Quadruple split.

Chapter 2822 Unease and Variables

Time flies, time flies
One second later.

……

"Ok?"

The towering giant frowned slightly, looking curiously at the mage who had inexplicably fallen into a daze before him, and asked, "What's wrong with you?"

"No...nothing..."

With a pale face, covered in sweat, and half-dead, Ah Sang raised his head and gave a weak smile like a sea giant, saying in a dry voice, "I've said almost everything I needed to say. It's time to say goodbye."

"Ok."

Fourteen nodded slightly and said in a calm tone, "Then, considering how much you've benefited me, I'll let you go this time."

"Heh, I knew you'd say that. It's alright, I've already... huh?"

Ah Sang sneered, then his pupils suddenly contracted, and he asked in bewilderment, "Wait a minute, what did you just say?"

"I said, since you've benefited so much from this, I'll let you go this time."

Fourteen calmly looked at Asang, and then, under the other's dumbfounded gaze, he released his [Domain] and [Realistic Boundary]. Looking down at the latter, who had fallen on his butt after being out of his control, he said indifferently, "This is what we agreed on before."

Ah Sang: "...Huh?"

"However, this will only happen once."

Fourteen's eyes narrowed slightly as he stared at Asang, and he grinned, "If I were to run into you again, I wouldn't be as lucky as I am today. Heh, but we probably won't run into each other again in the future."

Ah Sang: "...Huh?"

"That's enough for the small talk."

Fourteen stretched out a magnificent yawn, then slowly turned and walked towards the central lake that connects to the tributary of the Golden Radiance River, saying without turning his head, "Well then, good luck, Master."

"Then what..."

The next second, as if he had made up his mind, Ah Sang stood up unsteadily and mustered up his courage to shout loudly at Fourteen's towering back: "Please, wait!"

"Ok?"

Fourteen stopped, squinted at Asang, and his voice became somewhat low: "Could it be that you've changed your mind... and don't want to live anymore?"

"No."

Ah Sang shook his head vigorously and said in a deep voice, "What I want to say is, even if we meet again in the future, could you spare my life?"

Fourteen: "...Uh?"

Ah Sang nodded vigorously, his eyes resolute, and said, "I love traveling, but I'm afraid of dying."

"You... ha, fine."

Fourteen smiled and then continued walking deeper into the central lake: "If we meet again and you don't provoke me, I'll let you go."

Ah Sang: "What if we meet again?"

"...If you are still powerless against me."

"And what if we meet again and again?"

"..."

"Then again and again and again..."

Do you want me to kill you right now?

"You walk slowly."

"Hehe, come visit the deep sea sometime. I'm suddenly looking forward to seeing you again."

After leaving behind those words, Fourteen, who could no longer return to his normal size, sank into the lake and disappeared beneath the vast blue expanse.

Then--

"Fuck!"

Ah Sang, who had just stood up, fell back to the ground, panting heavily as he exclaimed, "Holy crap! Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap! He actually let me go! Can you believe he let me go?!"

[He's a very interesting person.]

As always, Oboro's gentle voice echoed in A-Sang's mind, asking with a slight smile: "Isn't this a good thing?"

Ah Sang sighed deeply, made a face like he was about to OTZ (a Chinese internet slang term for "frustration"), and wailed, "But I just advanced to Epic rank! I can already run away!!"

【Well, then what? 】

Long smiled calmly and asked again, "Having broken through to the Epic level, isn't that a good thing?"

"It's a good thing! But I feel so frustrated!"

Ah Sang slammed his fist on the ground, crying out in despair, "I've looped through countless one-second loops! All just to escape from him! And he just let me go without saying a word! He let me go, sir!"

[173,684 seconds.]

Long casually gave an answer that A-Sang didn't care about, saying softly, "It'll probably take a little over two days. Thanks for your hard work."

"Ha, ahahaha..."

Ah Sang chuckled weakly twice, then lay flat on the ground in a spread-eagle position, saying in a dry voice, "This isn't hard work, this is pure misery, teacher."

[Speaking of which, if you could go back to the correct timeline now, you should be able to get into the top five of that "individual combat power ranking," right?]

Having extensive knowledge of information regarding otherworldly beings, and even following real-time rankings, Longping casually asked, then chuckled, "What a pity. If you could go back, you'd probably become quite famous, and make a lot of money."

"Who says it isn't?"

Ah Sang shrugged, sat up wearily with an increasingly pale face, and sighed, "Speaking of which, now that I can control time, is there a way to send myself back?"

[Controlling time?]

Long casually repeated the sentence, chuckling lightly, "You're overthinking it, aren't you? So depressing."

"Am I overthinking things? Am I overthinking things?"

Believing he had grasped the essence of time, and having forced himself to achieve an epic feat using the spatial school of thought as a breakthrough, Ah Sang, currently brimming with unprecedented arrogance, clicked his tongue and said in a deep voice, "I've lived through a full 180,000 seconds! 180,000! Doesn't that count as controlling time?!"

To be precise, it should be '173,684' seconds, and even that doesn't really count as 'mastering time'.

Long first gave a simple correction, then said in a slightly more serious tone: "If my deduction is correct, you will soon face a very important problem." "Mao?"

Upon hearing this, Ah Sang immediately reacted and asked, "What important question?!"

First, I want to clarify that your self-perceived "control of time" is merely a concrete application of the concept of "time" using your own characteristics within a specific environment. If true "manipulation of time" is like building a castle by hand, then you're at best playing on a slide—note, "playing on a slide." You can't even "build" a slide.

Long carefully explained to his beloved disciple, speaking calmly: "In other words, if the true timeline is a castle, then this overly 'simple' timeline is a slide, and you can only barely enjoy playing on it right now."

A-Sang, who was somewhat dejected because he had been given a cold shower, but was also not too dejected because he was often given a cold shower, nodded and muttered, "Yeah."

My deduction is that, setting aside the 'castle' which you can neither understand nor control—that is, our real timeline—you not only can't build a 'slide,' you can barely even 'play on a slide.'

Oboro continued patiently, speaking calmly: "Under such strained conditions, you still managed to skate '173,684 times,' which is undoubtedly an extreme level of exhaustion."

Ah Sang blinked, a sudden sense of foreboding rising within him, and he quickly asked, "So what will happen!?"

[Logically, you would suffer a backlash far exceeding your own strength, definitely not something an Epic-level character could withstand. But fortunately, this timeline is too special, and you, with the same special nature, will likely be forced to make a 'directional jump' in time. This jump will definitely point to the future, 173,684 seconds from now.]

Long calmly proceeded with her deductions, earnestly reminding her: "During this process, you'd better concentrate, because this is your first, and very likely last, 'directional jump' since you started playing in the [Innocent Realm]. If you can seize an inspiration during this rare opportunity, it will be extremely useful to you."

“I know…”

Before Ah Sang could finish speaking, he felt a familiar yet strange sensation coming from all directions. After a moment of mental confusion, he returned to normal.

The central lake, as always, rippled with waves, pulsating as if alive under the gentle caress of the breeze.

but--

"Two days later?"

Ah Sang slowly closed his eyes, then opened them again, gazing absently at the central lake, which resembled a sapphire embedded in the ground, and murmured, "I think I've found a little bit of the feeling?"

"A little bit is good enough, Sad. You've never been a particularly talented kid, so there's no need to rush."

Long sincerely comforted his apprentice, then continued the unfinished topic, saying: "After time is 'recovered,' your body and mind will realize what just happened. In this situation, even if your 'game pod' is very high-tech, or even possesses some kind of 'greater' power than time itself, it cannot offset your mental fatigue, so..."

"So what?"

Get some rest first.

"Huh? Professor, what do you mean by that... Waaah!"

With a short cry of surprise, Ah Sang felt pain all over his body. Not only did he suffer from a high fever that penetrated to the bone, but his head also felt as if it had been hit head-on by a sledgehammer. His eyes rolled back, and without uttering a sound, he turned into white light and disappeared.

……

At the same time, within the inner mountain of Tianzhu Mountain, in retrospect...

"Ah."

Almost the instant Ah Sang regained his strength and was about to be forcibly logged off by the system, Long breathed a sigh of relief, ensuring that Ah Sang could successfully disappear instead of leaving his body in the [Realm of Innocence]. She left the pot of [Sands of Time] that had helped her spy on that young apprentice and murmured, "Two hundred years ago, a hybrid with the bloodlines of both a sea giant and a Behemoth left the Nesmont Lake District and returned to the deep sea...?"

Before him stood a man with thick linen bandages and flowing silver hair, the thirteenth-ranked [Clarity Seer], Oboro, who stood silently with his hands behind his back for a moment before speaking slowly.

"Do me a favor, old friend."

"Do me a favor? You mean you want me to investigate something, but you don't want to file a record?"

The slightly weathered voice of Albus Diacard, the high-ranking observer [Narrator], rang out not far away. Although Oboro 'could not see' him, a semi-transparent phantom dressed in a black robe, slightly balding, and with a somewhat hunched figure, still appeared faithfully here.

"You can understand it that way, but after I 'verify' it, these are things that can be made public to everyone."

Oboro precisely turned his head towards Diacard's phantom and said in a calm tone, "I feel it's not appropriate to go public right now. I just want to observe whether everyone can detect it."

Diacard paused for a moment, then said calmly, "One month, then I'll fill in the gaps."

"can."

Without hesitation, Long nodded and said succinctly, "Now, help me check if there are any records of a hybrid of a sea giant and a Behemoth from the year 9346 of the Holy Calendar, the month of flowers, two days after the Melody, until now. It doesn't matter if it's just suspected. It should have entered the water near Lake Nesmont in the southwest continent and then gone straight to the deep sea."

"Saint Calendar 9346? Ah, okay, okay, let me convert it, it's probably... 14585."

Diacard's phantom muttered something as it slowly walked to a bookshelf that was not clearly visible from this side, casually said "Wait a moment" and then fell silent.

……

five minutes later
"No."

Diacard looked back at Oboro and said with certainty, "I have just sifted through all the information we could find from 14585 to the present, including the scrolls and memory crystals left by the many agents during this period, and there is no information about the 'sea giant and behemoth hybrid' you mentioned."

Long frowned slightly and asked, "What about the ambiguous information?"

"No."

The old man shook his head and said decisively, "At least within the scope of the information that can be gathered at Tianzhu Mountain, there is no hybrid of sea giant and behemoth, nor any offspring of sea giant or behemoth that fits the criteria."

"Has it been silent for a full two hundred years...?"

Long sighed silently, muttering with a complicated expression, "It's that unsettling variable again."

"An unsettling variable?"

Diacard frowned slightly and shook his head impatiently, saying, "What strange things are you thinking about now?"

"You're just overthinking..."

Long chuckled and countered, "So you think the Light and Shadow of Apocalypse are also just wild speculations? At this incredibly coincidental time?"

Diacard looked at Oboro helplessly: "We've always been doing what we're supposed to do, nothing more."

"The problem is that we never really know what we should be doing."

Long shrugged and said with a wry smile, "In the end..."

"In short, I'm already tired of your nonsense, Oboro!"

A burly figure burst into the time-travel room, rudely interrupting Oboro's words, his expression indignant—

"Don't act like a madman, and don't force me to say anything even worse."