Ancestral Land, Castle.

Main Hall.

The queen consort's face was streaked with tears, her right hand clutching the ice blade trembled slightly, "Why, didn't you dodge?"

"Because I can't die," Chen Yu smiled, "And I know, you didn't want to kill me."

"...Why."

"Didn't you tell me before that I would do something great in the future? That's proof that I, as I am now, won't die. I'm destined to live on for thousands of years."

"..."

"Fate," Chen Yu shrugged, "you know in your heart that everything is predetermined."

Upon hearing these words, the queen consort's emotions crumbled even further.

"There, there," Chen Yu remained calm, ignoring the blood spreading across his chest, turned around and patted the trembling shoulders of the queen consort, pointing upstairs, "The group of friends on the first floor are awakening. Let's go to the third floor to talk." Find adventures at My Virtual Library Empire

Without waiting for a response,

he directly made his way back to his own bedroom on the third floor.

The queen consort silently watched Chen Yu's retreating figure, remaining silent for a long time before slowly following him after wiping the tears off her face.

"Close the door, thank you."

Sitting down at the desk, Chen Yu crossed his legs and pulled out a box of cigarettes from the drawer, lighting one with a flame before sticking it in his mouth, "Sit."

As she closed the wooden door, the queen consort sat opposite him, "You knew early on that I would come."

"No kidding," Chen Yu exhaled a cloud of smoke, "I'm not an idiot."

"When did you learn to smoke?"

"I can even consume soul beads, what's wrong with smoking a cigarette?" Disliking the smoke before his eyes, he shifted his position to face the queen consort squarely, "Let's skip the useless talk. How long have you been in this timeline?"

"...Forty years."

"Why come so early? Planning to kill the 'Great Emperor's mother' directly?"

"I didn't even know who the Great Emperor was, let alone find his mother," the queen consort's gaze was complex, "I just wanted to come early, to kill him before he could grow up. But unfortunately, I searched every place and couldn't find any trace of him."

"Heh," Chen Yu laughed, snuffing out the cigarette.

"So, I had pretty much guessed it then. That Great Emperor, it's you."

At this, the queen consort covered her face, lowered her head, her body twitching again as she sobbed, "So it turns out... the root of all evil, it's me. It's me."

"If I hadn't gone against time."

"I wouldn't have brought you to the present."

"You wouldn't have come, and humans wouldn't have ingested soul beads."

"Nor would there have been future calamities..."

Chen Yu's smile faded as he said, "There also wouldn't have been humans."

"..." The queen consort lay powerless on the table, suddenly bursting into loud sobs.

All her long-held beliefs had collapsed.

She had traveled through thousands of years.

Undergone hundreds of reincarnations.

What was the meaning?

What was the value?

For millennia,

the pillar that kept her going was to seek revenge on the initiator of the soul beads.

But now, the reality in front of her told her,

it was she who had "ignited" the soul beads, "killed" her brother from a millennium later.

She was the initiator.

She was the cause of all evil.

She, was the original "starting point."

"Stop crying, have a cigarette," Chen Yu offered a cigarette. Seeing that she was unmoved and kept crying, he stuck it in his mouth again, consoling her, "Sis. In fact, if you think about it from another angle, you are actually the savior of human civilization. If you weren't idly sick enough to travel through time and brought me along, our race would've been extinguished long ago. You came forty years early, and you know very well what humanity was like during this period."

"Waah!!!"

Instantly, the queen consort cried even louder.

"Stop crying! I, for one, can't stand to see a girl cry. Haha. Um."

"I don't care!" the queen consort, looking frenzied, suddenly raised her head and slammed the table, "Whether civilizations perish or not! I don't care! I just can't accept that the future catastrophes were caused by me!"

"You're too agitated," Chen Yu stood up, walking over to a pile of soul beads nearby. He picked up a soul bead and handed it to the queen consort, "Here, eat a soul bead, calm down a bit."

"Don't think I won't dare to kill you!" the queen consort's eyes suddenly reddened.

"You can't kill me," Chen Yu spread his arms, expressionless, "Stop deceiving yourself. By now, you should fully realize why a time paradox is called a paradox. I won't die. And you are bound to travel through ten thousand years. Otherwise, this timeline wouldn't even exist."

"..."

The queen consort fell silent, feeling powerless.

"How should I put this?" Chen Yu, hands in pockets and a cigarette unlit in his mouth, walked towards the window, looking out at the cloudy sky, "I understand some of your feelings. If 'fate' is predetermined, then we are just a bunch of marionettes. All this talk about self and consciousness, independence and freedom, is all bullshit."

"It's like playing a video game. We are just fixed NPCs in the game. Ah... it's so despairing."

"But are there any benefits? There are."

Chen Yu turned around, looking at the queen consort, "Like me. Even though I've returned to ancient times, I'm not worried at all about whether I can live until a few thousand years later. Because in the future, I am definitely going to appear."

"Some people often say, life, since you can't fight against it, you have to learn to enjoy it."

"And since we are predetermined episodes in history, why bother fussing about it?"

"So."

"Ultimately."

"Humanity wasn't saved by you."

"The future wasn't caused by you."

"The soul beads weren't activated by you."

"You're just a puppet whose self-will, self-thinking, self-choice, and self-freedom don't belong to you at all, so what does it all have to do with you?"

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