Chapter 398: The Initial Answer

“Gao Ming, I used to admire you. I saw a lot of myself in you.” The corpse puppet’s lips moved. “However, I realised I had overestimated you after knowing all of your secrets. You have to die so many times to reach me and use such a weak method to imprison me.”

Gao Ming didn’t interrupt the corpse and allowed him to continue. He was trying to discern one thing: Who was controlling the puppet? Was it the God of the Future, or was it the real Situ An?

“From many aspects, you are too banal. Do you know why Lu Zang chose you in the end?” The corpse somehow forced a smile. “It’s because he believes you are easy to control. He can have a smooth time stealing everything from you.

“In the death portrait of the bloodred city under the black lake, there are thirteen candidates. Each of them has a reason to become the new ruler of the city, but you are an exception. Your appearance is to obfuscate fate’s gaze. You are a pitiable bug that doesn’t even know his own name.

“Even now, you treat this strange title as your name. Don’t you worry that one day, people will only remember the codename, Gao Ming, and no one will remember the actual you?”

It was unknown whether Situ An was too resentful for being trapped for so long or the God of the Future had gone overboard. The puppet revealed so many things. Gao Ming derived a lot of information from it. The information might not be true, but as long as parts of it were close enough to the truth, it was worth it for Gao Ming.

“It doesn’t matter if Gao Ming is my name or not. It’s enough that I am still me.” Back in Li San Hospital, Gao Ming already knew certain things through his interaction with Lu Zang... But did that change anything?

“Does it really not matter? Then, why don’t we play a game with your parents as the bet?” The corpse puppet taunted. “Don’t you want to know what your parents are doing? Who are they, and where are they now?” The puppet smiled gleefully. He was ready to unleash chaos upon the world. “Lu Zang must have told you that Han Hai is a giant prison. Humans are ghosts, and ghosts are humans. All your memories about everything outside of Han Hai are fake. They are fabricated by fate. In that case, are your parents really your parents in your memory?”

“I started investigating when Lu Zang chose you. I found something interesting about you. Your parents mysteriously disappeared from a point onwards. I poured all of East City’s resources into looking for them but to no avail. Everyone’s memory related to them was fuzzy. It was like they had been deleted by fate.

They would appear to deliver cakes and say some strange things. In the past, Gao Ming thought nothing of it. However, after he gained part of the power of the God of the Past, he noticed something strange about it. In the memories of the Gao Mings who died at the beginning, there were not that many mothers and fathers. With each of Gao Ming’s death, there would be one additional pair of parents. They knocked on his door stubbornly to celebrate Gao Ming’s birth.

“At first, there was only one pair of parents. Even after many deaths, I am still me, but there are more and more parents... Did the parents of each of my itinerations enter the shadow world and congregate on the same line because they have been continuously searching for something?”

The corpse of each Gao Ming in the past had been embedded in the walls of the tunnel and froze in time. However, the parents of these Gao Mings didn’t give up on him. They had been looking for them until they entered the shadow world and found him at home.

Time kept repeating. Behind the death of each Gao Ming, there was a pair of despairing parents who sunk into the shadow world. They were not stuck in a spot where time was frozen. Where was this time?

The gift of the God of the Past was someone’s most important thing in their lives. It was a memory that even God had trouble disgusting.

Gao Ming’s present was very simple. It was the birthday death portrait he obtained at the start. All his parents were by his side. They surrounded him.

Have they always been with me?

These thoughts were maddening. Ever since he left the tunnel a few months ago, everything was pierced through by a trail. Gao Ming felt like he was finally approaching an answer.