Yan'er will honor him, respect him, and love him for the rest of her life!

Qin Yan'er led Ye Yuan toward her residence.

Their residence was in a slum within the imperial capital, and Ye Yuan's somewhat ornate attire looked completely out of place here.

The moment he stepped into the slum, everyone's gaze converged on him, and quite a few people began to stir restlessly, but upon seeing the Royal Knight emblem on Ye Yuan's chest, they abandoned their intentions.

Finally, under Qin Yan'er's guidance, Ye Yuan arrived in front of a low-lying shack at the edge of the slum.

To call it a house was a stretch; it was actually a crude shelter constructed from a few large, tattered rags and a withered tree.

Qin Yan'er turned her head and said, "Big Brother, Mom is right inside."

After saying this, she ran into the room and shouted, "Mom, I've brought a big brother here, and he's willing to lend us money!"

On the bed, a woman with an extremely pale complexion slowly turned to look at her daughter.

"Oh? Please, invite him in." The woman's voice was hoarse, as if she might depart at any moment.

Ye Yuan walked inside.

The moment the woman saw him, she froze for a few seconds.

Ye Yuan also froze for a few seconds; he didn't know how to describe the woman before him.

Her entire body was nothing but skin and bones, her hair had turned completely white without a trace of black, and there was not a hint of color on her face.

Her whole being radiated an overwhelming aura of death.

He was somewhat shocked that this woman was even still alive! Let alone capable of speaking!

"Yan'er, you go outside for a moment; Mom has some things to say to this big brother."

Little Yan'er nodded, "Okay." Then she ran outside.

In Ye Yuan's view, this woman wasn't suffering from an illness at all; rather, her lifespan was nearing its end.

"Your body..." The words reached Ye Yuan's lips, but he ultimately couldn't bring himself to say them.

"It's fine, I know my own body."

"I never expected that I would be able to see you while I was on my deathbed."

The woman stared straight into Ye Yuan's eyes and said calmly, "You are not from this world, are you?"

Ye Yuan's pupils constricted, and he asked in surprise, "Are you one too?!"

Coming from Earth was a secret he had never told anyone; could she also be from Earth? But how did this woman know?

The woman continued, "Don't worry, I mean no harm. Come to think of it, we are both from the same hometown."

Ye Yuan thought to himself, I knew it!

However, Ye Yuan still didn't know how this woman had figured it out.

"You must be curious about how I knew, right? I wonder if you have ever heard of a witch?"

"On Earth, you often refer to us as old hags."

Ye Yuan couldn't help but feel a bit strange. Wasn't his hometown, Earth, a world that championed science? How could such things as witches actually exist? Even if they did, they should have been frauds.

However, after Ye Yuan pondered it once more, he didn't find it strange anymore.

Since he himself could come to the Douluo Continent, then it made sense for Earth to have some supernatural occurrences as well.

"We witches, we don't just look at the world with our eyes; we also use our hearts."

"Cough, cough, cough!" Her breathing grew even weaker.

"My time is running out, and I want you to help me with one thing."

Ye Yuan knew the person before him was a fellow countryman, so he nodded and said, "Please, tell me."

"After I accidentally arrived in this world, I searched for countless methods, but I simply couldn't return to Earth."

"By now, I have come to terms with it. The only thing I can't let go of is my little Yan'er."

"I want you to acknowledge her as your younger sister and protect her for the rest of your life."

"Of course, I won't let you help for nothing."

The woman tremblingly took a pocket watch from her bosom. The pocket watch looked like a product of Earth, but the various patterns on it appeared somewhat eerie.

"This is the Time Book Watch. I have seen a glimpse of your future; your future is fraught with disasters, and when the time comes, this object can lend you a hand."

Ye Yuan took the pocket watch; it felt ice-cold to the touch.

"Yan'er—" the old woman shouted toward the doorway.

Qin Yan'er heard her mother's call and immediately ran inside.

"Mom, what's wrong?" Her gaze was innocent, completely unaware that her mother was about to pass away.

"Mom is leaving. From now on, he will be your big brother."

"In the future, you must honor him, respect him, and love him! Do you hear me?" The woman almost roared the words out.

Qin Yan'er had never heard her mother use this tone before, so she immediately replied, "Okay, Mom, don't be anxious, Yan'er will listen to you."

"From now on, he is Yan'er's big brother. Yan'er will honor him, respect him, and love him for the rest of her life!"

"Good child, it is Mother who has failed you..."

She then looked at Ye Yuan and said, "I must trouble you to burn my body after I pass."

"If the body of a witch is not destroyed after death, it will bring misfortune and calamity to the people here."

Ye Yuan nodded.

After speaking, she looked up at the eaves, her gaze seemingly piercing through the roof to look far into the distance.

"I am finally going home, returning to Mother's original home..." Having said this, her hand, which had been stroking Qin Yan'er's, dropped.

Even if Qin Yan'er was naive, she knew that her mother had left her forever.

"Mother! Wuwuwu..." Qin Yan'er collapsed onto the bed, tears streaming down her face. Ye Yuan did not go to comfort her, letting her cry as she pleased.

Ye Yuan did not know how long she cried; he only knew that she eventually cried herself to sleep.

Only then did Ye Yuan gently pick her up, cast one last glance at the woman, and then channeled his soul power to set the house ablaze.

At this moment, Ye Yuan felt dejected. After all, was he not also someone who had arrived in this world by accident?

Witnessing the woman's end, his mood grew heavy.

Would his own ending be the same as hers?

From then on, a young girl always followed behind Ye Yuan, and he raised her well.

Ye Yuan pulled back his thoughts and said, "I once extracted half of your soul and placed it into a girl named Xiao Wu in the Star Dou Great Forest."

"You can understand it as the original Xiao Wu having died; the current Xiao Wu is another you, a you in every sense."

"Now, I must fuse this half of your soul with that other half, and then destroy this body."

"Only then can we deceive that person."

Qin Yan'er nodded: "Alright, Brother, go ahead. Be gentle, Yan'er is afraid of pain."

Ye Yuan's face darkened. What kind of outrageous things was this little girl saying!

"Bear with it, it will be over soon. It won't hurt."

"By the way, due to the effects of the soul fusion, you will temporarily forget some things, but you will remember them slowly."

The vision ended.

Ye Yuan felt that he was truly damn smart; he was worthy of himself!

In other words, the current Xiao Wu is my Yan'er, only her memories are temporarily suppressed by the soul fusion, so she cannot recall them yet.

That made it even more impossible for him to let Xiao Wu go.

"But I had already changed the past back then, so why did I need to restart the cycle?" Ye Yuan asked the Little Golden Man.

The Little Golden Man replied: "Are you stupid! The moment you returned to the past to change history, the world split into two timelines."

"Your current timeline has not been changed; you simply opened up a new one. In other words, you created a parallel world."

"It is just that the time in that parallel world is frozen at the moment you changed things—the moment you saved Yan'er."

"Only when the person who changed history, which is you, dies, will the two timelines merge."

"Only then will you have truly succeeded in changing the past."