Why Did My Eighteen-Year-Old Self Get to Meet a Man Like Him?

The candle flame flickered.

Bibi Dong suddenly stepped out of Lin Fan's embrace. She went to the bed and pulled something from beneath the pillow.

It was a tiny silver badge, an identity token reserved for the Saintess, engraved with Spirit Hall's Holy Sword Emblem.

She came back and pressed the badge into Lin Fan's palm.

"Take this."

Lin Fan glanced down, surprised. "Isn't this your..."

"Saintess Token! If you run into a Spirit Hall checkpoint out there, you can use it to get away." The tips of Bibi Dong's ears reddened slightly. "Just think of it as... a piece of intelligence I'm giving you in advance! It'll be useful later."

Lin Fan looked at the badge in his palm, still warm from her hand. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, he merely closed his fist around it and tucked it into his clothes.

"I'll keep it safe."

"Mm."

Neither of them spoke again.

In the silence, the candle burned down inch by inch, casting their shadows across the wall and stretching them longer and longer.

At last, Lin Fan turned and pushed open the secret chamber's door.

The night wind swept in, carrying the grim air peculiar to Spirit City.

He did not look back.

The door slowly closed behind him.

Bibi Dong stood in the flickering candlelight, staring at the shut door. Slowly, she clenched her fists.

"I'll make sure... to hold it for you."

At that very moment, the Firmament projected their farewell in the secret chamber across the real Douluo Continent.

Spirit City, the Papal Palace.

Bang!

Bibi Dong slammed her palm against the armrest of the Papal Throne. A hairline crack split the solid-gold surface.

She stared at her younger self in the Firmament, held in Lin Fan's arms. Her chest rose and fell violently, and fury churned in her eyes, almost beyond her control.

"Why?"

Her voice echoed through the empty hall, thick with twenty years of hatred and jealousy. She nearly forced the words out through clenched teeth, one by one.

"Why did my eighteen-year-old self get to meet a man like him? And yet the man who knelt before Qian Xunji back then and begged me not to make a sound didn't even dare leave me a proper letter?!"

No one in the hall dared answer.

Outside, even Ghost Douluo and Chrysanthemum Douluo softened their breathing.

But just as her towering fury reached its fiercest point, a crack suddenly opened in it.

Bibi Dong looked back at the Firmament.

She saw her younger self trembling in Lin Fan's arms.

It was fear without the slightest attempt to hide it.

And Lin Fan? He had neither recoiled from her nor pushed her away. He had simply listened quietly until she finished.

He had asked her to stay.

Not so that he could save his own skin, but because he had given her a place as his inside agent.

In his own way, he had told that eighteen-year-old girl: You don't need to come with me. You're already the most important part of my plan.

If that coward had looked at me that way even once back then...

If he hadn't run, if he'd turned around and said even just one thing—"Stay. I'll clear the path for you"...

Bibi Dong's throat suddenly tightened.

Plip.

A drop of water landed on the back of her hand.

She looked down and realized that, without knowing when it had started, tears had covered her face.

"So... if it had truly been you, was this how you would have loved me...?"

Bibi Dong closed her eyes.

That tear slid from her fingertip and fell onto the cold floor tiles, shattering into countless tiny points of light.

As if reaching across time and space, she murmured to the man in the Firmament, too softly for anyone but herself to hear:

"Then I'll take Spirit Hall for you!"

Just then, a voice announced from outside the hall.

"Your Holiness, the Great Enshrined requests your presence."

Bibi Dong's pupils contracted slightly.

Since she had ascended to the papal seat, Qian Daoliu had never summoned her of his own accord.

Spirit City, the Worship Hall.

It was Bibi Dong's first time setting foot there since becoming Pope.

Beneath the hundred-meter-tall Angel God Statue bearing the Six-Winged Angel, Qian Daoliu stood with his back to her. He seemed to have been waiting a long time.

"You arrived later than I expected." Qian Daoliu did not turn. His voice echoed through the hall, neither loud nor soft.

Bibi Dong stopped at the entrance and went no farther. She inclined her head slightly. "Great Enshrined, what guidance did you summon me here to offer?"

"I wouldn't call it guidance." Qian Daoliu slowly turned, his pale-gold eyes settling on Bibi Dong. "I merely want to know what you intend to do about the man in the Firmament."

Bibi Dong's expression did not shift, and her voice betrayed no emotion. "Haven't you already guessed, Great Enshrined?"

"You sent Gui Mei and Yue Guan to Nuoding City, then ordered them to stand down. On the surface, you were using the empire to eliminate someone in your way. But I'm more inclined to believe you were leaving the man in the Firmament a reason to return."

"If the Yu Xiaogang of this reality dies, that man's connection to this world will be severed! You don't want that, do you?"

The hall was so quiet that the faint crackle of the burning candles could be heard.

After a long while, Bibi Dong finally raised her eyes and looked directly at Qian Daoliu.

"He is the only person who can change this world."

"I don't care what you think of me. But I will not allow anyone, myself included, to destroy this last chance."

Qian Daoliu listened without anger or argument.

He simply turned back toward the Angel God Statue. His voice was as calm as if he were mentioning something of no consequence. "Go and do what you wish. Until things truly spiral out of control, I won't stop you."

Bibi Dong turned and left the Worship Hall.

Qian Daoliu remained where he was. No one heard the words he murmured into the empty hall.

"But if the day comes when you shake the foundations of my Spirit Hall, the angel's sword will not veer even half an inch for you just because you are Pope."

While Bibi Dong was rebuilding her faith, another scene was unfolding in the Heaven Dou Empire's imperial palace: panic that made it seem like a living hell.

"They've gone mad... Every last one of them has gone fucking mad..."

Xue Ye slumped on the dragon throne, his eyes fixed on the Firmament.

Below him, the assembled civil and military officials, including Ning Fengzhi of the Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Sect, trembled so badly they could not string together a complete sentence.

They had always thought Yu Xiaogang, the man driven out of Spirit Hall twenty years ago, was nothing more than a failure who had accomplished nothing.

But the Firmament had shown them that it had all been a vast scheme laid by Yu Xiaogang!

"No wonder... No wonder Bibi Dong, once such a gentle and kind Saintess, suddenly became so iron-fisted after Qian Xunji died! She even launched a coup to purge the Elder Hall and forced her way onto the papal seat!" Cold sweat streamed down Ning Fengzhi's face. Even his Seven Treasure Glazed Tile Pagoda Martial Soul trembled beyond his control.

Yet the instant he reached that conclusion, a nagging doubt flashed through his mind, one he could not suppress.

No... If Bibi Dong really was his inside agent, why did Yu Xiaogang hide from her for twenty years? Why did he pretend to be a stray dog at Notting Academy? If he'd already taken control of Spirit Hall through Bibi Dong, why keep pretending to be useless?

The thought chilled Ning Fengzhi to the bone.

He found he could take his reasoning no further.

Because whichever way he worked through it, everything pointed to the same possibility—

"Unless... he has an even greater scheme! One so vast that even Spirit Hall in his grasp is merely a piece on his board, ready to be sacrificed at any moment."

"Dear heavens!"

Ning Fengzhi's hands shook so badly he could barely hold his teacup. "We thought he was on the second level, but he's on the tenth! He pretended to be useless for twenty years because, outside Spirit Hall, he has an even more terrifying move in reserve."

Xue Ye let out a roar like a cornered beast. "Twenty years! A full twenty years! This devil called Yu Xiaogang has been playing the fool at Notting Academy while secretly controlling Spirit Hall's Pope, gnawing away at the foundations of the entire continent step by step!"

"Is that plan of his to strike from both inside and out already ready to spring shut?! Has that army he built from commoners already—"

Before he could finish, the night wind swept a burst of noise in from outside the hall.

Xue Ye sprang from the dragon throne as if struck by lightning. Deathly pale, he pointed at the doors. "What was that?! Have they come?! Has his commoner army already slipped into the palace?!"

Outside, several attendants on night duty were speaking quietly, their voices mingling with the faint clink of armor.

That was all.

But Xue Ye could no longer take anything in.

He stared at the floor tiles in the center of the hall as though, at any moment, rows of Soul Guidance Rifles would thrust up from beneath them, every black muzzle aimed at his throne.

"Pass the order! Quickly! Bring every royal guard into the palace! And—go to the imperial prison! Bring me that Yu Xiaogang they just captured!"

His voice had gone shrill, as if he were forcing it from deep in his throat. Every word shook.

"I don't care what instruments of torture you use! I don't care how you do it! You must force him to spit out that final plan to overthrow the continent! Go!"