Chapter 985: Neither Clone nor Paradox
“What are you-hey!”
Before Zhen Liu could fully comprehend what the hell this crazy boy was telling him, his left hand suddenly jerked itself forward in order to grab the aforementioned boy’s wrist in order to pull him forward.
Zhen Liu could actively feel [Chaos] leave his body in order to do…something with this guy popping out of his head. He just wasn’t sure what.
Well, other than the sigh of relief that came out of the guy’s mouth once his hand finished doing whatever it was doing.
“Much obliged. Now, can we stop all of this vamping and just yank me out already? It’s surprisingly cramped in here.”
“Is…is that jab at me having a small head, or a comment on the amount of knowledge crammed in my head?”
“The fact that you seem to be sharing this space with an active spirit-body kaijin,” the strangely knowledgeable man retorted. “I’m actually surprised this hasn’t drove you nuts.”
“Meh, you get used to it.”
“Fair enough. Now would you mind?”
With that weird conversation out of the way, Zhen Liu proceeded to pull on young man’s arm until he was fully out of his head.
It should be noted that Zhen Liu didn’t actually pull a person out of his head, rather, a strange yet incredibly elaborate aether seal had formed on his forehead and that was where the strange young man had extracted himself. That stated, Zhen Liu still felt as if his brain had ejected metal spike or some other painfully large object.
‘Welp, I can now say I know what Zeus felt like when he gave birth to Athena,’ Zhen Liu attempted to joke with himself as a literal human being finished extracting themselves from his forehead. Once that was done though, an even more awkward conversation followed.
“Let’s see here…good to know that the Library has…radically changed again. I swear, none of you Kaijin Lords ever seem to be happy with sticking to a specific aesthetic,” the strange man commented as he looked around the padded room. “Smart choice in having me appear in such a room, by the way. Significantly easier to clean up if things had gotten nasty on either end.”
“Uh huh…,” Zhen Liu nodded, while keeping in mind that it was probably a terrible idea to further entertain this weirdo. “Would you mind telling me who you are now, or…”
“Oh, right. Manners, duh,” the man about Zhen Liu’s age said as he palmed his forehead and somehow summoned a chair for himself to sit upon.
Zhen Liu was just about to ask how he managed to pull of that little trick in a secured room inside of an isolated magic library, but went against that line of questioning when he recalled that about five minutes ago, this guy didn’t exist…maybe.
Luckily, he was going to get those answers…right now.
“For starters, my name is Cornelius. That’s not really my name, but I have gotten some great mileage out of it so you can just call me that until…well, until the end of time.” It should be noted that Cornelius said that last bit as if it was a joke. That said, Zhen Liu wasn’t entirely sure if it was one.
“Now then, you’re probably wondering where I came from and why I’m here, yes?”
“Seeing as you popped out of my head, yes I was wondering that.”
“Well, long story short, you and the kaijin have the annoying ability of being able to simultaneously confirm where I am and when I am in existence. Whenever that happens, a new me, a new Cornelius, pops into existence in order to set things straight.
Or at least, make it so you can’t perceive the other versions of me. It’s complicated as hell, so don’t bother asking me to elaborate.”
“Uh…what?”
“To try and make things easier for you to understand, try to see through the eyes of your kaijin again. The ones named… Razorstella and Frosttusk? See if they can still…well, see me.”
“Okay…”
Zhen Liu proceeded to stretch his senses to Frosttusk and Razorstella once more in order to figure out what the hell this Cornelius guy was on about. Once he did though, he just had more questions.
Because the moment he should’ve been seeing a street cook and a slave merchant with eerily similar faces, he just saw a street cook and a slave merchant with incredibly different faces.
If Zhen Liu was inquisitive before, now he was downright curious as all hell.
“How the fuck…wait are you some kind of Otherlander with a weird ability?,” Zhen Liu asked with an incredulous eye, and recalling thebsheer amount of media he used to digest that involved an out-of-time schmuck.
“I might be an Otherlander…or not? Not sure which anymore,” Cornelius answered while scratching his chin. “In actuality, I used to be a pretty standard type of aether warrior until I stumbled upon a weird book that radiated the power of [Time]. And, like any good cultivator in my position, I picked it up and used it’s power to help me cultivate, reaching all the way to Aether Saint too. But…that’s when the trouble started…and when I simultaneously got entangled with that stupid thing.”
It should be noted that Cornelius said that last part with a strange amount of affection.
“Well, to be more precise, it saved my ass.”
“What?”
“Well…”
________________________________________
Turns out when you cultivate something as rare and precious as [Time], things get a little…weird.
I don’t know whether or not it was due to my physique not being out to snuff when it came to cultivating [Time], but the stronger I got, the more I began to slip in and out of time.
One moment, I’d be spending a day during the Golden Era of the Thunder Emperor.
The next moment, I’d be spending five years fighting against the UNBLINKING ONE or something like that.
Slipping in and out of time is enough to drive most normal people insane, but they have the luxury of forgetting. The problem with me, is that I couldn’t forget jackshit.
Every mistake, every foible, death and loved one, all of it was forever recorded in my brain.
Hell, I’m pretty sure I was destined to become some sort weird anchoring archive at the end of the universe.
But then, during one of these bounces through time, I ended up running into one of you guys.
A Kaijin Lord.
And, like you guys seem to have a horrible habit of doing, my life was changed forever after.
________________________________________
“I don’t know what it is they pulled off exactly, but they managed to figure out how to cause me to well…split?,” Cornelius said with a shrug. “I’m not sure what to call this phenomenon exactly, but every time those kaijin manage to spot me, another me spawns on the exact same timeline and sort of…lives their own life? Like they’re aware of the basics, like the name, the pocket watch and the cultivation, but they basically get Carte Blanche to live however they want. Some good, some evil, you know how it goes. Either way, there are a bunch of versions of me living in the moment.”
“Uh…huh…”
In this exact moment, Zhen Liu finally understood why people found time travel to be convoluted bullshit.
“I’m not gonna lie, I feel like I’m gonna need a diagram for this shit.”
“Yeah, no idea how I would draw this though,” Cornelius freely admitted.
“Wait, is this why I was able to meet three different versions of you?”
“Yes, that’s precisely…wait a minute, three? You mean two, right? The slave merchant in Roaring Tide and the street chef here in Stampeding Bison?”
“No,” Zhen Liu shook his head. “The two you mentioned earlier, and the third being an old guy I met who was around during the Invulnerable Storm Queen’s era.”
“Storm Queen…hold up,” Cornelius said in a shocked tone as he got up to this feet. “Are you…talking about Mia? Song Gu Miavora?”
“Miavora?,” Zhen Liu repeated with a questioning look. “That definitely doesn’t sound like a normal Roaring Tide name.”
“That’s because it isn’t,” Cornelius began to explain. “Miavora is regional, more specifically, that region between Roaring Tide and Soaring Griffon. She’s like you, a transplant.”
“Oh! That…kind of explains some things…but yeah, what about her?”
“Well, the thing is-bah!”
“Whoa, what the fuck?!
Before Cornelius could get another word out of his mouth, Logos and Pathos had suddenly manifested in the padded room and had simultaneously slam him against the wall in rare display of physical action.
As they did, Zhen Liu could feel [Chaos] being used to lock the man in place.
“Logos, Pathos. What the fuck?!”
=Milord, we’re sorry for intruding like this, but-=
“Why?”
<=Because this asshole is why the Storm Queen perished all those centuries ago!=>
“Say what?!”
It was just one thing after the other today, wasn’t it?
