# Chapter 2039: Questioning the Foundation of Evolution
"Forgive my impertinence, is it because of evolution, or..." Xu Huo couldn't hide his surprise.
Huahan Werner narrowed his eyes. "You could say it's the price paid for youthful ignorance."
He didn't explain too clearly, but the implication in his words seemed to lean toward evolution.
"Evolution is good," Huahan Werner continued. "Do you know how many players there are in the entire game world?"
Xu Huo shook his head slightly.
"Countless."
"The E27 wormhole point has less than twenty districts, but during the formation of these dozen-plus districts, new districts were constantly being born and disappearing. Every time a district is born, the number of players explodes once. By now, it's difficult to accurately count how many players there are at the E27 wormhole point."
"And this is just the situation at one wormhole point."
"Among so many players, Super Evolvers might only account for 10%, perhaps even less than that. Temporal Evolvers make up a small portion of all Super Evolvers, and those who understand time evolution are even fewer. So it's not unusual for Evolvers to take some detours."
"However, if Mental Super Evolvers and Spatial Super Evolvers go down the wrong path, they can still come back. It's hard to say the same for time evolution—you might even lose your life."
"Young people shouldn't be too independent. Don't try to figure everything out on your own every single day. Occasionally asking your elders for advice isn't something to be ashamed of."
Huahan Werner stretched as he spoke, then patted the tools on the table. "Look at me. There's no promising junior in my family, so I spend my days dealing with flowers, birds, fish, and insects."
"Do you know how to garden?"
The topic shifted a bit quickly, but Xu Huo had no say in the matter. He nodded. "I learned a little from someone."
"Perfect timing. Since we have nothing to do, you can give me a hand." Huahan Werner tossed him a pair of shears. "New saplings. After soaking in nutrient solution for half a day, they've grown all messy. They need to be trimmed before they can be planted in the soil."
Xu Huo picked up the tools, changed into the shoes the butler had brought, and followed Huahan Werner into the adjacent garden.
The garden was somewhat messy. In the corner sat a large vat, and the roots of the small saplings thrown inside had already grown out of the vat. They seemed to sense the presence of soil, all stretching out and burrowing into the nearby flower beds.
"These evolved species have even stronger vitality than humans." Huahan Werner had Xu Huo trim the roots short. "Once planted in the soil, they won't grow this fast."
Xu Huo did as instructed, but he noticed that the saplings whose roots he had just cut were already starting to yellow from the small branches, showing signs of withering.
Huahan Werner came over, scooped up a sapling, stuffed it into a hole, grabbed some soil to cover the roots, then stomped it flat with his foot. "The wisdom of plants. When nutrients are abundant, it can grow wildly. But once there isn't enough nutritional support, it will first abandon the more distant parts to preserve the main body."
Xu Huo silently observed for a moment, then continued trimming the roots of the remaining saplings.
And so they worked—one trimming, one planting—quickly getting all the saplings from the vat into the ground. The garden was now covered in yellow leaves that had fallen from the saplings. However, after being planted, they didn't continue to wither. As nutrient solution was poured in, they began to revive.
Xu Huo suddenly said, "It seems like time has flowed backward."
Huahan Werner adjusted his hat and looked up at him. "Time doesn't flow backward."
Xu Huo looked back at him. "Time can't go backward?"
"No." Huahan Werner said, "Time can move forward, but it cannot retreat."
Xu Huo paused. "I know that district times in the game world are different. Perhaps one could jump from a faster-time district to a slower-time district?"
"Moving slower doesn't mean it isn't moving." Huahan Werner laughed. "When I was young, I thought the same as you. After I got older, I gradually gave up that idea."
Of course, he had to give it up. If time could flow backward, why wouldn't he, who was proficient in time power, reverse the time on himself?
"I've heard people mention Curved Time," Xu Huo added.
"That's just a time hypothesis." Huahan Werner said, "No one has ever proven it."
"What do you think time rays look like?"
"Crisscrossing lines." Xu Huo answered. "Like overlapping nets, where every corner of the net is interconnected."
Huahan Werner rubbed his chin. "That's quite unique."
Xu Huo was slightly surprised. "If it's not like that, how can time rays resonate with each other?"
"Time is a unified whole." Huahan Werner thought for a moment and said, "The time you experience in one space is essentially the same. It doesn't change because of different materials. Dividing it into rays is for better understanding and mastery, but in reality, it is a single entity. When you touch time power, you've touched all the time in that entire space. It's just that individual ability is limited, and so is the range of perception."
Xu Huo found this difficult to grasp. It was quite different from his own perception.
"Haha! If you can't figure it out, take your time." Huahan Werner stood up, walking out of the flower bed as he said, "Your method might work too, but don't get fixated on forms, and don't let space evolution influence you. Although time rays are called rays, they don't necessarily have to be in the form of rays. Calling them time rays is just for convenience of understanding."
Xu Huo followed behind him, frowning slightly. Space rays and time rays were the foundation of his space-time evolution. He had begun his space-time evolution based on the form of rays, and in the impressions left by Carmen Field, the form of time power was also closer to rays. The most direct example was introducing time rays from other districts to accelerate the flow of time on people or objects. If it wasn't accomplished in the form of rays, then what was it?
Overturning the composition of time rays would be equivalent to overturning the foundation of his evolution. So when he walked out of the flower bed, his expression had calmed again.
Huahan Werner didn't continue this topic. Instead, he said to the butler who was approaching, "Is dinner ready?"
"Sir!" The butler was already angry from a distance. "Your face!"
Huahan Werner touched his face and realized that mud from his gloves had gotten on it. He laughed heartily, wiped it carelessly, and said, "Don't be angry. I'll go wash up right away."
He then told the butler to take Xu Huo to the dining room first.
The butler looked at the mud on Xu Huo's shoes and pants, raised his eyebrows even higher, and said somewhat exasperatedly, "I don't understand how planting a few saplings can get you covered in mud from head to toe. Did you have a mud fight?"
Xu Huo looked at the man beside him. He was also curious—why would someone, after planting a sapling, pull it out and replant it just because the direction of a single leaf didn't please them?
Huahan Werner pretended to be deaf and walked away.