Chapter 456 – Time Begins to Flow Again

After descending the snow-capped mountain, Qi Si headed east, stopping and starting, and returned to River City in late autumn half a year later.

The city, not yet invaded by the eerie, was alive with the bustle of everyday life. He entered at dusk when the streetlights had just come on; private cars in every color streamed along the road, horns and traffic whistles rising and falling, punctuated by snippets of pedestrians’ conversations.

A girl in her teens held her mother’s hand, recounting class gossip in exaggerated tones; salarymen clutching briefcases hurried along, laughing into phones wedged between shoulder and ear; a group of elderly men and women pushed a speaker toward the nearby plaza, chatting nonstop about their children.

Qi Si wandered aimlessly, spotted a subway entrance, descended the steps, and boarded whatever train arrived.

During the six years after his parents’ death he’d mostly stayed home; even when he went to the studio he usually took a cab. It had been a long time since he’d ridden this most ordinary form of transport.

He squatted in an unobtrusive corner, watching a parade of people get on and off: a middle-aged laborer clutching a bag of peanuts stood awkwardly; several youngsters wearing earphones stared at their phones, flicking through short videos.

Qi Si suddenly realized he didn’t know River City at all. The locals he could name barely filled one hand, and most of them could die in front of him without his batting an eyelid.

He knew nothing of the city’s major events, nothing of its districts and geography. If you showed him a hundred aerial photos of cities worldwide, he doubted he could pick out the one belonging to River City.

Put plainly, he felt zero belonging to River City. Lacking identification with humanity and incapable of collective awareness, he’d been born without the psychological groundwork for “belonging.”

Yet he had lived here six years; apart from handling matters in Qijia Village and the Statue of the Joyous God, he’d never considered leaving. The instant he exited the Final Dungeon he’d been sent back to River City, and after a detour to the snow mountain his first thought was still to return here.

Such contradictions would be suspicious on anyone. Qi Si suspected some forgotten reason behind it all. If a “third self” had orchestrated this grand design, the key to breaking it would likely lie in River City.

The carriage filled with people; the stench of sweat mingled with the spicy odor of fried skewers, fermenting into a rank miasma. Bodies stood wedged upright; the slightest jolt sent limbs colliding.

Qi Si was glad he existed on another plane, unable to touch these people—yet merely standing in such cramped quarters, inhaling that filthy smell, stung his nose and eyes.

When the train reached its stop, Qi Si stepped out, drew a deep breath of cold night air, recalled the location of Riverside Estate, and headed straight there.

He took the direct route—crossing rivers, passing through walls—like a true ghost, silent and imperceptible.

A city at night is never as peaceful as it seems: sin grows like mold in deserted corners; a vagrant sleeping under a bridge is dragged into a car by hoodlums; in a ground-floor flat a woman smothers her baby.

Qi Si also spotted a man with tastes similar to his performing a vivisection in a basement. He watched with interest for a while, concluding the fellow’s aesthetics and technique were a disaster.

How could he pick such ugly material? How could he let it scream so loudly? Qi Si itched to dissect the man and give a proper demonstration—but in his current state he could only watch helplessly.

All night Qi Si wandered River City, still no more familiar with it. Fortunately he located Riverside Estate and reached its gate before dawn.

The breakfast-shop owner was already up, soaking scallions and greens in basins of water, scrubbing each leaf. Behind the shop, in a pile of trash, a bitch nursed her pups; one black-furred pup peered out with bright, curious eyes.

Qi Si strolled around, slipped past the buildings he knew, and entered his familiar unit. Inside the lift he realized he couldn’t press the button; sighing, he backed out, walked to the emergency stairs, and obediently began to climb.

Perhaps because he was almost home, he found himself surprisingly patient, even studying the little ads plastered along the stairwell—every word and picture utterly alien to him.

His ties to the real world were tenuous; he barely knew the apartment he’d lived in for years. Even back in 2035 he’d never looked at the stairwell, so he had no idea how many times these ads had changed over twenty-two years.

Qi Si consoled himself: while waiting for his scheme to unfold he had plenty of leisure for sightseeing. Now he was alone; worst case, he’d have to wait here twenty-two years until the timelines converged.

Even in his godhood days he’d had Li and a flock of ignorant humans for amusement. While sealed inside the Carnivore instance, though Si Qi left him no memories, there’d still been villagers and players to play with. To be this bored was a first since birth.

Qi Si floated above the master bedroom, gazing at the infant version of himself lying in the cradle, wordless.

Wisps of black smoke coiled around the baby; twisted Ghosts stepped into the room one by one, bowing their heads around the cradle like participants in a welcoming Ritual, yet silent as if mourning some horror about to arrive.

The infant’s eyes were half-open, face calm; whether asleep or awake no one could tell. Even the most terrifying evil, rejected by the world, looks no different from any human child in its infancy. The Creator stuffs souls of every hue into human-shaped molds; until the shell is peeled away, who can say whether what’s inside is god or monster?

Qi Si saw a woman hurry in; spotting the baby safe in the cradle, she exhaled in relief. Gazing lovingly at the child, she rocked the cradle gently, then turned to the man behind her. “Comrade Lao Qi, I told you you saw wrong from the balcony—our little Qi Si isn’t even one yet; how could he climb out and walk?”

Qi Si glanced at the damp footprints on the floor not yet evaporated, then at the infant in the cradle who seemed to be feigning sleep. “…” Fine—apparently he’d been trouble from day one.

“Ding-dong—ding-dong—ding-dong—” The doorbell rang three times in succession—no hallucination or accident.

Without looking up the woman urged the man, “Go see who it is.”

The man strode to the door, turned the handle, and spoke in bewilderment, “You are—”

A young man in a suit and frameless glasses stood outside. He gave the man a calm once-over, then produced an ID from his pocket. “Security Bureau Inspector Fu Jue. On January 1, 2014, River City Central Hospital uncovered a newborn-swap case recently solved; I need to visit every family whose child was born that day.”

He finished in a level tone, then asked as if casually, “Your child is named ‘Qi Si,’ correct?”

Qi Si floated behind the body of Fu Jue that now housed Lin Jue’s soul, watching him enter the master bedroom, glance at the Ghosts encircling the baby, scribble something in a little notebook, and politely take his leave.

Though he’d long known Si Qi and Lin Jue had made a pact, and that Lin Jue had known of his existence twenty-two years earlier, seeing it firsthand still filled Qi Si with irritation—and murderous impulse.

Over the next few days Qi Si watched the infant version of himself, whenever the parents were out, crawl from the cradle unaided and pad barefoot across the floor, exploring the world with the cautious curiosity of a beast newly arrived on earth.

He could feel it clearly—the child-version of himself was understanding the world more and more, turning into something close to a normal human. The ghostly shadows clustering around him never dispersed; their posture shifted from bowed submission and dread to baring fangs and claws, yet they still couldn’t touch the infant in the least.

Then, one day, while the baby was toddling along, he slowly began to bend forward, dropping to all fours like some throwback, crawling across the floor like a real infant. In one instant he froze, tilted his tiny neck back, and let out the howl of a human baby.

Veins throbbed at Qi Si’s temples; he loathed noisy children, and even if the brat had once been himself, there were no exceptions. He deeply regretted trekking all this way just to watch this period that even dogs despised; maybe he should take another lap around the snow-capped mountains.

The doorknob turned behind him, though it was still broad daylight and hours before his parents got off work. Qi Si looked back: Lin Jue, immaculate in a black suit as though on his way to a funeral, stood in the doorway.

Without a word Lin Jue walked to the infant, picked him up, laid him back in the cradle, then turned and left in silence. Watching the young man’s retreating figure, Qi Si felt a flicker of curiosity—if Lin Jue chose to kill him right now, would Si Qi have left any contingency?

But he quickly and disappointedly realized that, as a dyed-in-the-wool rationalist, Lin Jue was still waiting for him to enter the Eerie Game as the trigger for the Final Dungeon; of course the man wouldn’t let personal likes or dislikes jeopardize the big picture. How dull.

Perhaps the old almanac had declared the day “fit for meeting kin,” because barely an hour later another visitor arrived—and it was someone Qi Si could actually talk to.

Dong Xiwen and “Yuan” made themselves at home on the sofa, trading stares with Qi Si.

Dong Xiwen coughed twice to break the awkwardness. “Um, Big Brother Si Qi, let me introduce you—this is ‘Yuan,’ one of the leaders of our Balance Church. You two should have met; I think you’ll find plenty in common.”

Yuan wasted no words and stated his purpose: “Before the Twilight of the Gods I struck a bargain with Qi. Now I’m here to honor it. He told me to pass you this line: ‘For gods, time is a vast Möbius strip; you can move forward or backward to close the fated loop. The key date is August 7, 2029.’”

August 7, 2029—that summer six years earlier. Qi Si remembered being sent by his uncle to the Balance Church’s camouflaged “youth behavior-correction camp,” the day Qi first descended into his fate and gifted him the first anomaly of his life.

Time… time… Instinct told Qi Si he had seized something crucial. Qi had handed him memories missing thirty-six years, but what if he could rewind to some node and watch everything He once experienced?

Yet he currently held no authority over space-time; how was he to manipulate time?

In the Final Dungeon, Pema once told him and Lin Chen: “Neither of you has finished atoning for your sins. Remember—do not speak of time, and do not let others speak of it.”

Pema said that speaking of time would “age” you, but because time is non-linear and can form closed loops, what players experienced was “reverting to a child.”

Only with the new information from Yuan did this rule finally make sense. As a clue deliberately given by an NPC, it had never been truly used by players even after the Final Dungeon ended.

So had the Final Dungeon really ended? Had they truly left it? Might being trapped in this pocket dimension cut off from reality be just another form of the Final Dungeon?

Qi Si grasped something. Smiling, he recited the date Yuan had supplied: “August 7, 2029.”

Gods possess billions of years of memories; what would turn humans into ignorant infants is, for a deity, merely flipping through the blurred pages of an immeasurably long history.

At first Qi Si only tested the date aloud, then he repeated it—again and again, faster and faster until the words blurred beyond recognition. Around him the scene twisted like a spinning kaleidoscope: figures and objects reared up and collapsed in rapid succession, gorgeous and bizarre tableaux flashing past.

He saw a boy in red wandering among herds of beasts, scooping up a multi-colored cub, turning it over for a playful look before tossing it back; he saw a youth in crimson sacrificial robes stride through majestic halls and painted corridors, head lowered, smiling as he spoke to elaborately dressed humans; he saw a golden World-Tree thriving beside a golden river, the red-clad youth and many young men and women sitting beneath it, cupping a scarlet heart scooped from the stream… The inverted images sorted themselves into chronological order, and Qi Si beheld the thirty-six years that had vanished from memory.

After creating the Eerie Game, Qi temporarily relieved the gods’ desperate plight of being devoured by rules; knowing the principle of sustainable exploitation, He shuttled through instances to observe human choices, adjusting difficulty on the fly. Watching numerous players clear dungeons by routes outside the original rules, He grew intrigued—and another idea took root.

Why must gods submit to the rule of rules? Why must they forever face the threat of rules? Was there a once-and-for-all solution?

Thus, in one instance He located Lin Jue—then ranked first on the comprehensive power leaderboard—and raised a hand. A blood-colored Contract scroll unfurled before Him. Smiling, He asked the Ark Guild’s president: “Would you like to end the Eerie Game and resurrect all the humans who have died?”

What followed was the well-known conspiracy and that grand, thunderous failure. After Twilight of the Gods, the Ark Guild fell apart; most of Qi’s divine power was sealed, and He was suppressed inside the Carnivore instance. Fortunately He had prepared for the worst, bargaining in advance with Yuan and White Crow, while casting His own avatar into reality to become Qi Si.

On August 7, 2029, Qi stored every detail of the plan within that day’s memory. Through it Qi Si learned the previously hidden part of the layout.

After the Be Careful of Rabbits instance ended, he and Qi merged; Qi used this chance to enter reality. As a god well-versed in the nature of Identity Cards, He foresaw Zhou Ke’s appearance and, when the man headed for Qijia Village, left a sliver of residue in River City to meet with Li, who had likewise come to reality.

Qi Si could infer the rest even without knowing the plan: Zhou Ke swapped world-lines with him inside the Final Dungeon, threw himself into the contest against Lin Jue under the identity “Si Qi,” exhausted Lin Jue’s hand, and was then killed by Li.

Because “Si Qi” was incomplete—in other words, the god who governs Contracts had not fully died on the rule level—the authority of Contract remained in this deity’s hands. After the usurper died, the unique existence could return to its original world-line at any time.

“So I’ve been arranged from start to finish, huh…” Qi Si laughed.

The way back to reality was also stored in the memory: the Jester Trickster Identity Card was the final cog driving the whole scheme.

A red-and-black card appeared between Qi Si’s fingers. Like the magician pictured on its face, he bowed politely; phantom politeness floated in his hand, doves and tarot-cards flying out and fluttering around him.

“I am Qi.” Qi Si spoke a lie that was not falsehood, deceiving the rules and fate on high.

The card spun rapidly between his fingers, froze, and expanded until it filled the sky. Below the stage a dark sea of people roared in thunderous cheers.

Upright.

All your words shall be believed.

A dense jungle solidified beside him; white-robed figures with rifles patrolled outside rows of locked iron houses. In one of them shadows writhed, a grotesque monster casting terrifying silhouettes on the walls.

A sixteen-year-old boy, thinner and paler than his peers, sat quietly on an iron bed, surrounded by ghostly shadows, head lowered, staring blankly at the floor.

Qi entered the room, leaned down with a soft laugh: “Qi Si, I’ve come to see you—and to deliver a birthday greeting seven months late.”