Chapter 193: Love Her Baseness and Ugliness

"Why do this?" After a long pause, Chris finally snapped out of her malicious sarcasm. "I know, and you know yourself, these are not your true words."

He gripped the back of the sofa tightly, veins bulging on the back of his hand. "And I don't believe it. I don't believe I am still just a substitute for a phantom. I forgive you... I forgive your thoughtless words. You just want to avoid the problems that truly exist, so you raise every thorn on your body, stab me, make me hurt... I forgive you..."

By the end, all his strength gradually faded, and his voice gradually lowered.

As if unwilling to look at him anymore, Yang Yi turned her back: "Why deceive yourself?"

Chris still held to his own viewpoint. He seemed not to be speaking to Yang Yi, but persuading himself: "I will not believe a single word you say now... When people are emotionally agitated, they can say anything... What truly reveals a person is not what she says, but what she does..."

These words gave him strength again. He gazed at Yang Yi with burning eyes, gazed at his lover, gazed at the strongest girl in the world with a heart covered in scars:

"You say you only fell in love with a fake phantom, yet you listened earnestly to my setbacks and experiences.

"You say you are humble and insignificant, yet no one in this world does better than you.

"You say you are cowardly, yet you faced monsters that even you yourself fear without retreating an inch.

"You might only love me a little... but you love this world, you love humanity. You are more great and brave than anyone in this world. Do not describe yourself so wretchedly!

"You are just trapped, trapped by your own past. You have always tried to escape it..."

Chris's tone was full of pity, yet it made Yang Yi's anger flare up, let alone his baseless speculation about her past.

"Great? Brave?" Yang Yi sneered. "Trapped by the past? You think you understand me?"

"Do you know? I hate this world. I wish this broken world would explode immediately!

"I hate humanity even more. Ugly humanity! Selfish! Hypocritical! Vicious! Stupid! Short-sighted! I would rather be a maggot, a maggot that burrows in shit all day, than be human!"

Her breathing grew rapid, her chest heaving constantly from agitation. She seemed to be looking at Chris, yet also seemed to be looking through Chris at the entire world, at all of humanity:

"Only in places with no people can I find peace. Why do you come to bother me? Why won't you let me stay alone in Haibei City? I am a selfish person. I completely do not want to care about your human disasters. Even if you all die out in the apocalypse, what does it matter to me? Even if the entire world is destroyed—I would be happy!!!

"Since I understood things, I have wished for this disgusting world to end quickly. If the price is to use myself as a burial offering, I would happily jump into the grave pit and be a burial offering along with this damn world!!!"

Yang Yi shouted, panting. Two patches of sickly flush rose on her pale cheeks, and her pupils revealed a nervous madness.

Among these words that burst forth, some came entirely from the heart, while others were for venting, venting the anger and depression accumulated over more than twenty years.

Surging anger and indignation flowed endlessly from every part of her body into her chest, almost causing her to explode.

At this moment, she only wanted to vent thoroughly, to strip off this layer of hypocritical skin, to lie naked with bones and muscles exposed, trample on her own fresh blood, and run wildly in this world that made her hate.

Chris was stunned by these sudden words and did not snap out of it for a long time.

"No, no. I know you love this world, otherwise you would not save it, and even sacrifice your own life several times..."

The corner of Yang Yi's eye twitched involuntarily. She sneered: "Yes, sometimes I also have the illusion that I love humanity, that I love this world, feeling that this world is not entirely worthless and has some lovable parts...

"But when I walk among them, when I form intimate connections with them, when I see them clearly, hatred grows uncontrollably! At that moment, I know love is an illusion! I love the illusory humanity, the conceptual humanity, not the real humanity... He was right. I only love my own fantasy..."

She murmured to herself, sometimes rambling incoherently, sometimes spouting a few subconscious words. Perhaps even she herself did not know what she wanted to express.

Suddenly, she stared fixedly at Chris, smiling sarcastically: "Just like I love you. I only love a phantom created in your image. When you truly come before me, I start to hate you!"

Chris slowly let go of her. His hands trembled as he fell weakly onto the sofa.

His entire body was numb. Yang Yi's words seemed to drift in from a very distant place, or like an echo in an empty valley. Every sentence was deafening, yet because they were too real, they instead seemed distorted—like a nightmare that happened by chance at midnight.

He wanted to say something, but his thoughts were stirred into a paste. His mind was like it had been violently struck, a chaotic mess. It took a long while before he could snap out of it.

Although he had always hoped she would be open and honest, this was absolutely not what he wanted to hear. He even began to hate himself, hating that he had already endured for so long, yet why did he confront her today, inviting this unexpected disaster?

Gradually, he snapped out of his own pain, only to fall into another new kind of pain. This pain caused his heart to swell and sour, gradually turning into a cramping agony.

This pain was not because she said she hated him, but out of sympathy for her anger, out of heartache for her experiences. He never knew her inner world was such a torment, so helpless, and he, who claimed to love her, knew nothing about it.

Pity and heartache rose in his chest. Chris felt that at this very moment, he understood her more than at any other time, and loved her more than at any other time.

He stepped forward to embrace her, but she struggled free several times. Chris ignored her resistance and persistently pulled this hedgehog covered in thorns deep into his arms, even if it meant stabbing himself all over with scars.

They held each other like this for what seemed like three or four minutes, or perhaps only ten or twenty seconds. At this moment, they could not feel the passage of time.

Yang Yi's agitated emotions gradually receded a bit, but sorrow and guilt surged up: The reason she vented on Chris was because she knew he loved her, and her indignation came from those people she hated.

How cowardly and incompetent! She considered retaliating against those people meaningless, yet she knew how to make the person who loved her suffer.

Yang Yi pressed her hands against his chest, trying hard to pull the distance between them. "I am a mental patient. I am a madman. Can't you see? I am not normal! If you still have a shred of sanity, you should leave me immediately, leave me forever and ever..."

She spoke with her head down, because she did not want Chris to see her face covered in tears.

He held her so tightly that unless she hurt him, she could not break free.

But she did not want to hurt him at all.

"I have no sanity! The moment I fell in love with you, sanity disappeared!" Chris shouted. "I am just a fool caught in love, and I believe I will remain this foolish forever..."

When a person falls in love with another person wholeheartedly, he loves not only her beauty and the happiness she brings him, but also her misfortunes, her hate and anger, and even her baseness and ugliness.

"No, no... I will drag you down into the abyss... Having me down there is enough..." She murmured some indistinct words. Suddenly, she raised her head and said, word by word:

"Let's break up!"