Unusual Fate Records

Chapter 340, Section 032: Frank Talk (Part Two)

"This goes back to when I first came into this world, about ten years ago."

Qi Tongshan looked up as if recalling something.

"It took me a long time to accept this White Walker body and learn about this race. I've been in this world for three years now."

"Then, by chance, I had a sudden thought: could there be other people in this world, like me, who were brought here by destiny? If there really is such a group of people, is there any chance that they could work together to find a way back?"

"With this mindset, I created a website called 'The Time Traveler Association.' The website included some suggestive words, hoping that people with similar experiences would see it. A decade or so ago, 'time travel' was still a novel topic. However, it attracted quite a few enthusiasts of things like pornography and Cthulhu. By sheer chance, their activity became the best disguise for the forum."

"What's heartening is that quite a few people are sharing their real experiences on these forums. We secretly banded together and formed a group called 'New Century'."

“New Age.” Fu Xun’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"Yes." Qi Tongshan nodded.

"In the group, none of us knew each other's real identities, but we shared information through the virtual network. Because we were all refugees who desperately wanted to return to our own worlds, we were more open in our conversations. After sharing our worlds, we discovered that our timelines were all different."

"A world with completely different timelines, listening to them talk about historical events from their own era that are completely different from their own."

"Wait a minute," Fu Xun interrupted her, asking, "According to you, doesn't that mean there are people from the past, present, and future?"

"I suppose so," Qi Tongshan said. "Some people come from the slave era, some from the feudal era, some from the steam era, and some from the cyber era that surpasses ours."

"Of course, those who can use the internet are people who are already familiar with the technology of this world, which gives the user a choice from the very beginning."

"Won't that create future or past versions of yourself? Wouldn't that lead to chaos?"

Fu Xun proposed a hypothesis.

"This situation does not exist."

Qi Tongshan shook his head and added:

"There must be other limitations. In this world, no one has discovered another version of themselves. Perhaps the rules of the world do not allow the same person to exist in two forms, unless you are Schrödinger, the cat-abusing demon king."

"However, there is still a bug: the time traveler may be your future relative or friend, thus bringing a lot of advanced information."

Fu Xun stroked his chin, pondering, "That's possible. But didn't you say that the development of their worlds isn't necessarily the same? For example, Chen Ruolan, whom Hu mentioned, and Chen Ruolan from our world."

“Yes,” Qi Tongshan admitted. “So the predictions of people from other worlds are not very reliable. Their advantage is based on coincidental similarities in events. This is because of the ‘chaos’ caused by fate.”

"'chaos'?"

Fu Xun and Jin Ziyue exchanged a glance.

"Wonton?" Chen Ruolan's eyes lit up.

“That’s called wonton…” Fu Xun squinted.

"Oh oh..."

She shrank back sheepishly, sitting obediently.

Jin Ziyue pressed further: "So, it is fate that manipulated all the transmigrators to come to this world."

"It's pretty close to the truth." Qi Tongshan nodded.

"It's that kind of vague and ethereal stuff again." Fu Xun curled his lip impatiently.

"So our final research direction led us to the ethereal and mysterious mysticism," Qi Tongshan continued.

"We cannot study fate, but we can explore the laws of the world."

"There's a guy in the group who proposed a hypothesis called the 'World Anchor' theory."

"The shift of the world requires something to establish coordinates; it represents the origin of the world, its marker. The existence of the origin allows us to relatively understand our own position."

"And we are like points that the world has plundered from other coordinate systems. If we want to go back, we must pass through the origin to calculate our position and distance from the original coordinate system in order to accurately return to our world."

"Unfortunately, we still do not know what the world's anchor is. What form does the 'anchor of the world' take? Is it an object or an abstract symbol that can give it the power to live as long as heaven and earth and shine as brightly as the sun and moon?"

When Qi Tongshan finished speaking, everyone fell into deep thought.

After all, what she revealed was too unbelievable.

Qi Tongshan said, "Although it's a hypothesis, the other party seems to be a Fate Master, and his understanding in this area is obviously deeper than ours. He began to organize everyone to work together to verify the authenticity of the 'Anchor of the World'."

"So, from that time on, netizens from all over the country started to meet, and people began to organize themselves. I didn't like to get involved in these things, so after hesitating, I didn't choose to join and instead relied on myself to gather information. With the help of my father's identity in this body, some information wasn't too difficult for me to gather."

"Later, as you can probably guess, this group of people became the organization's earliest and most core force."

Qi Tongshan said.

Jin Ziyue and Fu Xun could imagine that the group of refugees exiled to this world were like rootless duckweed, lowering their standards and breaking the rules after being separated from their original environment, daring to do almost anything.

Once there are people with ill intentions, they can be organized and quickly become a powerful force that defies order.

Jin Ziyue thought for a moment and asked, "Who is the leader?"

"His ID is 'Mourner,' and his profile picture is a white mask with scarlet eyes and a sorrowful expression that shines through the slits."

Chen Ruolan and Fu Xun both looked at Jin Ziyue at the same time.

"A masked man? How creepy."

Chen Ruolan's muttering was clearly pointed at something.

"Is it still fashionable to wear masks to look cool these days?"

Fu Xun followed suit.

"Why are you looking at him?" Qi Tongshan asked, puzzled.

Jin Ziyue didn't speak, but took out the white mask from inside his clothes and placed it on the table.

The white, half-crying, half-smiling mask, illuminated by the black and red of the table wood, reflected a scarlet light from its eye slits and corners of its mouth.

Qi Tongshan was stunned. She looked at Jin Ziyue in surprise and asked, "You have one too?"

“Hmm.” Jin Ziyue rested his elbows on his thighs, clasped his hands together to support his chin, and said, “But I don’t remember where this mask came from.”

“You guys are really… a bunch of troublemakers.” Qi Tongshan sighed, “None of those wearing masks are good people.”

"Is there something wrong with this mask?" Fu Xun asked.

Qi Tongshan's expression was somewhat serious, with a hint of apprehension in his eyes: "I didn't notice anything wrong, but that's precisely the most problematic part of this mask."

Chen Ruolan curiously reached out to take it, but Qi Tongshan slapped her hand away.

"Don't touch it yet."

Then, she turned to Jin Ziyue and asked, "Have you ever paid attention to how you usually use your mask?"

Jin Ziyue hesitated for a moment and said, "It's just something you wear on your face."

"Where do we pick it up from?"

"The inside of the clothes."

"What about storage? Wearing a mask all over your body must be very inconvenient, right? Didn't you feel any discomfort?" Qi Tongshan pressed on relentlessly.

Jin Ziyue was speechless for a moment.

Fu Xun's expression also became more serious, and he said, "It seems I haven't heard of it."

Everyone stared at the mask, at the eerie smiling face and the sorrowful crying face. The longer they looked at it, the more the slits in the mask seemed to come alive, revealing an ambiguous sadness or smile.

(End of this chapter)