Lu Mingfei was silent for a long time before he finally said in a low voice, "Can humanity really defeat an opponent like that?"
Lu Mingze smiled. Under the moonlight, that smile seemed somewhat bleak.
"Of course—not," he said. "From the very beginning, the Four Great Kings' enemies were never humanity. They were each other, and—the Fate that was bound to arrive in the end."
"Fate—"
Lu Mingfei repeated the word. Lu Mingze had mentioned it once before, but this time, it felt especially weighty, like a piece of iron pressing against his chest.
"Yes, Fate." Lu Mingze snapped his fingers.
A set of table and chairs suddenly appeared before them. A black cast-iron table, two wicker chairs, and on the table, a pot of freshly brewed black tea and two bone-china cups, with steam curling gently upward. It looked like the sort of café one might find in a small European town on any given afternoon.
Lu Mingze sat down, poured Lu Mingfei a cup, then poured one for himself. He lifted his cup and gently blew on it before speaking unhurriedly. "We call the original worldline the Alpha Worldline. On that line, you had a senior brother named He Xiaomeng, a friend named Chu Zihang, and a girl named Erii. But someone—suddenly restarted the world."
He paused.
"The cost of doing so was immense. But the worldline's development must have deviated greatly from his expectations. He had no choice but to do something so extreme."
"Restart—" Lu Mingfei frowned. "Right, you seemed to have mentioned that before, on the Sumeru Platform."
He could no longer remember whether Lu Mingze had actually said "restart," or whether the thought had surfaced in his own mind. That memory was as blurry as if viewed through frosted glass, but he vaguely remembered