Free Web NovelChapter 378: Chapter 182: Defeating the Twisted One
Every time space distorted after time travel, Bai Wu wasn’t clear if there was any significance to it.
He looked at the woman carefully, her clothes were different from those of the lower-class women, and they seemed more like the uniform of some organization.
She had an air of competence, and such a woman walking in the lower level could easily attract some ill-intentioned people.
The woman, however, didn’t seem to care, as she emanated a dangerous aura from head to toe.
Anyone who approached her would unconsciously be warned by the woman’s playful gaze.
This warning seemed to bring a kind of mental pressure.
So on the way to the entrance to the second level, a fairly beautiful woman walked down the road, yet no one tried to stop or chat her up.
Seeing this scene, Bai Wu suddenly felt it was very strange.
"Could it be the sight that I saw for the first time before I left the tower? Is this woman from the Tower God Society?"
"No, that’s not right...
In the Tower God Society, Lilith counts as upper echelon, yet the impression this woman gives Bai Wu is even more dangerous than Lilith.
The Tower God Society surely would not have such a person.
Bai Wu was puzzled as to why Prayle’s Eye had failed again.
Come to think of it, it seemed that after fully entering a certain scene, his eye never popped up any notes again.
It was as if certain rules had also been twisted.
Bai Wu walked closer to this beggar, or rather, closer to the self of this life.
In the lower levels where people came and went, he always kept his head down, his gaze distracted, but the moment Bai Wu got close, the young beggar suddenly looked up.
His originally lifeless eyes were instantly filled with terror, as if he had seen Bai Wu.
Bai Wu found it odd too, if he didn’t exist, then the other’s gaze would pass through him.
But there was nothing behind him. Immediately, Bai Wu realized that this person was talking to him:
"Remember the words I’m saying, remember... they come from the fifth..."
The young beggar’s shout into the void was interrupted by the woman’s sharp hand-chop to the neck of the beggar.
Some passersby gathered around, but just for a few seconds before they turned their heads and walked away.
Bai Wu knew those words were meant for him, this person was pleading for his help, but why?
Why can he see me?
When this question popped up, Bai Wu instantly thought of many things—
He has Prayle’s Eye!
Before I came to this world, this body already had the Prayle’s Eye!
What does that sentence mean? They come from the fifth level?
That’s major information, these definitely aren’t people from the Tower God Society.
This woman also found it odd, who exactly was this little beggar talking to?
She looked around but didn’t find anyone.
After some thought, Bai Wu came up with a possibility.
If each ruler had their own external powers from the tower, the Qin Family representing Black Gold Island, the Yan Family representing Huangquan Island, the Xie Family representing Mechanical City—
Then is it possible that there exists a family whose actual partner is Jing Liu?
Is it possible that Jing Liu has its own forces inside the High Tower?
The more Bai Wu thought about it, the more plausible it seemed; perhaps among the eight rulers, one of them had been persuaded by the prophecies of Jing Liu to follow its lead.
Who might that person be? It could be a ruler Bai Wu had not yet met, or it could be himself...
His gaze returned to the beggar. This body was indeed very similar to his past life.
But Bai Wu could differentiate between resemblance and reality.
He didn’t believe in coincidences. The Black Ace killed him, and then he ended up in a body that was very similar to his own?
How could such an absurd coincidence happen.
So from his arrival, to the farm riot, the escape of the two K’s, and the travel of the Black Ace, could all of this be part of some plan?
When Lin Rui was still the First Generation Masked Strange Person, many things he said were completely different from others, giving off a feeling of information suppression concerning this world.
This also meant the Masked Strange Person, who grew up on the farm, knew many secrets about this world.
The somewhat confused Bai Wu felt he had missed an opportunity.
"It seems all I can do is wait until I return to the original world and ask him."
Bai Yuan, Bai Wu now believes that this man, playing the role of a loving father, must know many secrets.
Bai Wu had also considered whether this plan... could all be Jing Liu’s master strategy.
But the mere thought of it made him feel an intense dissonance within.
So much so that Bai Wu thought the idea was foolish.
Jing Liu was an almost omniscient being, if it decided to change something, it would undoubtedly be terrifying and in a subtly pervasive way.
But Bai Wu simply couldn’t imagine Bai Yuan being schemed against by someone. freeweɓnovel.cѳm
He detested Bai Yuan, even though he knew that Bai Yuan’s actions had a certain purpose, he still loathed him.
Nevertheless, dislike as he might, he had a superstitious belief in Bai Yuan. He always felt... even Jing Liu couldn’t possibly scheme against Bai Yuan.
In this world, there are such individuals whose personality gravitates toward instigating aversion, performing detestable deeds with an enchanting smile, yet they always seem to have the last laugh.
In Bai Wu’s eyes, Bai Yuan was exactly that kind of person.
If the whole setup was such that Jing Liu schemed against him, against Lin Rui, against many other characters to accomplish something, he believed, these people definitely did not include that detestable father.
Bai Wu’s stream of thought was soon interrupted. During the lengthy time that followed, he realized something quite serious.
He thought that after he had consumed a few drops of the Wells Water symbolizing distortion, and his body began drifting through time and space, it was an effect of the Well Water. He just had to wait for this effect to slowly wear off, and he would return to Baichuan City.
Although this was indeed the case, the duration of the effect far exceeded his expectations. Bai Wu had only just begun to experience the immense energy of the Well Water.
The next second, the scene began to fade away again, and he saw the vast desert.
The lengthy journey commenced.
He trekked through the desert for quite a while, roughly seven hours, before the scenery started to change again after encountering a stone array labyrinth.
Afterward, Bai Wu went to the Giant Mang Mountain Range in the western part of Sheng Country. In the icy, snowy landscape, he saw a very ancient carving of an eye.
It took him a full sixteen hours just to see this eye carving.
After the mountain range, Bai Wu started his journey in a city.
This time, he lived in this city for eleven days.
He didn’t encounter any living people, only saw many traces of living people struggling to survive.
In those eleven days, Bai Wu kept waiting for a reset, for a sign that he would enter the next world.
It was enough to make Bai Wu forget where he originally was, and where he should go.
He even thought that the next part of his journey had begun, that he had died on the battlefield in Baichuan City and had traveled to this city to start a new Chapter of his life.
So during that time, Bai Wu began searching for traces of the lives people had lived, looking for those who had tirelessly pursued the High Tower.
Messages on the phone, terse notes, words written in blood. Thanks to the rules, these things should not have persisted for long, yet they remained.
But Bai Wu also faced many troubles. Over eleven days, he accumulated far too many negative attributes.
He felt as if he truly began to survive in some sudden time-space, considering the real possibility of it; thus, he also searched for Doomsday Puzzle fragments, trying to rescue himself.
But he couldn’t find the fragments. In this city he didn’t know whether to be Shudu or Food City, Bai Wu was nearly tortured to death by negative attributes.
After eleven days, Bai Wu finally left the city, and the world changed once again.
He arrived at some ancient tribe.
As he entered another world, all the negative attributes on his body dissipated, starting to accumulate anew.
From the first scene change that cleared the negative attributes, Bai Wu clearly understood how Lin Rui had rid himself of the torment of negative attributes and survived outside the High Tower for seven hundred years.
But this time, he stayed in the same area longer than before, forty-five days.
Bai Wu thought the eleven-day journey amidst the city ruins was torturous, but he found that he had only just reached the entrance to hell.
During forty-five days, Bai Wu faced death many times, and his body fell into an extremely chaotic state.
It was like playing a game in his past life, where he was cursed with every negative attribute by a hundred dark sorcerers.
Life reduction, desire for slaughter, blindness, slow motion, dizziness, cognitive confusion, extreme paranoia, bleeding, weakened strength, sensory block, hallucinations...
And Bai Wu’s hair, beard, and nails kept growing longer.
He struggled within death for a long time, but was eventually rescued by the people of this tribe.
In forty-five days, Bai Wu did not find the Doomsday Fragment. Originally, without Prayle’s Eye, he was still confident that he could find the Doomsday Fragment and relieve his condition.
But he dared not think that the second negative attribute would be cognitive confusion and sensory block from the start.
In the darkness, Bai Wu silently counted the seconds, the minutes, accumulating them slowly until he finally endured to the next world.
When he left, the high priest of the ancient tribe knelt before Bai Wu, as if he had seen the same scene as Bai Wu, like he was worshiping some deity.
Bai Wu didn’t know the meaning of these experiences; he just knew that if he didn’t leave soon, he truly wouldn’t make it.
Thirty days.
Nine days.
Eleven days.
Seven hours.
One hundred and twenty-two minutes.
Forty-four days.
...
Two months and seven days.
Bai Wu kept traveling under the power of the Well Water, and he became aware of a grave issue—if he had grossly underestimated the power of the Well Water.
Have I become a Traveler in time and space? Or has the Well Water distorted me, making me an entity unable to stabilize in a certain time-space?
In some of the regions Bai Wu had visited before, he still knew somewhat their significance.
But now, he couldn’t determine the frequency of visits, the destinations, nor the purpose, which became even more unclear.
Bai Wu had no idea where to go or how to return to Baichuan City.
Unconsciously, he had been out there for three years.
In those three years, he visited over thirty places. He heard countless strange sounds and saw many bizarre sights. He went through innumerable deaths but still managed to survive.
However, the drifting was far from over.
Another three years passed, and then another three years after that.
Bai Wu’s hair had grown down to his waist. Over more than a decade, he had faced death repeatedly, tortured by various rules to the point of a fate worse than death, yet he always managed to survive.
He had to continually overcome the extreme heat outside of the High Tower, the cold, the fierce and unpredictable weather, the strange rules, the unsolvable puzzles, and the powerful foes on his journey to stay alive.
The biggest problem was cognition.
He had only lived in the world of the High Tower for less than a year, but in this chaotic drifting, he had experienced over a decade.
And he didn’t know how much longer it would be. Ten-plus years ago, filled with passion, he drank the Well Water, ready to fight desperately against two god-like creatures—it now felt like a very distant history.
Bai Wu would often isolate himself, continually reminding himself to remember his former companions and that battle.
Living in a false time and space for ten years, and in the real time and space for one year, it’s very possible that a person’s cognition could be twisted.
Taking the false as real, the real as false.
Perhaps Baichuan City, perhaps the shelter... was just a dream he once had.
He was just a drifter, a vagabond wandering through various times and spaces.
These thoughts would resurface every once in a while. Over a decade was enough to turn any hope into despair.
Bai Wu had to reconsider a serious and sad issue, or rather a situation—there was no going back.
He gradually understood the terror of the Well Water. That he was still alive now was purely luck. The ninety-five percent fatality rate was utterly false advertising.
He didn’t even have the confidence to ensure that if he went through such drifting again, he would still be able to survive.
Such endless drifting, such a journey without a destination. The distortion brought by the Well Water seemed just to have begun.
Bai Wu entered a state of silence, recalling the past more and more often, more and more frequently, and for longer and longer.
But that feeling of being prepared for death had completely disappeared.
On his final journey, ragged and shabby, Bai Wu arrived at a certain jungle and ate a fruit.
His memory began to forget massively. Over those ten-plus years, he knew the chance of returning to Baichuan City was slim, but he had always held on to it in his memory.
But now, it all ended.
The distorted plants outside the Tower, consuming them also meant bearing various twisted effects.
Bai Wu’s memory began to dissipate bit by bit.
He felt he was about to die. One second he was lying on the forest floor, and the next second, he was wrapped layer by layer in ice. freёwebnovel.com
In a long dream, Bai Wu felt as if he had survived several more years.
But he remembered nothing anymore. After the memories that sustained him disappeared, the journey became even longer and more brutal.
The distortion from the Well Water seemed to finally move from twisting time and space to other aspects.
Text, information, imagery, cognition, all began to twist.
Once Bai Wu opened his eyes, the world presented to him was endless distortion.
A green moon, a cold blue sun, day and night alternating without any regular interval, the speed of things moving sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and his own location constantly changing.
Not even the surrounding sounds were certain. When the wind blew, it seemed like he could hear car horns, women’s crying, baby laughter.
Appearing by the seaside, with the tides surging, he could hear countless beasts roaring.
As his entire spirit was completely twisted, and his will worn away by endless wanderings, Bai Wu had a premonition of his death.
He collapsed to the ground, perhaps on a shallow beach with the tide receding, or possibly on a boulder with mountain winds howling, or maybe on a dusty bed in some city, and he fell into a deep sleep.
This journey without meaning seemed to also lack an ending.
This was something more terrifying than death itself, dying bit by bit in an environment where there is no understanding of meaning, complete solitude, and yet no ability to change anything.
Since the entire world was no longer normal, and everything was twisting, it made him, a person who was originally normal, lose his perception of normalcy.
In the drift of ten-plus years, Bai Wu still felt no negative emotions, but the sense of confusion and weariness also made him wish for death.
Birds and beasts gnawed at his body, seawater washed over his corpse again and again.
In the scorching sun, in the storm, in the mud, in the pouring rain... Bai Wu collapsed to the ground, motionless, like a dead man.
Maybe he would merge with this world in such a way, maybe he was already dead, and his body had just forgotten to decompose.
Maybe all of this was just a manifestation of the distortion. Perhaps, if given the chance to choose again, he would have preferred to die in battle outside that school over a decade prior than to choose to drink such a few dreadful drops of "distortion."
Now, it all should have ended. He would be forgotten by the world, buried between heaven and earth, unknown and unremembered—with no turning back.
It was supposed to be this way until... that note suddenly appeared.
[I admit that the process of you digesting this power has been very long, but never think it will defeat you. You should stand up. You have waited for over a decade, living painfully in a world without cognition and everything twisted, but others have waited for ninety years.]
[You find it painful and tiring to shuttle through hundreds of time-spaces, but there is someone else on an endlessly tiring journey in the infinite causal cycle, even more wearied than you.]
"If distortions haven’t brought you down, then it’s your turn to defeat them, isn’t it?"
"Most of the Well Water’s power has already been absorbed by you, with only a small part still altering the rules. You are about to return to your original city; the sanctuary is still waiting for you."
"Of course, you could also choose to lie on the ground in such a manner, letting people witness what it looks like for someone whose body hasn’t died after drifting through space and time for more than a decade, but whose soul has. Although for them, your current state has appeared all of a sudden. After all, your decade-long journey has been just the effect of distortion; in that world, merely a second has passed."
"The Little Dwarf will probably be very angry, and he will die as an Evil Fallen. Of course, he’s about to die now. The people of the Investigation Corps will all turn into evil ghosts wandering in Baichuan City; your friends will fall one by one, and those who came to support you will eventually bring about their own catastrophic downfall because of this action."
"Or is it that you’ve completely stopped caring by now?"
Bai Wu, lying on the ground, moved his eyelids slightly. Memories of the past started to blaze like a fire in the endless night, slowly igniting.
The final note popped up.
"Finally, let’s make another choice, shall we?"
"Start over."
"Fight the battle again."
"Exit the game."
Just as when this human died for the first time, on that flight filled with Evil Fallen, similar options had popped up in the notes.
Only at that time, the owner of the eyes had not responded.
But this time was different.
The arm buried in the ice suddenly began to tremble, and the vast glacier at this moment revealed countless cracks.
The next moment, the iceberg started to collapse, and massive ice spikes began to fall.
All the cold seemed to evaporate in an instant! The being that had slept for so long, like a corpse, finally rose.
In the Inner World, red fury instantly covered his body, like a layer of crimson armor.
With the help of Prayle’s Eye, this human named Bai Wu finally remembered everything. Or rather... he had never forgotten; he just lacked a hint to recall everything.
That’s what the Eye provided.
Bai Wu remembered that he still owed someone an end to a cycle, still owed a group of people a dream that lasted ninety years.
To not die in distortions is to erupt within them.
The raging fury turned into flames, and the glacier melted completely at this moment!
His hand, as if responding to the remark from Prayle’s Eye, tapped in the void.
A true man, of course, has only one option.
Fight the battle again.
The drifting of more than a decade finally ended at this moment. This long journey, aside from bringing Bai Wu endless fatigue, also saw the insane growth of the Innate Force.
And the advancement of Prayle’s Eye!
His eyes, like stars, became even more expansive.
Countless droplets danced in the air before turning into mist; space seemed about to split at this moment as if celebrating the birth of a great being.
Or perhaps rejoicing that humanity had crossed a certain realm.
Through the droplets that dissipated in the steaming air, Bai Wu saw what he looked like now.
"The hair got a bit long... but not bad, let’s keep it this way for now. But the beard is quite troublesome; I slept really long this time. It’s hard to imagine someone choosing to soak in such danger; what kind of monster would that be."
In the space where the ice floes shattered, Bai Wu floated midair, slowly shaving off his beard.
Though a slow process, it was only a moment.
Having drunk from the Eternal Spring, his appearance had not aged a bit through the decade.
"There are still many questions I want to ask. I need to thank you; I almost couldn’t wake up. Yes, this time, you are the MVP."
Bai Wu said to the reflections in the countless droplets.
Prayle’s Eye, in a sense, operated by thinking according to his other side.
Bai Wu’s other side was a thorough cynic, a riddle man unfit for any place.
Perhaps normal Bai Wu could be destroyed by distortions, but this madman wouldn’t.
Of course, it couldn’t converse with Bai Wu; in fact, this dialogue was essentially Bai Wu talking to himself.
The land of the shattered glacial region began to slowly regain peacefulness, but in the distance, Bai Wu saw the night sky of Baichuan City.
The long period of drift that had lasted over ten years was finally coming to an end.
From the unknown, curiosity, contemplation, confusion, to fatigue, despair, complete fracturing, and renewal, this journey was long and of significant meaning to him.
As he finally set foot back on the land of Baichuan City, completing his Twisted Journey, Bai Wu’s eyes once again surged with the battle spirit he had before embarking on the journey.
Seeing old companions still struggling and fighting, the fatigue of a decade disappeared in an instant, and he felt his blood burn once again.
Time had fleeted by, over a decade had slipped away, yet he remained as he was before the distortions had eroded him.
Everything returned to square one, but because of his return, nothing was the same again.
Looking at the dark barrier not far away and feeling all the negative emotions on the battlefield, Bai Wu felt as if he had the power to tear it open:
"It’s time for my counterattack."
