"Before you stood an Invincible King."
"A Special Lifeform of the universe whose Life Gene Level was thousands of times higher."
"Before I fell, my King Rank title, Star Sea King, spread throughout the universe."
"It inspired awe among countless races and drew the attention of innumerable forces."
Every word was like a heavy star crashing into Luo Feng's mind.
Invincible King? Star Sea King? Renowned throughout the universe? Countless races?
Luo Feng was utterly dumbfounded.
He knew each of those words on its own.
But put together, they formed sentences he could not understand at all.
They were beyond his comprehension.
Compared to the Warlords and Wargods among martial artists,
and even the scattered descriptions of beings Beyond War God that he had glimpsed in the martial arts school's database,
these were more distant, more magnificent, and more unreal.
It was like an ant living on a two-dimensional plane suddenly hearing someone describe the magnificent mountains and rivers of a three-dimensional world.
It wasn't that he couldn't understand the words; he lacked the very foundation and framework to comprehend them.
"What are you talking about?"
The wariness on Luo Feng's face gave way to overwhelming bewilderment, and he repeated the words without thinking.
"Invincible King? Forces of the universe?"
The words sounded utterly out of place in the monster-besieged Base City where he lived.
He had initially thought the other party might be some powerful spirit reader,
or was using some kind of high-tech cloaking and voice-transmission device.
But now, what the other party was saying pushed his guesses in an even more absurd and bizarre direction.
Lin Mo sensed Luo Feng's violently fluctuating mental state, full of confusion and doubt, and understood.
At this point, Luo Feng was merely a young man confined to a planet with a primitive civilization,
who had yet to even enter the Planetary Level.
The universe, King Rank, races vying for supremacy.
To him, these were no different from tales out of the Arabian Nights.
"It seems you know nothing about any of this."
Lin Mo's voice returned to its calm state, that hint of pride receding and giving way to a tone of scrutiny and appraisal.
"No matter. You only need to know that I mean you no harm."
When his voice faded, a brief silence fell over the cramped hotel room.
Only the faint nighttime clamor of the Base City drifted in from beyond the window,
making the room seem even more deathly quiet.
Luo Feng stood where he was, his body still tense, but his mind racing.
The information revealed in the words of the being who called himself Star Sea King was too shocking.
It completely overturned his worldview.
The universe? Countless races? Invincible King?
Those concepts weighed down his thoughts like heavy blocks of lead, leaving him unable to digest them for the moment.
But there was one thing he understood.
The other party seemed to have no hostile intentions for the time being, and was interested in him.
Why was he interested?
Right now, Luo Feng was nothing more than a cripple who wasn't even a martial artist.
Wait!
A terrifying thought, like lightning suddenly flashing through the darkness, cleaved through his tangled thoughts!
These past three months!
The loss of his strength, strange to the extreme, which had left every doctor and instrument helpless!
The timing, the appearance of this strange voice.
Could it be?
Luo Feng jerked his head up, though there was nothing before him.
But his gaze was sharp enough to pierce the void.
His voice trembled slightly with agitation and a certain suppressed anger:
"So, the changes in my body these past three months...
"My strength disappeared for no reason, and I fell from a martial artist back to an ordinary person. That was all thanks to you?"
His accusation was like a stone cast into a deep pool.
Deep in his consciousness, the ancient being seemed to fall silent for a moment.
He did not answer immediately.
He did not deny it.
To Luo Feng at that moment, this silence was almost the same as an admission!
"Heh..."
A short breath escaped Luo Feng's throat; it was impossible to tell whether it was a laugh or a sob.
Then the emotions Luo Feng had suppressed for three whole months
erupted like a flood breaking through a dam, mingled with extreme fury, grievance, and indignation!
"Do you know how I've lived through these past three months?!"
He growled, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles creaked, his eyes turning red again in an instant.
But this time it wasn't from grief, but from blazing rage.
"Every day! Every single day, I could feel my strength slipping away!"
"Like sand slipping through my fingers, no matter how hard I tried to hold on!"
"I trained like my life depended on it! Until my muscles tore! Until I threw up!"
"But it didn't do a thing! I lost it even faster instead!"
"I didn't dare tell Mom and Dad! I didn't dare tell my little brother!"
"Every time I called and heard my mom happily talking about how wonderful the villa was, and how much more energetic my dad had become,
"I could only smile and lie! Say I was fine! Say I was away on a mission! Say everything was going smoothly!"
"I didn't even dare go home! I was afraid of seeing the hope in their eyes!"
"I was afraid they'd ask me what was wrong!"
"I was even more afraid that, a month from now, I'd have to watch helplessly as they were driven out of the villa,
"and our whole family moved back into that old place, so small and run-down, with no elevator and not even a ray of sunlight getting in!"
Luo Feng's voice rose higher and higher, hoarse as it echoed through the cramped room.
"I lay in bed, tired as a dead dog, but my head was full of all this damn mess!"
"I tossed and turned and couldn't sleep! I lay there with my eyes open until dawn!"
"In the end, I had no choice but to buy the cheapest sleeping pills at the pharmacy! I could barely get any sleep without them!"
"I kept doubting myself! Had I done something wrong?"
"Was I never meant to be a martial artist? Was I destined to be a good-for-nothing who dragged my whole family down?!"
He glared fixedly at the empty air in front of him, as though the culprit were standing right there.
"And now, now you tell me all of this was because of you!"
Faced with Luo Feng's accusations, erupting like a volcano, and his towering rage,
the wisp of Lin Mo's remnant soul deep in his consciousness seemed somewhat ill at ease as well.
He could clearly sense the grief, anger, and despair in Luo Feng's mental fluctuations, so intense they were almost tangible.
It was utterly different from the resolute and decisive figure with a will of iron that he remembered from the future.
Yet it was more real, and more piercing.
"Ah."
"Well... strictly speaking, I didn't do it deliberately."
Lin Mo's thought came through, his tone carrying a faint, rare note of self-defense.
Though the defense seemed so feeble in the face of Luo Feng's misery.
"When I fell, I sank into the deepest slumber."
"I only awakened recently."
Lin Mo's words were somewhat vague.
"I can't blame you?"
Luo Feng was so angry he almost laughed, his chest heaving violently.
"Just because you weren't conscious, you put me through hell!"
"..."
Lin Mo fell silent again.
He thought back to how he, Lin Mo, had roamed the universe for countless epochs, decisive in battle and clear about debts of gratitude and grudges.
But in today's matter, he was indeed in the wrong.
A moment later, Lin Mo sighed softly.
"This matter... was indeed my fault."
"Since this began because of me and caused you trouble and loss, I should naturally compensate you."
Luo Feng breathed heavily, glaring at the empty air before him.
His anger had not subsided, but at the word "compensate," his gaze shifted slightly.
What did he need most right now?
Not an apology, not an explanation, but something tangible that could change his circumstances!