Free Web NovelChapter 171: Chapter 171: Conversation with Jing Liu
The sensation of life force rapidly dropping to zero did not stop Bai Wu from thinking. On the contrary, as his consciousness dissipated due to the pain, he grew even more focused.
In that moment, looking at the surroundings, Bai Wu was certain that this man possessed some unknown spatial ability.
His gaze became increasingly vacant, like the lusterless eyes of a dying person.
The information provided by Prayle’s Eye was somewhat chaotic—
[.It’s not clear when he looks at you, it’s not clear when he looks at me]
Bai Wu paid it no mind, for Prayle’s Eye had already hinted that the opponent, a sixth-order adversary, was beyond his ability to observe.
With the current state of Prayle’s Eye, predicting when the wristwatch would maintain its maximum value was also impossible.
Therefore, the situation wasn’t too bad, at least some information had been obtained.
The process of dying was so fleeting that many memories in his mind began to collapse, but Bai Wu was still able to maintain his focus, pondering over the events he encountered on the farm.
"These aren’t the children from the casino; the ones here are smarter and of better quality. The casino’s children must come from somewhere in the High Tower, and it’s very likely that the timeline here is just before the advent of the apocalypse."
"These children can awaken Sequences without suffering from negative traits, and I can’t sense the presence of Evil Fallen, which means that this place does indeed serve as some sort of refuge. But the owner of the farm... may not necessarily be from the human side."
"I haven’t found the owner of the obsession yet, could it be that nurse? It doesn’t quite fit... She seems to blend in very well."
The puzzle had many pieces, and for the moment Bai Wu could not think of more answers.
As death approached, his body began to tilt, a sensation the human brain could actually feel during the process.
Reflected in the consciousness, it felt like a descent.
As if the once-idyllic farm had suddenly developed cracks beneath one’s feet.
Bai Wu began to fall through the cracks.
Plummeting into a chaotic starry sky.
From the starry sky to the earth, then from the earth to the deep sea. This process was somewhat lengthy, and then Bai Wu’s body landed in an unknown plane.
He couldn’t see anything clearly around him, as if looking through layers of frosted glass, hazy and indistinct, except when looking back at where he had been, Bai Wu saw a ceiling.
A massive, boundless ceiling, seemingly built as a dome for a certain city.
The uneven dome was full of small grooves. He couldn’t help but feel that these grooves looked familiar.
So much so that it led him to question—was this the real process of dying, or was someone suggesting something to him?
In the end, Bai Wu landed at the base of the High Tower.
The crack finally vanished, for steles of white, blue, purple, red, and black appeared.
In the empty Lower East Square at the base of the High Tower, there were only two people.
Bai Wu and a woman.
"If you fall unconscious in the world of the phone booth, your consciousness will enter a sleep state, but if you die, then for several days, you will be in a kind of suspended animation," the woman suddenly spoke.
She was not tall, appearing quite petite, one of the few women Bai Wu had encountered who were shorter than the captain.
She seemed like an ordinary young human female in her twenties, but her true age exceeded both Lilith and Cain.
Bai Wu did not ask for her identity; he had already guessed, especially after hearing the phrase "Laosi has gone mad." He could confirm that this woman was Jing Liu.
"How many days is ’several days’?"
Jing Liu smiled:
"Given your constitution, perhaps you’ll be unconscious for ten days to a half-month, or maybe you’ll wake up in about a day. Based on your past, your tolerance for pain is high, so you’ll likely fall into the latter category."
It’s fine, it won’t delay my visit to the Married Women’s Manor to see the married women.
Bai Wu nodded and then asked:
"Did you build all these phone booths? Is your name really Jing Liu?"
"You’re very smart. Yes, I am Jing Liu, and I built the phone booths, but I prefer to call them the House of Karma. As for the name Jing Liu, it’s just a code for me. If you don’t like it, you can call me something else."
"The level of naming in your family is really beyond description."
Hearts Seven, Spades Ten, Jing Si, Jing Liu, should I say it’s succinct, or bizarrely creative?
"While I’m unconscious, will I be staying with you here all the time?"
"Not really, our time for conversation is very short, as this is merely a deep consciousness space. You might think of it as a dream within a dream within a dream. Because we can’t make more time, we can only extend our communication as much as possible in this way."
Bai Wu understood; this old lady was playing Inception with him.
"Go ahead, what do you want to tell me?"
"You should say what you want to ask me."
Bai Wu said:
"Did you really see the future where a savior changes the world?"
Jing Liu smiled:
"It seems my brother’s heart has invisibly given you a sense of mission. This question is easy to answer, I can tell you one thing."
"What’s that?"
"Not long after my brother and I arrived in Denglin City, due to certain reasons, I never told anyone else about the visions of the future, including my brother."
Bai Wu furrowed his eyebrows.
"Do you mean you can’t see the future, or that you’ve seen it but can’t speak of it?"
"The latter. I can see the future, but I can’t reveal any predictions about it. Perhaps I could force myself to reveal it, but I’m not sure whether the causal transformations during the process would be good or bad. Plus, it would cause me to gradually disappear."
Jing Liu did something unexpected for Bai Wu; she removed her top, revealing her naked body.
This act had nothing to do with lust; it wasn’t the development of this delicate body that was the focal point but rather that parts of Jing Liu’s body had become like the body of a deep-sea jellyfish, translucent and clear.
Upon closer inspection, it seemed no longer of human flesh and blood.
"Prophecies have their price, and this is the price I have paid. To prevent this change from spreading further, I have stopped narrating the outcomes of prophecies. What I can do now is merely observe causality."
Jing Liu’s words left Bai Wu in silence.
"So... the existence of the savior you told Jing Si about, is it false? No, not exactly false, but rather not a prophecy at all? You never verified it yourself?"
"Exactly. The only prophecy I really made was for a very short term, like to convince scientists that I can make predictions by guessing what their distant relatives were doing. That didn’t cause me much damage.
All the prophecies I performed and the insights I gained were bound by a line. I don’t have the courage to cross that line; if I tried to calculate the end of the world, I might die on the spot, and trying to calculate how the next era would evolve would consume a lot from me.
In the decades before, I kept using prophecies, looking at the changes a few years or decades ahead, but now I seldom do that as well. Especially after foreseeing you. Your existence, although a part of causality, seems to lack stability."
Decades ago, Jing Liu made predictions about the future in gambling dens, revealing only bits of information. But now, she had almost reached a point where she couldn’t disclose any information.
Bai Wu said:
"So what’s the deal with these phone booths?"
"Good question, you’ve reached the crux of it. I can’t predict the future too much anymore, and my body is increasingly affected by causality. But I once tried to see, at least in that not-final ending, humanity was at a disadvantage."
"In order to change this state of affairs, I began to advocate the savior theory and started building the Path of Karma in Food City. Constructing this area nearly cost me half my life. Yet even so, I couldn’t control causality freely."
This sentence made Bai Wu feel that this woman actually harbored great ambition.
If a person could utterly control causality, then she would have completed the transformation from human to deity.
Perhaps Jing Liu also had her own objectives.
"Unable to control it freely, does that still mean you can control it?"
"To be exact, it’s not about control, it’s about imposing variables on all causality. Of course, from an overall perspective, there’s actually no change, but our eyes can’t see the whole picture, only parts. When it comes to the parts, our actions are indeed changing causality."
It was a tongue-twisting statement.
But Bai Wu vaguely understood, he said with astonishment:
"Could it be that you mean if those obsessions within the telephone booths really changed, history would also change?"
"That’s exactly what I mean."
Bai Wu was shocked.
If these telephone booths could change reality, then could it be that ninety years ago, just like a transmigrator descending, he appeared in the red zone, battling the monster under the blood-colored sea of clouds?
Did he truly join the deputy commander of the Investigation Corps from many generations ago in slaying that powerful monster?
He suddenly realized that this possibility did exist.
After all, Gu Hailin and the others could not return. What exactly happened outside the tower, whether he rescued them or not, had no effect on the High Tower.
At least not currently.
As for Wen Hao, Lin Rui, these two were minor figures and could not have any influence. But one of the calls came from himself...
If Yin Shuang had done something at the time, could it have completely changed his trajectory through the butterfly effect?
He felt the terror of Jing Liu’s power, but also harbored a doubt.
"I know what you’re thinking. You want to say, if the telephones inside the booths can connect to the past, then why not let you answer more calls, why not let you go back even further in time?"
This experience of being seen through was rare, Bai Wu did not deny it, but said:
"I’m still not sure about some things, maybe you’re lying to me."
"You will understand on your own soon enough."
"If that’s the case, then why not let me answer more critical calls?"
If it was possible to change the past, why then did Jing Liu let him return to seemingly meaningless times in the past? frёewebηovel.cѳm
Whether it was Wen Hao, Lin Rui, or even Gu Hailin, none seemed to matter.
At least to Bai Wu, they were not instrumental in saving the world. freёwebnovel.com
Jing Liu found Bai Wu’s thoughts quite adorable.
"You’re very smart, at least most of the time, you’re quite accurate in your judgments, but when it comes to influencing time, to changing the future, our opinions differ, or rather, you are yet unable to understand the magnitude of time. The change of certain trivial matters from seven hundred years ago might not immediately reveal their significance, but a snowball that’s been rolling for seven hundred years is bound to be enormous."
"Are you talking about the butterfly effect? That still can’t convince me. Because there are ways more direct and efficient than the butterfly effect."
"Indeed, it’s the butterfly effect, but the main reason is that I can initiate calls from only three telephone booths; the rest of the causality is not under my control."
Jing Liu’s words were complex, Bai Wu sorted through his thoughts.
"You mean most of the incoming calls in the telephone booths can’t be manipulated by you?"
"Yes, these House of Karma that I created are causality that already exists. They choose who will change them and it’s not something I can control. I’m not even their creator. The most accurate way to put it would be, the moment I witnessed these causalities and decided to open a preliminary entrance for them, I became a part of these causalities."
Bai Wu was able to accept this explanation.
It wasn’t that Jing Liu spoke in riddles, rather the logic and philosophy related to time were naturally like this.
The moment Jing Liu tried to change the future, she became bound with the future, so there was never a question of changing the future.
What could be changed wasn’t the future.
This implied...
Him coming here, answering these calls, in the grand scheme of things, was an inevitable event, part of a closed loop.
Jing Liu did not anticipate that this concept, which she expected to take a long time to explain, was quickly understood by Bai Wu.
Bai Wu said:
"So the calls I’ll answer aren’t under your control. You can’t tell me the future, nor can you arrange for me to receive more important calls. Rather than saying you chose me, it’s more like causality itself chose me?"
"Yes, the only causality I can try to change is just in three places, but perhaps failure itself is also part of causality. You’ve just been to one of them, in terms you can understand from inside the tower, that place is the black zone."
Jing Liu’s figure suddenly became indistinct, but quickly reverted to its original state.
Bai Wu continued:
"It’s a pity. I have a lot I want to know about the future, and the past is no different, but it seems pointless to ask you. Do you feel lonely? Knowing so many secrets yet carrying them all alone, unable to share."
This conversation had already been scrutinized by Jing Liu before it ever happened, and she answered with a smile:
"You were meant to be a monster, yet you have a tender heart."
"..."
Bai Wu wanted to retort that this wasn’t tenderness, this was a hundred percent charm increase technique. And what did she mean by ’you were meant to be a monster’? Has she ever seen a monster as handsome as me?
"I’m not lonely. At least from today onward, someone knows of my actions, my brother, and many humans are striving."
"What’s on the sixth layer of the tower?"
"That’s a topic I cannot discuss with you."
"Would it change certain causality?"
"You could say that."
"Then—"
Before Bai Wu could finish, Jing Liu said:
"Where the Well is, I also cannot tell you. The more you know from me, the more my brothers and sisters can sense your existence. Do you remember what that person said earlier?"
Bai Wu nodded, knowing Jing Liu was referring to that sentence—our causality is not controlled by any entity.
"So there are some questions I can’t ask you. Knowing too much will get me in trouble with several Well-level Great Demon Kings?"
"Essentially. You have to seek the answers yourself. If you receive them from me, they will mark you."
"You all are indeed a group of inscrutable beings."
Bai Wu thought for a moment, then decided to ask a question he cared about, one that was unrelated to the Jing family siblings:
"My——"
"No, not that there isn’t, rather I don’t know. I don’t pay attention to such boring matters."
Bai Wu thought, great, he hasn’t even asked yet, and she guessed what he wanted to ask.
"Then one last question, who is ’Black Spade Ten’?"
