All that came before (thanks to Legendary Orange Meow for the silver sponsorship)

Chapter 766: All that came before (thanks to Legendary Orange Meow for the silver alliance sponsorship)

Something was wrong!

Within the abruptly halted memory, Ji Jue raised his head and carefully studied the caretaker, whose features had long since blurred with the passing years.

Unfortunately, he could make out nothing.

Bustaman stood dumbstruck. He had never imagined that the lifelong ambition he had pursued so obsessively had come from nothing more than a casual afternoon conversation in a gallery, one he had barely noticed at the time.

He even began to doubt himself.

"Could it be... could I have remembered it wrong?" Bustaman asked stiffly. "Maybe my memories got mixed up. It's been so many years..."

"Perhaps. Some details might be off, but this was indeed where your obsession first took root."

Yan Chang's figure appeared. "Human memory is unstable. It changes and embellishes things far too easily. Yet among all your hazy recollections, this one alone is so clear."

His footsteps stopped opposite Theseus, before another old oil painting on the other side of the gallery. Looking up at it, he asked, "If your memory of Theseus is wrong, how do you explain this painting?"

Bustaman stiffly turned his head and looked behind him.

Directly opposite [Theseus] hung another old piece from the collection.

A counterfeit reproduction.

Black and crimson surged toward him.

At last, he noticed the only two points that remained clear in his hazy memories—things that even he had instinctively avoided, unwilling to recall them again.

His subconscious had resisted and rejected them, yet in this recollection, they were so clear.

In the painting, a savage-looking giant opened his bloody maw and swallowed the headless corpse in his hands... yet why were the eyes of such a cruel, hideous giant filled with terror?

Beneath the painting,