Ye Chen held a lit cigar between his fingers, and perplexed smoke slowly rose from it.
"I still don't quite understand. I just want to know—what do these views you're talking about have to do with the 'past life' you mentioned earlier?"
Jietisikoki drew deeply on his cigar before speaking at an unhurried pace:
"Because the original human world—or rather, true human civilization—has already been utterly destroyed."
"And all of it happened within the scope of the 'past life' you mentioned."
"As for the 'humans' we recognize today, the overwhelming majority of them are merely 'substitutes'—other lifeforms from other dimensions, dragged out of the shattered ruins of space-time by the Abyss and the Holy Light, then reincarnated after being fitted with human skins."
"Ye Chen, there's no need to say much about you. An immortal Abyss Monster wearing a human skin was never human from beginning to end. I trust you understand that clearly enough yourself."
"But as for your colleagues in the Hunter Corps, almost all of them can likewise be classified as 'false humans.'"
"Especially that damned bunch of Apex Hunters."
"They may look like they belong to the same race as you, but every one of them is a supermonster beyond description. Otherwise, there would have been no way for them to reach such absurd heights, because those powers had originally belonged to them in the first place."
Ye Chen said nothing upon hearing this, deep in thought.
"."
Smoke curled through the spacious room like cracks slowly spreading across a glacier. Beneath the ice lay a distant truth, now about to see daylight again in the young man's eyes as the frozen surface shattered.
"So... Jietisikoki, what about you?"
After a moment of silence, Ye Chen turned and questioned Jietisikoki.
"You used the word 'almost' just