Chapter 159: What God’s heart desires.
In the moment when he was completely torn apart by Noah’s power, Shen Ti regained all his memories.
Noah, no, he had his own name—Lasasmus Cheasia. By bloodline, they were brothers, but he had always disagreed with his brother’s ideals, repelling each other from the moment they were born.
He was the Master of Time and Space, possessing an omniscient observational perspective. Every action would trigger the birth of a parallel universe, so he always stayed in his independent universe.
Here, with sufficient time-space barriers to isolate everything, he maintained the balance and orderly progression of time, a lonely observer.
But his brother, Lasasmus, was different. Feeding on the entropy of other creatures in the universe, he ruled over chaos, finding amusement in rearing lower-dimensional creatures, such as humans.
Yet Lasasmus was repeatedly thwarted by Shen Ti.
Because he could see the future of humans, among many parallel timelines, the future of one interfered with by Lasasmus was the most brutal one.
Life devastated, an apocalypse descending.
To stop Lasasmus, he specifically focused on humans, using his omniscient power to observe these beings trapped on the timeline, experiencing birth, aging, sickness, and death. Time was cruel to them and also impartial.
When he gazed at a particular human, all the possibilities folded within this moment for that human unfolded, extending into different timelines of parallel universes, including both past and entirely different futures.
But at a certain moment, he noticed someone.
This person was unlike all others; his timeline did not automatically unfold before him.
Thus, he noticed this person, a boy, and used his power to forcibly unfold the boy’s many timelines.
Originally, he should not and could not interfere with humans, as the intervention of a higher-dimensional being could bring great disaster to a lower-dimensional world.
But he did it anyway. However, to avoid disaster, he only unfolded the past, since the past for humans was already unchangeable.
Thus, through the time-space barrier, he saw the circumstances of this boy’s birth, which was a complete mess. His mother was working until the moment of labor, only being sent to the hospital when she could no longer stand. The delivery room was filled with the piercing sounds of humans, like a chaotic shell, and finally, the cry of a human baby broke through it, signaling his arrival in the world.
He also saw the baby’s father, delayed by work, rushing to the delivery room and anxiously pacing outside. He could not understand this emotion, nor could he comprehend the tears this man shed upon seeing his child.
Initially, it was uninteresting, and he watched it as a farce. After all, he had been alone in an isolated universe for too long, like being trapped in a small white room, receiving vast, boundless time-space information, seeing everything but wanting to see nothing.
Finally finding a human that piqued his interest, he did not know why he felt interested.
So, he watched the baby from birth, learning to speak his first words, to walk clumsily, to run, and to welcome another new family member.
The little boy stood outside the glass window, trying hard to look at the baby in the incubator, softly calling her, his face full of the joy and novelty of being a big brother.
His father told him, “Your sister is sleeping. She can come home in a few days. You must take good care of her then.”
The boy nodded immediately, his small face full of sincerity and responsibility.
He said, “I know, I will take care of my sister. She will never suffer, I will protect her.”
As an observer, he naturally wanted to see his and the baby girl’s future; by unfolding his timeline, he could see it.
But he refrained because he feared that once he observed his future, he would change it.
Thus, he continued to watch his past, gradually understanding human family structures. He learned that his surname was Shen, and his name was Shen An, meaning peace, given by his father.
He saw Father Shen teaching him to read and write his name, telling him, “This ‘An’ character is your name and also your mother’s surname.”
The child nodded, smiling, “Then I like this character.” Then he looked at his father and said, “Dad, what’s your favorite character?”
His father, at the desk, pondered for a moment, gripping the pen tightly, writing another character stroke by stroke.
“This character is hard,” little Shen An pointed out.
“This character is pronounced ‘Ti’, like in ‘caution’.” He told his son, “This is my favorite character, and I hope you remember it too.”
“Why?” he asked, looking up.
His father told him, “Because many things happen in life, both good and bad. Only by always staying cautious and fearful can one live safely.”
He then guided his son’s hand, helping him write the character again.
“It’s actually simple; this character is made of the heart radical on the left and the ‘easy’ character on the right.”
The little boy repeated, “Heart… easy… I’ve got it!” He snuggled into his father’s arms, saying, “From now on, ‘Ti’ will be my favorite character too!”
Ti.
As an observer, he also learned this character and the child’s surname.
Immersed in observing others’ lives, he learned many things he had never felt before and had previously been unable to understand. Humans, to him, were no longer just lower-dimensional creatures but were given more meaning.
So when he learned of Lasasmus’s invasion plan, he stopped him without hesitation, deciding to seal him.
He couldn’t see Lasasmus’s future, but he knew that letting him continue to expand, intending to consume all the universe’s entropy, would not lead to a good ending.
To avoid affecting other universes, he created a new independent universe to fight. However, their powers were equal, and the battle nearly destroyed everything in this independent universe. Lasasmus’s power shattered the time-space barriers he had set up, and if this continued, they would destroy other universes.
So, he used all his power to seal Lasasmus, placing him in the 3.5-dimensional space between their dimension and the human dimension, also known as No Man’s Land.
This place was like an endless desert, everything was void, and chaos was balanced, unable to generate disorder, thus providing no entropy for his brother to recover his power.
But the him who sealed his brother was also branded with the mark of eternal punishment and fell into the Abyss of Time and Space.
His brother’s power caused him to fall continuously, endlessly.
The Abyss of Time and Space would dissolve and absorb his power, creating the most fearsome punishment for him. Initially, there were no gaps to exploit, so the initial punishment was just endless falling.
What he didn’t know was that the sealed Lasasmus was not completely cut off from the outside world.
When humans believed they had invented new cosmic technology and sent communication signals to other galaxies, the particles of Lasasmus’ power, scattered during the battle, received all this, and thus initiated another invasion plan, which was also his resurrection plan.
He used his scattered particles to plant the seeds of his resurrection in human technology. Gradually, Lasasmus transferred his power, using technology as a carrier to invade. He tried many human hosts but failed each time, and some humans even detected his presence.
The ancient god, through technological products, invaded human bodies and brains like a virus, forcing them to become followers.
This was unacceptable to those humans, so they established the Revolution Plan, originally meant to resist the god’s invasion.
But eventually, Lasasmus successfully took over a human body, that of Russell, the leader of the Sha Wen faction.
This allowed him to directly control the weapons against him.
The leader of the Revolution Plan, Shen Siyuan, was destroyed by him using a book, and other members of the same group also died one by one.
Shen An watched his father resist the god he spoke of, raising a dagger to end his own life. He did not know that one day, in the future, he would make the same decision as his father.
At that time, the young Shen An knew nothing, only obtaining the book left by his father.
In fact, even his father could not turn the pages of that book smoothly because it was controlled by divine power, but Shen An easily opened it.
He did not know that he had already been marked by the god’s observation.
It was also that night that this young life summoned a powerful god.
The god, who had been falling endlessly, stopped falling and entered true punishment.
The Abyss of Time and Space found his only weakness, or rather, the only concern of this lonely god.
Using this, the Abyss of Time and Space created a vast, endless loop, starting from the moment this child summoned him.
He later learned what the endpoint was.
Under Lasasmus’s guidance, the Revolution Plan gradually turned into a slaughterhouse run by technology maniacs, with countless test subjects pushed in and then burned clean.
The mastermind controlled Russell, watching coldly, because he needed the extreme emotions of these test subjects, he needed entropy, as much as possible.
When Lasasmus realized that all this entropy, combined with all the chaos in human society, was far from enough to restore his sealed power, he decided to create a slaughterhouse for his feeding, a paradise for his revival.
Russell took over the game plan, creating the altar under divine power, a place following the law of the jungle, where death, loss, betrayal, failure… all continuously created chaotic entropy, gradually restoring him.
However, he who reached out from the Abyss of Time and Space could not escape the punishment of the loop. He was summoned, living through each day with Shen An, seeing his broken family after losing his father, witnessing his nearly insane mother self-harming, attending funerals with him, and burying the dead nightingale alone.
He accompanied Shen An through his gray childhood, witnessing his separation from his mother and sister, seeing how he survived each day of the experiments, watching him shatter into pieces and then glue himself back together bit by bit.
Until later, Shen An became An Wujiu, the boy whose every second of life he had been part of, turned into a perfect experiment.
An Wujiu was thrown into the altar, and he became the mark on An Wujiu’s body, accompanying him through life-and-death trials, step by step towards the end.
Until finally, when An Wujiu died.
It was then that he realized that An Wujiu’s death was the trigger for the next loop.
So Shen Ti experienced the pains of An Wujiu’s childhood over and over again, witnessing his death time and time again. He couldn’t even remember how many cycles there had been, various ways of dying, different scenes at the end, it was all too painful.
With each new cycle, he could feel An Wujiu’s pain more deeply, and his omniscient power as a god gradually blurred.
He could no longer see himself as a spectator; the repeated tragedies made it impossible to stay detached. Even knowing what would happen next, he could not prevent An Wujiu from encountering each new pain.
This immense sense of powerlessness overwhelmed him like seawater.
So this was punishment.
After countless cycles, An Wujiu left again, dying in front of him, and he didn’t even have the hands to hold him.
When An Wujiu lost his heartbeat, he knew he would repeat the cycle again.
But he did not want this, at least not as a useless god.
Even if it was just a butterfly that could briefly rest on his shoulder, as long as he could touch him and comfort him, anything but being a bystander, anything but being unable to do anything.
This strong desire materialized his power into a new form, a human.
It was a human form shaped by the countless cycles and the invisible influence of An Wujiu.
But he exhausted his remaining power just to become a human. The human body could not carry the omniscient memories of the Master of Time, so he forgot.
He didn’t even remember that he was in a loop.
The moment he woke up as a human, he knew nothing. When others politely asked his name, two characters suddenly popped into his mind.
“Shen Ti.”
“I am Shen Ti.”
Upon arriving at the altar, he remained very lonely. No one here could connect with him, no matter who they were. He was considered mentally ill, isolated, and forced to learn many useless things, gradually adapting to human society and learning to mimic ordinary people.
But that was not him; Shen Ti knew.
Nor were those people important.
Until he encountered An Wujiu again, in a game.
They met as opponents, and Shen Ti realized that he was the special one, the one who could stir his emotions.
But he forgot that he was in a loop and that one day he would face An Wujiu’s death.
During his time with An Wujiu, Shen Ti gradually regained his power.
He began to dream, and the dreams were mostly the same, all about An Wujiu’s death.
Finally, Shen Ti recovered some of his memories.
He foresaw An Wujiu’s death in this cycle.
But he didn’t expect that it wasn’t just him regaining power, but Lasasmus as well.
This time, An Wujiu’s death was different from before. He met the resurrected Lasasmus, who was now Noah.
Noah, through his restored omniscience, saw An Wujiu’s future and decided to go back in time to kill the young An Wujiu, to erase his existence, and further, to erase his encounter with Shen Ti.
By doing so, his brother wouldn’t betray him for a human, he wouldn’t be sealed, and he would control the entire universe.
In the final battle, Shen Ti discovered that Lasasmus had disappeared, leaving behind only numerous avatars to fight them.
He guessed the other’s plan and knew that to succeed, he might have to go back to An Wujiu’s past to stop Lasasmus from harming him, to let him live.
Thus, Shen Ti’s omniscient perspective from the past instantly returned, seeing An Wujiu’s childhood in the timeline.
But as he was reviewing the past timeline, the blood from Lasasmus’s attack on young An Wujiu, who had already traveled back, splattered across Shen Ti’s face, his brow, and his earlobe through the barrier of time.
Originally observing, Shen Ti returned to the past, once again taking on his true form, using his original power and abilities to repel Lasasmus and save An Wujiu at a crucial moment.
However, even though young Shen An survived, he did not live long enough to enter the altar, becoming a failed product of the Sha Wen experiments.
This was Shen Ti’s second-to-last cycle, the one closest to his last great loop.
The final great cycle began with An Wujiu’s death.
Shen Ti went through everything again, meeting An Wujiu once more, but this time a bit later, because his regained power was exhausted in the last great loop while battling Lasasmus.
Fortunately, An Wujiu also seemed to be delayed.
Just like the previous great loop, they met, fought, competed, and then fell in love.
Shen Ti couldn’t remember anything about the loop, couldn’t recall how he had been like Sisyphus, endlessly cycling through punishment.
He felt like an ordinary person, experiencing warmth and love.
And on the morning of October 24th, at the end of An Wujiu’s third loop, the torn Shen Ti recalled all his previous memories, including every great cycle he had experienced.
In that moment, Shen Ti understood why An Wujiu could influence the altar, spawn copies of the altar’s server, and create parallel universes. He also understood why only An Wujiu could traverse parallel universes, crossing the barriers of time, and fall into repeated rescue loops.
He also realized why he could hear An Wujiu’s inner thoughts, feel all his emotions, and empathize with him.
It was because he had given his heart to him.
In every previous great loop, when An Wujiu encountered Lasasmus, he couldn’t resist. How could an ordinary human resist the power of a god, even an incomplete one?
But what if he also had the power of a god?
In the last great loop, everything that happened to An Wujiu was the “fruit” planted by Shen Ti.
And now, he had to go back to plant the initial “cause,” or else everything would remain an empty observation, never becoming reality, unless he succeeded.
Cause and effect, cycles and repetition.
He also realized that everything he experienced in the loop was the result of observation, an unsettled reality with countless possibilities, like Schrödinger’s unopened box. To keep the cat inside alive, he must change it himself.
He needed to use the heart of a god to save An Wujiu.
Therefore, before An Wujiu’s fourth small cycle began, Shen Ti used An Wujiu’s time card, trading all his human life value to return to the moment An Wujiu was killed. He tried to maintain his human form, hoping young An Wujiu wouldn’t hate him.
But this return to the past was not just an observation; he would go back to before he was summoned by An Wujiu, when his father was still alive.
This time point meant he was still the complete evil god, the Master of Time, and Shen Ti’s human form couldn’t be maintained for long.
In this loop, just like the previous great cycle, An Wujiu was killed by Lasasmus, the human heart stopped beating, lying on the operating table, declared dead by the rescuing doctors.
That was how it was supposed to be.
But Shen Ti gave the heart of a god to An Wujiu, erasing the memory of their earlier encounter.
As a result, An Wujiu was reborn, step by step becoming the savior.
Only in this way could everything be smoothly connected. An Wujiu survived, living to the end, able to wield his power, seeking the perfect ending through each loop.
Only in this way could Shen Ti be reborn, from the body of his lover.
An Wujiu gave him a human name and a purpose to strive for.
And Shen Ti went back to save him, and in doing so, saved himself.
Both the god-slayer and the god’s only favor.
