Chapter 103: Time Forest

Chapter 103: The Temporal Thicket

Shen Ji and Li Wuyan entered the ward area. Since psychiatric patients were usually restricted from going out, the corridor had separate secure doors that were only unlocked for half an hour at breakfast and lunch times.

The system had arranged a complete family visitation procedure for them, so the nurse was already waiting when they arrived.

The nurse had them sign in and went over a long list of precautions before finally allowing them through.

"His condition is quite good. He has been moved from the large ward to a small one, but we still can’t allow you to meet him alone. He must be supervised by staff."

Shen Ji politely thanked her, "Thank you very much."

The nurse nodded casually, "No need to thank me, it’s what we're supposed to do."

After waiting in the waiting area for a while, the nurse finally brought over a young man. His hair was very short, a buzzed cut, but his eyes were gentle, and he didn’t look like a psychiatric patient.

Lü Jinfeng, the psychiatric patient who claimed to be reborn.

He looked at Shen Ji and Li Wuyan with confusion and after a long time said, "Who are you?"

"I don’t know you."

Shen Ji rapped his knuckles on the table, thinking about how to respond.

"The system had set up your identities as distant relatives of his. Anyway, you’re only staying for a short while, just string him along."

So Shen Ji spoke up, "We’re relatives from your hometown. You haven’t met us before. We came to see you because of Grandpa’s funeral."

"Grandpa’s funeral?" The other person looked even more bewildered.

"Grandpa passed away. Before he left, you were his biggest concern. He insisted that we come see how you’re doing. We, his grandsons, are here to honor his last wish."

As he said this, Shen Ji pinched Li Wuyan under the table.

Li Wuyan hissed in pain. He tried to dodge but couldn’t break free, his arm firmly held by Shen Ji.

What the—? Shen Ji seemed so slender and bookish, how was he so strong!

His thigh hurt from the pinch.

"Y-yes, that’s right." Li Wuyan had to force a sad expression. "Grandpa’s gone, we had to tell you the news."

The nurse glanced at the nearby monitor, perhaps feeling it was impolite to listen in on someone's private grief, so she walked to the corridor entrance and waited outside.

That way, even if something went wrong, she could respond immediately.

Lü Jinfeng was still puzzled. He thought for a long time before finally saying, "But didn’t my grandpa die before I was hospitalized?"

Shen Ji: …

Li Wuyan: …

"And there’s no way you two could be my relatives." Lü Jinfeng’s mind was still working. "My family could never produce someone as good-looking as you two!"

"I’m mentally ill, not stupid!"

"Who are you? Why are you pretending to be my relatives?!"

He made a gesture as if holding a gun, "Leniency for confession, severity for resistance! If you don’t talk, I’ll shoot you dead!"

Shen Ji: …

Li Wuyan: …

Shen Ji turned to look at Li Wuyan, "Are you sure he’s the first victim of the Prophecy Book contamination, and not just a straight-up psychiatric patient?"

"Well, contamination and mental illness can coexist, right?" Li Wuyan said, "Maybe the contamination worsened his mental illness?"

Shen Ji hesitated for three seconds.

Although he was very suspicious, in the past, it was indeed Li Wuyan who found the Prophecy Book and triggered it to reverse time. If Li Wuyan says it's him, then it probably is, right?

So Shen Ji spoke again, "We heard you’re a reborn person?"

"Reborn person?"

Lü Jinfeng looked up as if he had caught a keyword. He put away the ‘gun in his hand,’ looked around, and then cautiously spoke.

"Could it be… you’re also reborn?"

"Are you also reborn to save the world?"

"The future is an apocalypse. The apocalypse is crawling with monsters everywhere. My teammates and I died in a horde of monsters, you know? It was a giant serpent. I watched him get swallowed right before my eyes. So, gods appeared in the sky. They sent me and some others back to the past to warn people that the apocalypse is coming."

"As long as we avert these disasters, we can escape the apocalypse."

Li Wuyan asked curiously, "Why did they choose you?"

"Of course because I’m the world’s Savior! I’m the protagonist! I’m the chosen one!"

He cheered, "The gods spotted me right away!"

Li Wuyan grew even more curious, "Then why is the protagonist in the Prophecy Book me? My name appears a lot."

The man gave Li Wuyan a strange look, disdainfully saying, "What minor character dares to compare their glow to the sun?! The radiance of the sun will burn you!"

Shen Ji couldn’t help but laugh, but he quickly suppressed his smile when Li Wuyan turned to look at him.

If not for the sound he made moments ago, no one would have noticed that even Shen Ji was amused.

He avoided Li Wuyan’s gaze and instead communicated with the system.

‘This person is clearly mentally ill. Can you detect the Prophecy Book on him?’

"No detection," the system replied. "Strange, did we get the wrong person?"

‘But Li Wuyan brought us here. According to the normal course of events, it was Li Wuyan who found the source of the Prophecy Book and then destroyed it.’

"Yeah, so why is that?"

Shen Ji: …

The system was two-faced—one side an all-powerful system, the other an idiot system that understood nothing and had to ask about everything.

After thinking for a moment, Shen Ji turned to Li Wuyan.

He asked, "Do you think it’s him?"

Li Wuyan met Shen Ji’s gaze, and after a few seconds, he said, "Anyway, the information I found points to him, and my intuition says it’s him too."

Hesitating for a few seconds, Shen Ji nodded and said earnestly, "I believe you."

Li Wuyan was taken aback. He looked at Shen Ji and finally said, "Do you trust others easily?"

"No." Before Shen Ji could answer, Li Wuyan cut in, "Although we haven't spent much time together, I don't think you're the type to trust others casually. Yet you've kept trusting me over and over—there must be a reason for that."

He muttered under his breath, "It can't be love at first sight, right?"

Shen Ji teased him, "That's right, it was love at first sight for me."

Li Wuyan almost jumped out of his skin.

He looked at Shen Ji in confusion, starting to wonder if he had just heard things in a dream. Otherwise, how could this serious, quiet, good-looking guy say he fell in love with him at first sight?

Lü Jinfeng looked at Shen Ji, then at Li Wuyan.

He raised his hand again, making a finger gun.

"Talk! Who the hell are you?!"

He shouted, "Our Lü family doesn't have any gay people! My grandfather lived a straight life! He couldn't have spawned a bent grandson!"

Shen Ji / Li Wuyan: ...

They really felt like giving him a beating.

Shen Ji fixed his eyes on Lü Jinfeng, his dark eyes filled with scrutiny.

"If it's not on him," Li Wuyan chimed in from beside him, "could it be in the place he lives?"

"Let's go take a look at his hospital room!"

Shen Ji looked at Li Wuyan, "Ward?"

"Yeah." Li Wuyan explained earnestly, "When it comes to important things, people usually have two methods: one is to think everywhere is dangerous, so they keep it on themselves; the other is to be scared of carrying it and losing it, so they hide it in a safe place. For him, the only safe place would be inside his ward, right?"

That made sense.

Sure enough, as soon as the ward was mentioned, Lü Jinfeng's eyes immediately grew tense.

He kept sneaking glances at the two, frequently looking over his shoulder.

Shen Ji and Li Wuyan stood up, and Lü Jinfeng suddenly made a grab for them.

"No, no!" he screamed, "Don't take my rebirth guidebook!"

The noise drew a nurse, who came running. In the blink of an eye, time was passing, and Shen Ji saw clocks of all different sizes and types appearing on the surrounding walls.

Just like he'd seen deep in the forest of time.

The clocks were trying to advance.

"It's in this timeline!" Shen Ji slammed his hand down on a clock on the wall in front of him. With a crack, fungal threads shattered the glass surface of the clock, twisting around the moving clockwork.

Instantly, everyone around froze solid.

Each person's face was twisted into a grimace, especially Lü Jinfeng's. He was frozen mid-motion like a broken record, trying to grab Shen Ji, who was holding back the flow of time.

Li Wuyan instantly realized that Shen Ji had power similar to this strange place.

"Let's go!"

Fungal threads covered the entire wall, pinning the clock firmly in place, but an opposing force was battling against Shen Ji, attempting to bury this stretch of time.

Shen Ji ran out of the waiting room, with Li Wuyan right on his heels.

The further they went, the more clocks appeared—large and small, wall clocks, alarm clocks, wristwatches, even drawn clock faces. The entire world had turned into a world of clocks. Li Wuyan had never seen such a scene before; his eyes reflected the countless timepieces, a spark of excitement kindling deep in his eyes.

A mysterious, unknown, place brimming with danger.

He felt his inner adventurer wake up, that old thrill surging back.

He had thought he would never feel this way again.

They arrived at the ward, which was completely covered in a dense, packed layer of clocks.

The clocks were so numerous that they had blurred into lines, each covered with clock hands all trying to move forward but entangled by black fungal threads, constantly tugged backward.

Some fungal strands snapped under the immense force, but it didn't matter—the ability to reproduce of the fungal threads was even more terrifying than imagined. For every one that broke, three more were ready to take its place.

Together, they worked to freeze the entire timeline.

Li Wuyan looked at Shen Ji in amazement. The intense pollution aura made it somewhat hard to breathe, but at the same time, it left him utterly sure.

Shen Ji was strong, unbelievably strong.

He was the most powerful mutant Li Wuyan had ever seen.

Where did this mutant come from? Stronger than him, more knowledgeable about the situation, and he even knew Li Wuyan.

Shen Ji tore away the clocks covering the ward door and pulled it open.

A book floated in the air, emitting a soft golden light.

The moment Li Wuyan saw the book, a memory flooded his mind—content he had once read in the Prophecy Book.

These thoughts swirled through his mind over and over, robbing Li Wuyan of all thought. Seizing this gap, the book scattered, countless pages fluttered down to the floor like some ordinary book coming unglued.

"It's trying to escape!"

Shen Ji shouted.

Li Wuyan instinctively looked up as flames suddenly ignited in the air.

The moment he saw the flames, Li Wuyan realized he had used his Talent.

He shouldn't have used it.

Since becoming a mutant, Li Wuyan had never successfully controlled it even once. No matter how hard he tried to manipulate them, the flames would always burn through the air, incinerating all pollution and everything related to it—pollutants, mutants, and ordinary people alike.

"No..."

Li Wuyan reached out instinctively.

The flames burned fiercer and fiercer. After the flames, came ice. The ice spread along the walls, freezing the entire corridor into an icy hell. On the other side, the flames continued to rage violently.

Ice and fire—it was the perfect picture of that.

"Li Wuyan's Talent is named 'Zero Point,' a rare dual-attribute of ice and fire. The ice completely immobilizes all Pollutants, while the flames penetrate the ice to incinerate the entire Pollutant. This Talent is highly versatile, capable of even freezing special Pollutants without physical form."

The system exclaimed in shock, "Holy shit, aside from being uncontrollable, it's practically the most perfect and terrifying Talent. In this timeline, Li Wuyan absolutely counters Fury."

"His level is definitely above Fury's!"

Li Wuyan's hands trembled as he spoke, "I can't do it."

"Why won't it work?" a voice asked.

Li Wuyan looked up sharply toward Shen Ji. Unlike the person in his memories who avoided ice and fire, Shen Ji stood amidst the flames. The walls blazed with fire, and black mushrooms still clung to them, yet the flames and ice avoided him entirely.

Not a single flame touched him.

As if he were naturally able to evade fire.

"...You're unharmed?"

"Don't worry," Shen Ji smiled. "I won't be harmed by you. With me, you can go all out."

He pointed ahead. "Contain it!"

Li Wuyan thought: Indeed, you are special.

Different from everyone else.

If he weren't about to get married, stealing someone's love would be wrong...

He didn’t really want to be a homewrecker either.

Blue light flashed in Li Wuyan's pupils. He placed one hand on the wall, his gaze fixed ahead.

Ice spread rapidly, releasing an intense chill from the walls. White mist began to drift as flames expanded with the ice, freezing the entire level in an instant.

"Did it escape?"

"No."

"It didn’t!"

Li Wuyan and the system spoke simultaneously.

Li Wuyan's figure dissipated into the air, as if he had turned into ice or fire. In the next instant, ice from the ceiling suddenly fell, freezing a patch of midair upon impact. Within the ice, billowing cold mist could be seen, along with a struggling presence trapped inside.

Flames surged upward.

Shen Ji stood still, watching the ice block before him as if searching for an opening. The hyphae seized the opportunity, crawling across the walls.

The flames continued to burn, and within them, Shen Ji seemed to see a human figure taking shape.

Li Wuyan was holding the frozen ice block, looking at him with eager anticipation.

Shen Ji was taken aback.

"Now!"

'Li Wuyan' smiled at him too.

Now!

Hyphae shot out from all directions like spikes, piercing deep into the ice block, tearing apart what was inside. They fiercely devoured the pollution of the Prophecy Book, savagely ripping apart its forcibly assembled body.

It took the small mushroom a full ten minutes just to consume it.

Ten minutes later, the small mushrooms receded, and the ice fell to the ground, melting.

With the pollution gone, everything around began to restore itself. The flames subsided, and the ice turned into white mist.

Li Wuyan reappeared in his original spot, wanting to high-five Shen Ji in celebration.

But he saw Shen Ji's figure dissolving.

"Shen Ji?!"

Li Wuyan rushed to Shen Ji, trying to grab his hand.

"Where are you going?"

Shen Ji looked at the rarely panicked Li Wuyan, a smile touching his dark eyes.

He said, "It's time for me to return."

Li Wuyan froze.

"This is the pre-altered timeline, a past that doesn’t exist." Shen Ji placed a hand on his cheek, and Li Wuyan instinctively nuzzled into it.

Lie.

Li Wuyan thought: Your hand has warmth. I can feel your temperature.

How could it not exist?

He held Shen Ji's hand but felt the ring on Shen Ji’s ring finger pressing against his palm. The ring’s presence was so insistent, constantly reminding Li Wuyan that Shen Ji had a lover, that Shen Ji was about to marry, that Shen Ji didn’t like him that way, that Shen Ji was only so kind to him because he was a good person.

He felt jealous and sad.

"Will I never meet you again?" Li Wuyan asked.

"There’s no one better than you as a friend," he expressed his reluctance euphemistically.

Shen Ji replied, "Of course you’ll meet me."

"In the next timeline, in the future."

Li Wuyan’s eyes snapped open.

In that moment, he suddenly understood.

He understood why Shen Ji trusted him so especially, why he was so certain Li Wuyan could find the Prophecy Book, and why Shen Ji knew him while he didn’t know Shen Ji.

Because Shen Ji doesn't exist in this timeline. He was someone born in the next timeline who had met and known him.

He was in the next timeline. He was in the future.

Then, what about that ring...

"Whose ring is it?" As if reading his thoughts, Shen Ji said this.

The moment after he spoke, his figure vanished. Li Wuyan stood where he was, watching everything disappear as he returned to the square outside the psychiatric hospital, just before he had entered.

Police officers found him, and soon many people gathered around, trying to make him go back.

Only Li Wuyan stood silently in place.

After a moment, he suddenly started laughing, laughing with complete abandon.

When his laughter subsided, he placed his hands on his hips and exclaimed toward the sky, "Now that I think about it, that ring was actually quite beautiful."

"It really suits my taste!"

The people around him were startled, looking at him with expressions that seemed to say, "What kind of madness is he up to now?" But Li Wuyan paid no mind.

He was waiting for a blinding white light, waiting for countless clocks to appear.

Waiting for time to reverse to the very beginning.

Waiting for change, waiting for that person far in the future.

/

"Confirmed, the Prophecy Book has vanished."

The system announced in an excited mechanical tone: "Shen Ji! We succeeded!"

"Cheers!"

Shen Ji smiled faintly.

He recalled the expression on Li Wuyan’s face in that final moment.

Shen Ji could easily tell: Li Wuyan was reluctant to let him go.

He didn’t want to see Shen Ji disappear, didn’t want to lose him, didn’t want to return to his old life. Three months had been enough to shatter the life Li Wuyan was familiar with. He was forced to endure the changes of the era, wielding the most powerful Talent while imprisoned in the most terrifying way, utterly powerless.

Because he simply couldn’t control himself.

The Prophecy Book had altered the timeline. To prevent Li Wuyan from possessing such a powerful Talent and becoming a pollutant, it inadvertently neutralized the explosive nature of his abilities.

Pollutants inherently understood how to wield pollution far better than humans.

So, the ice transformed into a sky full of fluttering butterflies.

Shen Ji said, "For Li Zhiyan, although this timeline remains difficult, it’s still much better than the previous one."

"Of course."

The system replied, "In the first timeline, both of his friends still died right before his eyes, and his family met the same fate. He remained one of the many passive orphans mass-produced during the apocalypse."

"At least in this second timeline, he’s a high-ranking official in the Pollution Prevention Center and even found a wife."

Shen Ji: ...

"I’m the husband."

"The one on the bottom?"

"That has nothing to do with top or bottom!"

"Why?" the system asked curiously. "Web novels say the one on top is the husband, and the one on the bottom is the wife."

"Your data needs an update. Do you even understand prosperity, democracy, civility, harmony, freedom, equality, justice, rule of law..."

"You’re missing patriotism, dedication, integrity, and friendliness..."

"No, what does that have to do with how you address each other?"

"Just go update your data. You’re so silly and unreliable."

"Alright," the system said helplessly. "I’d love to, but there’s no time. If there’s a chance in the future, I’ll update."

Shen Ji paused. "What do you mean, no time?"

"S-class pollutants never truly vanish. When they die, they return to the primordial fissures, waiting to coalesce again. The Time Forest is the most complex pollution fissure. The Prophecy Book’s rebirth might take a very, very long time, but it’s not impossible."

"As the preventive mechanism of the Prophecy Book, I must go dormant along with it."

"That way, the next time it awakens and stirs up trouble, I’ll wake up too and stop it."

"This is my duty."

Shen Ji listened silently for a long time before finally speaking. "Can’t you wait a little longer?"

"If I leave the Time Forest, I won’t be able to find my way back. This place is too hard to locate—it hides within time, as if it doesn’t exist."

The system said, "I wish you and the protagonist a better and happier future!"

Shen Ji chuckled. "Such a cliché blessing."

"Cliché is fine! Don’t you journalists always say ‘elegance and vulgarity can be appreciated together’?"

"At the very end, I want to say one more thing."

"Little reporter, you’re the best host I’ve ever bound! Though, you’re also the only host I’ve ever bound."

"I’ll always remember you."

Shen Ji felt something leave his body. He reached out and stared at his palm.

That familiar mechanical voice would never sound again. In that instant, Shen Ji couldn’t help but feel a wave of nostalgia.

Small mushrooms crawled into his palm, like children who didn’t understand why their mother was sad but still wanted to comfort her. They nestled entirely in Shen Ji’s hand, showing off their new crystalline caps.

Look how pretty the small mushrooms are!

Master, look!

Shen Ji burst out laughing.

He closed his hand around the small mushrooms and lifted his head to take in the surroundings.

He was still in the Time Forest, where clocks of all sizes hung from the trees, ticking away as they measured seconds, minutes, and hours with perfect precision.

"Not a host."

Shen Ji murmured to himself, thinking: He should have said it earlier, to that simple-minded, silly little system.

If it had heard this, it would have puffed up with pride again, gloating happily all day long.

"Haven’t we always been friends?"