An Bao was quite confident in himself. He believed that as long as he was willing, there was no difficulty he couldn't overcome, nothing he couldn't achieve.
The visions had persisted for a year now. He felt anxious about his insomnia, fearful of the hallucinations, and awed by the visions themselves.
One day, he overheard his mother and father discussing him. They said that An Bao's mother in Heaven missed her child, but Heaven required An Bao to complete a trial before he could return. If he failed the trial, the consequences seemed severe. Lately, An Bao had no heart for studying; he only intensified his race-walking training, looking utterly exhausted. He desperately longed for things to improve—even if it meant facing that seemingly absurd trial, he was confident he could break through.
In the midst of his visionary hallucinations, he made a contract with many sources that emitted toad-like voices. The content of the contract was this: he would endure the sufferings of hell in the mortal realm with a mortal body; and he would experience what it felt like to be without his Emotion Regulators. Heaven would no longer grant him his powerful focus—instead, for the purpose of the trial, he would be provided with ample cerebral cortex matter.