Chapter 499: The Past Tragedy

Arabella Donovan’s stunned expression seemed to please the thing lurking in the shadows. A blast of cold wind blew toward her, so cold she couldn’t help but shiver, which abruptly calmed her.

Having already lured her into its own territory, this so-called Providence’s Consciousness would naturally not let Arabella Donovan be comfortable for long.

After the cold wind passed, Arabella Donovan felt herself floating up again, then plunged headfirst into a large cauldron of boiling oil.

Just like before, the cauldron of scalding oil couldn’t harm her in the slightest. Instead, it allowed Arabella Donovan to see clearly what was protecting her.

It was a transparent sphere enveloping her. From the inside, it looked like a giant, transparent bubble.

A faint golden light emanated from the bubble’s edge—a golden light Arabella Donovan recognized. It was… Merit!

‘The Merit I accumulated is protecting me! My previous suspicion was correct, after all. This Merit wasn’t granted by the current Providence. In fact, it’s helping me resist the harm from this new one!’

The fire beneath the cauldron raged ever hotter, and more and more small bubbles frothed at the surface of her protective sphere.

However, Arabella Donovan, situated right in the center of the cauldron, remained completely unharmed. She even found it quite comfortable and cool inside her bubble, completely oblivious to the true temperature of the oil outside.

The cauldron boiled and boiled for who knows how long. Arabella Donovan had nearly dozed off inside her large bubble when the new Providence, dead set on fighting her to the bitter end, finally realized its method was not working. With a sudden shift, it sent Arabella Donovan back to the pitch-black sewer where she had started.

Arabella Donovan froze. Just as she was about to do something, she felt a fierce gust of wind, followed by the familiar black smoke.

The failure with the mountain of blades and the cauldron of oil had greatly provoked this hitherto invincible master of the world. Arabella Donovan could feel its frustrated rage from the way the black smoke tugged at her.

Before she could react, Arabella Donovan was yanked back into the inky black smoke.

It was clear that this time her opponent was determined to kill her at any cost. The black smoke enveloping her was much thicker than before, coiling around her until it became a viscous mud.

Like real quicksand, it pulled her down little by little. The more she struggled, the faster she sank!

The black mud soon rose to Arabella Donovan’s throat, then her chin, her mouth and nose, her forehead, and finally, her entire head. Her breathing grew ragged, and her consciousness began to fade.

In her daze, she seemed to hear a familiar voice, one laced with despair and grief.

“Justin! Open your eyes and look at Mom! This isn’t real, this isn’t real, Justin…”

‘Mom’s voice?’ Arabella Donovan’s eyes fluttered open. She instinctively reached out, only for her hand to pass through an illusion.

Then, a series of scenes began to flash before Arabella Donovan’s eyes, one after another.

She saw Claire Bishop, three months pregnant, arriving at their family’s front door. In this reality, Arabella didn’t exist. Her parents were shocked to learn the identity of the supposed “biological father,” but out of obligation to Claire’s parents and their own fond memories of Claire as a child, they readily believed her story.

Even her eldest brother, upon seeing the forged prenatal exam report, acknowledged the child as his, despite having no memory of the supposed encounter. This marked the beginning of their family’s tragedy.

One month after Claire Bishop moved into the Donovan home, events took a sharp downturn.

Jasper Jacobs’s men discovered her whereabouts. Accused of harboring their boss’s woman and unborn child, the family suffered brutal retaliation from Jasper Jacobs.

Her eldest brother came under close police scrutiny after an employee was bribed to transfer massive amounts of company funds to unknown overseas accounts. A media firestorm ensued. Before the police could uncover the truth, Jasper Jacobs had already manipulated public opinion to declare him guilty.

The Donovan Company’s reputation was ruined. Business partners withdrew their investments one after another, and soon the company was facing bankruptcy.

Overwhelmed, her eldest brother refused to give up hope and desperately sought help. But one day, he was ambushed in a desolate, remote area by men sent by Jasper Jacobs. They stabbed him more than a dozen times. He never returned.

She saw her second brother, whose career was taking off, get targeted by Jacqueline Jennings. When he rejected her advances, Jacqueline framed him in a honey-trap sex scandal. His reputation was shattered, and he was forced to retire from the entertainment industry.

Afterward, Jasper Jacobs arranged for him to be pushed from a tall building, killing him. His death was then covered up to look like a suicide caused by a bout of depression.

Her fourth sister, who should have been cherished by her family and lived a life of endless joy, was instead branded a “vicious female side character.” She became the imaginary enemy of Cassandra Lynch and her sycophants. She was relentlessly targeted by those sycophants, who barely had a single brain cell among them, and in the end, was run down and killed in the street by a car driven by Cassandra Lynch’s biological father.

And her mother and father, simply for supporting a helpless cousin, earned the resentment of the social climber Julian Croft. Later, they were inadvertently drawn into the battle over Dennis Donovan’s inheritance, inexplicably framed, and thrown in prison, where they were quietly murdered.

At this point, her third sister had truly become an orphan, the sole survivor of her family.

At the time, Aurora Donovan was still engrossed in her research, working day and night in the lab. She was completely unaware that while she was secluded, her entire family had been wiped out. She had no idea that a terrible danger was fast approaching.

And so, her third sister emerged from the lab, ecstatic with her research breakthroughs, only to be confronted by the bloody reality of having lost her entire family. Soon after, her proudest research was stolen, and she herself was slandered with a reputation that earned her the scorn of thousands.

Crushed by this double blow, her third sister lost the will to live. She had poured her heart and soul into saving unfortunate people from terrible illnesses, yet she had been unable to save a single member of her own family. They had all died one tragic death after another. ‘How ironic.’

But she knew she couldn’t just die like that. After weighing her options, she risked returning to the lab, only to run right into Julian Spencer, the mastermind behind it all. They got into an argument.

As they struggled, Julian Spencer knocked over a chemical agent, starting a massive fire. He managed to escape, but her poor third sister was burned alive inside the lab. Even in death, she was slandered for supposedly plagiarizing another’s research and setting the fire in a fit of vengeful spite.

Arabella Donovan was seeing red. The scene shifted, and she saw herself—a version of herself that was both familiar and strange.

A four- or five-year-old Arabella, dressed in tattered and patched clothing, sat by the side of a bridge. Beneath it flowed a river that stretched on as far as the eye could see.

She didn’t know how long she had been sitting there, or what she was waiting for.

Day after day, year after year, young Arabella sat there by the river, dangling her little legs. She would stare at the shimmering water below, lost in a solitary daze, her thoughts a mystery.

Until a figure appeared…