What Hope? What Hope? A Toad Dreaming of Swan Meat, Aren't You!

"Guards, ready the horses!" Inside the Papal Palace, Qian Xunji immediately rose to his feet, his clear voice carrying beyond the doors.

Time was of the essence. Now that he had obtained detailed intelligence, he did not want to remain in Spirit City for another moment. He would set out now, intercept the Blue Silver Emperor, and become the future protagonist's father!

A moment later, Qian Xunji unhurriedly descended Divine Mountain. At the foot of the mountain, a golden carriage adorned along its edges with precious gemstones had long been waiting for him.

The carriage was drawn by four snow-white soul beast horses without a single stray hair. A Six-Winged Angel was carved into its body, exuding indescribable luxury and nobility!

When the Pope traveled, the spectacle was naturally beyond what ordinary soul masters could imagine. It was only because he wanted to keep a low profile today...

The rain in the sky showed no sign of weakening, and muffled thunder continued to rumble deep within the clouds.

Qian Xunji stepped onto the footstool and boarded the carriage.

"Let's go. Leave Spirit City!" His indifferent voice came from within the carriage and reached the coachman's ears.

"As you command, Your Holiness!" Seated in the coachman's position was a steady-looking middle-aged man.

Who would have thought that this plainly dressed driver in gray was actually a six-ring Soul Emperor?

Across the Douluo Continent, where would a Soul Emperor-level expert not be treated with respect? Yet in Spirit Hall, before Pope Qian Xunji, he was only fit to serve as a coachman.

The golden carriage slowly set off. The broad hooves of the four white horses struck the ground, producing crisp, rhythmic clops.

The carriage was neither fast nor slow, and its route happened to pass through Spirit Hall's most bustling Central Plaza.

Sitting inside the carriage, Qian Xunji rested his cheek on one hand and gazed leisurely out the window toward Central Plaza.

His gaze quickly settled on a dark, somewhat damp corner at the edge of the plaza.

There, a bedraggled figure was curled up.

At first, Qian Xunji had been furious, because he knew how he would end in the future—and what this ungrateful wretch would do!

She would destroy Spirit Hall and ruin the reputation Spirit Hall had built over tens of thousands of years! Because of the Rakshasa God, she had even harbored the terrifying thought of destroying the entire continent!

And he himself would die at her hands, becoming one of the most crucial links in her initiation of the Rakshasa God Examination.

But now, as he looked at that ugly creature curled into a ball in the mud, filthy from head to toe with a golden bowl before her, Qian Xunji's heart no longer stirred in the slightest.

Because Bibi Dong was simply too miserable now—far more miserable than Bibi Dong had been in the original timeline.

In the original timeline, Bibi Dong had at least retained her cultivation and had not been crippled. But now, her cultivation had been abolished, her martial soul destroyed, and even her appearance had become so hideous.

What was more, Yu Xiaogang had abandoned her. She had fallen into beggary and could only beg in Central Plaza—using a golden bowl, no less.

It was easy to imagine that when he gave Bibi Dong that golden bowl, he had never expected her to beg anything from it! After all, what beggar used a golden bowl?

Without cultivation, without a martial soul, without status, and without her looks, she was now far inferior even to the most ordinary peasant woman!

At the edge of Central Plaza...

The two Security Team members stationed not far from Bibi Dong heard the crisp hoofbeats from a distance.

When they saw the luxurious carriage drawn by four soul beast white horses and bearing the Six-Winged Angel emblem, the expressions of both Security Team members instantly changed!

One of them immediately lowered his voice. "That's... that's the carriage His Holiness the Pope uses when traveling!"

"Why would His Holiness the Pope come here at a time like this?"

The other nervously swallowed and instinctively looked toward Bibi Dong in the corner. "Do you think His Holiness is all bark and no bite? It hasn't even been half a day."

"Maybe His Holiness has softened up, so he deliberately came over in a carriage to take a look? Maybe he's looking for an opportunity to take her back?"

Though the two Security Team members spoke quietly, every word reached Bibi Dong's ears.

The person who had been curled up in the corner like a lump of mud suddenly shuddered. In those lifeless, bloodshot eyes, a crazed glimmer suddenly erupted!

"Teacher..." Bibi Dong used all her strength to slowly raise her head. Her severely disfigured face, covered in charred scars, was filled with sickly ecstasy and hope.

She stared fixedly at the approaching carriage, as though she could already see Qian Xunji stepping out of it and taking her home.

"I knew it... I knew Teacher would never be so heartless toward me! Fourteen years of raising me—how could Teacher possibly cast me aside just like that?"

He must have done all that to punish me for being willful! Bibi Dong began wildly filling in the blanks in her mind.

She cried and laughed at the same time. "Teacher, Dong'er truly knows she was wrong... As long as you let me return, even if I must serve you as a slave for the rest of my life, Dong'er will do so willingly!"

Under Bibi Dong's nearly deranged gaze, the luxurious carriage drew closer and closer to her position.

Eighty meters...

Fifty meters...

Thirty meters...

Twenty meters...

Bibi Dong almost held her breath. She had even figured out what kind of humble, sincere attitude she should use to crawl over and repent to the teacher inside the carriage once it stopped.

However, when the golden carriage passed by where she was, it did not show even the slightest sign of slowing down.

The carriage simply drove past Bibi Dong without mercy through the curtain of rain, following the broad road.

The four white soul beast horses held their heads high with pride as rainwater splashed from the wheels toward both sides of the carriage.

The carriage did not stop... It simply continued toward Spirit City's gates, eventually vanishing into the rain.

Bibi Dong froze where she was, and the hope that had just ignited within her turned into despair once more...

Why?

Why had she been given hope for a fresh start, only for it to be so ruthlessly crushed before her eyes?!

Or had there never been any hope at all? Had it merely been hope she had imagined for herself? Had Teacher only happened to pass by? Could it be that Teacher truly no longer wanted her?

"Phew... That scared the hell out of me!"

Seeing the carriage disappear into the distance, the Security Team member who had spat on Bibi Dong earlier fiercely patted his chest and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He looked at Bibi Dong with schadenfreude and sneered disdainfully, "I told you, didn't I? How could His Holiness the Pope forgive a thing that bites the hand that feeds it?!"

"You're a toad dreaming of swan meat. Why don't you take a piss and look at what kind of ghost you are now? You actually expected His Holiness the Pope to come personally and take you back? Heh! What a daydream!"

"If you could go back and lord it over us again, then wouldn't everyone be able to betray Spirit Hall in the future?"