The memory continued.
A cramped room appeared on the pond's surface, barely larger than a storage unit. Rain tapped against the window. A cheap desk fan rattled in the corner even though it barely worked, and a stack of overdue bills sat scattered across a fold-out table. Two papers rested in front of his older self.
One was from the normal university he had attended for four years.
The other was a recruitment pamphlet from a third-rate Mystic University so obscure that most people would have mistaken it for a scam.
Aren stared at it, remembering exactly what he had felt back then.
He remembered starving himself for a week straight, just to have enough money to afford a third-rate cultivation material that probably wouldn't do anything for him anyway.
His older self sat there for a long time, unmoving.
