Chapter 1755: The Truth Is the Truth, Whether You Accept It or Not
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
Being stabbed once again after so long had Rheia tearing up in pain, yet when she spoke Hao Ren immediately woke from the daze of the information bombardment. The latter blinked as he looked suspiciously at the tiny goddess of creation. “Rheia?”
“It’s me alright!” Rheia hissed. “What are you looking at! Pull it out!”
Hao Ren was still totally confused but he still acted on instinct. He carefully laid Rheia down as he held the hilt of the Godslayer, but just as he was about to pull it out, he asked again, “You’re sure you want me to pull it straight out? I remember reading that you are not supposed to pull a sword out for wounds like this, you’ll bleed out…”
Rheia’s tears almost burst out, “What’s with all that nonsense at this time! Most people would normally be dead from a stab like that! Bleed out my foot!”
Hao Ren thought again and concurred, seeing how feisty Rheia was she probably would not die from this anyway, so he gripped the hilt hard, “Hold on then, I’ll pull it out now!
“Gentl…”
“Hey ho!”
“Yee-eekkkk!!”
The moment the Godslayer was pulled out, Hao Ren felt an immense change in it. The sword, originally an object of the illusory world, initially felt cold and ethereal in his hands, but now the sword felt very familiar, as the super familiar rambling started as well, “Eh partner, looking for me again? Why does this feel so different from the past? I’m a little dizzy… Eh, where’s this place?”
Before Hao Ren could even open his mouth, the Godslayer shrieked. “Waaahhhh!! This… This… place… Isn’t this place back then… Did I sleep myself silly, or partner, did you just screw up the timeline and went back in… Eeek! The goddess! Why is the goddess on the floor! Why has the goddess been stabbed?! I….”
Hao Ren and Rheia could not take it any longer and yelled, “Shut up!”
Hao Ren then tossed the Godslayer aside as he knelt beside Rheia. “How are you doing?”
Rheia pointed weakly towards the wound on her chest. After the Godslayer was pulled out of her, a layer of light screen had covered the wound and was visibly healing. Even the torn dress was being restored.
“Don’t worry, this is just an illusion. I won’t die again.” Rheia took a deep breath. “But that really bleeding hurt…”
“I’m still quite confused,” Hao Ren said as he sat beside Rheia and scratched his head, “What was that all about? Why… did I lost control and stabbed you… It was like that illusion before.”
“Before we entered this realm, I had set up a divine command.” Rheia still lay on the floor, as she continued. “All shall return to where they were.”
Hao Ren’s expression was the same when Raven 12345 stomped on his chest and dunked two bowls of noodle soup down his throat. “…Bloody hell, is it really so?”
Rheia rolled her eyes. “Surprised? Unexpected right?”
“Unexpected yes, not surprised at all.” Hao Ren looked at Rheia’s mischievous face, “I…why did this happen? Regardless, what had happened is just way too much of a twist no?”
“I didn’t know why it happened as it did, but I won’t be doing it again,” Rheia said as she held her chest with one hand, and tugging Hao Ren’s shirt with another to help herself up. “I never thought I’d get stabbed again… Boy, do I regret that.”
Hao Ren looked at Rheia in the eye, “Did you actually realized that earlier? That I am actually…”
“I had never thought of that, but after making contact with the Gilded Disc I saw some memories, it was a memory fragment that was separated while I was in a daze, and had inhabited the disc,” Rheia explained, “Then I saw the mark on your hand… So I decided to test it out.”
“But the mark on my palm was only imprinted on two years back.” Hao Ren looked at his palm and the mark was jarring as ever. “That was an accident… and this shouldn’t be innate right?”
“The entanglement of information… Such a thing cannot be explained using causality.” Rheia sighed. “The mark was destined to appear on you, and it could have been innate, or something that forms later, but regardless, it will always appear before you meet me, as this is the proof that you had once killed a god.”
“Seems like I have to accept it whether I like it or not.” Hao Ren sighed, his tone conflicted. “This is a bloody joke that I can’t even laugh at. I bust my arse for so long to find and revive you, and the truth was that… What is this? Some bloody sins of the past?”
“Don’t you go cursing in front of a goddess now, especially an underage one.” Rheia rolled her eyes at Hao Ren before turning around. “I know, this will be hard to accept… It’s not only you, even I had never thought it’d turn out like this. Like it or not, accept it or not, this is the truth.”
“Yeah, the truth of… me stabbing you ten thousand years ago.” Hao Ren laughed at himself, but he felt that many of his questions in the past were now answered.
The web of connections he had with the objects left by the goddess, his immunity to the magics of the Plane of Dreams, his ability to activate the “illusory world”, and that Raven 12345 had told him in the past.
“The matter of the Plane of Dreams, it has to be done by you.”
Perhaps Raven 12345 herself had no explanation for this, but Hao Ren had found his answer.
The illusory world had not ended, with Rheia’s divine power, this ethereal dimension had stopped as Hao Ren and Rheia sat in the already collapsed temple hall, and the atmosphere was a little awkward.
A little was an understatement, it was bloody awkward.
A long moment later, it was Hao Ren who broke the silence. “I’ll take responsibility.”
“…Eh?
“I said I’ll take responsibility, didn’t you listen?”
Rheia thought for a bit before her eyes widened. “That’ll cause a lot of misunderstandings if you put it that way!”
Hao Ren had not put much thought when he said that, and with Rheia’s reminder, he stared at her with an even wider pair of eyes. “What the hell is in that brain of yours! Can’t you not be pure like a proper goddess should?”
Rheia had fully recovered by then and was in the mood to get into a verbal fight with Hao Ren. “What does that have to do with being a goddess! Plus that’s rich coming from you who had killed a god in the past!”
“That’s rich, as if me killing you in the past was not directed by yourself!”
“That’s because you were already planning it, and I just came along and gave you some technical support and suggestions…”
“In the past, the stuff of the past…”
The hall fell silent again, and only after about half a minute later did Rheia let out a long sigh, “Right, those are all in the past.”
“A bloody mess it was,” Hao Ren shook his head, “Let’s not bother pointing fingers, that’ll never end. But regardless, that stab was mine, I won’t run away from that.”
And Rheia did not seem to be in the mind of delving into the matter, “Forget about it, I never thought of hating anyone back then, plus like you said, I was one of the hands involved in the deicide…”
As she spoke, she smiled. “No one should bear responsibility for something they did in their past life, especially when you had already done so much in this. If not for you, I probably will still be asleep in the Umbral Realm, and the Mad Lord may very well break out and I’m soundly defeated in my sleep.”
Hao Ren gave Rheia a surprised look. “You’re sure relaxed about this.”
“Of course. I’m a goddess after all. Seeing those mortal rascals going about trying to kill themselves in all sorts of way, if I’m tensed all the time I’d probably die of an aneurysm,” Rheia retorted cheekily as she held her arm, before switching the topic. “But then again, that stab did hurt. You need to repay me for that.”
“Ugh… that was you going wild… Alright, alright, what sort of repayment?”
“…Can my homework…”
“No.”
“Wuuu…”
“Even if you go ‘wuuu’, the answer is no.”
Rheia gave up. “Alright, forget about it.”
“But,” Hao Ren suddenly recalled something, “If you let the guardians know about this, will they come after me?”
Rheia actually pondered it seriously, “If before I returned, they’d probably do that. Probably not now, first I’m already back, and the fall was just a deep sleep, plus you had help them a lot, and all of the burdens of the Plane of Dreams are on you. The guardians are not fanatics and are still rational. Also, isn’t this a thing in the past?”
As she finished, she raised an eyebrow at Hao Ren, “And most importantly, nothing else better to do that you need to tell them that? I plan to keep it a secret.”
Hao Ren was at a loss for words, and things were just as Rheia had said. He then shook his head as he sighed, “When we found out Lily was the reincarnation of the King of the Demon Hunters I had actually wondered if I was some sort of legendary figure in my past life… but this… legendary figure aside, I actually did some rather legendary stuff back then.”
Rheia hissed. “Yeah, you actually ran through a goddess with a blade.”
“Uh, too much violence, not suitable for children.” Hao Ren facepalmed, “But there’s something I don’t understand. When the godslayers were destroyed by the Divine Wrath, the perpetrator would have been subjected to the worst of the wrath. I’d understand if I was totally annihilated there and then… but how did I pass through the Wall of Reality and reincarnate on earth?”
When Hao Ren said that, even Rheia was stunned. “Oh right, how did you get over there… does the Thunder of Divine Wrath has the ability to send someone over dimensions?”
“Bullshit, if that was the case that’ll be taken more as a gift than anything. Then you’ll have mortals coming in the thousands every now and then to blockade their churches and the curse their lord no?”
Rheia imagined the possible scene and concurred. “You’re right.”
Hao Ren stroked his chin and only said after some slight hesitation, “Say… how about we rewind back to that scene again?”
“Just because you’re the one who’s getting stabbed!”