"We are looking for some beast that killed our people." The woman explained calmly. "I don't know why, but the scents of our dead people are coming from you. And you don't even have the pol to kill an ant. I want to know if it is someone that exchanged the scent with you to trick us. Now, tell me quickly what your name is and where you come from. I want to know all the people you have come across in the past week."

He didn't have the pol to kill an ant? It had been long since he received such an insult. But he could let it go in exchange for information. These three people in front of him could tell him everything he needed to know.

So he played along.

"My name is Ilu Sanka. I came from Dikan." Abdin knew that they couldn't call out his lie. For one, it wasn't the name of a famous cultivator so they wouldn't have any reason to recognize it. And since the fall of Dikan, the survivors had been fleeing and seeking asylum in the neighboring empires. Finding Abdin here wouldn't raise any suspicions. Besides, his cultivation was pretty low so the name matched well.

"You are lying," the woman calmly said. Her tone was still the same. "Your name isn't Ilu Sanka. And you are not from Dikan." She tilted her head up at him. "I'm curious, why do you lie? Are you truly the one that killed our people?"

Abdin took a breath ever so slightly that only the most observant could notice. When the castle expanded that last time, it had consumed thousands of soldiers among the invaders.

The victims would die just as the people of Wuran and Nanila were dying now.

Yes, some skills would detect lies but he couldn't remember seeing anyone that could identify killers from their scent. Did they want to tell him that all the people that died from Wuran to Nanila to the invaders had left their scents on him? A scent that couldn't be erased even by the loop?

"I shall give you the chance, to tell the truth," said the woman. "I am not going to kill you right now if you do. But I shall behead you if you lie. I will start with killing that baby in the house while you watch."

Damn spiritual sense. The woman had used it to see the baby in the house.

He had screened the room with charms... So the Nánata could ignore charms. In the first place, that must be how they found him since he'd assembled charms to protect the house.

Abdin shook his head. "I haven't killed anyone in my life." In his current life in this loop, he didn't kill anyone.

The woman frowned. She couldn't detect any lies this time, but his scent was clear. She could still smell the aura of her men on him.

She turned to the others and they spoke in hushed tones before turning to him again.

Suddenly the center of her eyes began to glow red. It was much more intense than what he'd seen with Laluri.

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He felt lightheaded and staggered.

It took a great effort to open his eyes, and when he did, the scenery had already changed.

He wasn't at the door or even in Nanila, but in a dense forest surrounded by soldiers. The three people he had been speaking with stood at the front watching him with narrowed eyes.

Space manipulation? The Nànata certainly deserved their fame. It had been a long time since he came across such a thing.

The place was noisy and Abdin couldn't understand what they were saying. The first thing that crossed his mind was the baby.

It was unlikely that anyone would enter the house and find the baby.

The poor thing would probably starve to death. For that reason alone, Abdin felt the urge to reset the loop at that very moment. But he needed information and this seemed to be the best way to get it...

As he debated on what to do next, it became eerily quiet. The men surrounding him made way for someone approaching. A man wearing a leather outfit with a silver-colored mask moved forward and stopped before him.

Silver Mask!

This was about the eleventh time he'd met the man. And never once had he heard the man's voice.

"What is your name?" The man's voice entered his ears. It was manly. It wasn't harsh, but it carried a chill that froze the bones. And yet, it was familiar.

'This voice...'

Abdin froze. He recognized it almost immediately but he couldn't trust his ears, at least not this time. For in a different era, centuries ago, he heard the same voice.

It was at a distant place east of the commonly-known East, at an island that housed the only level 6 empire.

It was at a time when Abdin invaded the eastern lands with his castles. The people of the level 6 empire sent a messenger to him.

The messenger had a voice exactly like that of Silver Mask. The reason Abdin couldn't forget the voice for all these years was that the voice was death itself.

Whenever the voice commanded, men would obey.

During that forgotten era, the voice merely spoke, and the eastern dwellers were forced to behave and cast Abdin away. That time, Abdin had narrowly escaped.

And he kept running for a long time. He never stopped fleeing even after leaving the East. He had passed many empires on his way, but he had never stopped until he became confident that he had outrun the voice.

The question was, what was that voice doing here? From the level 6 empire of Yusta'Diyum to the known East was a journey of months on a mount. And from the East to Biyakis was a journey of at least thirty years even to core formation experts, a journey that a low-level cultivator couldn't make for all their life. It had taken Abdin a very long time to make. What brought this voice here?

"My name is Abdin son of Samu son of Yunusu son of Nuhu."

Abdin tried to bite his tongue and stopped it from cooperating, but just as he had witnessed that other time, this voice was strongly compelling. A will that couldn't be escaped by anyone. Was all his flight leading him to this fate?

But Abdin believed that destiny could outrun a wish and vise-versa. It was why he had a wish for every fate that might catch up with him.

Since his fate had become interwoven with this herald from Yusta'Diyum, the biggest and most developed empire in the world, then his sole wish was to die and cut his losses.

And no one in the world could stop him from dying if he so wished.

Those thirteen words he uttered in reply immediately transformed into an incantation. The incantation in turn transformed into a rune. And the rune etched itself on his skin. Abdin's body immediately exploded and spread the gore all around him.

But, in a state quite mysterious to him, he wasn't dead yet. Or to be more succinct, his body died, but his soul was still tethered in place.

Silver Mask reached out and grasped something unseen, and Abdin's soul suddenly appeared at the spot.

A soul had an iridescent form with a human outline. Humans, both young and old, mostly had a common color for their iridescent forms.

But some people had red, black, or green colors. It was said that pol or the number of people killed by someone could change the color of one's soul. Though nothing was certain since the religions had put a close watch on all soul experiments.