Chapter 673: The Ancestor's Gift (62)

The Magic World's remaining energy was still willing to respond to Du Zhengyi's summons, but high-energy Magic, like the Magic World itself, was heading toward exhaustion. In an instant, Du Zhengyi tried to use several High-level Magic spells, but the effect was like a short-circuited neon sign by the roadside; it flickered with a few sparks and then vanished. Something in the Seal Land exacerbated the manifestation of Magic exhaustion, making High-level Magic particularly difficult to use here and now.

Perhaps it was at this moment, having walked to the end of his own life, that Du Zhengyi truly felt the Mage World had reached the same dim twilight as he had. It was not just that he was no longer capable of doing what he wished; the Magic World was the same.

But he briefly thought of Luo Qi, who was unaffected by the decline of the Magic World; his Magic was exceptionally bright and dazzling in this mediocre twilight. Luo Qi's Magic system was different from other Mages; other Mages' Magic required Spells to drive it, and their power came from the Magic World. But Luo Qi's Magic came from himself; he did not need Spells, nor did he have any Spells at all—his power came from his own being.

If one day the power of the Magic World were to disappear completely, Luo Qi's abilities would still exist. Whether Luo Qi liked it or not, he would be one of the few Mages left in the world at that time. A secret old world would depart without a trace, leaving behind only a few marks.

Du Zhengyi's original mission included clearing out the "High-Reaction Mages" defined by Qionglin, which was almost equivalent to erasing these traces. Part of Qionglin's responsibility seemed to be ensuring that the Magic World disappeared completely and silently. These thoughts flashed through his mind in an instant; there were things he wanted to tell Luo Qi, but he no longer had the time.

His nerve conduction speed had been pushed to the limit. To enhance his dynamic visual ability, his pupils split into several layers, becoming somewhat less human. The details of static objects became blurred and distorted before his eyes, but when a pale blue trajectory disturbed the air, his vision captured this attack trajectory—which was almost invisible to the eyes of an ordinary person—with greater ease.

The fleeting pale blue fluorescent light glided behind Du Zhengyi, and a sharp, stinging pain came from near his spine. Almost at the same time, Du Zhengyi suddenly turned sideways, dodging a vicious attack aimed at his spine. The moment the stinging pain occurred, he clearly saw the claw-shaped blade again. In the afterimage left in his mind by his enhanced visual nerves, he saw a humanoid figure. It was definitely a person, but their whole body was covered in strange armor, and the helmet was particularly unique, covering only one eye, while the other side seemed damaged. Consistent with his guess, the invisible person could not be completely invisible; as long as they had contact with him, they would become visible. In other words, the invisible person would lose the advantage of invisibility as long as they attacked him, so they could only act like an assassin. But he himself could only counterattack the moment he was attacked; such a passive situation made him feel like a hunted animal.

However, Du Zhengyi still seized the opportunity to counterattack, striking at the invisible person with extreme speed. The black blade condensed in his hand stabbed backward at high speed. The invisible person had their own attack protocols; if a strike failed, they would disengage and fall back into an invisible state. Du Zhengyi felt as if he had stabbed into a slightly viscous liquid, and then the blade missed completely; the invisible person had vanished entirely once again.

This was only Du Zhengyi's first probe, and he had already roughly determined that if he could not control the invisible person, increasing the intensity of his attacks would likely not have much effect.

He had never seen true Invisibility Magic; Mind Mages could barely achieve the effect of invisibility. For example, Luo Qi could make others turn a blind eye to him or see him as someone else. But in essence, that was not invisibility; it was just tricking other people's brains into having an illusion. As long as one knew in their heart that he existed, one could still touch him, or rather, still attack a Mind Mage.

The invisible person's situation was completely different. When they were invisible, it was as if they did not exist in this world, a bit like the intermediate state during Teleportation. Du Zhengyi had been curious when he was first able to perform Teleportation: when he disappeared from one location and appeared in another, where was he exactly when he was in the intermediate state between the two places, and did he truly exist? Unfortunately, the knowledge he studied focused on how to perform Beacon calculations and how to calculate target Coordinates quickly and accurately.

Perhaps the world had different dimensions, and perhaps from another perspective, space travelers were shuttling between folded worlds, which was why they could reach their destinations in an instant. The world could certainly be folded; what was folded was not just space, but time could also be folded. If Luo Qi discovered one day that time could be folded, given his personality, he would definitely activate this mechanism at any cost. Moreover, this cost was merely the exponential decay of Magic Energy, which to Luo Qi was hardly a cost at all. Luo Qi might even be happy to see it happen; Du Zhengyi even thought that if Luo Qi's wicked sense of humor flared up, he might frequently shuttle through time, using this to exhaust the Magic World's energy and wear Mages down into useless beings inferior to mortals.

If the Clownfish had achieved time travel, why hadn't he adopted this method? But then Du Zhengyi thought that if the Clownfish wanted to destroy the Magic World, there were simply too many means he could take, and the Clownfish didn't seem interested in any of them. But if the Clownfish was a regressed Luo Qi, he would still choose a meaningful point in time.

When he first met Du Zhengyi at Qionglin, Du Zhengyi was still a teenager, and the Luo Qi on this timeline was even younger then, just a kid who didn't know anything, so that time could not have been an important time point for him and his lover. This point seemed to be directly ruled out.

The Clownfish had said many things to him, some of which must be true, and these truths included the time of his own death on that timeline. He had no chance to know Luo Qi on that line because he died early at Qionglin, at the hands of the rash Lotus Burners. The appearance of the Clownfish might have prevented some of the Lotus Burners' progress, but it must have been more than that.

The Clownfish was a cripple, but Luo Qi was not. Luo Qi once said that he had been tied to train tracks by a group of little bastards, but a Mage passing by saved him. If that Mage hadn't appeared, Luo Qi would have lost a leg and become like the Clownfish. Du Zhengyi could now be certain who that Mage was. Being a Mage but also a cripple was a mark of "incompetence and stupidity" that followed a Mage for life. The Clownfish could disguise his appearance, but he never disguised his disability. This indicated that he didn't care about this disability, but conversely, it also indicated that he was extremely concerned about his disability at the same time. He roared silently at this world by displaying his disability. But if a person could return to the past, how could they not save themselves and seek liberation from a certain obsession? Perhaps it really was Luo Qi who saved Luo Qi.

But Mages were not so easily crippled; as long as there was time, a Medical Mage could repair a certain degree of damage. As long as they received treatment in time, a leg crushed by a train could grow back into a new limb. Luo Qi's father was a Medical Mage, perhaps even the most prestigious and capable Medical Mage in Qionglin. He must have had a Medical Entanglement with such a small child; he should have been able to feel that Luo Qi was seriously injured very quickly and should have rushed to save him. He was fully capable of making the child's leg grow back, even if there might be some issues with the nerves, it wouldn't lead to the complete loss of a limb. But the Clownfish was still a cripple, which meant that Luo Mage was in a situation he couldn't leave at that time.

Du Zhengyi suddenly understood what that scene was. In a state where he could not produce emotions, Du Zhengyi still felt a tremor. It was highly likely that it was the moment his own life was hanging by a thread on that timeline; Qionglin had kept Luo Mage there with unquestionable authority, hoping that Luo Mage would prioritize saving Du Zhengyi. Luo Mage must have tried for a while, but that rescue failed, and he himself on that line still died. Luo Qi lost a leg, was bullied even more severely by the Magic World, and was eventually banished or self-exiled from Mage society. At the time, Luo Qi was still able to survive, perhaps because he was discovered by humans and sent to a human hospital, treated as a human. The regressing Clownfish must have saved Luo Qi from the tracks at that time point under extreme operation, either before or after meeting him.

Ten more seconds passed, and no more pale blue movement trajectories appeared around Du Zhengyi. The invisible person seemed to have made up their mind to wear him out by stalling for time.

For a brief moment, he couldn't help but think, if it were Luo Qi, the current Luo Qi, which point in time would he want to return to? The worst time point would be the moment the Clownfish and Du Zhengyi crossed paths at Qionglin. But based on his understanding of Luo Qi, Luo Qi was much smarter; he wouldn't get himself involved in Chaos. But he really couldn't truly guess Luo Qi's thoughts; he suspected that the Entanglement had never been able to constrain him precisely because he logically didn't know what Luo Qi would do, and perhaps the mechanism behind the Entanglement didn't know either. Whether Luo Qi was the threat behind Gushan's greatest secret remained ambiguous.

But suddenly, the idea of a time point itself gave him a flash of insight; he suddenly realized he had figured out a more important thing. The Clownfish didn't go to find his lover, nor did he fight the Lotus Burners to clear them from this world, because what he wanted to clear was all Mages, this entire Magic World, and the entire history of Mages. Space travel required Beacons, and time travel required nodes. Mages did not have a history discipline; to find a Mage's time nodes, one could only look for vague clues in the history recorded by humans. But Mages did not truly not record history. It was just that for those who could regress time, history was the Coordinate of time, so accurate historical times and historical events had always been one of the greatest secrets of the Magic World; only Calculators were allowed to accurately record and calculate time.

There were many secrets in Gushan, but what the Clownfish wanted to find might just be the Coordinates of time. What he wanted to return to was the time zone of the Progenitor Mage, or perhaps even older—a time point before the Progenitor Mage had appeared. This thought shocked Du Zhengyi; it was an almost impossible concept.

But if it were Luo Qi, he had the guts, and he had the imagination to do so.