Volume 4, Chapter 73 – Keeping The Secret

And when the next day came.

Tianyin had just finished breakfast when she was suddenly told that Heavenly Father had awakened and was asking to meet her.

Although she did not know what had happened, Tianyin still headed at once to the room where Heavenly Father was resting.

She pushed the door open. On the bed where Heavenly Father had been placed, the Heavenly Father who had been so incomparably weak yesterday was now half leaning calmly against the headboard.

At first glance, Heavenly Father seemed more or less normal.

But only when she looked carefully did Tianyin realize that Heavenly Father, whose face should have been that of a middle-aged man, had now become unbelievably aged.

He gave the feeling of having grown countless years older overnight.

“You are here?”

While Tianyin was still inwardly shocked by Heavenly Father’s change, his voice sounded.

Different from the voice that had once been full of majesty, this time Heavenly Father’s voice was like that of an old man nearing the end of his life, giving people a feeling of weakness and lack of strength.

“Heavenly Father? Are you… are you alright?”

Tianyin did not know what state Heavenly Father was in now that he had awakened. Although she did not quite understand why Heavenly Father had called for her, she still felt that Heavenly Father’s condition right now seemed rather strange…

“My time is running out…”

Looking at the cautious Tianyin, Heavenly Father let out a faint sigh.

“My daughter, she has not woken up yet, has she?”

“Mm… Lucifa still has not woken up…”

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Before coming to see Heavenly Father, Tianyin had also checked on Lucifa’s condition. At that time, Lucifa had still been sleeping soundly in her own room.

“She has not woken up?”

Hearing Tianyin’s words, Heavenly Father nodded as if he understood.

“That is good. I do not want my daughter to see me this bedraggled at the very end…”

“Wait… the very end… Heavenly Father, what do you mean?”

Although Heavenly Father’s words sounded like he was lamenting, Tianyin still very sharply caught the word “end” in his sentence.

“Yes… the end. I can already feel that I do not have much time left. To think of it, until now, I had never imagined that I would leave this world for such a reason…”

Heavenly Father sighed, then let out another soft breath.

“The reason I suddenly woke up this time is actually because I cannot put my daughter at ease… that girl Lucifa, I hope that after I leave, you can protect her well…”

“Eh?”

Heavenly Father speaking words that sounded like entrusting his daughter to her made Tianyin blank out without meaning to.

“Wait… Heavenly Father, you, you mean?”

“The literal meaning.”

In response to Tianyin’s question, Heavenly Father answered in an incomparably calm voice.

“I hope you can take good care of Lucifa… and if I die… I also beg you not to let Lucifa know of my death.”

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“But… Lucifa is your daughter. If you really pass away, she ought to have the right to know, right?”

Tianyin hesitated a little.

It was obvious Heavenly Father had called her here to entrust his final affairs.

She did not know why, but Tianyin felt the burden on her shoulders grow heavier.

“Lucifa lost her mother when she was still very young. You should know that, right?”

Heavenly Father spoke in a low tone.

“Mm… Lucifa has mentioned that before, but I do not really know the details…”

“She mentioned it? It seems she already sees you as someone very important… Since Lucifa has talked about that, I will not repeat it. I will just tell you about the Seven Original Sins.”

Saying this, Heavenly Father slowly closed his eyes.

Only after taking in a deep breath did he slowly start to speak.

“As one of the Seven Original Sins, Pride has a very strange property to its power.”

“Any existence that gets close to it will have its life force forcibly stripped away. Not only that, anyone who draws near to it, no matter who it is, will become extremely unfortunate.”

“And this bizarre ability shows itself most severely when it comes to blood-related parents.”

“Eh? Wait… if that is the case, then Lucifa’s mother is…?”

Hearing Heavenly Father’s explanation of the power of Pride, an ominous guess about the reason for Lucifa’s mother’s death began to form in Tianyin’s heart.

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“That’s right.”

Heavenly Father was straightforward and directly confirmed the guess in Tianyin’s heart.

“Back then, Lucifa was still very young and could not control the powerful power of Pride. The result was that the power of Pride was constantly leaking out at every moment.”

“And Lucifa’s mother, my wife… was affected by Lucifa’s power of Pride… and passed away just like that…”

Tianyin did not know what to say.

Who would have thought that Lucifa’s mother had actually been affected by her own daughter’s power of Pride…

And the truth of that death was precisely Lucifa’s eerie power of Pride…

“…”

Seeing Tianyin fall silent, at a loss for words, Heavenly Father’s voice slowly sounded once more.

“When I discovered that Lucifa’s power of Pride would affect my wife, I had the thought of abandoning Lucifa… but that thought was rejected by my wife…”

“At that time, all I knew was to push the responsibility onto Lucifa. When I had no way to abandon her, I simply stopped trying to involve myself with Lucifa at all…”

“That is why I said I am an unqualified father.”

Only now did Tianyin finally understand why, in Purgatory, Heavenly Father had mocked himself as being an unqualified father.

“The power of the Seven Original Sins took Lucifa’s mother away, and at that time I also put all the blame on her.”

As he said this, Heavenly Father’s eyes were full of self-reproach.

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“In truth, when did Lucifa ever want to kill her own mother? So the fault of this matter was never hers. But I kept insisting it was all her fault. Someone like me is not fit to be her father at all…”

“So… the fact that Lucifa hates me so much now is really just the result of my own actions coming back to me.”

“It is shameful to say, from the day Lucifa was born until now, other than the day she was born when I held her once, in all the days after that, I have not held her even a single time…”

“…”

Looking at Heavenly Father as he began to blame himself, Tianyin did not know what to say for a while.

Certainly, in his position as a leader, Heavenly Father was an outstanding and competent leader.

But in his role as a father, he was completely unqualified.

“I want to make up for my mistakes, so I swore that no matter who it was, they could not hurt my daughter.”

“I wanted to protect her for a lifetime, but now, I can no longer hold on…”

Saying this, Heavenly Father once again spoke the plea from before.

“After I die, please conceal the fact of my death in front of Lucifa.”

“My daughter has already lost her mother. I do not want her to feel sad again because she has lost her father.”

“Just let her live on well while carrying her resentment toward me.”