Didn't you go to Teyvat to earn money to support me?

"Your current personality... well, the past 50,000 years in the Paradise of the Past were indeed boring. During this time, you only had me. Our 50,000-year history is not as exciting as your life on Earth in the last ten years or so. You pounced on me the moment we met. As Eve, you wouldn't have such courage." Aponia's tone was calm, but Shen Liang could faintly hear the subtext.

He quickly put on a sweet smile: "Mommy Aponia, that's not how it works. People are more influenced by their most recent memories. But for me, the most important memory will always be Mommy Aponia, without a doubt!"

"Baby, you're a bit cunning."

"This is what growing up is all about. Fifty thousand years have passed, and I can't keep wallowing in self-pity as an artificial being. Thinking back on my past memories now, they're both embarrassing and childish. I was always putting on a cold, icy act..."

"Baby, don't you want to be a pampered little wolf anymore?"

"Of course I don't... Okay, I can never get rid of this title. Stop looking at me like that, I admit it... I really didn't know that older sister-style girls all have this kind of personality. You guys are like this too, and that Yae-no-Fox Inazuma is like this too..."

"Yae no Kitsune?" Aponia was taken aback. "You have another woman outside?"

Shen Liang quickly shut up. The Paradise of the Past had no outside information, so theoretically, Aponia couldn't possibly know about his adventures outside.

Sure enough, the mature and tall nun's eyes softened even more. "I overlooked something. If you can send a woman so beautiful that even I am a little surprised into the Land of the Dead, how could you possibly suppress your true nature outside, doll?"

Shen Liang was not surprised but pleased upon hearing this.

“Cecily… Mother Aponia, have you resolved the Saintess’s problem?”

"Holy Maiden?" The nun's gaze was no longer gentle; she stared coldly at the happy boy.

Chapter Sixty-Eight: Throw him and his saintess together into Teyvat!

Shen Liang lived in the Paradise of the Past, which was modeled after Eden's Golden Garden, for a full 50,000 years. He knew the patterns on every garden, every room, and even every pillar better than Eden himself.

Aponia raised her hand, "Access to the management permissions for the Paradise of the Dead."

As one of only two human life forms in the Land of the Dead, Aponia also transformed herself into a server supporting the Land of the Dead, thus ensuring its continued existence. However, there are actually two administrators of the Land of the Dead. The other one is Klein, who also lives in the Land of the Dead. However, since the pre-civilization era, Klein has had his Herrscher core removed by Shen Liang, so he lives as a puppet and cannot be considered human in essence.

As for Shen Liang, although he claims to be the Lord of the Paradise of the Past, he does not actually possess the authority over it. When designing this database, everyone knew that authority could not be granted to an immature Son of Man; at the very least, Aponia had to be given the ability to control him… This was not actually to influence Shen Liang, but rather to influence Aponia. Everyone was well aware that their doting on the Son of Man was instinctive, as Primarchs. Once Shen Liang was given authority on par with Aponia, after fifty thousand years of interaction, Aponia's doting on him would only increase day by day, inevitably leading to the complete loss of her dominance over him.

Therefore, Aponia's highest authority must be set from the very beginning of the database's establishment, so that even if she wanted to provide Shen Liang with various conveniences, she would be powerless to do so. Women are born with an emotion that they cannot abandon or overcome, called "motherhood," and the Son of Man is precisely the one who is best at exploiting this emotion... Since the purpose of the Son of Man's plan is to test him and help him grow, Aponia must personally take control of the Paradise of the Past.

Soon, recent data on the Paradise of the Past appeared, and Aponia clicked on it casually. Shen Liang turned his head and saw a life support tank rising in the center of the church through information recombination.

Soon the surrounding churches changed their style, and a few seconds later, this place transformed from a holy and beautiful church into a life support medical room in a paradise on earth. Next to the transparent life support tanks were many tubes that sustained life, and a beautiful girl with white hair flowing upwards, sleeping in the life support liquid, was hugging her knees and floating in the tank.

To be precise, she wasn't a young girl, but she possessed the stunning beauty and fair skin of one. Even in her slumber, one could still glimpse the unparalleled splendor she had in life. After all, she was the pinnacle of Earth's extraordinary abilities, the chosen one born in the Earth's era.

—Cecilia Shaniat.

“Sister Lia.” Shen Liang was briefly startled, then realized what was happening and quickly turned her head away.

Aponia glanced at him quietly, then tapped the data panel again, and the woman in the life support tank put on a white dress.

Shen Liang breathed a sigh of relief and carefully examined the saintess who seemed to still be alive.

"Only twenty years, kid, you're too timid." Aponia chuckled.

"Cowardly? I don't think so. I'm the coward, not Eve." Shen Liang glanced at her strangely. "Mom Aponia, all these years I've used my ordinary strength to intervene in national wars and challenge the gods. My life in the last twenty years has been far more domineering than the tens of thousands of years before, hasn't it?"

"I'm not referring to courage in that regard."

Shen Liang didn't understand either, but his attention was drawn to the IV tube extending from the wall. He thought for a while and asked, "Actually, I was just wondering, is our Paradise of the Past built on a database of data, or on a golden garden in the real world?"

He really cares about this.

When he woke up, he realized he was in the body of Shen Liang, an Earthling, and that he had probably been asleep in the Paradise of the Past for a long time. The timeline, in particular, should have started after he met Kevin on the German battlefield, awakened his memories of the Paradise of the Past, and was then pulled into it.

The time spent in the dream cycle was roughly proportional to how much time had passed in the real world. During this period, his body was kept alive in the afterlife by intravenous infusions, and his weakness and hair that reached the ground when he woke up proved this.

Cecilia is currently being kept alive in a life support tank, which uses life support technology from a previous civilization. It is clear that Aponia has done a lot for Cecilia during this period... These are all methods that can only be used by "influencing the real world".

However, the Paradise of the Past is clearly just a database.

Just like this entire paradise complex, which is essentially just a database simulating the Golden Garden, Aponia can easily transform the surrounding environment into other environments, which should theoretically just be simulated information.

Throughout their 50,000 years together, Shen Liang had always thought this way: he believed that he and Aponia's bodies had been stored elsewhere or that they had simply disappeared, and that they communicated entirely through their thoughts uploaded to the database... But now it seems that it's more than that.

"Past Paradise is the information repository of the Fire Chasing Civilization. It exists between information and physicality, serving as both an information repository and a cluster of buildings built upon the real world," Aponia said calmly. "We record everything that happens on Earth. The operation of anything is essentially the flow of pheromones. There is no difference between the real world and the information world. When you seek us out, it exists in the real world; when no one seeks us out, it is hidden in the data stream of the Fire Chasing Civilization's main server... For security reasons, the main server is not on Earth."

"Where is that?"

Why do we call the 'Paradise of the Past' the 'Project for the Son of Man'?

"Huh? Why?"

"Twenty-two years have passed, baby, and you seem to have lost some of the keenness you had in Eve's time."

"As an ordinary person who has lived for so long, I must have become a little complacent, right...? Mother Aponia, you mean... uh, my system?"

“Möbius has stored the Paradise of the Past in your mind, for you are an immortal serpent,” Aponia whispered. “Only you, who are immortal, can have an immortal paradise. Only the child who chases the flame can save everything.”

“Actually, I’ve always thought that you should change your habit of speaking in a soft and sentimental way all the time, Mom Aponia… Don’t hit my head, I’m already short enough!” Shen Liang ran to the side, pondered for a while, and then said, “However, the operation of things is information itself. Information and matter are just two ways of reflecting things. I agree with that.”

"This is the foundation upon which the paradise of the past exists, and it is also the support you rely on to redeem everything, my child."

“I understand.” Shen Liang nodded.

In actual history, the Moths of Flame ultimately failed to defeat the Herrscher of the End. Apart from a few individuals like Kevin and Huaneng who entered the Vault, most of them had to stay behind to die.

His only act of resistance in history, despite his usual obedience, was as the "executor of the Son of Man Project," making the sole demand that everyone input their memories... that is, their thought information, into the Paradise of the Past.

Memory is the most powerful pheromone.

Because the Pure Land of Past Lives has the ability to preserve pheromones of everything that happens on Earth, it is the world's largest repository of civilization information. Therefore, these memories are essentially a "life box".

Memories are preserved in the afterlife, and even after death, the pheromones remain. In simpler terms, the soul remains concentrated in the afterlife, in the form of data.

Under normal circumstances, this doesn't mean much... Ethically speaking, these data souls only contain memories from the time the original body recorded them; memories not recorded by the original body simply don't exist, such as those from when they died in battle...

From a layman's perspective, these data souls cannot be considered the souls of the deceased; they are merely backups.

but……

"The Land of the Past records everything. As long as I can gather back the pheromones that dissipated after their deaths and combine them with their souls, it will be a true resurrection," Shen Liang said decisively. "Just like when I searched for pheromones in the ley lines of Teyvat."

Aponia looked at him with a smile.

In fact, the Land of the Past is modeled after another world on the Tree of Imaginary Numbers, created using the unique "ley lines" found in the "Teyvat world".

The earth's veins can remember everything that happens on the land, and the Paradise of the Past lives bears the same responsibility. As a Paradise of the Past lives that has entered the quantum state, it has in fact been monitoring the entire solar system. The computation of the quantum state is completely unrestricted, and everything that happens in the world every second is recorded here, including the path to the destruction of previous civilizations.

“Now I’m carrying the burden of more than just the heroic spirits of Teyvat; I’m carrying the burden of Earth as well.” Shen Liang sighed. “It’s the same old routine, right? Find a suitable candidate for a Stigmata and resurrect a Hero. Did you really not consider what if I can’t activate the Stigmata? What if I can’t find a suitable candidate that I can attract?”

“Then we’ll wait until you find it. We have plenty of time.” Aponia smiled faintly. “System activation requires you to come into contact with Honkai energy, but you are special. You will come into contact with Honkai sooner or later.”

"Speaking of which, I was already in my twenties when I suddenly shrank because of this?" Shen Liang suddenly wondered if this was the reason why she suddenly became only 1.5 meters tall when she was writing novels and living in a mansion on Earth.

"Activating the system will require you to reawaken your Holy Mark and return to your true form, which will naturally drain a large amount of your life force, but that's okay... snakes are immortal creatures."

"The problem is, after you shrunk me, you didn't even consider turning me back! I feel like I won't be able to go back to being 1.8 meters tall even in several years!"

"Change back?" Aponia looked at her frantic little wolf in confusion, blinking. "Your true form... isn't this your height?"

Shen Liang gave up struggling.

This seems to be his fate. If he wants to regain the power of the "Son of Man," he must accept everything about his past self. This includes, but is not limited to, the boundless life force passed down to him by Möbius and the appearance, height, and physique that Alicia predetermined for him in the womb…

He snapped out of his reverie and looked at the sleeping Cecilia.

"Your 'Saintess'?" Aponia combed through Shen Liang's excessively long black hair, her tone somewhat cold.

"Sister Leah is of course the Holy Maiden."

"Sister Leah...that's a very affectionate way to address her. Is her daughter your girlfriend?"

“Well, once I materialize everyone in the Paradise of the Past, Mother Aponia can also meet Senior Sister.” Shen Liang smiled frankly. “In the Paradise of the Past, everything can be monitored. I think Mother Aponia knows about my relationship with Senior Sister, right? Although a lot has happened, Senior Sister Kiana is indeed the first girl I have feelings for during my life on Earth.”

Aponia paused slightly, but the slight dissatisfaction she had just felt dissipated with the boy's honest words.

"The girl you like...would you like to bring her to meet me?"

“We have to let Mother Aponia take a look.” Shen Liang turned around and gently hugged the nun who seemed a little flustered. “Don’t worry, Mother Aponia, no one can take your place in my heart.”

"Didn't you already have a mother named Maria on Earth? This Miss Cecilia seems to treat you like her own daughter as well."

Aponia herself vaguely realized the subtle meaning behind her words, and a faint blush rose to her face.

“But Aponia, you’re the most special.” Shen Liang gently rubbed his face against hers, a way Aponia had been most familiar with for so many years. “Don’t worry, Aponia, I can never escape from you. After all, a child can never…”

A slender finger gently blocked Shen Liang's lips.

The beautiful nun gazed tenderly at the boy: "Don't say it, doll. Never say the rest."

Shen Liang remained silent, then smiled.

For fifty thousand years, he and Aponia had been inseparable, their understanding so profound that they were practically one. Their bond transcended all boundaries; whether in the Fire-Chasing Civilization or Earth's civilization, there were probably no two people in the world more intimate, more doting, or more intimately familiar with each other.

But it is precisely because of this love that some things remain secrets that cannot be revealed, even after 50,000 years.

“Miss Cecilia’s life can naturally be saved. Given the methods of the Past Paradise, preserving her physical body is not difficult.” Aponia seemed somewhat embarrassed and changed the subject. “However, Miss Cecilia is the most outstanding warrior of this era. Her strength reminds me of Kevin, but the price of this strength is that she is more terrifyingly corrupted by Honkai energy. Specifically, her body can have its last life force locked away, but that life force isn’t even enough to revive her. Moreover, the Past Paradise can only prevent the corruption from spreading, not eliminate it.”

“Honkai erosion is almost unsolvable. Lia was already like this from the beginning, and now it’s just getting worse,” Shen Liang said. “The creative power of the Black Abyss White Flower can only repair the body, not the Honkai energy erosion. The Teyvat Continent’s Transformation of the Sea and Moon technique can only make her feel better, but it can’t deal with the erosion either… All the efforts I’ve made before have basically been prolonging her life rather than curing it. The way to cure it… the system told me is in Liyue.”

"The Child of Man System will connect to the ley lines in Teyvat. The system's method is the method the ley lines told me, but I haven't found it yet." Shen Liang calmed his breathing and said as calmly as possible, "So, I need to return to Teyvat. Please... Mother Aponia, send me out."

Aponia tilted her head back, crossed her arms over her chest, and silently declared her rejection.

“Mother Aponia,” Shen Liang said softly, “it was destined, you know, I had to go back to Teyvat sooner or later. I would eventually… shed my serpent skin.”

The nun remained kneeling and praying with her eyes closed, ignoring the boy in front of her.

"In order not to affect the timeline and prevent time from correcting me, please erase all my memories... It's okay, Mother Aponia. It's only a decade or two. Eve's life, Shen Liang's life, I've experienced so many lives, what's one more?"