Chapter 394: "I Am Chen Ye. When You Read This Letter..."
"I am Chen Ye. By the time you read these words, I will already be dead."
Ethan took the letter from his previous life out of Loki's hand, opened it, and was startled by the very first line.
For a split second, he thought he'd transmigrated into the wrong world!
Maybe he hadn't landed in the Marvel world at all, but in some creepy, convoluted horror-mystery world.
Ethan kept reading Chen Ye's letter.
"Scared you, didn't I? I've always wanted to pull that meme, but nobody in the Marvel world gets it." Chen Ye seemed to have predicted exactly how Ethan would react.
That line drew a wry smile from Ethan. He could almost see Chen Ye in the Marvel world, lonely and resigned, trying to share a joke with a culture he didn't fit into. The longing to be understood leapt right off the page.
"Hello, my reincarnation. I really am dead. Still, this life was worth it. My only regret is that I never made it back to my original world to see my family."
That line touched the softest part of Ethan's heart. He pictured Chen Ye standing at the end of an alien world, gazing up at the stars, his heart full of longing for home.
Reading this far, Ethan's eyes reddened a little. He could feel how deeply Chen Ye had missed his family, a bond that crossed the line between life and death. And didn't Ethan feel the same?
But if someone as powerful as Chen Ye had never made it back to his original world, could Ethan really go home?
"I know you have a lot of questions. Relax. Strictly speaking, you and I are not the same person. Or rather, I really am dead. As dead as dead gets. There's no so-called body-snatching, and no so-called resurrection through reincarnation."
"I've lived plenty. I don't want to live anymore. I spent thousands of years on this and still failed in the end. I'm not doing it over. Too tiring. A transmigrator living this exhausting a life is an utter failure."
"As for whether you can go back to the original world, that's up to you."
"Apart from inheriting my memories from before I transmigrated, you have nothing in common with me. Rather than calling you my rebirth, it'd be more accurate to call you another me from a parallel universe."
"You've played video games, right? Think of it like this: after I transmigrated, I made a save. I was Save File 1, and I failed to clear the game. You're Save File 2. Your future is yours to decide."
"The only thing is, in the new save I slipped you a little cheat, the Friendship System. And I'm going to tell you what I learned from my failure."
"You can restart a game. You can't restart a life. I can't, but you can. I was still a transmigrator, after all, and I had a bit of power. Heh."
The deeper he read, the more fully Chen Ye's personality took shape in Ethan's mind. The letter didn't show the coldness Loki had described. It showed the calm detachment of someone who had been through a great deal and let go.
As Ethan read, it was as if Chen Ye were right in front of him, two men with the same face talking to each other.
Ethan could hear both the reluctance and the letting-go in the letter. Maybe Chen Ye truly was tired and wanted to rest.
He understood now. He wasn't Chen Ye's replacement, nor a simple reincarnation. He was another self from a parallel universe, with a destiny and a mission all his own.
By Chen Ye's account, Ethan owed him some thanks. Without Chen Ye, Ethan might never have been born.
"You must have heard part of my story from Loki by now. You know the One Above All hunted me down. In fact, everyone in Marvel came after me."
"Damn it, these Marvel people really don't fight fair. All I wanted was to go home. They hit really hard. They're strong. Be careful."
"That's right. The reason they hunted me is that I found a way home, the only one I've ever found: Transcendence."
"Only by reaching the realm of Transcendence can you break completely free of the Marvel Universe, escape being rebooted, and find the road home."
"But the Marvel Universe as a whole, or you might call it Marvel's Heavenly Dao, does not allow any living being to transcend. So the One Above All, the incarnation of that Heavenly Dao, led the full might of the Marvel world in an endless hunt for me."
"You've seen how it ended. I failed. But I actually made it halfway. I reached Half-Step Transcendence. Otherwise, how do you think I could have held out so long against so many powerhouses at once?"
Reading this, Ethan thought to himself, So I was right. Chen Ye found a way back to the original world.
He had already guessed that Chen Ye's being hunted had to do with wanting to go back to his original universe.
The letter made Ethan's path forward clear. Reaching the realm of Transcendence was the way back to the original universe.
But a problem immediately occurred to him. First, he didn't know how to reach Transcendence. And even if he did, he might not be able to escape the One Above All and the rest.
"But whatever happens, at least now I have a direction." Ethan clenched his fists, his gaze resolute. At the same time, he knew that even if he truly reached Transcendence, he couldn't let his guard down against a being like the One Above All. He had to become stronger, and more careful.
Ethan read on.
"The truth is, with my power I could easily have lain low somewhere and hidden. But I discovered my path was wrong. When I reached Half-Step Transcendence, I found I couldn't go one step further."
"I despaired. After all that time and all that effort, I looked back and realized I'd taken the wrong road. I gave up the struggle. But I couldn't let it go, either. So with the energy I had left, I sealed away my memories from before I transmigrated, along with a small piece of my soul, and threw them straight into the cycle of reincarnation. And I hand-built a cheat: the Friendship System."
"At my level, hand-building a System was easy. It did cost me all my remaining energy, though. I'm good to you, aren't I, other me? When I transmigrated, I didn't have any System. Every bit of power I had, I earned through training day and night."
"So that's where you came from. Strictly speaking, you really are a Marvel native. After I'd done all that, I decided to go all out against those guys. If I killed every one of them, maybe I could still get home. And even if I couldn't, I'd show these Marvel folks what we transmigrators are made of!"
"I didn't embarrass us transmigrators, did I?"
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