Chapter 625
It seemed to retain quite a few fragmented memories, and it appeared to have an intense obsession with the past...
"How did you know that name?"
Xia Er didn’t answer the question posed by the pure white armor. Instead, she turned the inquiry back on it.
Her question wasn’t particularly obscure, and the pure white armor instantly grasped what she was asking.
It was the name "Fang Shizhe" (缚时者, literally "Time Binder"). Aside from those who had succumbed to the corrupted faith of the altar, only a handful of people familiar with the legends of the Abyss knew this name.
The pure white armor fell silent again, and Xia Er quietly thought to herself, "Let’s talk again when you remember or are willing to share."
*Alright... If there’s news about Lei Mei Dai Si, I will call for you...*
The voice of the pure white armor gradually faded, and its flame extinguished. After a moment, the flicker was replaced by the persistent calls of Xiao Zuo, who was now shouting for Xia Er.
It seemed the pure white armor had returned the necklace to Xiao Zuo.
Xia Er gazed at the sun sinking on the horizon, reflecting on the words of the pure white armor, and gently shook her head.
What Xia Er needed wasn’t to change much in the past. Although the pure white armor retained many fragments of memory and possessed unique abilities, it was clear that it harbored a powerful obsession.
It was determined to change something in the past, and those changes might not be beneficial for Xia Er; they could even contradict her own wishes.
Considering all of this, Xia Er couldn’t simply take the word of the pure white armor and sign a pact of companionship with it.
At the very least, she needed to clarify the impact she had caused during her last visit to the past, to understand what had been affected, before she could even think about returning to the past again.
Moreover, Xia Er had discovered another issue... the importance of having a powerful organization to rely on in the past.
If such an organization could be established, then every time Xia Er used the altar to return to the past, she wouldn’t need to linger there for long. She could simply inform them of what she needed to do, leave it to them, and return to reality to observe the changes...
This would undoubtedly increase the frequency of her returns to the past... provided that Xia Er could endure the soul-burning and endless darkness each time she returned.
"Ha..."
Xia Er let out a slow breath.
This was a simulation; even the mad Sadana could understand that. Perhaps this was one of the reasons why Sadana chose not to appear...
And since it was a simulation, Xia Er could actively seek out Sadana.
The Witch Academy, Sadana, potions, the tower... everything that might have been left behind from the past was what Xia Er was searching for.
She mounted her steed and headed toward the nearest village. After confirming the location of An Su City, she urged her horse onward in that direction.
The wind whipped around her, lifting Xia Er’s cloak, the fluttering fabric and her flowing hair brushing against her cheeks and ears.
Along the way, Xia Er pondered a question.
It was about the monsters from the Otherworld.
Now, her understanding of the Otherworld had deepened significantly.
It resembled a prison for Ascenders, housing not only completely deranged Ascenders like Sadana but also chaotic ones like Lei Mei Dai Si, and intelligent beings like the pure white armor.
Some Ascenders, akin to "Divine Servants," retained their original faith, and they seemed to make up the majority, just as in the past.
The rest, like Xiao Zuo, were new "native" species born from the twisted flesh of Ascenders and the chaotic will of the Otherworld, having no existence in the past.
The monsters Xia Er had observed thus far constituted the current chaotic and distorted ecology of the Otherworld.
The terrifying echoes within the Otherworld might also be the result of different faiths colliding and distorting, creating reverberations from the past... the entire Otherworld resembled a vast petri dish, teeming with indescribable entities.
But conversely, the Otherworld was also a treasure trove.
Many of the Ascenders there had once belonged to the Tower—like Lei Mei Dai Si and Sadana.
If she could slay these monsters, she could extract "uniqueness" fragments from them, and through the memory-recalling ability of the "Recorder," perhaps she could directly trace back to the past using those fragments.
However, this process was too lengthy; with her current mental strength, Xia Er certainly couldn’t manage it, so this method was of no use to her at the moment.
Additionally, the state of Lei Mei Dai Si was another point of concern for Xia Er.
Generally speaking, if Xia Er altered the past, it would affect the future. The original world could be called A, while the affected world could be termed B.
All variables from A to B should be traceable.
For instance, if Xia Er went back in A to save someone, an affected B world would emerge, containing that person and their descendants.
But Lei Mei Dai Si in the Otherworld seemed to have jumped directly from A to B, with no apparent influencing factors in between, even shocking the pure white armor beside her.
This indicated that the Otherworld was indeed independent of the world line Xia Er inhabited, yet it also proved that Xia Er could influence the Otherworld.
Could she leverage the unique characteristic of Lei Mei Dai Si’s changes to do something in the Otherworld?
Xia Er pondered, but she had no better ideas on how to proceed—she didn’t even know why the Otherworld existed, who created it, let alone what to do with it.
After several hours of riding, Xia Er finally spotted the familiar An Su City. The moment she returned, she contacted Tara through the "All-Knowing One."
Tara hurriedly arrived with Perci, and after a bumpy few hours, Xia Er was now resting in a café.
Once Tara entered the café, Xia Er didn’t rush to leave. Instead, she began to inquire about the Church of the Savior Goddess and the Holy Ascension Sect.
She wanted to see if the new Church of the Savior Goddess, which she had influenced, had changed in comparison to the original.
However, as Tara recounted the histories of the two sects, Xia Er’s heart gradually sank.
The pre-change Church of the Savior Goddess... and the one that had replaced the goddess with Xia Er were indistinguishable.
The Faceless Goddess statue remained the same, and the Holy Ascension Sect still faced division.
The tenets of the Church of the Savior Goddess in An Su City continued to shift towards justification by deeds, downplaying the existence of the goddess, while the Holy Ascension Sect still worshipped Sadana as the true mother goddess, striving to overthrow the heretical Savior Sect.
It could be said that the history from the era of the Great Cataclysm onward had changed almost not at all... the only difference was that Xia Er had indeed gained a piece of "uniqueness."
If the Great Cataclysm was a "filter" or "detector," then Xia Er was the one who could bypass both.
The epochal shifts triggered by the Great Cataclysm could direct all changes from the past toward the same outcome, but they could not affect Xia Er as a variable...
If there truly existed a person or organization that orchestrated this Great Cataclysm, then the terrifying fluctuations caused by Xia Er’s previous save states might have already led them to lock onto her.
Was the failure Lei Mei Dai Si spoke of due to her efforts not escaping the cleansing of the Great Cataclysm?
Yet, some details had indeed changed...
Following her previous memories, Xia Er arrived at a certain house.
This was the first place she had found traces of the Witch Academy after returning from the past, where she had discovered the legacy and manuscripts of the witches, inheriting their faith and power over the years.
But this time, that ordinary house... was just an ordinary house with an ordinary family, devoid of any changes.
There were no manuscripts passed down through generations, no traces of the Witch Academy’s existence.
After leaving the house, Xia Er fell into deep thought.
The emergence of this issue could stem from two possibilities.
1. The Witch Academy was also purged during the Great Cataclysm due to its overwhelming power.
2. The Witch Academy survived, and with the assistance of Lei Mei Dai Si and others, became a truly secretive organization, far more clandestine than the one left behind by Hei Ni.
To determine which situation was true, she only needed to check if there were any changes in the different historical records... for example, the secret mark that Xia Er had agreed upon with Lei Mei Dai Si.
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