Chapter 158: You must succeed this time. I’ll wait for you in the future.
An Wujiu’s hands continued to tremble uncontrollably.
He found that he couldn’t control anything—his thoughts, emotions, state of mind, the darkness within, the deaths of everyone around him, this damned cycle, this damned self.
Not even his own hands.
The gun fell to the ground, symbolizing An Wujiu’s failure.
He could feel danger approaching, gradually surrounding him, but An Wujiu’s body was stiff. He wanted to move but couldn’t.
At this moment, he felt like an animal that couldn’t understand human society. It seemed like every painful thing in this world was happening to him, one after another, without respite.
In front of him were Lilith’s tear-filled eyes. An Wujiu couldn’t imagine the state of mind she was in when she left. Did she face death alone, with the determination to let him live?
For Lilith, she had no idea if she had a chance to start over. The dead are dead, and everything ceases to exist. They were separated by ten years, and their last glance was just as cruel as it had been a decade ago.
He couldn’t do anything except bring more pain to his sister.
An Wujiu stood up in a daze, walking forward like a walking corpse.
He was going to find his sister.
He had promised to find her.
This promise trapped Lilith, trapped Shen Nan. She had spent her whole life striving to survive, just for the moment they would meet.
But still, she failed.
He stumbled, unguarded, and fell to his knees. Despite having won so many times, this time, he couldn’t get up.
The thought of destroying everything suddenly emerged, slipping in like a thief. An Wujiu’s mind flashed with the image of No. 0 before he died.
He retched unexpectedly and uncontrollably, as if trying to expel another [An Wujiu] from his existence to eradicate him.
But what he vomited was only blood—a large pool of blood.
The long knife strapped to his back swayed, slapping against his spine, which he could barely straighten.
This deadly, bloody forest was like a dead sea. He remained at the bottom, feeling suffocated. Floating pollutants and dismembered limbs gradually drifted together, coalescing in front of An Wujiu to form a new creature, huge and grotesque.
The creature opened its bloody mouth toward him, and a blue tongue, as thick as a giant serpent, emerged, with a child standing at its forked tip.
As the blue light dissipated, Noah’s face was revealed. In a short time, she had grown considerably and was now a young girl.
An Wujiu knew they had failed and that the evil god had appeared. This oppressive force, strong enough to feel like a vacuum, could only come from the evil god.
He did not lift his head, still kneeling in despair. Despite this, his omniscient perspective let him know that the one appearing here was Noah.
Noah looked at An Wujiu in the distance, tilting her head slowly as if observing. Although she continued to recover and evolve into her complete form, the memories from the human body she once borrowed had not disappeared.
On the contrary, when she saw An Wujiu at that moment, those memories became very clear.
An Wujiu was at the end of his life, with hardly any sanity left. He had lost his former calm and leadership and was now like a stagnant pool of water.
His blood-splattered face showed no expression, his eyes were hollow and red, and his drooping eyelashes almost obscured everything in his vision.
This was a complete defeat.
Noah tilted her head slowly to the other side.
Her lips didn’t move, but a voice emanated from Noah. It had male characteristics, but the content was not in human language.
“Do you regret it?”
An Wujiu did not answer.
Noah asked him again in human language, through the girl’s body.
An Wujiu still didn’t answer. After a long silence, he lifted his red eyes and stared at Noah, suddenly laughing.
As he chuckled, a tear fell from his left eye.
Noah could not understand why he was crying.
“Aren’t you curious?”
As the “god” behind the altar, he was not only the player Noah but also the embodiment of the NPC Rabbit. He could be any NPC that might appear on the field. He was omniscient and omnipresent.
He had fooled An Wujiu, making him think he was a human girl in need of protection and sheltering him desperately for a long time.
But he was not human and could not understand human emotions. Gratitude, righteousness, these were legitimate reasons for humans to dominate each other, but they meant nothing to him.
The smile on An Wujiu’s face did not fade. The peony pattern on his neck was faintly red due to his near-breakdown emotions, looking extremely poignant.
“Curious about what? Curious about why you appeared, how many clones you have, curious about how you killed my father, took everything from me, pushed me step by step to today, or curious about how you killed Shen Ti and erased all traces of his existence?”
He struggled to stand up, staggering towards Noah, “In your eyes, I am nothing but a useless and valueless waste, right?”
As he spoke, An Wujiu laughed at himself, “Of course, when humans step on an entire colony of ants, why would they care about any one of those dead things?”
“I’m not curious about anything.” An Wujiu stopped walking, the smile on his face gradually freezing.
He could feel the power within him crashing madly, and he knew that darkness was constantly devouring him. The dark side, extreme evil, and anger all turned into invisible hands, pushing him into a deeper abyss.
But An Wujiu was still struggling. He looked up, staring at Noah, with his sanity bar hovering at the last bit but no longer decreasing.
At least don’t become another self, An Wujiu.
He told himself, and then, with his last bit of sanity, he told Noah, “If this is the fate I cannot change…”
An Wujiu raised his hand and swiftly drew his long knife, his wrist turning backward to decisively point the blade at his own heart.
“At least I want to make the final decision myself.”
Noah intended to kill him because he had seen An Wujiu’s future. He was the mortal enemy who had been easily spared but ultimately destroyed him.
But after An Wujiu changed the past, the future he possessed also changed.
Now, he was already on the verge of destruction, ready to shatter at a touch.
Even so, Noah couldn’t let go of this possibility. Only now, he didn’t want An Wujiu to die.
So he acted. The monster behind him extended numerous tentacles, snatching An Wujiu’s long knife and binding him entirely.
The long cyan knife fell to the ground, emitting a metallic ringing.
Noah stared at An Wujiu, like a predator eyeing prey about to be swallowed.
He had to wait until he recovered, then completely eradicate him, erasing his existence from the beginning.
Changing all futures.
Noah looked up at the sky. In an instant, the dawn sky suddenly darkened, plunging into deep darkness. The numerous full moons remained, gradually turning blue. They simultaneously extinguished and lit up again, repeatedly.
The tentacles tightened, leaving An Wujiu with no possibility of suicide. He found it hard to breathe, lifting his eyes to the sky.
There wasn’t a single star in sight.
He suddenly realized this wasn’t the real sky, and those moons weren’t real moons either. They seemed like…
Many pairs of eyes.
It turned out that as the universe kept overlapping, the eyes of the evil god’s true form were opening one by one.
Does this mean he’s continuously recovering and is almost successful?
“In fact, I once helped humanity, which is why you occupied the land and sea,” Noah’s voice came leisurely from above, ethereal and devoid of any human emotion.
“Now I want to retract that help.”
He said it lightly, as if taking back a gifted present, but it was the life of an entire planet.
“My younger brother would defy me for a human, even fighting me and sealing me.”
He lowered his eyes, staring at An Wujiu with a pure yet immensely intimidating gaze. “Before being sealed, I punished him by trapping him in time. As a result, he anthropomorphized, becoming human in appearance. Now I know that human was you.”
“And now, I don’t know where he is. Perhaps his human body has perished, his divinity lost somewhere along a timeline in some universe, trapped there, ironically, like he and I used to be masters of time, beings beyond time.”
An Wujiu’s heart ached terribly. He could only grit his teeth, the veins on his neck entwined with the flower pattern.
In his heart, there was only one name, Shen Ti, all Shen Ti.
He really wanted to tell Shen Ti that he couldn’t hold on any longer and that he was really tired.
Everything that had sustained his life had disappeared. He had tried to grasp tightly onto each one, but he lost them all.
It hurts so much, Shen Ti.
This pain was the accumulation of all the pain in his life. He even experienced tinnitus, unable to hear what the other was saying, but he wanted to listen; it was Shen Ti’s past.
“Do you want to know why you’re different, why you have the power to rewrite time?”
This was the last sentence An Wujiu heard.
Because in the next moment, something sharp drilled out from his heart, slicing open his chest from the inside out.
And his vision went completely black, and he was unable to hear any sound.
In the darkness, An Wujiu could only see the tentacle emerging from his own body, emitting a faint green glow. This light gradually spread, diffusing, eventually forming an entire halo of green mist around him.
[Leave the rest to me.]
In a blurry voice, he clearly heard this sentence.
All the green light surged towards him, gathering into a human form. The light carefully cupped An Wujiu’s face, pressing its forehead against his.
At that moment, a surge of power was injected into his body, dragging away the sinking despair and death.
An Wujiu suddenly found himself in a familiar place.
He realized his vision had returned, allowing him to see everything around him: white walls, and bright corridors. He walked forward in a daze, passing some people whose expressions were not pleasant.
An Wujiu saw several people in white coats and realized he was in a hospital.
He didn’t know why he was here and wanted to call out for Shen Ti, but found he couldn’t make any sound.
As he walked, An Wujiu suddenly saw two familiar figures, his steps halting, his whole body stiffening.
Because they were his parents.
The closer he got, the more real and clear they became. His mother sat on a bench in the hallway, and his father stood beside her, allowing her to rest her head on him.
Their anxious and worried faces did not look like an illusion.
An Wujiu tried hard to make a sound, but they couldn’t hear him.
He ran over, wanting to hug his mother, who was trying hard to stifle her sobs, but he fell through the empty air.
Mom?
Dad.
An Wujiu squatted down, looking up at his father.
No one could see him.
An Wujiu didn’t understand. Was this a dream, or was he already gone, experiencing a hallucination as his life flashed before his eyes?
He stood up, wanting to know why they were sad, so he looked behind them, at the door at the end of the hallway. It was the operating room, and the “In Surgery” light above the door, which had been on, suddenly went out.
An Wujiu, filled with doubt, walked towards it. He lightly pushed the door, and it opened.
There was no one inside the operating room.
Puzzled, he turned back to look at his parents, but they had disappeared as well.
What’s going on?
An Wujiu walked in alone. Only one surgical light was still on. The operating table was covered, hiding the patient being treated. But a notification slip had fallen to the ground, and An Wujiu picked it up.
Upon seeing the content, An Wujiu’s brows furrowed slightly.
The name on the surgical slip was Shen An.
The condition listed was cardiac arrest, and even after the surgery, they couldn’t save him.
He clenched the report, quickly walking towards the operating table and pushing aside the covering with a shove.
The scene before him left him stunned.
Lying on the operating table was his childhood self. And standing beside the table was Shen Ti, already in human form, able to smile and talk.
[Shen Ti!]
An Wujiu ran to him, wanting to hug him, but once again fell through empty air.
Shen Ti focused entirely on the unconscious little Shen An, or rather, little An Wujiu.
“You, as a kid, are really recreated one-to-one.” Shen Ti suddenly spoke, extending a finger to gently touch little Wujiu’s nose.
Then he retracted his hand, placing his palm against his own chest. Before long, a faint green light emanated from his palm.
A ball of light appeared in his hand—a pulsating light.
“I only have this one heart.” Shen Ti’s hand gently pressed against the small chest of An Wujiu. The light slowly infused into him, and after it was completely absorbed, he gave a light pat.
“With this, it should work, right, future you and me.”
The observing An Wujiu suddenly realized something.
Could it be that he had already been killed once?
And it was Noah who killed him.
As he was thinking this, the little Wujiu on the operating table woke up. Seeing Shen Ti, he blinked in confusion.
Shen Ti remarked, “Even this expression is identical. Were you always this calm as a kid? Seeing someone as handsome as me doesn’t surprise you.”
Unexpectedly, little Wujiu calmly asked, “Who are you?”
Shen Ti chuckled, “I’m your future…”
He paused, “Forget it; I hate spoilers.”
Little Wujiu couldn’t understand what he meant and just looked at him blankly.
“Are you a doctor?”
Shen Ti was amused again, “No, but I did save you. I used a card, spent all my life points, came from far away to save you, and then I…” He didn’t continue; he just laughed to himself and pointed to his wrist, “You wouldn’t understand as a kid, so I won’t say more. I’m running out of time.”
Little Wujiu reached out and tugged at the tip of Shen Ti’s leather glove, “Where are you going?”
“Me?” Shen Ti shrugged, “I might drift to a very faraway place. Do you know what drifting is?”
“It’s when you can’t stop, right?” little Wujiu asked.
“Right,” Shen Ti smiled, “Exactly. I can’t stop myself.”
Little Wujiu kept staring at him, making Shen Ti find it amusing, teasing him, “What are you looking at? Do you think I look good?”
The child nodded honestly and said, “Yes.”
“Do you like my… looks?”
“Mm, I like them.” He nodded again.
Shen Ti was satisfied, muttering to himself, “How could you not like it? It’s a face I made myself.”
The little Wujiu didn’t hear this, but he still didn’t let go.
“So…”
“What else do you want to ask?” Shen Ti indulged him, saying, “Quickly, I really don’t have much time.”
Little Wujiu thought seriously for a moment, “You saved me; I need to thank you. My mom taught me that if someone helps me, I should help them too. I… Gege, can we meet again in the future?”
Being called gege so easily, Shen Ti’s feelings grew complicated.
He suddenly understood why humans sometimes couldn’t control the urge to cry.
“We will.”
Shen Ti patted his small head, gently making a prophecy.
“I’ll be waiting for you in the future. We will definitely meet again.”
“But to not affect our future meeting…”
Shen Ti’s hand paused; his large palm gently brushed over the child’s entire face, finally dropping down and catching the now-sleeping little Wujiu.
“I can only erase your memory, even though I want you to remember me.”
Shen Ti bent down, touching the child’s face.
“When you grow up, there will be a past version of me, ugly and clueless, who didn’t take good care of you but was summoned by you and risked everything for you.”
“This time we must succeed. I’ll be waiting for you in the future.”
He shattered into countless particles of light, disappearing in the silent operating room.
Shen Ti, standing at the end of time, came rushing to the starting point of An Wujiu.
In the end, their fates were connected—a cycle of cause and effect.
