"Fate, heh-it always guides people into the abyss-"
Lu Yan fell to his knees, gasping for breath.
His face, etched with the marks of time, was now covered in beads of sweat. His increasingly gray temples bore not only the coarseness of long hardship, but also a hint of a life burning out.
"It's been twenty-five years. We only wanted to go home and have a look-"
He rambled like an old man, coughing up blood as he spoke, as though he meant to vomit out half a lifetime's words along with his innards. "Wendu was a strong-willed girl. Toma's mother should be sixty this year-Kunla always said he had a younger brother waiting for him-"
"At least, at least-I wanted to let them see them-"
In front of him, Mizaistom was hardly in better shape.
One of his arms hung limply at his side, clearly broken.
More horrifyingly, half his face was swollen, with signs of living things constantly wriggling beneath the skin.
Where his left eye had been, surrounded by a painted black ring, there was now an empty socket. Mizaistom had gouged that eye out himself.
"Young man, even if you rush over now-it's too late. Druha is about to break through that wall. Besides, you've been hit by my [Creep]-"
Suppressing the pain, Mizaistom said, "The idea that destroying the Secret Realm will let you return to reality is only your conjecture. Even if you break through the Secret Realm, you'll most likely only cause it to collapse."
Mizaistom knew little about science, but he had special information channels and connections in the Ochima Federation that gave him access to highly classified information.
After the tragedy in Stella, countries around the world had invested more heavily in Secret Realm research to prevent similar incidents from happening