Chapter 2104: Meeting Dr. Wu Again
The pumpkin city, once full of life, fell silent again. The lights stopped flickering, the smoke ceased to drift, and the people running through the streets froze in their original expressions and postures. The swaying branches, the falling leaves, and even the pursuing players were all locked in place.
Only Xu Huo, Tang Ming, and Wang Ling, who were holding time items, could still move within this space that had completely turned into a static backdrop.
At this moment, Tang Ming couldn't even be bothered to avenge his earlier kneeling humiliation, because he saw a beam of white light, which hadn't been there before, rising from the direction of the Sunshine Tree Villa District. A surge of immense joy burst from his eyes, and he rushed impatiently toward 12th Street. Unfortunately, before he could take a few steps, his entire body stiffened in mid-air, and then he turned into a handful of dust, scattering to the ground along with the items on his hands.
This scene horrified Wang Ling. He immediately turned his head to look at Xu Huo, only to find the other man looking back at him.
"Don't move," Xu Huo said, then avoided two streams of time power ahead of him and headed toward Sunshine Tree No. 12.
The lights at Sunshine Tree No. 12 were still on. Standing outside the door, one could still hear the laughter and cheerful voices from inside the house—a child clamoring for another candy, the father's stern refusal, the mother's gentle coaxing. It seemed to be the only sign of life in this frozen Pumpkin City.
Xu Huo stepped forward and knocked on the door.
A middle-aged man wearing glasses opened the door, smiled at him, and said, "You're here. Come in and sit down."
The hostess poured tea and then took the child over to the sofa to read a picture book. "Dr. Wu," who looked somewhat different from his image at the Little Star Company, led Xu Huo into the yard. Gazing at the chaotic time power swirling over one part of the city, he said, "Time cannot be reversed."
Xu Huo also looked at those seemingly solidified time powers, feeling for the first time the vastness and omnipresence of time power. Standing from his perspective now, he perceived not just time rays, but the oppressive pressure of time power itself. Activating a time ray was a very small action, but what flowed was time itself. Regardless of the area covered, time was time. Placing oneself within the torrent of time was a very dangerous thing. He had to carefully stand at a precise distance from another time power to activate them, then let them fall where they were supposed to go.
Similarly, although Pumpkin City appeared calm now, it was actually covered by multiple time powers, looking like a hunting ground where danger signals were completely undetectable. That was why Tang Ming had blindly crashed into another stream of time power and perished.
"But curved time can reverse time," Xu Huo said.
"Time reversal, temporal rewind—it's just a term," Dr. Wu said, reaching out to touch the surging curved time in front of him. "Time cannot be reversed, but curved time can be reversed. Unlike time, curved time is very difficult to capture. Sometimes it vanishes, sometimes it is born, like another serpentine force hidden in some indescribable, incomprehensible crevice outside of space."
"It can reverse time by one or two seconds, or by one or two years. Within the conceptual framework of the Dimension Game world, it is the true hyperdimensional existence."
"Does that still count as time?" Xu Huo asked.
"Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't," Dr. Wu said. "Time is just a concept created to make human life more convenient. But the existence of curved time makes original time unable to be self-consistent. Returning from the future to the past, within normal time, you are still aging. However, under the influence of curved time, you have truly returned to the past, to the state you were in at that past moment."
"When affected by curved time, you can consider yourself a hyperdimensional existence as well, but you cannot freely control the length of the rewind."
Xu Huo didn't know if the Dr. Wu before him was just a recording or if he possessed a certain degree of autonomous consciousness like the Midsummer Night Star River. He took out the "Angel's Eyes" and asked, "Does the super item's time rewind borrow the power of curved time?"
Dr. Wu glanced at the stone and then said, "Curved time is difficult to capture, and even if captured, it's hard to tell how far back into the past it can rewind. That's why I said it's like a serpent—sometimes it exists, sometimes it doesn't, unlike our normal time, which is constant."
"If one could find the right curved time, could it bring the entire game world back to its origin?" Xu Huo continued to ask.
Dr. Wu smiled at this point. "As I said just now, curved time is more like a serpent. It can exist and disappear, and naturally, it has a volume. You introduce time power into another space; the range you can cover is your volume. The larger the range, the larger the volume. No curved time is sufficient to make the game world disappear."
Xu Huo didn't think so. "Since curved time is a hyperdimensional existence, its volume should also be immeasurable by normal human standards. Perhaps the entire game world is as insignificant as a grain of sand compared to it. Whether it's a super item or an Evolver, capturing and activating it is just getting a tiny droplet from the splashing spray of a giant torrent."
"Sometimes like a fine drizzle, sometimes like a flood, sometimes like nothingness, sometimes like everything."
Dr. Wu paused for a moment before letting out a hearty laugh. "People sometimes ignore things because they are too small, but they forget that if an object is too large, it will also be naturally overlooked."
After saying this, he restrained his smile and warned Xu Huo, "So you must be careful. You need to distinguish between yourself and time."
Before Xu Huo could grasp the deeper meaning of his words, Dr. Wu's expression returned to its previous calm. He went back inside, took a box from the safe, and said, "I see you've evolved quite well. This should be what you need right now. Unfortunately, I don't have much left. If you need more, go find a player called 'Food Guest.' He still has some."
Xu Huo opened the box and saw a P5S potion inside.
He stared at it for a long time before asking, "Is predicting the future real?"
Dr. Wu's figure flickered for a moment, then returned to normal. He said, "I'll leave this place to you. It will disappear in ten days. Take the Time Tower with you."
"I still have a few more questions," Xu Huo said, speeding up his words. For example, why was the P5S potion he needed right now stored here? And since curved time was so difficult to capture, why could Pumpkin City fix it? Was it the same principle as super items? If so, did it mean curved time, like normal time power, could be freely controlled by Evolvers?
If predicting the future was a flash of insight from time power, was it a result of curved time's influence? If so, would this predetermined future change due to changes in the process...
But none of these questions were asked. Dr. Wu's figure dissipated.
(End of Chapter)