“Only you? What do you mean?”
Li Hai furrowed his brows and asked, “Are Feifei and Zan Popo both your Clones?”
As he said this, he also thought to himself:
This Anping Xi is already a Clone of the Black Celestial, so why can he still create more Clones? And isn't Feifei also a Holy Envoy candidate, so why would she become Anping Xi's Clone?
As Li Hai's thoughts spun, Feifei, or rather Anping Xi, smiled and spoke again:
“Feifei and Zan Popo are not my Clones, but my—Persona.”
“Persona?”
Hearing this unfamiliar term, Li Hai became even more confused.
He frowned and said in a deep voice, “What do you mean? Are you schizophrenic? Are they personalities you split off?”
“If that helps you understand—”
Anping Xi smiled, “Then understand it that way.”
Then he or she continued:
“Four hundred years ago, I was an actor in a troupe. From the age of seven, I performed on stage, in villages, in towns, in wealthy homes, playing various roles, earning applause and curses, and briefly experiencing various lives. This feeling… I was very fascinated by it.
So later, when I gained the ability, I wanted to truly experience the entire lives of various people. Therefore, I split off one sub-personality after another, and then removed the unique personal memory information carried on the surface of these sub-personalities.
Then I inserted these blank sub-personalities, which still carried my personal character traits, into the minds and consciousnesses of various people, replacing their personalities, but still using their memories.
This way, I could experience their complete lives from both my main personality's perspective and the sub-personality's non-my perspective, standing offstage, manipulating and appreciating each drama of joy and sorrow that I staged. Tsk, tsk, tsk, this is… truly too interesting.”
After listening to this long speech, Li Hai was silent for a moment, then said coldly:
“I understand. You have always been using some Divine Ability or evil art to split off sub-personalities that can be perceived and manipulated by you, and then let these sub-personalities Possess innocent people in the world.
Finally, you turn these people into tools for you to experience various lives, to please your fanatical desire for performance, and to satisfy your perverse narcissistic tendencies. Heh, I have to say, you are truly a complete lunatic.”
“Lunatic?”
Anping Xi smiled and said, “I have indeed experienced the lives of more than one lunatic; they were all quite interesting.”
“In any case—” Li Hai said in a deep voice, “Zan Popo must have been Possessed by your sub-personality a long time ago, and Feifei somewhat later.”
“You guessed correctly.”
Anping Xi said leisurely, “Popo, she became my Persona as early as when she was a slave at the Mystic Gu Workshop. She was only in her teens then. As for Feifei… her situation is more complex.”
“Feifei in her childhood was indeed a slave of the Mystic Gu Workshop and did undergo various terrifying experiments within the workshop. But it was precisely the torment of these cruel experiments that allowed her to awaken her revival ability.”
Anping Xi recalled, “However, unfortunately, after dying and reviving, although Feifei’s Physical Body was fully restored without a scratch, her spirit, which had already disintegrated under various torments, could not return to its original state. So she became a hollow person whose personality and thoughts had completely collapsed.
From then on, Feifei, who could only lie blankly on the ground without any ability to act, became the best food for the wild beasts deep in the Red Soil Forest. Every day, she would be dismembered by packs of beasts several times, dozens of times, or even hundreds of times.
Anyway, no matter how many times she died, she would revive again in some corner of the forest, once again providing a fresh, unresisting meal for the beasts. This cycle continued day after day, month after month, year after year.
So, after dying countless times, perhaps dozens of times, constantly reviving randomly throughout the forest, Feifei, with the gradual movement of time and fate, finally traversed eight thousand li in three years, coincidentally moving into the hall of the Li Wang Temple in Jin Fu Town, and was then discovered by my Persona, Popo.”
Li Hai interjected, “So Feifei was then Possessed by your sub-personality, becoming another one of your Clones, and then, along with the Clone named Popo, they acted out a false drama of a loving mother and filial daughter day after day, month after month, year after year.”
“You are wrong, Li Hai, completely wrong.”
Anping Xi flatly denied, “That was absolutely not a false drama. Before you came to Jin Fu Town, Zan Popo and Feifei’s lives were real. Their emotional interactions and exchanges were natural, and they brought me much joy and much emotion, and—”
He or she said leisurely, “If it weren’t for the support of my sub-personalities, they would have been crushed by their tragic lives a long time ago.
As benevolent as I am, all the Personas I chose were originally poor souls whose spirits had collapsed due to the ravages of life and fate.
If I had not appeared, these Personas would have died early, no longer able to experience this colorful world and wonderful life.”
“You are not honest, Anping Xi.”
Li Hai retorted coldly, “I despise people like you the most. If you commit evil, then commit evil. What’s the point of saying such grandiloquent words? If you were truly that kind-hearted, then why did you sit by and watch Zan Popo be tortured and killed by Zhang Yong?
What, is being brutally murdered part of a wonderful life? Bullshit! What’s wonderful about being dead? You just wanted to use Popo’s life as a tool to test me, that’s all.”
“?!” Anping Xi looked at Li Hai in surprise, “You saw through that? How impressive.”
Then he or she smiled slightly and said:
“You guessed correctly. The two Personas, Zan Popo and Feifei, were indeed used to test you, because sincere people with a sense of justice like you are basically stubborn fools who respond to kindness but not to force.
People like you, they won't fear power or strong enemies, but they will always be moved by the plight of pitiful people, and they will be inspired by the ideals of chivalry, and then, in a surge of emotion, they will make various predictable moves.
So, I wanted to approach from this angle, to see if there was a chance to make you useful to me.”
“So that’s it. A lunatic’s thinking is indeed broad.”
Li Hai said calmly, “But, since you’ve explained everything so clearly now, how will you use this approach on me again later?”
“This is a kind of sincerity, and also a declaration.”
Anping Xi smiled and said, “My purpose in appearing here is very simple: I want to ask you, do you want to be my friend or my enemy?
If you choose the former, then your future will be bright. If you choose the latter, then you will have to face a large group of enemies as troublesome as me, or even more troublesome.
So—tell me, what is your answer?”