Wang Hao blinked, once, twice, as if struggling to clear his vision, to make sense of what he had just heard.

"You?" he repeated, his voice rising in incredulity, "On your knees?" It was an image his mind utterly refused to reconcile with the person sitting before him, a profound violation of his friend’s very essence.

Lin Yi nodded, reiterating what he had said, his composure absolute.

A profound silence descended upon the room, thick and suffocating. It was not merely the absence of sound, but the heavy quiet produced when a deeply ingrained reality had just been violently contradicted, when long-held beliefs about a person’s unbreakable spirit were challenged to their core. Wang Hao’s worldview, constructed around Lin Yi’s unwavering strength, threatened to crumble.

"And he enslaved you?" Wang Hao asked, his voice barely audible, the word ’enslaved’ tasting like ash on his tongue. The idea was almost too monstrous to contemplate.

"For the duration of the event," Lin Yi clarified, explaining the specific conditions. "The mark was released when he reached level 250." His tone was devoid of self-pity, simply relaying the facts of his ordeal.

"And after all that," Wang Hao continued, his voice slow and deliberate, processing the layers of injustice, "he still sent three divine beast projections to kill you? After everything?" The betrayal, the sheer callousness of it, was almost too much to bear. It wasn’t just an attack on Lin Yi, but a profound insult to everything!

"Everything exactly went like that," Lin Yi confirmed, the single word hanging heavy in the air.

"After making you farm experience for him for an entire month, essentially using you as a living tool?" Wang Hao’s voice was now laced with an edge of pure outrage, a protective fury on behalf of his friend. The image of Lin Yi, the leader, the trailblazer, reduced to such a subservient role, was infuriating.

"To be honest," Lin Yi said, his eyes meeting Wang Hao’s, showing that he understood the depth of the insult. "I expected him to make such a move, so I prepared beforehand."

Wang Hao slowly raised both hands and covered his face, pressing his palms against his eyes as if to block out the horrifying images his mind was conjuring. He remained like that for several long, drawn-out seconds, the silence in the room punctuated only by the subtle rustle of Shen Rou’s unmoving notes. His shoulders sagged, the weight of the revelations bearing down on him. Finally, he lowered his hands, his face etched with a solemn, weary expression, like a man who had just endured a great personal tribulation, witnessing suffering almost too profound to grasp.

"Continue," he said, his voice flat, resolute, ready to face the full, unvarnished truth, no matter how painful. The initial shock had given way to a grim determination to understand the full scope of Lin Yi’s ordeal.

Lin Yi, seeing the silent acceptance in his friend’s eyes, continued his narrative. He spoke of the subsequent encounters with the dragon projections, the three colossal, terrifying beasts sent to finish him off.

He then described how he had managed to defeat the first two, pushing himself to his absolute limits, only for the third, far more formidable projection, to absorb the essence of its fallen brethren, escalating the threat to an almost insurmountable level. He recounted the dramatic collapse of the event itself, the very fabric of that separate dimension tearing apart, manifesting as ominous rifts opening across the sky, portending the end. He spoke of his emergence into a strange, featureless white room, a place of unsettling calm amidst the chaos, and the imposing final door that stood before him. He then hinted at what had lay behind that door, a place of ultimate choice and consequence, though he remained deliberately vague on the specifics.

There were, however, crucial details he deliberately omitted, information too profound, too dangerous, or too complex for the current conversation. He did not speak Xu Ling’s name, knowing the immense implications of revealing her existence and power. He made no mention of the Celestial Emperor, a name that carried a weight beyond anything his friends could currently comprehend. The true nature of the inheritance he had received remained unspoken, its power and potential far exceeding what was prudent to share. The whispers of the Aethel-Sun bloodline, the Origin Seed, or the Immortal Decree—all were carefully guarded secrets.

Some matters, he knew, were simply too heavy for casual conversation, or even for an immediate, honest debriefing. It wasn’t a question of trust; he trusted Wang Hao and Shen Rou, not to the extent of placing his life in their hands, but enough to tell them about his celestial inheritance. No, trust was not the issue here. Timing, however, was everything. These were truths that required careful consideration, a gradual unveiling, and a certain level of preparedness that his friends, in their current state and understanding, simply did not possess. To reveal them now would be to overwhelm, perhaps even to endanger them, or prematurely alter their perception of reality.

He only provided details about the Star Compass, the extraordinary artifact that had platformed him, and the three-day journey it had taken him to finally make his way home, back to their familiar world.

When he finished, the final words hanging in the air, the room once again fell into a profound quiet. This silence was different from the earlier, shocked one; it was a quiet born of sheer mental exhaustion, of processing a tale so epic, so brutal, and so transformative that it reshaped their understanding of existence itself. The lingering echo of Lin Yi’s voice seemed to fill the space, leaving an indelible imprint.

Shen Rou was the first to break the stillness, her analytical mind immediately grasping the core anomaly. Her gaze was directed at Lin Yi, her brow slightly furrowed in deep thought.

"The time distortion," she articulated, her voice resuming its precise, measured cadence. "The space you entered with... whoever was there. It clearly existed outside of conventional temporal flow."

"Yes," Lin Yi confirmed, his response concise. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"What felt like a matter of mere hours to you, perhaps a day or two in your perception, translated into nearly a full month here in our reality." She stated this as a logical deduction, the pieces of a complex puzzle falling into place.

"Indeed," Lin Yi confirmed. "As expected of you, Shen Rou."