The Great Sage Wants to Die C35

Chapter 35

There were countless pieces of Han Yuan’s past that Irkus did not—and could not—know.
If Irkus possessed only twelve years of unknowns, then Han Yuan carried four hundred.

Han Yuan would answer anything when asked, slipping into unsolicited stories beginning with “Back in my day…” Yet whenever the truly important questions approached, his mouth would shut as though locked.

Thus Irkus knew nothing about where Han Yuan had been born, how he had met Yekarina, or for what reason he had been cursed with immortality.

“They said the central fountain is your hometown.”

“Hometown?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if he meant it seriously or as a joke.”

Tristan scrubbed at his head with an expression as if unfairly accused. He was merely repeating what Han Yuan had said, yet somehow he felt like a liar.

“And he said to stop watching him.”

“…”

“He told me to tell you directly. He won’t explain anything, so don’t go digging into his past.”

Han Yuan was indescribably soft when it came to Irkus. Anything another person would be kicked out for, Irkus could get away with simply because he was Han Yuan’s ward—the child Han Yuan had raised with his own hands.

But whenever Irkus tried to pry too deeply or showed too much interest, Han Yuan would push him away again. He left the door wide open, yet whenever Irkus tried to step through, he would slip away. It was sly—frustratingly, expertly so.

“In my opinion, the Great Sage is just playing with you.”

Tristan spoke around a yawn, shaking his head at Irkus.

Even Tristan—who had all the perceptiveness of a soup-soaked napkin—could see plainly that Irkus liked Han Yuan. And yet, no matter how one looked at it, this one-sided love had no future.
A four-hundred-year-old immortal sage and a Third Prince still scrambling for a foothold—at first glance it sounded romantic, but when examined closely, the reasons it shouldn’t work were too many to count.

“So just be satisfied that the Great Sage is your guardian. That alone makes you ridiculously lucky.”

He wasn’t wrong. Tristan spouted nonsense often, but he wasn’t called the sole disciple of a Dragon Slayer for nothing—he had moments of clarity. His air-headedness just made those moments hard to trust.

Yet Irkus believed Han Yuan becoming his guardian had brought misfortune to both of them, not luck.

If, when Irkus first lost control of his magic and killed someone, Han Yuan had reprimanded him—had abandoned him—the story might have taken a different course.

But instead, Han Yuan embraced him.
And that was the beginning of the problem.

From then on, Irkus began measuring exactly how much Han Yuan would allow, where the borders of his acceptance lay.

Han Yuan insisted he wasn’t soft-hearted, yet he was held fast by countless past attachments. So Irkus couldn’t help noticing why Han Yuan kept a certain distance.

Han Yuan was afraid.

If Irkus Robein failed to kill him, then Han Yuan would be forced to watch Irkus die instead.
For Han Yuan, immortality was no blessing but a curse, and Irkus was the closest thing he had to hope of ending it.

Irkus recalled the information he had earned as payment for delivering Archibald’s head.

If he could somehow break the contract with Han Yuan, then Han Yuan would remain at Irkus’s side until the prince’s death. Even if all hope vanished before his eyes, if the one who shattered that hope was his person, Han Yuan would forgive him. Because that’s the kind of man Han Yuan was.

That—perhaps—is why he was cursed.
Why he had lived four hundred years.
Why even with the title of Great Sage, he was unbearably foolish.

“Keep watching him.”

“What did you hear me saying this whole time? You want to see me die?”

“You just don’t get caught.”

“Easy for you to say. The one we’re talking about is the Great Sage.”

“But you can do it.”

Irkus turned his gaze away from Tristan’s whining. Seeing no sign that Irkus would withdraw the request, Tristan clicked his tongue.

“I’ve watched you for years now—you’re getting crazier.”

“Me?”

“Who else? Be careful. Once you go mad, there’s no cure.”

Such a helpful warning indeed.

Irkus gave him a gentle farewell as Tristan grumbled his way out of the room.

For better or worse, Tristan would do as Irkus asked. Tristan was Irkus’s swordmaster, and aside from Han Yuan, the only person Irkus trusted.

Irkus leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes.

Even Gilbert, who had lived with Han Yuan for years, had no idea where Han Yuan had been born or how he had ended up in the Robein Empire. Han Yuan was like someone who had fallen straight from the sky—his trail patchy and fractured.

The more Irkus tried to uncover, the further everything slipped away.
He recalled Han Yuan’s black eyes—usually unreadable, but full of unguarded joy the moment he first saw Irkus.

If investigation yielded nothing, then there was only one method left:
He would simply have to wait for Han Yuan to open up about his own past and emotions.

Patience, at least when it came to Han Yuan, was something Irkus possessed in abundance. He could easily endure several years of Han Yuan’s silence and secrets.

What is a Tower rat doing in the palace?

Lately, my pastime had been wandering the palace and lightly ruining the nerves of palace workers and nobles commuting in and out.

Young, tender-hearted beings lost all focus if I so much as lingered nearby. Watching them fluster and fumble was… delightful.

Not that I was tormenting them on purpose—just scouting the palace where a child had once barely survived, rolled, and crawled for dear life.
Consider it karmic interest for failing to look after him back then, humans.

Despite the ages passing, the palace structure had hardly changed since my days as Court Magician. Not surprising—renovation on such a scale required massive work—but still irritating.

How did they manage a country with this level of laziness?
Back in my day… the structure was changed constantly to maintain the secrecy of the hidden passages.

These sloths had kept the secret passages from the 13th Emperor’s reign all the way to the 21st.

Clearly these palace fools were embezzling their salaries. Otherwise how could every secret passage I knew still exist? Surely one of them should’ve been sealed by now.

Not that I was going to kindly inform them of this. It benefited me, after all.

And it was thanks to my wandering the passages that I discovered the Tower rat.

I was walking the corridor linking the Emperor’s office to the garden, mentally cursing the shoddy maintenance, when I sensed a considerable flow of mana.

They were trying to stay hidden, but since they assumed I would be lazing in my room, their secrecy was… lacking.

This is precisely why magical assassinations fail.
And conversely, why I was at risk of being discovered.
One wrong spell and the knights would storm in shouting “treason.”

Did I pack any mana-control artifacts? I mentally scanned through the list of magical tools I had brought.

If not, I would have to use physical combat—physical combat—despite being a mage. A humiliating and inefficient ordeal I did everything to avoid. Using my body to do what magic could do painlessly always ended in disaster.

And just as I stepped out of the secret passage, I saw him:

Tower Master Angel.

Hooded, yes—but the magnitude of the movement spell, done without formula deployment or artifacts, narrowed the possibilities drastically. Only Irkus, myself, or the Tower Master could move a group with such raw mana output.

Eliminating Irkus and myself left only Angel.

We even knew each other.

When one lives long enough, enemies pile like mountains underfoot. Worse than enemies are the deranged individuals who treat moments of your life like decorative collectibles. At times it felt as though Yekarina were sending lunatics from heaven just to keep me entertained.

Among those lunatics, the Tower folk were special.
They worshipped me more fervently than the continent’s main church, Elios.

It was like being cast as the Heavenly Demon from the wuxia novels my father used to read.

They shunned the widely-accepted Elios faith, shunned the old Hænus religion, and instead worshipped me.
A cult, through and through.

They begged to be accepted as my disciples. They wanted to cut off pieces of my body for research.
Seeing them made me understand exactly why people fear cults. And why one must never become the object of worship—because being worshipped is exhausting enough to kill you, even if you cannot die.

And the leader of these deranged Tower cultists was Angel.

Despite looking young—a man in his early twenties save for his shock of white hair—Angel was over a hundred years old. Inside that youthful shell was a creature that had lived twice the lifespan of ordinary men.

His specialty? Immortality research.

This lunatic truly wanted to be like me.
Anyone still wanting to prolong their life after living that long was clearly unwell.

While other Tower mages worked on practical or offensive magic, Angel tinkered with recipes for youth-preserving elixirs.

That obsession earned him the Tower Master’s position thanks to immense funding, but from my perspective—someone who despised Qin Shi Huang—it made him nothing more than a chilling madman.