Deviant: No Longer Human-Chapter 806: Mantis stalks the cicada, the sparrow behind it… and a hunter behind them all? (2)

Unless...

There was a glitch.

Or…

Someone put a glitch there on purpose.

His breath grew cold as the image resurfaced:

The golden baby.

The tiny figure emerging from the cracked cocoon.

An executioner being born.

The fountain, the spiraling threads of existence, the tendrils holding reality, all of it wasn't just a graveyard.

It was a manufacturing chamber.

A place where life was unmade, then remade, into executioners meant to keep balance.

Empty.

Purified of identity.

He should have become one of them. His soul should've been stripped bare, folded, rewritten.

But he didn't.

Something... someone... let him slip out.

Not just him.

Aegis too.

Why?

For what purpose?

What does an entity beyond existence... seek to achieve by creating anomalies?

By letting half-formed executioners escape?

By letting them keep their memories?

Wang Xiao stopped mid-air.

A faint ripple passed through the sky around him, as if the world itself had exhaled in fear.

His eyes dimmed, colder than void.

And in that silence, a dying voice resurfaced, the Karmic Emperor's final whisper, spoken as his will dissolved into ash:

"You are one of us…"

The words struck, Wang Xiao's chest tightened... Now the fragments aligned.

Of course.

That was why he could hold that sword,

the blade that never awakened for anyone except him. Even with Yanyan's power manipulating its output she could not stir it from slumber.

Only him.

Because he was an Executioner.

Not fully.

Not complete.

But still, one of them.

The world around him dimmed further, colors bleeding away, as if mirroring the thought.

"…"

The realization fell through him like a collapsing star.

Was he still Wang Xiao?

Or something half-born, half-exiled, a broken construct of the system, a creature that slipped through a gap no one was meant to slip through?

Who was he, really?

What was he?

His own identity felt suddenly thin, like smoke that refused to stay in his hand.

But the confusion didn't last.

His face hardened… slowly, decisively.

Whether he was man, anomaly, or failed Executioner didn't matter.

He needed answers.

And answers lay where Executioners were born.

His plans shifted instantly, Yuriko had to ascend.

She needed her thousandth reincarnation completed, because her ascension would summon another Executioner. And when they arrived, they would never expect Wang Xiao to merge fully with Yin Yue, transcend, and slaughter them.

That was his path now.

After all, one Executioner was already here for him. But Yang Yuhuan's soul was sheltering inside Yin Yue, and Wang Xiao had lived, meaning he was still a target.

Except that Executioner, the Karmic Emperor, was gone.

Killed and absorbed.

A feat no one could imagine, let alone repeat.

There would be no new Executioner assigned to him.

He was free now.

Free to live quietly.

Free to disappear.

Free to walk away from all of it.

…But he didn't want freedom.

He wanted a graveyard.

A true graveyard.

A graveyard of Executioners.

He wanted to kill every last one of them,

consume them, devour their power, until no existence, no reality, no dimension stood above him.

Once Yuriko transcended, another Executioner would come. And this time, Wang Xiao would be ready, a Great Lord formed from Yin Yue's merged essence,

strong enough to crush them like ants.

His eyes sharpened, cold and bright, his mind raced in patterns no being could comprehend.

There was someone above.

Above the Executioners.

Above the threads.

Above the system.

The very 'Ancestral entity', Xue Hanqin once claimed was the strongest, the one who died trying to slaughter every Executioner in existence.

At that time, it had seemed insane.

Reckless.

Pointless self-destruction.

But now?

Wang Xiao felt the same thread pulling at him.

A manipulation.

A design.

There was a thread running through him, Aegis, and that Ancestral entity, faint, but undeniably deliberate, as if none of them were accidents of the system but pieces carved from the same intention.

Aegis being able to hold the blade made it clear enough.

Wang Xiao wasn't some unpredictable anomaly who slipped through a crack.

He was designed.

Someone had shaped him, shaped all three of them, for a purpose...

The unease in him curled like smoke, the suppressed anger trembled like a sealed volcano.

Fine.

They wanted a graveyard of gods?

He would give them one.

If Xue Hanqin were alive, she would scream, accusing him of repeating the same tragedy,

the same path that destroyed the last Ancestral deity.

And perhaps he was.

Perhaps he was walking into the same doom.

But Wang Xiao saw the unseen fingers pushing him toward that fate.

That manipulation only made his resolve burn hotter.

Just because the puppeteer wanted him to kill Executioners didn't mean he wouldn't do it.

And it certainly didn't mean he would forgive them.

He would twist them into puppets, break their pride until they understood the filth of servitude… let them choke on the taste of chains they once held over others.

He would deny them the kindness of death, strip them of the right to end, force them to understand that oblivion is a blessing far above their station.

He would let them scream for release until their voices snapped, let them beg for the darkness to take them… and make sure that the darkness never answers.

Because the worst punishment is not dying.

It is discovering that you are not allowed to.

___

12th January,

Close to seven in the evening.

A small dark shadow kept chasing the bigger one, Yin Yue trailing behind Wang Xiao, who was moving with no pattern other than "god on evening walk."

From high above, Shanghai split cleanly into two halves:

Pudong stretching toward the East China Sea, glittering like a blade in blue sea, Puxi sprawling inland like an old beast refusing to die.

Wang Xiao drifted across Pudong, crossed the Huangpu river, slipped into Puxi, and finally arrived in Changning district, an upscale district stuffed with government officials, ministers, and enough political pheromones to give any mortal a migraine.

And his first stop?

The External Relations Ministry.

To check if "Liu Yanmei", the current Foreign Minister, was in.

Of course she was the current minister because the previous one died.

And of course he died because Wang Xiao killed him.

And of course Liu Yanmei took the position because Wang Xiao was in the building when it happened.

That's just how his life go.

He originally met her when playing with Wang Xueying here, then again when visiting Qian Ruixin at the Murong estate.

That was when he discovered Liu Yanmei was the real mother of Murong Shan.

Funny thing?

Both Murong Shan's stepmother and real mother had already ended up in Wang Xiao's bed, not because he cared,

but because life is unfair and he apparently like women suffering.

Qian Ruixin had nothing to do with it;

he only slept with her mother-in-law to terrify her, and Liu Yanmei for entirely different amusements.

But after Xin Meifang casually mentioned selling Qian Ruixin as a human sacrifice to Murong Shan?

Ah.

Then Wang Xiao grew interested.

Murong Shan, reincarnation of "Tantalus", the punishment poster-boy of Greece, was trying to break his curse by sacrificing women born on certain dates.

Qian Ruixin was the last piece of the ritual.

Too bad fate hated him more than Wang Xiao did.

The man's entire life fell into abyss: every time he tried to meet his newly wed wife, Qian Ruixin, a new "urgent matter" screamed at him. It was as if destiny itself was kicking him in the balls repeatedly.

And tonight, destiny went for a full swing.

Murong Shan came to secretly visit his real mother, publicly meeting her would spark a scandal.

But he arrived just in time to see another man stepping out of her office, more precisely, Wang Xiao, someone he recognized almost as a brother-in-law.

He opened his mouth to greet him.

But the words never came out.

Murong Shan froze on the spot, turning into a statue mid-breath.

His jaw clenched so hard it looked painful, and his face darkened a full two shades.

The minister of foreign relations appeared, trailing after Wang Xiao like a well-behaved xiaosan, quiet, obedient, and suspiciously comfortable in that role.

A charming woman in a white fox-skin coat, cheeks still flushed, hair tousled in soft waves, lips stained a dark cherry, a juicy winter peach walking on two legs.

If not for the one detail that ruined everything:

A faint streak of white at the corner of her mouth.

Semen...

She hadn't even bothered to wipe it properly.

In fact, she almost looked proud of it, as if being seen still "touched" by the prince would boost her prestige, as if the world should know she had just been with him.

Unfortunately for her, that tiny moment of arrogance was the biggest mistake she would regret for the rest of her life.

She blinked when she saw her son waiting in the hallway.

Her smile faltered.

Everything collapsed at once.

"..."

Murong Shan said nothing.

Just stared.

That was enough.

A single moment of silent eye contact and she understood everything.

That motherf*cker Wang Xiao... fucked his mother.

Of course Wang Xiao hadn't come for nothing. Liu Yanmei had been delighted, thinking he remembered her, that he valued her, that their… arrangement… had meaning.

Only now did she fully realize the power she'd gained simply by sleeping with him,

even members of the Standing Committee stopped calling her for explanations.

Her victimhood evaporated; she had evolved into a woman who enjoyed the perks of proximity to danger.

She wanted to deepen the bond.

And tonight, she thought she succeeded.

Until she saw her son staring at her from the hallway.

And in that instant she understood, she wasn't blessed tonight.

She was framed.

"…"

Far away—

"Haha…"