this infinite world

"…Really? Dr. Manhattan is missing."

At this moment, Zheng Zha, who was in space, faced the communicator Chu Xuan had given him earlier. He listened to this unsatisfactory news and sighed: "Any other news?"

"No."

Chu Xuan's calm voice was the same as always, as if Dr. Manhattan's disappearance was not a sudden news, but a fact he had known for a long time and had expected: "He disappeared suddenly seven days ago. No one knows his whereabouts, and no one knows where he went. Even the second generation of Silk Soul has not received any information."

"What about Mars? I remember in the movie when Dr. Manhattan was unhappy, he would often leave the Earth and go to Mars to relax and meditate."

"Similarly, no energy response was detected, as if Dr. Manhattan had completely left this universe."

"Okay, Chu Xuan, thank you for your help."

After cutting off the communicator in his hand, Zheng Zha looked back at the moon which had moved a position when he activated “Honghuang – Creation of the World”, and sighed silently.

As Zheng Zha exerted his strength again, his exquisite and meticulous skills gradually unfolded, slowly pushing the moon back to its original orbit.

This process, which is unimaginable to ordinary people, is as easy and effortless to Zheng Zha as gently moving a glass ball, even though this "glass ball" is actually a huge star weighing 700 trillion tons.

——Even clay figures can have temper.

If Zheng Zha previously only regarded the reversal of time as the rule of this world, which was as difficult as the world of Red Alert 2, then the inexplicable disappearance of Zhang Heng and Zhan Lan touched his reverse scale.

Just like a dragon's reverse scale, once touched, it will lead to fatal consequences. For Zheng Zha, his teammates in the Zhongzhou team are his reverse scales, those companions he will never tolerate others touching.

In fact, the method of "pushing the moon away from its original orbit and affecting the earth's ecology" is already a change that cannot be gentler. Whether it is starting the "Honghuang-Creation of the World" to blow the moon to pieces, or directly pushing the entire earth into the sun, these are all methods that Zheng Zha can choose... However, Zheng Zha did not put these ideas into practice in the end, but chose a "gentle" method.

Perhaps in the face of his partner's sudden disappearance, Zheng Zha would have yelled in anger, punched the sky angrily, and poured his anger into his fist to shatter the clouds. But Zheng Zha now has long left the stage of being unable to control his emotions, and he will not do those unnecessary things.

——Strength is only a means to achieve the goal, and solving corresponding problems is the purpose of using strength.

Those who try to manipulate and play with time will eventually be bitten back by time itself. Zheng Zha always keeps this lesson in mind.

He never forgot the tragic end of Yuri, who was full of confidence and tried to control everything with the time machine. Therefore, although Zheng Zha realized that this attempt to go back in time would probably not be the last, he still did not choose to embark on the path of exterminating the world.

He didn't know what the triggering conditions were for the time reversal, nor did he know how many times the time reversal could occur. Therefore, even though he was extremely anxious about the disappearance of his partner, Zheng Zha would not cross the line he set for himself.

With Chu Xuan's precise calculations and the help of the Conferred God List, he was confident that he could push the moon back to its original orbit even in the face of the smallest possibility. However, if the earth was completely destroyed, they would be truly helpless.

Therefore, in this action, Zheng Zha did not follow Chu Xuan's strategy, but chose a more direct and thorough way to solve the problem. His goal is to find Dr. Manhattan himself and get all the answers from him face to face. In order to achieve this goal, Zheng Zha took a bold move and went directly to the White House, determined to uncover all the mysteries in one fell swoop... But as Chu Xuan stated in advance, this overly reckless plan unexpectedly ended in failure.

“…I was impulsive this time.”

Feeling the coldness of the universe, Zheng Zha calmed himself down a little before turning on the communicator again and said to Chu Xuan on the other end, "It was a waste of effort."

“There is no such thing as wasted effort. Sometimes taking a long detour can actually be a shortcut.”

After saying something that made Zheng Zha a little confused, Chu Xuan said calmly: "We have room for trial and error, and we also need to verify certain conjectures and eliminate wrong paths."

"……What's the meaning?"

Chu Xuan did not answer Zheng Zha's question, but continued: "Zheng Zha, you don't have to return to Earth next. Instead, stay in the universe and try to use your mythological genes to feel the feeling before returning."

"Next, I need to confirm something."

"Is that so? But my power is not enough to fight against this huge time reversal... No, I understand."

Before he finished speaking, Zheng Zha suddenly interrupted his speech, as if he had changed his mind at that moment. He then followed Chu Xuan's instructions, mobilized all the power of his mythical gene belonging to "Zhu Jiuyin", quietly closed his eyes in this vast universe, and devoted himself to the action that was about to begin.

One second, ten seconds, a hundred seconds.

One minute, ten minutes, a hundred minutes.

Time passes, years pass, and Zheng Zha maintains the minimum level of life activities while pushing his perception to the extreme.

——Until he opened his eyes, everything returned to the starting point.

"Did you find anything?" Chu Xuan's voice sounded beside him the first time.

"Of course there is... I didn't feel any signs of time going backwards just now. This is not a time reversal at all. I just had a preconceived idea."

Zheng Zha opened his eyes and let out a long breath. He first looked back at his teammates on the Zhongzhou team, and after confirming that no other teammates were missing, he raised his head and looked at the clock tower in front of him, which was still pointing at 11:10.

The man felt the mysterious feeling at the last moment before he returned to the present node, and muttered to himself: "Just now I used Zhu Jiuyin's gene to try to resist, but it didn't work at all. It was like being blocked by a higher-level force. No, rather than being blocked, it was more like a "reset"..."

"...A kind of reset of the world." (End of this chapter)