Chapter 668: The Ancestor's Gift (57)

"You didn't give yourself any pain relief?" Clownfish said idly.

He had been following Du Zhengyi for a while, observing him the entire time. No matter how much endurance Du Zhengyi had, he was not made of steel and iron after all; his body would still have some conditioned reflex reactions to pain.

Du Zhengyi ignored him; he had become even more silent along this journey. Clownfish had given him some time to digest his bad mood and regain his composure. But before long, Clownfish started talking again, as if by his nature, he was not meant to remain silent.

"Qionglin is actually a Seal Land too. I mean, at least the mechanisms are all about the same, right? You can shut this place down, so you can shut down Qionglin too."

No one answered him, but Clownfish could see that Du Zhengyi was becoming more and more certain of the route, as if the deeper they went, the more he reached areas he was familiar with.

"You have a deep understanding of Qionglin, don't you? But you never thought about leaving Qionglin. That is actually very strange. I will never be able to understand why, when Qionglin clearly killed your entire family, you remain completely indifferent."

"I have told Luo Qi many times, my parents were not killed by Qionglin." Du Zhengyi glanced at Clownfish's blurry shadow.

"That is truly strange. Even if your parents weren't killed by Qionglin, the dead Du Clan members should have been your uncles and granduncles, right? A person cannot be completely indifferent to their own kin, especially someone like you, who is both sentimental and long-lasting in your attachments," Clownfish said. Receiving no answer, he continued.

"Unless, they are both your family, and not your family." Clownfish seemed to smile, gradually revealing a sense of having everything under control.

Du Zhengyi frowned, and a trace of chill finally flashed across his face.

"You are a Gushan Guard, which means there is an Entanglement between you and your duty. No, that's not right, it should be that there is an Entanglement between you and Gushan. Gushan does not represent Qionglin; Gushan is far older than Qionglin, coming from a more ancient era, a more distant... a more distant place." Clownfish said with a smile. "An Entanglement represents a contract that traverses time and space. But there is no such thing as a one-way contract in the world. If A and B form an Entanglement, then A must have already paid a price to B, and B will also pay a price to A in the future. If B does not want to pay when it is time to pay, then Heaven will force B to pay in some form. Right? I think you once received some kind of favor from Gushan, and this favor requires you to make a contribution at some moment in the future to give back to Gushan. Of course, once you have paid off the debt, the Entanglement will be undone."

Clownfish coughed, looking a bit embarrassed, "I once had some misunderstandings about Entanglements. I thought they were some cooler bonds."

He walked for another stretch before continuing, "And there is no way for people to establish truly ancient Entanglements between each other, like the kind of Entanglement between you and Gushan. Medical Entanglements, the Entanglement between parents and children, are all just a type of Magic derived from Mages imitating the behavior of Progenitor Mages; specifically, they might be Perception Magic. This kind of Magic consumes a lot of energy, causing the Magic in this world to constantly decrease, because perception requires Magic to run periodically in the background. Every time it runs, the energy consumption is huge. Moreover, this connection can only be limited to the same world. It is like a series of processes running in a computer, just on a higher physical dimension."

"I think the Entanglement between you and Gushan is a true, ancient Entanglement that transcends time and space, which only the computers of the Progenitor Mages could complete," Clownfish finally concluded.

Du Zhengyi finally looked at him in surprise.

"The oldest Entanglements can even span galaxies," Clownfish said. "Linking all the way from here to Orion."

"Is it time for you to take your medicine?" Du Zhengyi asked.

"It seems you are not as smart as I thought," Clownfish said. "The Bloodline Seal of the Mages has sealed you; even though you have always been the person closest to the truth, you have never been able to discover it. Mages are inherently arrogant, always believing that they are the masters of this world. You don't think so, but you don't care about humans either; you don't even care about your own kind. You only want to complete the contract you must complete, and in the end, you are nothing more than an accomplice."

"Aren't you arrogant too?" Du Zhengyi said suddenly. "I never waste words with High-Reaction Mages, because no matter what they say, it is meaningless; it is a complete waste of time. I have seen many High-Reaction Mages; they are all kinds of people, all rare geniuses, all believing they shoulder a historical mission, and all viewing themselves as saviors. Just like you are now. Although Luo Qi is a bit more paranoid than some, he is never arrogant; the thing he loathes most is a savior."

"You also feel that Luo Qi is paranoid. If a person is excluded and abandoned their whole life, and is always losing things, they will always want to ask why—why the world is like this. When these things, these questions, accumulate to a Critical Point, quantitative change will naturally lead to qualitative change. I don't think I am a savior; what I want is very little, and very simple. I love my wife very much, and I hope she lives in a better world, preferably a world that Mages have never invaded. A pure human world, even if it is not perfect, is what that world was supposed to be."

"You think you shouldn't exist either." Du Zhengyi felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar. He finally understood why, if this person really had traveled from the future, he had not gone to look for his still-living lover. He looked at Clownfish's blurry shadow; besides the necessary concealment, did he also think that he should exist in such a blurry way, or rather, blurrily not exist?

Clownfish avoided his question, even though his question was phrased in an affirmative tone. "If humans had the ability to realize the existence of Mages, perhaps they would have long ago realized that Mages are actually just a group of intelligent beings from an extraterrestrial galaxy. Arrogant and combative, keen on biotechnology, viewing themselves as Creators. Keen on war, letting their own world be destroyed by war, not knowing if they were avoiding enemies or what, they migrated to this planet. Have you ever thought about why all the legends tell stories of a single-digit number of Progenitor Mages? I think it is because in their doomsday war, only a few people escaped in total. They fled here, pathetically using biotechnology to propagate their race. But perhaps, as some human papers point out, forcibly cloning a population might encounter irreversible genetic regression, eventually leading to the exhaustion of the population once again. Just like we are now. It was supposed to be this fate, yet we forcibly changed it, and the result is just destroying one more intelligent race on a planet."

"I would very much like to see the future Luo Qi; after all, I might not be able to see him, but I never thought Luo Qi would become like this."

Du Zhengyi's indifference caused the mist shrouding Clownfish to fluctuate; Du Zhengyi later thought that might have represented his emotional fluctuations, rarely causing some changes.

"Can your brain avoid thinking? It is as exhausting as talking to my dad," Clownfish said.

"Stop mentioning your dad. What is 'a person being excluded and abandoned their whole life'? Have I ever excluded you? Have I ever abandoned you?" Du Zhengyi did not know what he was saying either, but chaotic emotions always needed an outlet. Or perhaps it was because his bones, which had broken and regrown, were truly hurting too much, hurting him to the point of extreme agitation.

Clownfish fell into a dead silence.

"If you have nothing better to do, I advise you to go find your wife; once you see the young lady, your madness will be cured," Du Zhengyi raised his hand to cover his wound, endured it, and said.

"The genes of the Progenitor Mages are the key that can open their equipment. They chose your family to continue the genes; in reality, they are just keeping a family of system administrators. Has your family been acting as a key for so long that you are willing to be a key-spirit?" Clownfish said, but his pace slowed down a bit.

"Don't think that I can shut down the environment created by the Progenitor Mages," Du Zhengyi said.

"Of course I know there is no way to shut down the Magic environment that Mages have nested on Earth," Clownfish said. "Although the energy is now unstable and the power Mages can call upon is getting smaller and smaller, the idiots still think that Magic truly comes from themselves."

"Has the Magic of you Mind Mages become smaller? No, right?" Du Zhengyi asked.

He did not debate with Clownfish about things he did not understand well to begin with, but a counterexample might be enough; Clownfish was unable to answer.