Throne of Radiance

tick.tick.tick.

……what sound?

...Where am I...Where am I?

The consciousness was in a daze, as if a stick had been turned over and over in his head countless times, severe dizziness, almost numb pain, and many fragmented memory fragments were washed back and forth in it, making this person almost fall into a deep sleep The consciousness of the past was awakened bit by bit from the brink of death.

brush……

In the closed laboratory, a pair of eyes slowly opened.There is still lingering confusion and fear deep in the pupils.

The blinding white light hurt his eyes.

Accompanied by the subconscious physiological fluid overflowing from the corners of the eyes, the confusion and fear in the depths of the eyes were gradually swallowed up by the surge of despair, anger, and resentment.

"Hoo...I..." Am I still alive?

The moment he realized this fact, Rhine didn't feel any joy in his heart. Instead, he was overwhelmed by a deep darkness, and his whole heart seemed to be slowly sinking into an abyss.

The experience of the past three days told him a fact.

Sometimes, living is not necessarily luckier than dying.

Maybe it would be a relief to die like this?

But some kind of obsession that even he couldn't understand forced him to survive the brink of life and death again and again.

"The third round of experiments has begun, and the subjects have no rejection reactions."

A cold and calm voice sounded indistinctly in my ears.

In Rhine's vague perception of time, it seemed that it was the next moment, and the voice continued to speak: "The experiment continues."

The icy liquid rushed in the blood vessels, Rhine seemed to be under the glacier, and his whole body was frozen by the cold air.

Immediately afterwards, there was a burning pain like a flame.

His faltering consciousness began to sink again.

"The vital signs of the experimental subject are about to disappear!"

"Sleep, sleep, never wake up again..."

"Relieve..."

The incandescent light became more and more blurred, and large swathes of darkness gradually filled his vision. There was a voice from the depths of his heart, bewitching him to go to the deepest part of the darkness.

"Just die like this, end all pain..."

The voice gently bewitched his ears, as if a pair of invisible gentle arms were wrapped around his body, trying to drag him into the abyss of death. He saw the gates of hell opening in front of his eyes, he saw black flames spreading across his vision, he saw crowds Ghosts carnival before the eyes.

Does the drug work?Or a near-death hallucination?

Rhine didn't have the mind to distinguish these things for the time being. In the depths of the mud-like darkness, he suddenly began to struggle hard.

"Sure enough, I'm still not reconciled..."

The burning black fire, the howling ghosts, the darkness like mud, tearing the shackles all over his body in a gesture that seemed to hurt both sides, the man climbing up from the mud is like smashing the gate of hell to climb to the world of evil spirits.

But more and more turbulent jet-black silt came from all directions, refilling the gap he had torn open with great difficulty.

"The rescue failed, the test subject was confirmed dead—"

"Do not……"

The mud spread all over his body, covering his mouth and nose.

"I'm not reconciled, I'm not reconciled, ahhh!"

"—Damn it was never me! I will never accept such a fate! I will not accept—"

hum...

At the moment when it was about to be completely swallowed into the darkness, a beam of soft light suddenly appeared, tearing a hole in the darkness.

Then, large swaths of darkness melted around.

Rhine finally seized the opportunity to crawl out.

Like a gladiator who has experienced a lot of hard work, lying on the "ground" exhausted with scars all over his body, he opened his eyes and looked curiously at the source of the light——

Flowers, big big flowers, colorful flowers.

Countless flowers filled his sight all at once.

In the depths of the darkness, there is actually a sea of ​​flowers growing.It seems that there is a small shop located in the sea of ​​flowers.

By the time Rhine came back to his senses, he had already walked into the flower shop.

In the flower shop, a young man was lying on a rattan chair reading a book. Seeing him coming, he just smiled slightly:

"Welcome, dear guest. What can I do for you?"

"...Where is this?" Rhine's tone was a little dry, "Is it a paradise that can only be seen after death?"

He had never been a theist, but the scene in front of him was so shocking that he couldn't do what he wanted.

"Of course not." The flower shop owner smiled slightly.

He has a seemingly ordinary but inexplicably attractive face, which makes people feel close to him subconsciously. When he looks at him with his tolerant eyes like an elder, even Rhine, who is now full of hostility, can't help but let go. All vigilance and precautions.

"I don't know if heaven exists, but even if there is, you definitely won't be able to go now, because you haven't died yet."

"...I'm not dead?" Rhine repeated blankly.

Everything that happened now was beyond his common sense, he looked at the surrounding things in a very confused way, and in the messy brain, finally there was a key piece of information flashing across like lightning.

He suddenly realized something.

"Flower shop, shop owner..." The mysterious existence and the story of the other party's saving the unfortunate people that I had accidentally heard on the extraordinary forum flashed in my mind, and Rhine looked at him in disbelief, "You, you are the "Flower Whisperer" , "Wish Maker"? "

The other party smiled slightly, as if acquiescing.

The moment he realized this fact, sudden ecstasy swept his heart, and Rhine trembled with excitement.He knelt down without hesitation, and begged as if grasping the last straw: "Please save me! Only you! Only you can save me! I am willing to give all I have to return to you!"

The man on the wicker chair put down the book in his hand, and he stood up.

"Return?"

Rhine heard a soft sigh.

The slowly sounding footsteps stopped in front of him, and Rhine heard the owner of the footsteps speak softly——

"Actually, this is not heaven, it's almost hell - because this is the deepest point of despair."

"However, in the most unfortunate soil, there is a chance to water the flowers of hope." The voice of the young shopkeeper was not in a hurry, but it was like a breeze blowing away the negative emotions in his heart, "When you bring an unfortunate The silt, crossing this desperate wasteland to come to me, has brought the best reward——” At this point, the shopkeeper stretched out his hand.

"So, do you want to trade? The unfortunate owner." There was an inconspicuous flower seed lying in his open palm, "Take all your despair and misfortune as reward, and exchange for a flower seed of hope and luck." .”

·

The moment the flower seed fell into the hand, the black silt wrapped around his body scrambled to the palm of his hand. Rhine saw the inconspicuous flower seed rapidly germinate, twirl, and bloom in the silt.

The snow-white flowers bloomed in the darkness, as if shining with the light of flawless hope, this light gradually filled Rhine's sight, making his heart tremble.

Boom, boom, boom.

He seemed to hear his own heartbeat.

"The rescue failed, the test subject was confirmed dead—"

"Wait, there is still help! The heartbeat has recovered!"

"Passed the third round of experiments, and began to record data changes..."

The light of the incandescent lamp spread in front of his eyes again, and a blurry snow-white figure swayed back and forth on his retina.

"I... am alive?"

At the same time that this idea appeared, Rhine remembered the hallucination-like experience when he was dying, and his heart, which was already filled with despair and numbness, trembled unbelievably.

"It's not a dream..."

"...Lord God!"

The "wisher" who helped him survive must be a god!If you are a god, you can definitely...

"I can definitely get out of here!"

Rhine closed his eyes, blocking the overly fanatical light in his eyes.

hope……

After staying in this white hell for three days, this word appeared in his heart for the first time.So pious, so determined.

Accompanied by this high emotion, Rhine felt that the blood in his body seemed to be boiling. Under his muscles, there seemed to be an invisible force turning from water into a river, and it was about to spurt out. His heart began to pound heavily. beat.

He heard the familiar ecstatic voice—

"The experiment was successful! The physical data of the experimental subject is constantly increasing, and has exceeded the limit of ordinary people... Wait, the data changes have exceeded expectations, maybe..."

At this moment, the light tube in the laboratory blew.

Afterwards, the entire laboratory was shrouded in darkness.

There was a loud noise in the darkness.

"What's going on? Why did the laboratory suddenly lose power..."

"Where's the backup power supply? Why didn't it start..."

"Damn it, my experiment was in vain!"

The consequences of the power outage made the laboratory chaotic. Some people were looking for the cause, some were trying to rescue the crashed experiment, some were overhauling the equipment, and shadows flickered back and forth.

"Crack-"

There were strange noises in the noisy voice.

In the darkness, it seemed that a beast had broken the chain.

The galloping blood burned in the blood vessels like a flame, and some kind of power spread all the way to the whole body along with the heart.Accompanied by a few rough cracking sounds, the special metal ring bound on Rhine's wrist and ankle was directly broken by a terrifying force. He broke it with both hands, and also tore off the restraint belt around his body.

Rhine jumped up from the operating table!

His eyes, burning with rage, seemed to glow in the dark.

Whoa!

The rain poured down like a flood from the sky to the earth.Amidst the sound of the rainstorm, there was rumbling thunder, and the silver-white lightning pierced through the rain curtain like a knife light piercing the sky.

The light of lightning shone on the open door of the institute.

It also illuminated a figure running wildly.

And nearly a hundred soldiers with live ammunition followed closely behind him.

——A sudden thunderstorm hit the imperial capital of the Morning Star Empire, which unexpectedly caused a sudden power outage in the research institutes in the suburbs.

This should have been an accident that couldn't have happened at the National Institute of Secrets.

But this rare accident happened in ten years.

——At this time, in the laboratory, the experimental subject that should have died due to the failure of the experiment miraculously survived.He seems to have hit the 0.01% chance of success just right.

——Coincidentally, it happened to be five o'clock in the afternoon at this time, the time when the soldiers responsible for the security of the institute changed shifts, and it was also the time when the security force of the entire institute was weakest.

But two and a half minutes from power outage to recovery was enough time for this subject, who seemed to have gained an amazing transformation from the experiment, to push open the door of the laboratory and escape from the research institute in chaos.

A series of "coincidences" created his luck.

The dark laboratory is getting farther and farther behind.

Rhine ran desperately towards the light.