My mom is waiting for treatment, and you're summoning me to be a hero?

Beyond the stone gate at dusk lay only emptiness.

There was no ground, no dome, no holy light, and no humming of laws.

There was only an endless, viscous darkness, where even the flow of time became blurred.

Gao Yang sat cross-legged in the void, his white robe hanging down over nothingness, his face still the ordinary appearance of a forty-year-old middle-aged man.

However, this time there was another figure besides him.

He was a young man, dressed in a plain white robe, with delicate features. He was Bai Mu'en, who had just ascended from the Arena of Life and Death.

The pope's soul trembled slightly, and the light at its edges flickered uncertainly.

He knelt down before Gao Yang, his head almost buried in his chest, his voice hoarse and broken.

"My Lord God... I was so foolish. I am guilty. I was deceived by him... deceived by him from beginning to end. I used my imagination to replicate his power, but I was devoured by my own imagination. I lost the Holy Tower Kingdom, I lost the Holy See, I lost the high hopes you placed in me... I..."

Gao Yang raised his hand to interrupt him.

The movement was very light, like brushing away a wisp of smoke.

His voice echoed in the void, flat and devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

"You are the only hero in nearly a thousand years to have passed the test of time, and you are the Pope I personally chose. How could you be guilty?"

Bai Mu'en was stunned.

He raised his head, his gray eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment.

He was utterly shattered by Lin Mo in the Death Arena.

As he knelt in the blood pit waiting to die, he felt like a complete failure.

But at that moment, the gods told him that he was innocent.

"But……"

His lips moved, but before he could speak, Gao Yang spoke again.

"You did a great job."

Bai Mu'en's soul trembled violently.

He looked into Gao Yang's eyes, which seemed to hold the stars, trying to find a trace of mockery, a trace of comfort, or even a trace of emotion... but he found nothing, only an endless galaxy flowing with golden runes.

He doesn't understand.

He couldn't understand why the gods would say "well done," even though he had messed everything up.

He wanted to ask questions and pour out all his confusion.

But the moment his lips parted, the void before him suddenly distorted.

Darkness recedes, and light surges forth.

The yellow of the dirt road, the green of the locust trees, and the blue of my mother's apron.

He found himself standing beneath the crooked locust tree at the village entrance, a tree he remembered from his past.

The mother stood under the tree, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand, looking out of the village.

Her hair was still black, and the wrinkles on her face weren't as deep as I remembered. Her apron pocket was bulging with a handful of peanuts.

Bai Mu'en looked down at her hands... her six-year-old hands, with blisters still remaining on her palms from climbing the tree yesterday.

He remembered, it was today.

My father sent a message through someone saying that he would be home today. My mother was so excited that she didn't sleep all night. She got up early in the morning and steamed a pot of white flour buns.

Thinking of this, he subconsciously looked towards the village entrance.

In the distance, a figure strode quickly from the end of the dirt road.

It wasn't the heavy, sluggish pace I remembered.

The figure walked briskly, carrying a bulging snakeskin bag on his shoulder, his footsteps kicking up a small cloud of dust on the dirt road.

He looked very confident and spirited.

Only when he got closer could he see that his father's face was much younger than he remembered. There weren't as many wrinkles around his eyes, and although his skin was still dark, it had a healthy glow that Bai Mu'en had never seen before.

Upon seeing the mother and son, the father threw the snakeskin bag on the ground, ran over in three steps, and opened his arms to hug both his mother and him at the same time.

The force was so great that it lifted Bai Mu'en off the ground, the stubble on his face stinging painfully.

The man burst into laughter.

"Business is good this year, and my boss gave me two extra months' salary! I plan to go to the south next year to start a small business... I've been there for two years and I know the business well, so I won't have to worry about finding a way."

The mother buried her head in the father's arms, her shoulders trembling slightly.

She cried, but the corners of her mouth turned up when she cried.

Looking at her mother's face, Bai Mu'en realized that she never remembered what her mother looked like when she smiled.

This was the first time he had ever seen it.

Then life was like a photographic record that had been fast-forwarded, with images flashing past his eyes frame by frame.

Every frame is bright and vibrant, a stark contrast to the drab old images he remembered.

My father went to the south to do business. The first time he only made a few thousand yuan, the second time he doubled his money, and the third time he opened his own small shop.

My mother moved to town and rented a house with a balcony, where she kept seven or eight potted plants.

She took photos when the flowers bloomed and sent them to Bai Mu'en's school.

Bai Mu'en got into a good school, found a good job after graduation, and bought a house in the city.

He brought his parents to live in the city. His father's back was still straight, and his mother's hair turned white very, very slowly.

Urged by his parents, he went on several blind dates and finally married a girl with a bright, smiling face.

On the day of the wedding, his father drank too much and could barely stand while holding the wine glass. Yet, he insisted on holding his father's hand and talking nonstop. He couldn't remember a single word his father said, only that his father's calloused hands were trembling.

He had a child, and his parents became grandparents.

The mother held her granddaughter on the balcony, looking at the flowers, humming the nursery rhyme that used to lull her to sleep when she was little.

The father was dozing on the sofa, with a yellow dog lying at his feet, its tail idly sweeping the floor.

Everything is so good.

This is exactly the life Bai Mu'en longed for, the life where his wishes came true.

But these are ultimately illusions.

In the void, Gao Yang quietly watched Bai Mu'en's soul.

The boyish-looking soul was curled up in a ball, hugging itself, with a genuine smile on its face that Bai Mu'en had never seen before in his life.

He was immersed in the illusion woven by Gao Yang, living the life he should have had.

That was a life without betrayal, without deception, and without questioning the injustice of fate at his parents' funeral.

Bai Mu'en did not kneel in front of the mourning hall and roar, "God, you are so unfair!" He was not chosen by the summoning array in despair, he did not live a life of fear and trembling on a strange continent, and he did not exchange his honesty and kindness inch by inch for blind faith and obedience to the gods.

But an illusion is still just an illusion.

Gao Yang stretched out his hand, his five fingers loosely clenched.

Bai Mu'en's soul suddenly shone with a dazzling golden light, and countless extremely fine time law patterns spread outward from the core of his soul, cutting his soul body into countless fine fragments.

The scene in the illusion began to collapse... The mother's smile shattered into specks of light, the father's back vanished into dust, the bride's curved eyes turned into fireflies, and the flowers on the balcony withered petal by petal.

But Bai Mu'en was still immersed in the illusion and hadn't woken up, with that satisfied smile still on her lips.

He was unaware that he was being refined.

Or rather, even if he knew, he wouldn't care.

The last fragment of his soul merged into Gao Yang's body, completing another piece of the puzzle of the laws of time.

Gao Yang withdrew his finger, and only silence remained in the void.

The faint specks of light emanating from the fragments of Bai Mu'en's soul floated in the darkness for a moment before extinguishing completely.

The Pope, the strongest demigod on the continent, the agent of the gods... left not even a trace in this boundless void.

Gao Yang closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Then he spoke softly to the empty void.

"Too slow. Lin Mo, when are you going to stop?"

As soon as he finished speaking, Gao Yang closed his eyes, a scene of the human empire flashing through his mind, and then took a step forward.