It was common knowledge that time couldn’t flow backward, and a person couldn’t jump randomly within his own timeline. Within the same dimension, the laws of cause and effect were immutable.
Back before Kunlun-jun had been awakened, Zhao Yunlan had once traveled eleven years back to Renwu year—except he hadn’t, not really. Shennong had just put an eleven-year mini-cycle into Nüwa’s scale, creating a pocket dimension. It had been an illusion that was very similar to, but different from, reality. He had simply been inside that pocket dimension for a while.
When Fourth Uncle had given him Nüwa’s scale, Zhao Yunlan had already unknowingly walked into that pocket dimension. Within it, time had reset when it finished its eleven years, so since Zhao Yunlan had been inside, he had gone back eleven years too. He hadn’t returned to reality until Shen Wei broke that dimension with the Soul-Executing Blade.
The bubble that had separated him and Shen Wei just now was the same as that eleven-year cycle. Every bubble was a world set to repeat over and over for a certain span of time.
Some were simple and crude, repeating every ten minutes; some might seem incredibly real and complex, repeating only after thousands of years.
So this wasn’t some kind of artifact. It was simply all the remains of the sages’ attempts to create the Reincarnation Cycle. The waste from their experiments had been sealed in the South Sea all this time until the seal had first been disturbed by the King of the Gui and then accidentally smashed open by a great yao, leaving it exposed to the Mortal Realm.
Zhao Yunlan looked up at the streetlight. I knew you wouldn’t leave me any inheritance, he thought. Just a bunch of messes for me to clean up.
At this point, there was no knowing where Shen Wei was, so there was no point in hoping for rescue by his blade. No, Zhao Yunlan was going to have to shatter each tiny, looping world from within.
It wasn’t complicated. Every pocket dimension had a point that connected it to the real world, and that point was how Zhao Yunlan got in. Once that point was found and destroyed, the pocket dimension would collapse, unable to sustain itself.
For example, the connection point in that eleven-year cycle had been the mysterious Record of Ancient Secrets. Zhao Yunlan had owned a copy in the real world, and there was another copy in the little cycle. When he entered the cycle with the book, the two copies overlapped, connecting the pocket dimension and the real world. Illusion and reality intersected.
At the time, Zhao Yunlan had been desperate to know what Shen Wei was hiding from him, so he kept chasing after the book. It never crossed his mind to destroy it. But if he had burned Record of Ancient Secrets as soon as he got it in the little time loop, cause and effect within the pocket dimension would’ve contradicted cause and effect in the real world, and the alternate world would’ve disintegrated. He wouldn’t have needed to wait for Shen Wei’s blade at all.
If he had burned Record of Ancient Secrets in the little time loop, the book would’ve still been in his hands when he returned to reality instead of staying behind in the loop.
As for the real Record of Ancient Secrets…it might’ve been Shennong’s mortar who had hidden it in the Special Investigations Department to begin with.
Currently, all these overlapping pocket dimensions were like bubbles. Zhao Yunlan was reflected within them, and each one would take something from him as the connection point between that dimension and the real world. The now-stopped Clarity, the lifeless talismans, the Soul-Guarding Order that was now just an ordinary piece of wood, the whip that couldn’t be summoned…or even his powers as Kunlun.
And of course, Zhao Yunlan had no way of knowing what the connecting point in each world was, so he would have to feel them out individually and destroy them to shatter the dimension. Only then would that given thing return with him to the real world.
“So fucking annoying.” Zhao Yunlan sighed. “If I’d known it was going to be like this, I would’ve just organized an exam.”
It was all this tactless South Sea Water tribe’s fault. When he got back, he’d eat a whole seafood feast.
5
ZHAO YUNLAN HAD no idea how long he’d been lingering in the countless pocket dimensions.
Initially, the worlds were all simple scenes: a dilapidated road, a dark city, the countryside, underwater… There were no people to be seen, and the loops ranged from ten minutes to three days. They were always based on something inconsequential he had.
But it wasn’t long before the pocket dimensions became increasingly complex, not to mention larger and larger. Other people started to appear, including some people he knew. The world based off Clarity, for example, looped for an entire three years during the lifetime of Zhao Yunlan’s previous incarnation at the beginning of the Republican Era.
Clarity had been passed down from the previous Guardian, who was his prior incarnation. He had been chasing down a demon that had kidnapped someone, taking them hostage. The watch had been smashed in the process.
The hostage was a kid from an orphanage, and someone claiming to be the orphanage director rushed over to collect the child; while he was at it, he offered the services of a watchmaker he knew to fix the watch. When the repaired watch was returned, it was able to communicate between the worlds of yin and yang. It had become Clarity.
Zhao Yunlan watched as his previous incarnation, who had looked identical to how he looked now, hurried to the orphanage in search of its director…only to find that the orphanage director was a short nun, not the man who had offered to fix the watch for him.
“Ah, Shen Wei.” Zhao Yunlan caught up to his incarnation, contemplating the watch’s origin. He chuckled, shaking his head. “You sneaky bastard.”