Dragon Raja 4; Chapter 105: Odin’s Shadow (2)

Dragon Raja 4

“You mean… you rewrote history?” Lu Mingfei felt a chill run down his spine.

“For beings living in three-dimensional space, time is a straight axis, with events arranged in order along it. But if your perception can penetrate the fourth dimension, you’ll realize that yesterday, today, and tomorrow are all written in the same book. These events coexist, and which ones are revealed depends on which page you turn to. If your perception grows even further, you’ll see many, many books lined up side by side. As you open different books, the world appears differently. So no, I didn’t rewrite history—I just chose a timeline that was favorable to you.”

“Multiverse theory? Each book is a universe, and countless universes are stacked together in chaos?”

“‘Chaos’ is a fitting word, but the human idea of multiverse theory is still far from the truth. The universe isn’t layered but coupled—like a vast wave function, a towering tree of worlds, a labyrinth, and a self-entangled spiral. Human mathematics can’t explain it, and even Dragon Alchemy only scratches the surface.”

“I thought alchemy was just about making potions and weapons.”

“Alchemy is just a name humans gave it. The medieval alchemists barely scratched the surface of the knowledge. You could think of it as the science of the Dragon Clan, a tool to decode the logic of higher-dimensional universes. Even with alchemy, the Dragon Kings could only glimpse a very limited view of the higher dimensions,” Lu Mingze paused. “And Odin, aside from the Black Emperor, is the Dragon King who has achieved the highest mastery in alchemy. As the myths say, he is not only the king of warriors but also the master of wisdom.”

“So if Odin and Jörmungandr are Dragon Kings, then the gods of Norse mythology are all dragons, right?”

Lu Mingze nodded slightly. “I told you before, once you meet Odin, you’ll be swept into the current of fate. Now you’re starting to think about the truth behind it all.”

“My meeting with Odin was destined, wasn’t it? Even if I tried to avoid him, he would’ve found me eventually. That’s how I feel.”

“Meeting him was inevitable, but the timing of the meeting could have been managed. You shouldn’t face him until your forces are fully gathered. Last night, you chose the wrong time. While I reloaded you, there’s still a problem—Gungnir has marked Chen Motong. It will come for her again.”

“What do you mean by ‘marked’?” Lu Mingfei paled, sensing something terrible.

“As I said before, Odin is a master of alchemy among the Dragon Kings. Gungnir is a conceptual weapon he created himself. He imbued Gungnir with the concept of ‘absolute hit.’ This doesn’t mean the spear can kill its target at will, but rather that a mark is placed on the target beforehand. When Gungnir is thrown, that mark guides it through the laws of causality to pierce its target, inevitably causing death.”

“The eye… that eye!” Lu Mingfei suddenly gasped.

“Exactly, the eye is Gungnir’s mark. Even reloading can’t erase it. Now Chen Motong has become a person Gungnir must kill. No distance can prevent it.”

“It was supposed to kill me… it was supposed to kill me… and senior sister took the hit for me!” Lu Mingfei buried his fingers in his hair, trembling.

“Yes, Chen Motong shielded you from death. As I told you, in a way, she’s already a dead person.”

In a penthouse apartment in the CBD, Nono was taking a shower.

There was no spare bedroom at Lu Mingfei’s uncle’s place, and she didn’t want to share a room with Lu Mingfei or Finger, so she borrowed the apartment from a friend for a temporary stay.

She was in a bad mood today—not because Lu Mingfei had lifted her shirt, but because his expression at that moment had terrified her.

She had seen Lu Mingfei scared and panicked many times, but this time, his eyes were strange, like he had experienced something more horrifying than death.

Nono couldn’t help but wonder if he really had some kind of mental issue. To this day, no one had been able to prove Chu Zihang’s existence. Su Xiaoyan’s delusion of pregnancy, Nono speculated, was her way of filling the void left by Chu Zihang’s absence. In the afternoon, she had returned to the hospital to speak with Su Xiaoyan’s attending doctor, who made no attempt to hide that Su Xiaoyan had been mentally ill for many years. The delusion of pregnancy was a result of nearing menopause, triggering hormone fluctuations that caused symptoms of a false pregnancy.

The doctor even produced medical records to back up his claims. Faced with black and white evidence, Nono had to admit that her previous thoughts were just wishful thinking from Lu Mingfei’s perspective.

Exhausted, she slumped against the wall, letting the water wash over her. If this whole thing was just Lu Mingfei’s PTSD manifesting as a cognitive distortion, it would be utterly embarrassing. The crazy person wouldn’t feel embarrassed, but she and Finger, the two normal people who had been running around with the lunatic, definitely would. With Finger’s thick skin, he probably wouldn’t care, but the thought made her feel even more irritated.

She turned off the shower and started drying herself with a towel. As she dried, she suddenly froze. There, beneath her collarbone, was an eye.

To be more precise, it was a scar that looked very much like an eye. But when had she gotten this injury? Nono had no memory of it.

The longer she stared at it, the more it seemed like the eye was staring back at her.

Lu Mingze sat cross-legged, speaking softly: “We call the original timeline the α-line. In that world, you had a senior brother named Chu Zihang. Your teenage years were rough, but you made it through to your fifth year of college, eventually becoming the Student Union president. You were set for a bright future. With Principal Anjou’s favor, not only would you have become the head of the Execution Bureau, but perhaps even the principal himself. But someone suddenly restarted the world. The cost of doing so was enormous, suggesting that the world had deviated greatly from their expectations, forcing them to take such drastic measures.”

“In the world after the reboot, you’re still the Student Union president, but for some specific reasons, this world didn’t undergo extreme transformations. The biggest difference from the previous world is that Chu Zihang disappeared, and as a result, you took his place as the star of Shilan Middle School, inheriting everything that was his. We call this timeline the β worldline. The shift from α to β is the first split in the world.”

“Last night, you entered Nibelungen and met Odin, which was a mistake, so I helped you reboot the world a second time. The price I paid was much smaller than the one paid by the previous person because the time passed was shorter, and the changes made were minimal. To make it easier to understand, let’s call the timeline where you entered Nibelungen the γ line, while the current timeline we’re sitting in is still the β line. So now we have three worldlines: the α line, where Chu Zihang existed, the β line without Chu Zihang, and the short γ line, which is a branch of the β line.”

“But why am I the only one who remembers Senior Brother? Even his own mother forgot about him,” Lu Mingfei asked.

“When the observer’s insight is strong enough, they can see across different worldlines. Didn’t I tell you? For a top-level observer living in a four-dimensional universe, history is like a bookshelf filled with many books, and time is just the pages they flip through. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow exist side by side before them, with beginnings and endings all clear at a glance,” Lu Mingze said softly. “Your insight isn’t strong enough to reach that level, but as I mentioned before, you are a part of the ‘absolute reality’ of this world. Your consciousness is the ballast stone that keeps the world running smoothly.”

“Cut the abstract stuff. Can you save Senior Sister or not? Do you need me to trade my life for hers?” Lu Mingfei asked, staring directly into his eyes.

“You’re flustered, brother. You’ve already made up your mind never to make a fourth deal with me, but you’re still panicking because you care. Normally, this would be the perfect time for a demon like me to strike a deal with a client, but unfortunately, I can’t fulfill your request. ‘Absolute hit’ is a manifestation of fate itself, and now the threads of fate connect Chen Motong and Gungnir. To sever that link, you’d need an alchemical weapon of the right attribute, and those things are currently unattainable.”

“But in this timeline, Senior Sister and Odin haven’t even met. How can Gungnir still leave its mark on her?”

“You can’t think of Gungnir as a simple weapon. Though it’s an alchemical creation, it’s also a living being—an alchemical lifeform. Among the ‘Seven Great Kingdoms,’ which represent the highest achievements in alchemy, ‘life creation’ is one of them. Like you, Gungnir possesses the attribute of ‘absolute reality,’ allowing its perception to pierce through different lines. In short, it can cross worldlines to kill.”

“If you can alter history, why not help me return to the α line? At least there, I can find Senior Brother for help.”

“The one who sets up divergence points also leaves a mark behind, and accessing a save point requires that mark. However, the mark is usually well hidden, meaning only the person who set the divergence point can access it. The divergence point between the β and γ lines was set by me, but the divergence between the α and β lines was set by someone else. I have a good idea of who that person is, but I can’t find them, nor can I locate the mark they hid.”

“Your worldview is too confusing,” Lu Mingfei said, slapping his forehead in frustration. “I don’t have the brain capacity for this.”

“We walk through the halls of fate, winding between the sculpted pillars and arches, surrounded by the sound of worlds and mirrors shattering,” Lu Mingze recited softly.

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