I returned to my bedroom.
Mother was already yawning. Older cats got sleepy easily. Even though she had been given a great many extra years of life, Cat mother was, in the end, an over-age tricolor cat.
"Back?"
"Yes. Someone was fighting outside just now." I made up a story off the cuff.
I was terribly troubled. I had no idea how to explain the countless complicated and absurd things to Mother.
Should I stick to my usual style and be a self-destructing truck through and through, or use a gentler strategy and give Mother a little time to prepare herself mentally?
Reality did not give me much time to think.
Soon, I was already recounting the events of the past.
"I met Ye Qingxian when I was three."
"She told me there was a place where, as long as I was willing to work hard, I would never go hungry again."
"I was very clever back then. I didn't think for long before agreeing."
"As long as I could eat my fill, what did suffering count for?"
"Ye Qingxian didn't take me to the Upper Realm. She took me straight to the fifth-level world—the Supreme Heaven."
"Supreme Heaven was, as its name suggested, the highest place, eternally suspended above all else and shining upon the myriad heavens."
"There were sixty-six realms in the Supreme Heaven."
"It was a place where stars shone brilliantly and prodigies emerged one after another."
"Your daughter has lived up to expectations. I can now be considered a minor prodigy." A trace of pride still glimmered in my eyes.
A minor prodigy was far from my endpoint.
My goal was to prove to everyone that I, too, had the qualifications to be listed in the dazzling record of the gathered elite.
Ever since I awakened