After Gabriel and Raphael left, Chen Rui bade Qi Lanya farewell and departed Phantom Forest as well.
When he returned to the archery arena and saw the familiar Lola and Alice, their images faintly overlapped with those from the Mirror World he had experienced not long ago. Though several days had passed in the Mirror World while only a few hours had actually elapsed in this world, Chen Rui felt as though a lifetime had gone by.
The battle in the Mirror World—yes, it had truly been a battle.
A battle against himself, against his choices, against the deadly trap Lucifer and Eluxier had laid... It had been more perilous than any battle he had experienced before.
When Chen Rui chose to protect Athena and end everything by making himself the crucial point, he defeated himself and transcended life and death. Yet he had effectively lost to Lucifer. However, at the very brink of disaster, the Athena of the Mirror World chose to protect Chen Rui, allowing him to truly grasp the meaning of life's existence and win the whole game.
That experience had been full of twists and turns, an escape from death itself.
After successfully breaking free of the Mirror World, Chen Rui learned part of the truth behind the Twilight of the Gods. Back then, Lucifer had not hesitated to destroy himself in order to activate the Seven Chapters of Beginning and End—the seven divine artifacts—and unleash some most terrifying forbidden power, resulting in the fall of the gods. Lucifer's soul had nearly been annihilated, leaving him no choice but to reside within the seven divine artifacts and use the bloodline power recognized by them to accumulate soul power, waiting for rebirth.
Chen Rui's appearance, along with that of the Super System, caused Lucifer to overdraw his