“I couldn’t be 100% sure he’d target us—maybe it was for the Old Treeman. But for safety, I chose protection. If wrong, no loss. If right, it avoids trouble—like now.”
An Luo: “…Impressive.”
He was speechless.
Meieruita was just too reliable.
If it were An Luo… he’d probably still be watching the show, oblivious to left or right hands…
The farce didn’t last long. Even powerful witchcraft from a Wizard Apprentice couldn’t harm the Old Treeman.
Nor did he achieve his true goal of killing more passed apprentices.
Vast vines formed a protective net, blocking the remaining fireballs. None of the ambushed Wizard Apprentices died.
Then, his vines tightly bound the frenzied apprentice—very tightly. Though An Luo’s world was dark, he heard the screams.
Not just him—many injured apprentices wailed in pain.
It sent a chill down An Luo’s spine.
Even without visuals, the sounds hammered his brain like a mallet.
He was once again profoundly aware of how dark the wizards’ world was.
He had once seen news of a Flower Country tourist robbed abroad. Local police arrived promptly, shot the robber’s head off, and told the Flower Country man not to worry—everything was handled.
In the eyes of the locals, all of this was perfectly normal—nothing to criticize at all. If you got robbed, we took out the robber for you. Didn’t that just show how safe their country was?
But the Flower Country native was utterly terrified and packed his bags to flee back home the very next day.
For someone who grew up in a peaceful and serene nation, the shock of seeing someone nearby get their head blown off at point-blank range was unimaginable to those from other places.
An Luo now faced a situation much like that Flower Country native’s.
When Meieruita dealt with those attackers earlier, An Luo hadn’t had much of a reaction, mainly because Meieruita not only blurred the visuals but also used quick-kill methods with hardly any screams—any that there were got drowned out by explosions.
So An Luo hadn’t seen the footage or really heard the sounds, making his sense of “someone died” quite faint.
But now, everything happened right in front of him, right by his side, raw and unfiltered.
Whether it was the Wizard Apprentice struck by the fireball or the ringleader now being strangled by the Treant with agonized screams, all the sounds poured into An Luo’s ears without any censorship, all mixed together.
His initial relief and admiration for Meieruita gradually gave way to a bone-chilling fear.
An Luo had read plenty of novels as a veteran reader. Most transmigrators who ended up in chaotic, strength-supreme worlds adapted quickly to the brutality, rarely showing any discomfort.
In the few stories where the protagonist felt fear after witnessing a killing firsthand, the comments would roast them: “This guy’s mental fortitude sucks—too fragile, too cowardly. It’s just one death, no big deal. Why overreact?”
“Not refreshing enough. Go read about Long Aotian next door—he took out several people himself within a month of arriving. Learn from him.”
An Luo had once thought the same. Living in Flower Country, death and chaos felt distant, so without real exposure, it didn’t seem like a big deal.
That was why he could write Supreme Wizard, a dark and grim novel, without any psychological burden.
Until it didn’t feel like a big deal anymore…
Until now…
The vivid passing of a living being right beside him, in such a cruel manner.
It felt more terrifying than any horror movie.
An Luo felt like he was standing outside in sub-zero temperatures wearing only thin clothes, the bone-piercing cold seeping into his marrow.
For the first time, he clearly realized: In this place, human life was worthless.
Waves of nausea surged up.
Before this, though An Luo had always harbored survival anxiety—worrying that Meieruita might off him—it was just worry, nothing concrete. He had never truly encountered death.
Meieruita had never done anything to him and had always acted mildly.
Knowing and experiencing were two entirely different things.
At some point, An Luo had tightly gripped Meieruita’s clothes. The body heat from another person transmitted steadily through the fabric, and that person’s scent provided immense comfort at that moment.
Suddenly, Meieruita did something, and the external noises dropped sharply, turning into a vague buzz. Only Meieruita’s voice remained steady and clear: “Sorry, I didn’t consider the sound.”
He pulled An Luo tighter into his embrace. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll protect you.”
The assurance from the protagonist felt incredibly reassuring. Meieruita was An Luo’s sole anchor connecting him to this world—the one he knew best, liked most, and had poured the most effort into.
The only one who knew his origins, with whom he could freely discuss the past without reservation.
An Luo’s face was bloodless, still very pale.
He recalled the plot of Supreme Wizard.
It was an upgrade-flow novel, and this incident was barely a danger to Meieruita—just a minor interlude.
He handled it perfectly: calm under pressure, even sparing thought for An Luo’s safety and feelings.
An Luo had set him as a native of this world, so he adapted well to its dark worldview.
But An Luo couldn’t.
He lowered his gaze, and his original plan solidified completely.
He had to leave the wizards’ domain and live among ordinary people.
Though the era’s ordinary folk lived in a world vastly different from Flower Country’s due to the setting, at least there was basic order—not the utter chaos of the wizard world.
An Luo wasn’t cut out for competing, dominating, or upgrading against others.
Truth be told, many fantasized about achieving greatness after transmigrating, but it was just wishful thinking. In a comfortable modern society with relatively fair competition and open paths upward, they were just average Joes. In a harsher ancient or otherworldly setting, forget greatness—survival would be the issue.
Using modern knowledge? Leveraging eloquence to persuade otherworlders with your silver tongue?
Get real. Plenty of people couldn’t even convince their own parents or elders, let alone otherworlders with wildly different values.
They couldn’t resolve conflicts with strangers or handle online trolls—imagine facing a group raised in a dark, chaotic world with completely alien worldviews.
While you’re hesitating on how to debate verbally, they’ve already swung the knife.
An Luo knew himself well.
He was just an ordinary person. He only wanted a safe and peaceful life, with a bit of spice to avoid boredom, and he’d be content spending it quietly.
Once Meieruita took over the Wizard Tower, he’d leave.
Meieruita had thought he’d been thorough enough.
But now, he realized he’d underestimated just how stable An Luo’s original world had been.
People couldn’t imagine what they’d never seen. Though Meieruita had tried his best to envision and deduce, lacking clues—and with An Luo holding back details to protect Earth—he couldn’t grasp how peaceful modern Flower Country truly was.
In Meieruita’s view, even the most pampered noble ladies or princesses wouldn’t react like An Luo to such a scene—with such profound shock and fright.
Because death was commonplace; nothing unusual.
So he’d thought avoiding the gory visuals would suffice.
Back when Meieruita was still a manor servant before entering the Wizard Tower, he’d long grown numb to such things.
Lan Lian’s father, the local lord, would drunkenly kill offending slaves on the spot. Plenty more died under Lan Lian’s torment. And there had been a small war before that, with even more deaths.
Meieruita had imagined a paradise on earth, piling in everything he deemed unrealistically idealistic, but even that fell far short of the mark—vastly so.
“It’s fine now.”
Though annoyed at his oversight, Meieruita still gleaned more valuable info about An Luo.
And seeing An Luo, frightened into depending on him, didn’t satisfy him.
Meieruita wanted An Luo to depend on him out of fear of external dangers, staying by his side out of necessity. But when real danger actually scared An Luo, it irked him.
If needed, he’d manufacture threats himself, but he always controlled the dosage—never like this sudden crisis piercing An Luo’s mental defenses outright.
Everything now was beyond his control.
This loss of control filled Meieruita with extreme disgust and discomfort. The intense negativity seemed to trigger something—a faint “crack” echoed in his mind, like a sealed space splitting open, something trickling out.
The rift self-repaired quickly, returning to silent darkness.
But what flowed out integrated rapidly into Meieruita’s brain.
Fragmented knowledge.
Profound and arcane—none he’d heard of before.
Yet he understood it instinctively, as if he’d always known it but temporarily forgotten.
The external chaos gradually subsided. In the slightly humid air echoed the Old Treeman’s raspy voice and the Wizard Apprentices’ whispers.
Meieruita’s gray-green eyes calmly gazed ahead.
His guess had been correct.
He truly was the “Traveler” version of himself. For some reason, he’d sealed his memories, abandoned all achievements, wealth—even the Wizard Tower full of knowledge—and returned to the starting point.
Meieruita recalled Lan Lian’s early death. He’d thought An Luo misremembered due to time and revised openings, unclear on the cause.
But now… had An Luo really misremembered?
Or had Meieruita himself killed Lan Lian ahead of time, making him An Luo’s vessel?
Why would “Traveler Meieruita” do that?
With everything outside handled cleanly, Meieruita slowly lowered his hand from covering An Luo’s eyes. “Don’t be afraid.”
He repeated, “I’ll protect you.”
Of course I would.
So don’t be afraid, my dear… mother.
