In the reception hall, the human-shaped illusion standing there, forged entirely from ice, looked especially unreal.
Zero held Jade in his arms, walked slowly to the sofa, sat down, and placed the cat on his lap, stroking its back again and again.
He couldn't read any emotion from that faceless visage.
To be precise, except for Aha, perhaps none of the Aeons really had emotions.
Zero knew that, in order to let all the people of the Xianzhou ascend to a higher-dimensional world, he had used the Aether Resonance Engine at least twice.
Using the Aeons, and the entire universe, as fuel for the engine… unfortunately, judging from the result, he failed, and was forced into this endless cycle.
All of this, he owed to the Aeon of Remembrance, Fuli.
According to past records, Fuli rarely appeared before mortals, but twice already, this Aeon had personally sought him out to restore his lost memories.
This time was the third.
For an Aeon, what could possibly require Them to act personally? Why not send a Messenger instead?
Zero had already guessed before, that in countless cycles he couldn't even remember, he must have always chosen the same ending for the Xianzhou Alliance, ascension.
After all, Fuli understood him too well.
In Zero's backpack were many tools with different functions. Whether or not he could fully use all of them didn't matter, Fuli somehow knew exactly how to break his Mirror Flower, Water Moon.
That alone was enough to make him suspicious.
It couldn't be that Fuli had seen all his items countless times through endless cycles, right?
If his guess was true, then Fuli was really something else… Truly relentless, no wonder They were an Aeon.
Zero couldn't help sighing softly, then began to switch perspectives, trying to think from Fuli's point of view.
If he were Fuli, walking the path of destiny, doing his cosmic duties just fine, only for some human to suddenly appear, a human who wanted to dominate the universe, and this human, in order to lead his people to ascend, started using Them, the other Aeons, and the whole universe as a fuel source…
To make it simpler, it'd be like an engineer following a client's every whim, revising the same design over and over, dozens of times.
And when the engineer thought it was finally done, the client suddenly said, "It doesn't feel right. I can't say why. Let's go back to the very first version, shall we?"
Yeah… What he'd done before would be like erasing millennia, even tens of thousands of years, of Fuli's work.
And that process repeated again and again, countless times.
Just imagining it made his blood pressure spike.
Zero wasn't the same person he once was. Thinking of what Fuli must have endured, he actually felt a flicker of guilt for about a second.
Why only a second? Simple, because he hadn't really had a choice.
If Fuli could've killed him, They would've done it long ago. Why bother redoing everything over and over?
For an Aeon or anyone who'd tried to take his life and the lives of the Xianzhou people, the fact that he could even feel any guilt, wasn't that already saintly of him?
Besides, since he had fallen from a higher dimension into a lower one… didn't his existence, in some way, benefit this world?
Or was that just an illusion? Because he definitely felt like he'd been kidnapped and dumped into some backwater.
Zero couldn't help letting his mind wander.
In his previous life, Fuli and the Aeon of Erudition had interfered with the research of the colossus, preventing him from saving Lan, who had been frozen by the nobles of Luofu…
What outcome had They wanted? Was it to make Lan ascend as an Aeon?
Zero began to reason backwards, deducing Their goal from the results.
Once Lan became an Aeon, he would surely have done everything in his power to cooperate with her.
After all, she was the ultimate "hate-powered NPC", the more hatred she drew, the stronger she got. How could his past self have resisted recruiting her?
The Aeons' motive was obvious, one word, stall.
Stall him, stop him from playing his "coloring game," wait for the Hunt to ascend, and for Lan to gain enough leverage to make him step back voluntarily.
The more Zero thought, the further his mind drifted. He began to doubt the cause of his own death.
He and Akivili had died together, could that have been the result of Fuli and the other Aeons' deliberate guidance?
As a "higher-dimensional invader," nearly immortal, how had he even died?
If, over almost five thousand years, his ultimate goal, the one thing keeping him going, had been to return home…
Five thousand years of endless labor, only to discover that the goal you'd sacrificed everything for never existed in the first place.
It was like choosing a small asteroid to write your thesis on, only for it to explode right before graduation.
Thinking about it, his past self, with that unstable mental state, probably went insane.
How had he died? Lan had said that he'd end up confronting many Aeons, that he would die. So was he killed by all of them together?
And after death, did he become nourishment for the Tree?
Impossible. He didn't even fit into this world's system.
If the Aether Resonance Engine couldn't bring the Xianzhou people to ascension, then by the same logic, he couldn't become nourishment for a lower-dimensional world either, even if they swallowed him, it'd only give them indigestion.
Then he remembered what Aha had said before leaving, when binding the system to him, "Everything returns to its rightful owner."
If Aha hadn't been lying… then just how miserable had his death been? Did he literally explode into loot drops? Is that how Aha found the system?
Countless possibilities flashed through his mind. In his past life, his brain, running on a constant "insanity buff", had so few intact memories left. It was like a device that had been factory-reset over and over again.
Even with fragmented memory, Zero could still be sure of one thing,
This cycle, this particular reincarnation, was the best outcome that Fuli and the Aeon of Erudition could manage.
It was the best version of events where Zero didn't drain the entire universe like an oil field.
At the very least, Fuli, who knew everything, must have been willing to compromise, for that 0.01% chance of success.
Facing this Aeon who might know him better than anyone, Zero didn't hesitate. Instead, he decided to do the opposite.
You think I'm going to repeat the same mistakes? Wrong. I'm a good guy now, I'm going to make peace with you and even help you out.
After all, he no longer had any thoughts of leading the Xianzhou to ascend. Putting aside their past conflicts, at least on that point, he and Fuli could find common ground, become the best of allies.
Zero stroked Jade, feeling the lifeless, gas-can-like weight under his palm. He looked toward Fuli, still smiling kindly.
"So? Do you need my help again?"
Seeing that Fuli didn't answer, Zero didn't lose heart.
"Even though I just want to live as an ordinary diviner now, and enjoy a sweet, blissful romance with my beloved…"
"But if it's you, if you ask, I can make an exception."
To his surprise, Fuli rejected him outright, "You need not do anything. Just remember our agreement."
Fuli raised a hand, and a lotus flower of pure ice materialized, imbued with divine power.
The ice lotus floated slowly toward Zero.
He pressed down on the restless cat, who was itching to swat at it, and used his system's backpack to store Fuli's gift.
He couldn't understand why Fuli spoke so little. Surely They weren't this terse just because his insight made Them wary?
But Zero wasn't an ordinary person, he was someone who could make Lan, a near-mute chatterbox of a god, start talking on her own.
Granted, that had been because she couldn't stand being called "Your Highness" anymore and had come to confront him herself… but still, that was impressive, wasn't it?
Zero continued, "Why don't we be honest for once, have an open, straightforward talk, hmm?"
"To tell the truth, I really admire you. To endure this endless cycle, over and over, for the sake of all beings in the universe…"
This time, Fuli finally moved. They turned their icy sculpted face toward him, silently.
Zero instantly understood the unspoken message, Don't you know why there's a cycle in the first place?
He kept a straight face.
His tone grew more sincere. "That was all in the past! How could I have known how powerful the Aether Resonance Engine was? If only you'd told me earlier…"
Fuli had warned him not to study the engine, but hadn't explained the consequences.
Of course, even if They had, he might not have believed Them.
It was like with Jade, no matter how much he lectured her, she'd still mess around like the little gas can she was.
Zero talked for quite a while to that frozen sculpture of a face, and didn't get even the faintest reaction.
He started doubting his life choices.
He knew he was easily misunderstood.
Even when his thoughts were perfectly straightforward, people always overread them.
As a "higher-dimensional invader," incompatible with the Aeons' systems, he could withstand the Fruits of Abundance and even Lan's divine power that could have killed him instantly.
Even Aeons could slip up in front of him.
But this time, after all his talking, Fuli didn't show a single crack?
Could it be because, after reincarnating into Luofu, he'd gone from "higher-dimensional invader" to native, losing those very traits?
If what Fuli said was true, that destiny couldn't be defied, then, did he still have the power to change others' fates?
Out of nowhere, Zero asked, "Dear friend, were you the one who killed me?"
Fuli shook Their head, and in that distant, echoing voice, like chanting a riddle, said, "What I gave you just now… is part of your memory."
Zero's hand, mid-stroke on the cat, paused. His eyebrow twitched slightly, and he smiled even brighter.
Part of his memory? What's that supposed to mean? Are They messing with him on purpose?
Before he could start spiraling again, his alarm went off.
Time for work.
Zero had no choice but to pull himself back and stop thinking.
"What a pity. I have to go to work. Let's talk next time."
He picked up Jade, pressed his face against hers, took one of her paws, and waved it at Fuli.
His voice was full of cheer, "Bye-bye, Dear friend~"
Fuli's fading figure froze for a split second, then vanished in a flash of white light.
Zero didn't mind being recorded by Fuli. He had already drawn his conclusion.
He hadn't lost his "higher-dimensional invader" traits, it's just that he hadn't been impressive enough earlier to make Fuli slip.
Zero rubbed and squished Jade gleefully.
The cat, no, the heroic little cat, had done a great job. She deserved a can. Two cans.
He threw away all thoughts of putting Jade on a diet and happily opened two cans for her before heading to the Divination Commission right on time.
After the order to mobilize went out across Luofu, all six Commissions got busy. Fortunately, their chief diviner, Xiao Lin, was a total overachiever, dragging all his equally overachieving subordinates into an all-nighter.
Overtime had nothing to do with Zero, who'd been reassigned to the archives.
At his desk, he calmed down and began rifling through his system backpack, searching thoroughly, but the piece of paper with the fable and the "romantic scenery" was gone.
Worried, he grabbed a blank sheet from his desk and tried to rewrite what he remembered.
He couldn't recall the fable, but he remembered three lines...
[To anger every cat and dog, only to share with them the most romantic scenery.]
[To climb to the tallest branch of the tree, and share the most romantic scenery with them.]
[To climb alone to the tallest branch of the tree.]
He put a check mark after each line, thinking about how to hint at the repeated cycles.
After some thought, he opened his jade terminal and searched for an image, a Möbius strip.
Never mind its use in math or physics, visually, it symbolized endless looping.
He wasn't interested in math or physics, but from a forum he'd read before, he knew that a ring shaped like a Möbius strip represented infinite cycles and endless love.
He drew the shape carefully on the paper.
When he finished marking it, he hesitated.
Should he include Jingliu's name? Probably not, right?
If this were a game, this would be the "best ending", the one Fuli and the Aeon of Erudition had fought tooth and nail to reach, with only a 0.01% probability of success. If something happened now…
Wouldn't the Aeons die of fury?
Zero decisively put down his pen, stood up, and wandered the library shelves for a random book to kill time.
Thanks to his past life's corporate work experience, he finished two books in one day.
He ordered takeout in advance, and as soon as the shift ended, he hurried home, placing that paper carefully at the very front of his system backpack.
While eating and scrolling through Jade terminal, he unexpectedly received a message from Jingliu, who'd been unreachable since heading to the battlefield.
[Jingliu: Encountered fellow Cloud Knights who also follow the Command of the Bow.]
Before he could reply, she quickly sent another.
[Jingliu: We're regrouping.]
Zero could only respond with a cat-heart emoji.
As his weekend approached, she still hadn't replied.
He opened his system backpack and looked at the ice lotus Fuli had given him, reading the system's description carefully.
Perhaps as time passed, the system was gradually freeing itself from Aha's influence, its text was becoming more serious.
[A gift from the Aeon of Remembrance. Contains partial memories.]
He took a deep breath and chose to use the item.
Rather than deducing from scraps of text, he might as well restore his full memory.
———
The first thing he saw was a fleeting, incomplete scene.
A gray-haired young man wearing a black hat.
Akivili.
"Dear friend…"
Akivili called softly, those golden eyes, once empty, now filled with faint pity.
Compared to that incomprehensible sadness, Zero's own heart was torn apart, half burning with rage that wanted to destroy everything, half flooded with deep, peaceful calm.
Akivili took off the wide-brimmed hat, lowering it to cover his eyes.
The image began to dissolve, colors melting from black into shifting blocks of light, distorted, abstract shapes sharpening into clarity.
Zero glanced at the scene.
[Xianzhou: Yaoqing]
He looked down, he was lying on a bed. A doctor from the Alchemy Commission sat beside him, and the Chief Strategist stood nearby.
The doctor held a bowl of black herbal medicine to his lips. He instinctively took a sip, and the bitter taste instantly shot up to the top of his skull.
Holding that mouthful, he forced himself to swallow and looked up at the Chief Strategist, asking calmly, "You're going to kill me, aren't you?"
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