"I was already dead."
He Ao sat beside him, tilted his head up at the sky, and spoke calmly. "I just came back to life."
He paused, then slowly continued, "My parents gave me life, and you showed me the direction of my future. Now, I've repaid everything I owed you."
Hearing this, Old Gardener fell silent for a rare moment. He let out a hoarse sigh. "I don't think sending people to kill you was the wrong decision, but I truly didn't want to kill you."
He slightly withdrew his gaze and continued softly, "You inherited your parents' strengths—intelligent, sharp, and highly capable. You know, I never had children. For a long time, I treated you as my own son."
He Ao listened quietly, neither responding nor interrupting, merely listening in silence.
Old Gardener's voice carried traces of reminiscence and sorrow. "Before you defected, I had actually planned to arrange for you to enter the core of the Order Church and take over my position."
"But over these past decades,"
He Ao said calmly, "you never actually allowed me to come into contact with the true core of the Order Church."
"Yes," Old Gardener sighed softly. "I was indeed afraid. Afraid that once you came into contact with the Order Church, you would really uncover something and learn the true truth. You were too intelligent, too sharp."
He lightly brushed the dust from his clothes. "Sometimes, I thought about simply killing you. But I couldn't bring myself to do it. I had no reason to convince myself. Many times, I would wake from dreams, dreaming that you stood before me and questioned me."
He looked at He Ao and suddenly smiled slowly. "But when this day truly arrived, I found that I was calmer than I had imagined."
"When