The woman's eyes widened, and her eye sockets were slightly red.

"You are... Zhou Huai?"

She sized up the young man in front of her, holding her breath.

She dared not recognize the tall, imposing young man before her, except for his familiar features.

Seeing his mother's appearance, Zhou Huai felt a lump in his throat. He tilted his head back, suppressing the warmth in his eyes, and then nodded.

"Mom, it's me. I'm Zhou Huai."

Although her current appearance is completely different from how she looks in my memory.

But that sense of familiarity, that feeling of being connected by blood, cannot be replicated.

She is his own mother.

Upon hearing the reply, the woman burst into tears.

The tears wouldn't stop.

She stepped forward and embraced Zhou Huai. Her hands stroked his back, then cupped his face, her fingertips caressing his contours.

"Huai'er...it really is you!"

“My Huai’er, you’ve grown up...you’ve finally grown up...”

The woman sobbed uncontrollably, her tears falling onto Zhou Huai's cheeks, burning hot.

The mother and son embraced and wept amidst the sea of ​​clouds. Zhou Huai savored this maternal love.

After a long while, the two calmed down.

Zhou Huai gently supported his mother's shoulders, reason regaining control of his mind. He looked around and asked the question that had been lingering in his mind:

"Mom, what exactly happened? Weren't you kidnapped by Mr. Duan back then?"

Why are you here?

"And... what the hell is this place?"

The woman wiped away the tears from the corners of her eyes, her expression becoming complicated.

“You’re right, Mr. Duan took me away. For years, he has kept me trapped in an unknown place, and I don’t even know what kind of abyss that is.”

She pointed to the sea of ​​clouds beneath her feet, then to the towering tree radiating light in the distance, "The fact that you can see me here doesn't mean we've met in reality. This is my spiritual world."

"The spiritual world?"

Zhou Huai was stunned.

He suddenly remembered the ancient remnant soul named Chun outside the ruins. That woman had immersed her true form in a lake brimming with life energy, saying she would help him level up and break free from the shackles of a professional.

It turns /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ out that the method the other party mentioned for increasing strength was to allow him to overcome the barriers of dimensions through some secret technique and reunite with his mother in the spiritual world!

What kind of insane logic lies behind all of this? 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

Before Zhou Huai could ask any more questions and clarify the relationship, the woman spoke first.

She looked at Zhou Huai, then lowered her head: "Huai'er, don't worry about me for now. How have you been all these years on your own?"

She paused, then gripped Zhou Huai's sleeve tightly. "How is your father... Zhou Feng? Is he taking good care of you?"

Upon hearing the name Zhou Feng, Zhou Huai's smile vanished, and he lowered his head.

The Zhou family was a quagmire he didn't want to look back on.

“Father...” Zhou Huai lowered his eyes, his voice low, “is dead.”

"Dead?"

The woman stopped what she was doing and sighed.

"How could this happen... What exactly happened all these years?" She gripped Zhou Huai's arm tightly and pressed for an answer.

Facing his mother, Zhou Huai had no intention of hiding anything. He recounted his experiences over the years, one by one.

After her mother was arrested, she was bullied by her stepmother Liu Yuru and her adopted younger brother, and then she was ruthlessly kicked out of her home at the job transfer ceremony.

He recounted how he turned misfortune into blessing, awakening a god-level clone system and gaining the trump card to change his destiny.

"Later, a once-in-a-century beast tide broke out in Donghai City. The Dawn Guild secretly fueled the flames, and the Zhou family was wiped out in that catastrophe. And Father..." Zhou Huai clenched his fist, "He coveted the power brought by the divine artifact and ultimately died from the backlash of the divine artifact, the Heaven-Suppressing Seal. His essence was drained, and not even his bones were left behind."

As the woman listened, she covered her lips with her hand, and tears streamed down her face.

Zhou Huai didn't stop; he continued to recount his most secret past: "Later, in order to quell the turmoil, my soul power was exhausted, and I was on the verge of death. If it weren't for the fact that there's always a way out, if I hadn't risked my life to kill the resurrected SSS-rank Amaterasu Omikami Kujo Naruya from the Sakura Kingdom and reclaim the pendulum of life that could reverse life and death, I would have already gone to see the King of Hell. I successfully resurrected myself with this divine artifact..."

"But just when I thought everything was going in a good direction, Mr. Duan came to visit me in person."

Upon hearing the name Mr. Duan, the woman flinched and took a half-step back.

"...He found you?"

“That’s right.” Zhou Huai sneered. “He was arrogant and looked down on me like an ant. He casually killed the SS-level clone that I had painstakingly built up. I used all my trump cards, including the Great Sage Li Er’s words becoming law, but I couldn’t hurt him in the slightest. In the end, I could only rely on the characteristics of an S-level necromancer to create a perfect substitute to self-destruct, which was how I managed to fool him and escape.”

As Zhou Huai recounted his story, the woman listened intently, tears streaming down her face.

She never imagined that during the years she was imprisoned, her own flesh and blood would endure such hellish torment in the outside world.

“Huai’er... my Huai’er...” She reached out and stroked Zhou Huai’s hair. “You’ve suffered so much these years. I’m so sorry, I didn’t protect you properly...”

"Mom, don't say that."

Zhou Huai took his mother's hand in return and smiled.

“For me, those hardships are insignificant. It is precisely because of these setbacks and life-or-death crises that I have grown. If I had remained a useless person under the Zhou family's protection, I would never have been able to stand here to see you.”

Zhou Huai raised his head and looked into the distance.

"Right now, what's most important to me isn't dwelling on the past. It's how to deal with that Mr. Duan, and how to truly rescue you from that dark and hopeless place!"

Upon hearing this, the woman's expression darkened.

She shook her head and sighed.

"Huai'er, you don't understand..."

"Mr. Duan's strength has long exceeded your imagination. He is a transcendent being who is not bound by rules. Even if you have the help of the will of Heaven, even if you have those magical clones, you can't be his match."

"He has been planning for this day, for this great purge that will replace the previous version, for a very long time, spanning countless years. He is setting up a scheme to devour the whole world, and we cannot defeat him."

Seeing his mother's resigned expression, Zhou Huai did not back down.

"No matter how long he's been planning this, no matter how strong he is, I'm going to give it my all!"

"Mom, we have nowhere left to retreat! At this point, do we have any other choice but to fight to the death?"

He looked at his mother and said, word by word, "Even if I hide now, the world is about to face a great purge by the Heavenly Dao. When the nest is overturned, how can the eggs remain intact? Besides, Mr. Duan is a person with an extremely strong desire for control. Once he finds out that I am still alive and that I am an uncontrollable variable, he will come looking for me sooner or later!"

"To run away is to die!"