Chapter 665
The Price of Infinite Samsara
“A low probability event…”
Hearing this, Eivass’s heart tightened.
He said casually, “It’s impossible that there’s some kind of aggregation law, right?”
Actually, Eivass had been puzzled by this for a long time.
Whether it was Lily’s specialness, or Yulia, Sherlock, Isabel, and the others… they had all proven their uniqueness. Few of the people Eivass had deeply interacted with had ordinary pasts—even Haina, a pure-blooded commoner, had a fragment of Lancelot within her.
Not to mention that every Ascension Ritual Eivass had experienced had played a role, whether for better or worse, afterward. Either the power he obtained from the Ascension Ritual became an indispensable key, or he gained crucial information from it.
If it had happened once or twice, he would have thought himself lucky.
But it had happened almost every time, which made him feel a sense of powerlessness.
It was like The Truman Show—Eivass felt his fate being pulled and manipulated by some invisible force.
He was like the protagonist in someone’s novel. Because a novel has no filler, every plot point must have value to increase its utility. Therefore, everything Eivass had experienced had a special meaning…
Just thinking about it made him feel mentally exhausted. Because Eivass couldn’t be sure if any small event that happened around him was some kind of “plot foreshadowing”—but if he thought about it like that, he could hardly move forward.
Therefore, Eivass could only deliberately ignore these “coincidences.”
…Now, looking back, could all of this be the Lord of Scales and Feathers’ plan?
Or rather, was this a conspiracy that could not be spoken of?
“To explain this to you, I have to tell you something…”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers sighed, and a black top hat suddenly appeared in his right hand.
He put the hat on his head, and the surroundings shifted again.
The surroundings were black and red, and beneath Eivass was a giant scale, like a boat. In the distance, the sky showed strange purple-red spiderweb cracks.
Within each crack, there was a sky of an entirely different color. The scenes of worlds from different timelines were reflected within them.
Eivass had been puzzled at the time… why was the essence of the “Prophet” path ability, colored a purple-red close to the Transcendent Path? At that time, Eivass thought that was the color of the Origin River.
And now, Eivass could finally confirm—his initial intuition was correct.
This precognitive ability with an abnormal color was indeed a Transcendent Path ability!
“Boss… what do you want to say?”
Eivass licked his dry lips and spoke.
The Lord of Scales and Feathers merely looked up at the sky and said softly, “I remember telling you last time. History has multiple directions, and I can observe the future of various possibilities…
“But have you ever considered? Why is the world the way it is?”
“…Because the ‘Cicada Molting Incident’ caused history to shatter?”
“Then why did the Cicada Molting Incident shatter history?”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers retorted.
Eivass’s heart suddenly beat abnormally.
He realized that a great secret was within reach.
He was approaching the essence of the world, and with just one more step—
“…As expected, worthy of you.”
At this moment, the Lord of Scales and Feathers sighed, took off his top hat, and put it on Eivass’s head—he directly held the hat and covered Eivass’s face.
—Are you polite?
Eivass was stunned for a moment and retorted in his heart.
“In the past…”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers said, “When the Nine Pillar Gods unanimously agreed, the world could be reset. Because of this, the future at that time was ‘malleable’.”
As Eivass struggled to push away the hat and the Lord of Scales and Feathers’ hand pressing on it, he suddenly saw something in the hat.
It was a youth with a similar appearance to Eivass.
He had an exquisitely elegant face, long black shoulder-length hair, amber pupils, and a gentle smile. Above his head was a luminous halo—the halo looked like it had four ornate spear tips pointing in four directions.
The halo itself was a nearly transparent pure white, while the four spear tips were red, blue, yellow, and green respectively.
Behind him was a pair of pure white wings, and below his slender waist was a nimble, pure white serpentine body.
He was holding his right hand high, holding a Golden Apple and rotating it slightly.
Then, the entire world around him rapidly rewound—winter, autumn, summer, and spring flowed continuously, but only the youth holding the Golden Apple was illuminated by the light of the four seasons. The colors on his body changed, yet he remained eternally unchanged.
Just as Eivass was about to focus his gaze, the hat was taken away by the Lord of Scales and Feathers—but he did not put it on his own head, but casually tossed it into the Origin River.
“Boss, you this…”
“—Eivass.”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers asked sternly, “I ask you, what you saw in the hat. After I destroyed it, does it still exist?”
“…It probably exists.”
Eivass hesitated for a moment, “I still remember it.”
“Yes, the world also remembers the abandoned history.”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers said, “That is the essence of ‘Fate’—the trace of another possibility.
“The world rewound again and again, until after a certain point, history shattered. However, these repeated rewinding events had already engraved all future possibilities into the world.
“If you place several stones of different sizes on a piece of cloth… what will happen?”
“…They will converge?”
“No, not necessarily.”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers negated, “It depends on their position and weight. If they are too small and too light, nothing will happen. But if some heavy stones gather nearby, they will slide towards the same spot.
“What has been will be again—if certain ‘stones’ come together. Then, what has happened will easily happen again. In other words, when the ‘main actors are assembled,’ the ‘plot’ is about to unfold.
“In different rewinds, the world revolved around different people. Therefore, when the world resets, each ‘stone’ carries a different weight…
“—But you are different, Eivass.
“The ‘Samsara Heavenly Envoy’ appeared in all possibilities, so you are the heaviest stone. Just as you said—you are the ‘protagonist.’ When you encounter any ‘character,’ you will cause their ‘plot’ to happen prematurely. Of course, this means nothing special to you… because unlike the ‘protagonist,’ you can still die.”
“…But I am neither a Samsara Heavenly Envoy nor a Ring Heavenly Envoy?”
Eivass’s heart tightened, and he asked subconsciously.
He instinctively denied being the one causing so much trouble.
But he saw the Lord of Scales and Feathers looking at him with a smile that was not a smile.
In that instant, Eivass’s eyes widened slightly.
He suddenly understood—
Just like his own reaction, the Ring Heavenly Envoy thought the same.
“—This is one of the reasons the Ring Heavenly Envoy cut off a part of himself. In the words of the Taichu person… too much karma is entangled with him, which causes any of his plans to inevitably encounter unexpected events.
“You are the substitute he used to bear the ‘price of infinite samsara,’ Eivass.
“When you interact with anyone, it causes things to become chaotic. Because you will resonate with everyone who ‘was once an important character in a certain history’…
“I can tell you this—your life is not within anyone’s conspiracy or design. Because your existence is someone’s design.
“—So, shall we make a deal?
“Not as your boss… but as an equal, to propose a mutually beneficial cooperation with you, the ‘variable.’”
The Lord of Scales and Feathers said lightly, “You go and eliminate the Fallen Heavenly Envoy, is that okay?”
Eivass understood.
—The boss had issued a new lure declaration.
(End of this chapter)
