# 123
Chapter 123 – The Real World
“What the heck… it’s actually a guy.” Li Yifei poked his head in and muttered under his breath.
“Hmm?”
Merlin, who had been sitting quietly in the chair, glanced at him. A faint gleam flashed in his eyes, and the next moment his body—hidden beneath a dark-blue robe—twisted violently…
In the blink of an eye he had turned into a slim, golden-haired, blue-eyed woman!
“Gender is meaningless to me.” Merlin’s gentle voice rang out, leaving Li Yifei dumbstruck in the doorway.
“Director… th-this…” Li Yifei stammered, pointing at Merlin.
Lin Qiye didn’t seem surprised. He shook his head and said slowly:
“He’s Merlin, the legendary arch-mage who mastered shapeshifting. Turning into a woman is nothing—he could even become your dad if you asked.”
The moment Lin Qiye finished, Merlin’s body twisted again, rapidly expanding. The dark-blue robe stretched with him, no matter how large he grew, the fabric never tore.
Snake scales surfaced over his skin; a scarlet forked tongue flicked out. In moments Merlin had transformed into a Nāga serpent-demon several times Li Yifei’s original size.
The serpent, still draped in the dark-blue robe, coiled on the chair. Its vertical pupils locked onto Li Yifei’s eyes, and an invisible pressure made Li Yifei shiver.
Lin Qiye turned to him. “Is that your dad?”
“…How should I know?” Li Yifei stepped back half a pace. “I don’t even know what my dad looks like.”
“He can see your true form and figure out your father’s appearance… so this is the power of prophecy?”
Lin Qiye sighed, looked at the serpent, and said calmly:
“Lord Merlin, please change back. Let’s talk properly.”
The serpent nodded; its form flickered and it became the ordinary young man again, sitting quietly.
In the dim room the two regarded each other in silence.
“You are Lin Qiye?” Merlin asked slowly.
“You know me?”
“Ten years ago I foresaw that you would open this door.”
Hearing such mystical words, Lin Qiye grew interested. “Then tell me—what does my future hold?”
Merlin shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Aren’t you a prophet?”
“Prophecy isn’t omnipotent.” Merlin met Lin Qiye’s gaze. “The moment you opened the door I tried to glimpse your fate, but your past and future are both a blur; only the present is faintly visible.”
“The present?” Lin Qiye raised an eyebrow. “And what is my present like?”
“You’re caught in a dangerous whirlpool. One wrong step and you’ll be smashed to pieces—and those close to you may be dragged in as well…”
Lin Qiye’s expression turned grave.
“Any clearer and I can’t see.” Merlin shook his head. “In my current state I can’t perform overly precise prophecies.”
“Why?”
“I lost my crystal ball.”
“Lost?” Lin Qiye blinked.
Merlin’s mouth curled in bitterness. “Ten years ago a little girl came to this room and challenged me. If I won, she’d let me leave; if I lost, I’d give her the crystal ball…”
“And you lost?” Lin Qiye’s eyes lit up. “Was the girl about twelve or thirteen, with long black hair and a strange mark on the back of her hand?”
“Exactly.”
Lin Qiye pondered. “What did you compete in?”
Merlin’s smile was rueful. “Prophecy—or rather, deduction.”
“Deduction? How do you compete at that?” Li Yifei couldn’t help asking.
“We started with a single leaf and deduced the entire forest’s past fifty years, present, and next fifty years. No winner. Then we tried stones, water droplets…
Eventually we realized we couldn’t out-do each other on external things, so we made ourselves the target and deduced each other’s everything.
In the second round she successfully traced part of my fate, but in the third round I failed to see hers…”
Merlin’s brows knit tighter as he recalled it.
“Her existence was completely outside my expectations—no trace in past, present, or future… like a ghost not of this world. No matter what method I used, I couldn’t glimpse even a corner of her fate.
So… I lost.”
Li Yifei swallowed and nudged Lin Qiye. “That’s creepy. Who is she?”
“I don’t know either.” Lin Qiye shook his head, frowning.
Without doubt, the girl who won Merlin’s crystal ball, the one who took Nyx’s bracelet, and the one who left the envelope in the director’s office were the same person—“Jinian”.
But how could a twelve-year-old out-create the Goddess of Night and out-deduce the great prophet Merlin?
The more he learned, the more mysterious “Jinian” became. If he could uncover her identity, the origins of this enigmatic Asylum of the Gods might finally be revealed…
Yet for now, that investigation would have to wait.
First priority: cure this legendary arch-mage and extract some of his power!
Lin Qiye nodded, studied Merlin carefully, and a trace of doubt appeared.
Merlin’s condition differed from Nyx’s; so far he’d shown no sign of mental illness. Where to begin?
After a moment’s hesitation Lin Qiye looked Merlin in the eye and asked earnestly:
“What’s your illness?”
“?” Merlin raised an eyebrow. “You’re the one who’s sick.”
“If you’re not sick, why are you here?”
“No idea.” Merlin shrugged. “I’m merely a scholar trying to learn the world’s true face.”
“The world’s true face?”
“What do you think the world is, and what are we?”
Without waiting for an answer Merlin continued:
“To deep-sea fish, water and sea-creatures are their world. They’ll never know land exists beyond the ocean, nor that utterly different beings walk upon it.
To two-dimensional creatures the world is a plane; their very nature limits their worldview—they can’t imagine three-dimensional beings watching them from outside.
To the fish, the sea is the world; to the flat creatures, the plane is the world…
But are those ‘worlds’ the real world?
No.
Then how do you know the world we perceive is the true one?
What is real, what is the true world?!
Beyond this realm, what exists? And under the gaze of higher-dimensional beings, what are we?”
Merlin’s eyes burned with fervor; Lin Qiye saw the flame of pure inquiry.
He rose from the chair, one hand pointing at the sky, the other gripping Lin Qiye’s wrist, staring intently as he spoke, word by word:
“Have you ever considered… that perhaps our world itself was merely created by some higher-dimensional being?”