"Yeah," Old Johnny replied.
Then Zhong Dingming seemed to shed a heavy burden, his whole body relaxing. "I never imagined so many people from the previous Safe Zone were hiding here, yet I didn't recognize a single one. Xie Nanyun told me Qian Wendao had come clean too, admitting he'd escaped here from the previous Safe Zone."
"From the sound of it, you did too?"
"Yes." Zhong Dingming nodded. "But Zhang Yang, back in the previous Safe Zone, I had no recollection of anyone like you."
"I lived worse than a dog in the previous Safe Zone. How would anyone have known me? Most of us were the same. Before I started working with Guan Fuhai, I didn't even know he'd come from the previous Safe Zone too." Old Johnny grabbed the bottle and, dispensing with the glass, took a long swig straight from it. "Maybe... none of us deserved to have names."
Zhong Dingming frowned. "So, like me, you grabbed an [Apocalypse Fragment] during the riot on New Year's Day twelve years ago and escaped here?"
"Was there any other way besides that one chance?"
"True. That was our only chance." Zhong Dingming nodded. "We were all nobodies. It's only natural we wouldn't know each other. In the previous Safe Zone, I cultivated Starshine Vessels for people, doing all sorts of vile things. I never dared show anyone my real name."
"Then it looks like the Starshine Vessels in this Safe Zone are all your handiwork too."
"I merely sold tickets to a shortcut to success. Whether people chose to follow the shortcut I described was beyond my control."
"You really are like a devil. Just what I'd expect from the leader of the Heretical Cults."
"What I've achieved today was built on what I accumulated in the previous