In the blood-red desert, beneath the towering tree where light and darkness intertwined.
"Old friend, honestly, I thought you'd get angry, burst out of your little tree hollow, and beat me up."
His voice seemed to hold a strange magic that put people at ease. "You know I'm actually a good person. I just can't help myself. It was the same when I blew up Akivili's train back then. Settling down and living quietly is just too hard~"
"Why would I be angry?" Su Lin's voice came from within the Tree of Light and Darkness's trunk, betraying no emotion.
The Aeon Aha came here every so often.
He seldom cared whether Su Lin responded. He simply shared whatever had amused him lately, like a warmhearted neighbor who couldn't keep his mouth shut.
And the amusement he had come to share today
was how he had brought down from within a church that had once overcome calamity and fate.
"When time flows again and this stagnant spacetime returns to its original timeline, carrying its changes toward the place hope points to... What a shame. However long a dream goes on, it can never become reality. It's always just a little short."
He spoke with delight and pride. "And the mastermind behind it all was me, your old pal Aha."
Su Lin had naturally seen the lone branch stretching along the treetop, and the extraordinary finesse with which events had been steered.
It was like the two jokers in a deck of cards: one colored, the other colorless.
Shouzhou, whom the Divine Descendants had not seen in decades, had fallen in the underground ruins on the very first day Su Lin and the others arrived by teleportation. Aha had taken his place and allowed the Veles Army Group to capture him.
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