Ye Chen stood within a memory illusion where time had ceased to flow, silently listening as Lyle's innermost thoughts unfolded beside his ears.
"I, who boasted of my own strength, was actually saved in the end by such a weak, lowly little girl."
"That outcome of survival did not bring me much joy at the time. Instead, it filled me with an unprecedented shame."
"My life had actually been saved by nothing more than an ant."
"Such a humiliating fact was truly difficult for me to accept."
"Yet at the same time, I had no choice but to admit it."
"This little girl had indeed saved me."
"And this debt of gratitude..."
"Naturally, I could not leave it unpaid."
"She, so lowly, had saved me. That great favor alone was more than she could ever fully bear in her lifetime."
"So..."
"I had to find a way to repay this debt of gratitude—this humiliation—as thoroughly as possible!"
"That was what I thought at the time."
"Little did I know..."
"That day would become the turning point of my entire fate."
As the voice by his ear finished its earnest account, the scene frozen before Ye Chen began to collapse, rebuild, shift, and transform like a sand painting. In the end, it played out the past shared by the man and the girl before Ye Chen's eyes in a sequence of film-like scenes.
Ye Chen saw the girl call for the adults in the village and have them bring the grievously wounded man back to the village.
Ye Chen saw members of the Hunter Corps, clad in primitive hunter uniforms, arrive at the village and transfer the man to Hunter's Peak of ancient times for treatment.
Ye Chen saw the recovered man deliberately return to the girl's village and bluntly declare