. Thus, that fateful day comes where he is getting to meet the top dogs. That is also the first time Lin has ever stepped into a high-end club. 

At first, Lin is thrilled to meet his superiors. They pour drinks for each other and sometimes talk about random daily occurrences. However, the topic about the old lady and her daughter soon gets brought up, and what has come out of their mouths made Lin bleed. They laugh and joke about the suffering of others, and from the influence of alcohol, they speak more of similar occurrences that got swept under the rug. They dare to brag about their misuse of power. 

For the next few months, Lin has kept his mouth shut. He has done just what he needs to do while ignoring the thorn inserted into his heart. Yet, every time he breathes, he can feel the thorn moving in his wound, making him pain. 

The more time he spends in the company, the more he realizes the loopholes that he was blind to. He starts to see the neverending list of crimes. And finally, he snaps when one got committed in front of him.

Remembering how everything has unfolded, Lin presses his closed eyes. A bitterness flows inside him because he has sacrificed his family in the attempts to bring those crimes to light. He stands away from the bed, and he exerts more energy than usual to get up due to his fatigue. His body feels heavy. Although he wants to rest, he has one last thing he needs to do.

"Ian, right?" 

Ian lifts his head to look at Lin and nods.

"Could you spare me a bit of your time?" He looks at the door to indicate to Ian that they are going to talk somewhere else. 

Lin guides Ian up a flight of stairs that spiral around the enormous gold tree, and after a good fifteen minutes, they arrive at a place inside the tree trunk. The roof of the circular room is embedded with thousands of silver mana stones. In the middle stands a transparent column with gold particles floating upwards. A sea of sunflowers neatly spreads through the room. 

"This is a resting place that I have created," Lin breaks their silence that was kept when traveling to this place.

Ian would be a fool if he could not guess who Lin dedicated this place for. Kyrie's mother, Annalise, holds an important place in Lin's heart. 

"I will not beat around the bushes." Lin locks his eyes with Ian, "Are you aware of your curse, Ian?" 

Ian's eyelashes twitch when faced with that question.

"I… I am aware…"

Lin watches Ian's eyebrows knit and is a bit relieved that the youngster is at least aware of that time bomb that he carries. 

Someone lightly scuffs after hearing Ian's response. Ian looks around the room to find the third person. His eyes land on the old shaman that revealed herself in the sea of sunflowers. Her white hay-like hair pops out among the sunflowers.

She lifts her ogre mask, showing off her oddly youthful face. Her tender skin is enough to deceive anyone who does not know her. She wears a layer of white powder on her face with a magenta eyeshadow. Her lips are painted white with a red circle in each corner. 

"Cursed one… If you are aware, then you should not stay close to anyone," The old shaman says with a chilling, emotionless voice, "Cursed, but unwilling to die… I see that you struggle immensely against your fate! Death reigns in your fingertips, and darkness will consume you in the future."

Lin openly shows his dislike at the old shaman's words, "Well, what do you know about their future?"

Although the question sounds normal to other people's ears, the old shaman can clearly feel the sarcasm from those words. She has been wrong two times already about Kyrie. 

The old shaman has confidently said before that once Kyrie takes the potion of truth, Kyrie would have his fate cut with the gods, and Lin has to wait in a nearby city to fetch him back to the elven city. However, the old shaman is wrong, and she also gets significantly injured when the fallen god intervened. Kyrie ultimately regains most of his memories. 

The second time is when the old shaman predicted Kyrie's death, so Lin has to intervene. However, her interpretation is wrong again since Ian and Imogen are the ones who saved Kyrie. Although Lin has played a part by buying time for Ian and Imogen to arrive, the shaman has never foreseen those two in her foresight. 

The old shaman has never had a wrong interpretation before, but she has been wrong in every attempt when she tries to see Kyrie's future. Thus, she switches to look into Ian. The old shaman could still remember how shaken she felt when she peered into Ian's future.