He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Of the secrets currently known to Ai: the first life was born from Mimu... this is almost certain.

However, the origin of humankind remains a mystery.

There is more than one theory about human creation in this world.

In the era of the nest, the principles of the heart crumbled, the concept of genes dissolved, and species could no longer serve as a standard for measuring human life—there are countless theories, large and small, about the origin of humankind: besides the traditional academics who adhere to "evolution," there are also reformists who have adapted to reality, such as "differentiation theory" and "cell theory"...

Tsk, Mendel and Darwin in the Nest World version must have already had their coffins kicked open, dying with their eyes wide open in disbelief.

In Ys, during the time before Mimu died, the issues were not as complex as they would be in later generations.

The story of the flying bird is an origin story that lingers in a lost and mysterious history.

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"A very simple, very primitive, yet sufficiently complete and mature theory of creation..."

After listening attentively to the origin of the bird, Ai pondered for a moment and commented, "Born at a high place, yet exiled to the bottom due to congenital defects... The image of the bird is a metaphor for sublimity and perfection, embodying the yearning of a flawed soul to pursue ascent."

"From this perspective, regardless of whether the origin of this story is true or not, the framework surrounding the 'bird theory' is sufficient to establish the rudiments of a doctrine."

The pungent smell of blood lingered in her nostrils. Ai sighed softly, took the bone fragment from Abram's hand, and examined it casually. She asked, as if speaking in a nonchalant tone, "So, this is Agdewey's faith?"

"..."

Abram did not answer. After saying those words, he sat motionless in the pool of blood, his dark eyes like a calm, murky pool, turbid and lifeless, filled with thoughts that could not be deciphered.

"Tsk..."

Ai clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction, then silently stood up again. Congealed blood and bone poured down his body, revealing wounds that were almost completely healed. The slightly tired green vines diligently cleaned the foreign objects from Rhodes' body, pushing the bullets out one by one from the bloody holes, and coiled up inside the body like tending to a small nest.

Fully recovered.

However, the fabric on his body had been reduced to strips of shreds, and the evening breeze made him feel cold all over. If it weren't for the darkness around him, he would easily be mistaken for an exhibitionist pervert.

Ai glanced back at Abram and, seeing that the young man still didn't react, thought he might be frightened by the scene just now, so she decided to give him a little more time.

Just as he decided to go back to his room to change his clothes, he suddenly heard a rustling sound behind him.

The Vibration spell didn't sense any danger, so Ai casually turned her head and saw Abram not far away taking off his shirt and standing naked in the night.

"What are you doing?" Ai tilted her head, then suddenly felt a chill and quickly took two steps back. "Stay away from me, I hate naked men..."

Abram was also taken aback, seemingly not expecting Ai's reaction, but he quickly gave a wry smile, then slowly turned around, shining the light on his back—

"You wanted to know why the people of Agdewe have wings on their backs... You can take a look at this first."

Ai cautiously approached him and quickly noticed something unusual on his back:

Abram's shoulder blades were different from those of ordinary people; their extremely protruding shape seemed deformed, like blades embedded in flesh. The two grotesque bones tilted inward and grew "up" in an almost twisted posture—there was no transition between the wing bones and this body. They cut through the skin and spread out, reversing the original skeletal structure, as if forcibly covering the humanoid shell with something that did not belong here, more like parasites than coexisting.

-They really look like a pair of wings, but they are deformed wings.

At the very top of this wing bone, there are obvious signs of cutting and breaking—its original size should not have been so small, but rather, like the "bone carving" that has been shattered on the ground, it should have been able to fully unfold and wrap around the body of an adult.

"This is?"

Ai's expression was solemn—he felt that the scene before him was challenging his understanding. He could not sense any mysterious power from the humanoid figure in front of him—and this strange posture... could not be associated with a species that was "naturally born".

- A Frankenstein's monster, or a chimera.

If one didn't know the historical context of Ys beforehand, this appearance might seem more like a product of human modification by the City of Nest...

"This is the Lord's exaltation."

Bending his arms to their limit, Abram gently stroked the two deformed shoulder blades, uttering a whispered murmur as if in a dream: "Agadius's worship of the Lord... has lasted for a very, very long time, perhaps a hundred years... or even longer. At least as far back as I know, people have regarded the bird-like form as a symbol of beauty and nobility since the distant past."

"To make their bodies resemble those of birds, people considered slender bodies the epitome of beauty, hollow bones sacred, and far-seeing eyes a blessing... When the breeze is gentle and birds return to nest in the trees near the ground, the Agdius people see this as the birds' pity for the wingless... So they hold grand celebrations, everyone wears bird beaks when they go out, their skin and beards covered in feathers, their backs sprouting wings, to communicate like birds, trying to recall the language they have forgotten—"

"And since I was born, the most common blessing people have given me is: May your shoulder blades grow like wings, may your skin be covered with light feathers..."

"..." Ai listened quietly, then frowned almost imperceptibly.

He vaguely realized that Agdewey's worship and faith in the birds seemed to exceed his imagination.

On the other side, Abram continued to relay the message softly:

"The pursuit lasted a long time, but the Agdeweys eventually discovered that... the congenital defects of the wingless birds could never be filled, and no matter how humans changed, they could never have a bird-like form—everyone fell into doubt and fear, afraid that they would never be able to return to the sky and would be forever exiled to this foreign land."

"until……"

Abram swallowed, his voice becoming hoarse.

"Until, a real chick was born in Agdewe."

"A fledgling?" Ai tilted her head.

"Yes, a fledgling."

Abram nodded. "She was a shepherd's child, yet also a fledgling bird that had mistakenly landed on the ground—from the moment she was born, she had wings on her back and feathers covering her skin... Everyone regarded her as an apostle sent from Paradise, whose human form and bird-like features foreshadowed the sky's forgiveness of the wingless."

"And so... around the fledgling, the bishop was established here, and people sang the blessings of the birds and spread the teachings of the sky—when the apostles returned to heaven, the will of mankind could be transmitted back to the ears of the birds... and in the sixteenth year after the fledgling was born, she shed her earthly body and flew to Paradise, leaving behind three revelations before she departed."

Abram cleared his throat and then said solemnly:

"Firstly: The Lord has heard the lament of the wingless bird, and mankind has redeemed a portion of the favor of the sky—from now on, the exalted ones are the shadows of the birds, born with wings in their shoulder bones."

Secondly: Although forgiveness is granted, the wingless past remains humanity's original sin. Therefore, the Lord established a divide, so that those who are promoted would have "missing wings and few feathers"—only the convergence of the principles of flight could allow them to grow thin feathers.

"Thirdly: As a trial of return, the tribe of the wingless must give birth to a true bird. The bird's body must be as slender as a wisp of wind, and its bones as light as wheat. Unlike the chosen ones, its wings are complete and whole, its feathers full and vibrant in color, and its whiskers like the heart of a rose, the stamen of a rosy rose—when it spreads its wings and whirls, its golden-red is more brilliant than the blood of the blazing sun."

After saying all this in one breath, Abram took a deep breath and finally finished his long retelling.

"These three revelations are the highest doctrines of the Archbishop. The Lord's teachings brought renewed hope to Agdewe: everyone began to yearn for the birth of the 'Red Bird,' hoping that the Red Bird would carry the prayers of the wingless back to Paradise and redeem humanity from the heavens' favor..."

That's it.

That concludes the section on legends.

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"Hoo..." The sheer volume of information made Ai Yi feel dizzy. He let out a heavy breath, and a cool breeze blew in through the gaps in the cloth, bringing an indescribable sense of clarity and chill.

After saying all this, Abram closed his eyes silently. His body trembled violently in the darkness, and several times he seemed about to fall to the ground, but was forced to stand up by his weak legs.

He opened his eyes and looked at Ai, a glint of indescribable light flashing in his cloudy eyes. He then spoke with trembling hands: "That's all... After the fledglings returned to the sky, Agdeweg welcomed winged guardians, the Bone Eagle and the Nightingale... They are the two types of promoted beings who just hunted you down."

- Bone carving, nightingale.

Ai repeated the two words in his mind, and at the same time, he heard the unease and fear in Abram's tone. He sighed and waved his hand, saying:

"Don't be too nervous. I don't doubt what you said—I'm just a little surprised that you would tell me these things on your own initiative."

Ai knew the principle of giving a slap and then a treat, so she didn't show any more aggression towards Abram, who was now cooperating. She just sighed and said, "It seems you've made a very big decision."

"Are you determined?"

Abram didn't deny it. He shrugged his shoulders and said softly, forcing back his grief, "I just feel that perhaps it's really too late. Decisions made at this point... can no longer be called resolve, just useless regret."

He pressed his eyes shut, utterly distraught: "Can you believe it... before coming back here, I really, really made up my mind—I brought my diploma from Tun Ling High School, my resume, my bankbook, my property, and a surgery consent form, all to persuade my father to take Lily away..."

His words were strange; they were incoherent, yet he seemed to be trying his best to express something that had been lost and could never be recovered.

"Shortly after I escaped Agdewe and went outside, in a private hospital, I had my overgrown scapula removed... It was a symbol of the promoted—I thought, I want to cut this mark out of my body, I want to pulverize it from my flesh, tear it apart bit by bit."

"So I brought all the traces I left outside—to prove to them that I don't belong here."

"But you forgot to show your own bail certificate." Ai still found it somewhat amusing. "I told you, evil is a sharp hook embedded in the marrow, you can never escape it—"

"Yes." Abram smiled bitterly, then took a letter from his backpack and handed it to Ai. "I tried to struggle, but I was defeated by fear."

Ai had seen this letter when she went through his bag before, and now she could see what was inside.

After unfolding the letter and reading through the first few words, Ai frowned:

This is a letter of denunciation written to the Anti-Suppression Bureau. The wording is quite strong, completely exposing the bishops hiding in the shadows of Rusty Village. Although they do not directly state their specific crimes, their purpose is naked enough.

"This is a secondary component..."

He asked softly, "Where's the main component?"

"At first, I envisioned this as something to be used when I was about to overturn the table..." Abram folded the letter and put it away, continuing to explain, "I entrusted the main document to a friend and told him: if I hadn't returned to Dunling by the third day after I left, send it to the Anti-Smuggling Bureau... I was thinking that if I ran into trouble in Rusty Village, I might be able to use this letter to negotiate with Charon."

"But now none of this matters anymore..."

His pupils were still trembling, and his tone was filled with unparalleled sorrow: "A coward, defeated by his own weakness... I still didn't have the courage to perish with them. It was always this mentality that made me try to postpone things until the last moment... And it was those three days of my hesitation that led to Lily's misfortune."

His lips trembled.

"What a bastard I am."

- Tsk.

Ai said sarcastically, "I'm also frustrated, but unfortunately my companion is a complete bastard. He still won't confess to me about the crimes he committed in the past."

Neither the fox nor Lot bothered to comfort him; all the blame lay with Abram himself, and this fellow was not worthy of sympathy from the start.

However, if he were willing to stand on my side at this moment, he might be a valuable source of intelligence.

"So, what are you going to do now?" Ai looked at Abram's performance with great interest, and the young man had already raised his head again, the turbidity in his dark eyes clearing away.

He took a deep breath: "I see. You are a terrifying, bizarre, and powerful guy... Even an attack like this can't kill you. Perhaps even the Anti-Suppression Bureau can't do anything to you. Although I don't know what someone like you is here for in Agdewu... but that's no longer important."

A person who has nothing left to lose and is about to face the end—his world will be infinitely cramped and insignificant, but it will also become infinitely strong because of it.

He said, "I'm not going back, not even on the third day."

-oh?

Ai raised an eyebrow: "You should know the consequences. Once that letter is sent out, the entire Rusty Village, and you as an accomplice, may be doomed forever."

"Yes." Abram gave a bitter smile, like licking rust or sipping snake venom. "I've already written the ending."

A coward who had spent half his life running away finally revealed the only, and most satisfying, decision he had ever made.

He stood up shakily, his feet seemingly treading on his past, weak self:

"I'm going to put an end to all of this."