"Hope for me...?" Gao Zhen repeated his words, wearing a confused expression on her face. She was unable to make sense of any of his words.

She was especially confused by the bright expression he carried while referring to the tournament and her Heir Selection.

"What do you mean? Hope for the Heir Selection? It’s been years since then. The new Heir would have already been selected by my father."

Hearing her words of confusion, Yi Chen shook his head and explained, "No! You don’t understand. This realm! This place where we are trapped in...it doesn’t follow the same principles of time as outside!

What has been more than two and a half years for us has only been around five days in the outside world! Meaning the Heir Selection has yet to take place!"

Yi Chen bellowed in excitement.

’Only five days...’ Gao Zhen’s steady gaze wavered for a brief instant as a part of her believed his words, hoping for it to be true.

However, that was for only a moment, as a second later she asked the most rational question that would come to anyone’s mind after hearing what Yi Chen had just said.

"Y-You...are you joking with me?" she asked as a frown soon formed on her face as she continued, "What’s wrong with you? I didn’t think that you were so clueless. How can you joke on such an important matt-"

Seeing that his words were taken in the wrong light, Yi Chen immediately cut Gao Zhen off before it could snowball into something worse and said, "No! You misunderstand! What I said is the truth!

Time in this realm is exactly one-eighty times faster when compared to the outside world. This Frozen Ice Realm was specifically created to pass down the Abyssal Blackglacial Arts and thus possesses such mysterious properties.

I know it sounds absurd, but it’s the truth!"

Yi Chen explained, urging her to believe his words. However, if only a few words were enough to make Gao Zhen believe his absurd statements, then she wouldn’t be confused in the first place.

"One-eighty times faster? Frozen Ice Realm? Did you just make it all by yourself? Do you realise that the more you’re trying to justify this joke, the angrier it’s making me right now? It can no longer be considered a joke, so please stop."

She snorted with an expression of disgust. The positive feelings she had developed towards him in all these years were crumbling with each passing second.

The next second, she shook her shoulders and pushed aside the hands that were grabbing onto her shoulders.

Even though he felt wronged, he still tried to make her understand.

’Gosh, why is it so difficult?! If only I could tell her about the system, then everything would have been much simpler.’

He thought in frustration and exclaimed, "Have I ever made such jokes in the past?! I didn’t, right? So why do you think I’m making one all of a sudden? What I said is the truth! Time in this place is 180 times faster, and once we are out, we’ll still have the chance to accomplish our goals!"

Hearing Yi Chen’s angry tone, Gao Zhen finally hesitated a little. However, his words were still too hard for anyone to believe. She had never heard the possibility of time being manipulated by someone or something.

But still, she wanted to give him a chance. A part of her hoped that she was wrong and she hadn’t misjudged the man with whom she had shared all these years.

"Then tell me!" she exclaimed while meeting his gaze, "This Frozen Ice Realm and the absurd fact about the time being one-eighty times faster in here...Just where did you hear these from? Who told you about this? And...Why now? After we’ve spent years trapped in this place, why are you telling it to me now?!"

Her voice trembled as she finished her words.

Anger, irritation, frustration, and hope. All four of them were mixed in different proportions in that outburst of hers.

As her words reached his ears, Yi Chen finally gritted his teeth and thought, ’This...well fuck it!’

"It was the voice!" he exclaimed the next moment and continued, "You remember the door trial I had to go through in order to open the temple’s door. It was at that time that I first heard that grating voice.

At first, I thought it had malicious intent towards me, but soon I realised it was trying to help me. Without its help, I would not have understood the situation quickly enough and would have failed the trial!

It wasn’t just at that time. That voice also helped me a lot in the trials the three of us were facing.

And half an hour ago, I heard the same grating voice while returning from the coastline. It was at that time that it had informed me about the realm’s details!"

By the time Yi Chen finished, he was breathing heavily and was looking straight into Gao Zhen’s eyes, demanding nothing but her trust.

Although he had mixed several lies with truth in order to justify his words, it was necessary. Without that, he felt that there was no other way for him to make her believe his words.

Telling her about the system was an option he never considered in the first place.

Therefore, deciding to take advantage of the strange voice he had been hearing all this time in his head, he framed this lie in order to justify the truth.

"Strange voice?"

An intense frown appeared on Gao Zhen’s forehead the moment Yi Chen’s words registered in her mind.

Although she still found it difficult to believe his words, her previous resistance to the idea had gone down by several degrees.

"...If what you say is the truth, and that strange voice indeed informed you about this. Then how can you be sure that it was telling the truth?" She asked the next moment.

"It definitely is telling the truth! There’s no reason for it to lie to us. Moreover, from my understanding, it’s apparent that this voice wants to help us, so I think it might be this tomb’s guardian trying to aid us..."

Yi Chen explained on the spur of the moment, sensing that Gao Zhen’s previous resistance to the idea had weakened considerably.

"This..."

The more she heard his words, the quicker her breathing became as a sense of hope finally began to take root in her heart.