Chapter 589: What Happens Next?

Arbiter’s Rights — which are created from the profound understanding of the Laws — are responsible for the existence of Gods. Knowledge becomes power, and the one with that knowledge attains godhood. In this sense, if someone were to acquire even more knowledge than a god, that god would instantly lose their divinity and become something of a quasi-god.

However, it would still take millions of years for one to usurp the Arbiter’s Right of a god, even if the challenger had Baiyi’s intellect and mental caliber. Baiyi should not have managed to steal the Time God’s Arbiter’s Rights because he did not have the time. Fortunately, the Laws Baiyi tried to grasp were the Laws of Time, and it had a pretty large loophole for him to exploit.

“Now that my understanding of the Laws has eclipsed that of the other guy, I’ve obtained some of his powers. Soon, my understanding will be complete and the Arbiter’s Right of Time will be fully mine, and when that happens, Tylemus will be demoted to a quasi-god — and that’s if he’s lucky. I could not have done this without Noirciel’s help; if she had not done what she did, I would have not been presented the chance. Thus, I strongly suggest that you all do your best to protect Noirciel,” Baiyi said.

“However, I am not yet a god. I may possess some control over Laws, but I am no match for the big guys up there. Nevertheless, Noirciel can help us with something else: she could help us create our own Divine Realm,” Baiyi explained.

“BUT — and this is important — I did not make her remain with us because she’s gorgeous, super moe, and very ‘dandere¹‘ — qualities that are hard to find in the wild — so do not think otherwise!” Baiyi quickly added.

The Archmage, who decided not to call Baiyi out on his blatant lie, asked, “And then?”

“After I learned enough of the Temporal Laws, I resumed my search for Mia. As we already know, the past is just a clusterf*ck. Think of it as a dictionary, whose pages have been torn into little pieces, and my task was to sift through those little pieces to find Mia; it was an arduous process. Back then, I was in a schizophrenic state; on one hand, your experiences in the real world made me aware of the flow of our time, but at the same time, my mind was emersed in chaos. This strange state allowed me to compare two different time states side by side, and this was the main reason why I utilized my Arbiter’s Right to create the technique, ‘Timefreeze’. (时间禁锢)”

The first time Baiyi used Timefreeze, it was not to attack but to accomplish his mission. He had used it to stop the flow of the ‘chaotic timestream’ to better ease his mind into the disorder. Only after further understanding the mechanics and Laws did Baiyi learn to wield it against his enemies.

“The chaotic mess of the past becomes more manageable when I freeze it. This allowed me to return to the point in the past that I had just left, to the armor I left there. However, when I returned to the past, I noticed something…”

When Baiyi returned to the past — to the time he visited Lulu’s dungeon cell — he realized that Mia and the Emperor were unmoving. He pinched Mia’s soft cheeks and used a marker pen to draw on the Emperor’s faces, yet the remained still. They did not move, like the characters in a manga.

“Wait, wait, wait. Did you really only pinch Mia’s face?” The Paladin Walker asked, surprisingly interested in this point.

“Of course! I swear that I did not do anything else!” Baiyi answered solemnly.

“Tsk.” The Paladin Walker frowned when he heard that, silently lamenting.

That situation ended up being easy to resolve. Once Baiyi was able to remove the Timefreeze effect, time began to flow again, and Mia and the Emperor were no longer frozen. The Emperor was still playing with the little kitten; it was as though he did not even know that he had been still for all that time.

When Mia and the Emperor saw Baiyi’s suit of armor shake, they were shocked and confused, so they bombarded him with questions.

From then on, Baiyi split his mind into three parts to maintain his schizophrenic state. One part of his mind tried to come up with a way to send Mia back to the present; however, he occasionally spared some time to froze time and snatch the kitten away from the Emperor, just to play with it. The second part of Baiyi’s mind focused on his race against time to best the God of Time. The last and smallest part of his mind continued to watch everything that was happening in the present.

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When the Church began its march into Arfin City, Baiyi came up with a technique to transport one’s spirit and mind through time. He then used this to send the Ancient Rohlserlian Sorcerers’ Corps to the present.

Baiyi named this technique ‘Time Editor’, likening the concept to movie editing: he would select a section from raw footage, snip it out, and paste it on whatever point in time he wished to. This way, characters could skip ahead and appear at whatever point in time Baiyi wished them to.

Although the idea was ingenious, it was risky to try it on Mia. As someone originally from the present, Mia was still alive at the target point in time; trying this on Mia would have forced thousands of years down into her, causing horrifying changes to her beautiful body. Just the thought of it made Baiyi shudder.

“So, I came up with a roundabout method! First, I froze Mia’s timeframe so that everything that happened through time would not affect her. Then, I snipped away six thousand years whilst she was in that state, and voila, she’s back!” Baiyi said triumphantly.

“Frankly, this technique should work only for Mia. One, she is my first Elect and is thus connected to my entire being; this is why I could use my spirit as a marker to send her back to this location, at this point. Secondly, as Mia has always been a person of the present, her going back in time had added an extra six millennia into her lifespan. Hence, even if I removed all of those years from her, she remained more or less unchanged,” Baiyi explained. “Had it been someone else undergoing this operation, I could only imagine the adverse effects on their body when six thousand years flowed through them.”

“Unfortunately, Mia suffered a couple of nasty side-effects. She’ll be stuck at twelve years of age for the next six thousand years; only then will her body resume its growth. Now, ladies and gents, don’t you think Mia is cuter now?” Baiyi said happily. He wanted to call the girl over and play with her cheeks when he realized that she had long since left the living room. Mia was not interested in listening to Baiyi’s lengthy exposition, so she went upstairs to tend to Noirciel and Attie.

“Hold on a moment. Now, I won’t comment on the technicalities of your solution, but Mia was about twenty-odd years old when she accidentally traveled back to the past. So why, pray tell, did she return to us at a biological age of twelve?” Shadow pointed out a discrepancy. “Doesn’t this mean she will remain an underage minor for six millennia, never to start a relationship and a family of her own?”

“Well, uh hem, I was nervous! So, I may have cut out a little too much from her lifespan…” Baiyi replied in a regrettable tone. “I mean, it was the first time I’ve ever done something like it, so it’s reasonable to make a pretty big oopsie…”

“You know what? Let’s not waste time fixating on the little things. There is still something more important to discuss,” Baiyi announced, eager to change the subject. “While on my journey to understand the Temporal Laws and saving Mia, I learned something more: I managed to glean on a curious piece of ancient history, one that had remained a secret from all of us.”

“It was history before the foundation of Ancient Rohlserl, before what we knew from the beginning of human civilizations before humans created city-states and founded an empire through magic. Something even more magnificent and fantastical!”

Baiyi’s words caused expressions of surprise to appear on the faces of the Voidwalkers.

“Let us first talk about the beginning of this universe. This one that we inhabit, including the Void, is different from the universe where my Earth exists, yes? There are no such things as stars, galaxies, and any other celestial objects observed by Earth’s astronomists, so we shouldn’t make comparisons between these two universes,” Baiyi began. “I would describe it more as a parallel dimension, like in a sci-fi…”

“In the beginning, there were not nearly as many realms as we had now; every realm was bound together. Let’s call this period ‘the prehistoric time,’ which lasted about ten million years or so. It was also a time of civilization, one that had advanced so far beyond that its eminence is unimaginable! Even though I could only catch a glimpse of that civilization from little time fragments, I could already behold the magnitude of their prosperity and power. It was not a civilization founded on science; it was one based on magic!”

“Everyone at that age had gained more knowledge and control of magic than all of us ever were. And that civilization they built? It was even more marvelous than every culture in every science fiction I’ve read. These prehistoric people had consummated their understanding that they directly manipulate the Laws of the universe, bending the Laws to serve their will. In the end, these humans discarded their corporeal bodies altogether and lived purely as souls.”

“Wait. Do you mean like us? In the Void?” The Archmage exclaimed in disbelief.

“Yep. Just like us in the Void. The axiom we knew so well, ‘the soul is the vessel for consciousness, and consciousness is the control to power’? That was a Law written by the people from that age! It was how they overcome the need for material bodies!” Baiyi said. “Every human in that prehistoric time possessed infinite power and time. They truly owned everything and controlled everything around them!” [1]

“The people of those times were gods!” Baiyi proclaimed, his voice filled with adulation. [2] “Perhaps it would have been more accurate to call that time ‘The Age of the Gods.’”

It was a revelation that set fire to everything the Walkers had ever known about human history — a myth on a secret past. Quietly, they waited for what came next with bated breath.