This Spiritual Energy is Lethal!
Chapter 265: Legend

Chapter 265: Chapter 265: Legend

Without the burden of carrying a great sword, Chen Ke felt much more at ease as he weaved through the alleys, avoiding the groups of soldiers on the streets while continuing to explore the roads beneath the city.

The siege was ongoing, only the attackers no longer utilized the large siege engines. Judging by the state of the streets, Chen Ke deduced that the city gates had been breached, and perhaps a vast portion of the city had been occupied.

When a siege battle moved to hand-to-hand combat within the city, it essentially signaled the defenders’ defeat. Surrender was merely a matter of time. The nobility hid inside the palace, too afraid to emerge, perhaps preparing a retreat.

However, the civilians on the streets were not so fortunate. Not only did they face a future of displacement, but they were also at the mercy of bloodthirsty soldiers slaughtering them. Tonight would be the end of days for Faralis.

What particularly intrigued Chen Ke was the lack of Transcendent clashes in this great battle. Sure, tremendous bolts of Lightning were one aspect, but in the era Faralis existed in, shouldn’t Magic and Transcendent Skills be as common as breathing?

If one were to delve into this, all the doubts lay with the Black Ring Sect. As the state religion of Faralis, they had not exerted any effort—at least, from what could be seen so far, there were no Priests on the battlefield.

Chen Ke squeezed through a crack in a surrounding wall and jumped into the courtyard behind a three-story building, which appeared to belong to the wealthier class among the civilians.

This building had not been touched by the flames of war, and in the current spread of extinguishing foam and firelight, the courtyard seemed like a haven from heaven, maintaining the state it was in during peacetime.

Chen Ke activated his Spiritual Vision to reconnoiter and discovered two people hidden inside the house, huddled together as if to dodge the storm.

He pushed at the door, which was indeed blocked. The door wasn’t locked, but it seemed a cabinet had been toppled to bar it.

"Stay hidden; I’m just borrowing some clothes," Chen Ke murmured to himself, looking up towards the second floor of the house, where he noticed a door open on the side of a small balcony.

He felt along the wall, found a few footholds to climb, stowed his rifle back in its holster, and clambered up to the second floor. He vaulted over the stone rail of the balcony and stepped indoors.

The second floor was a bedroom, with a small staircase going down to the first floor. Beside the double bed, he found a wardrobe, and the house’s owners were concealed within it.

Chen Ke first knocked on the wardrobe door. Receiving no response, he directly pulled the door open.

Inside the wardrobe, there was a young mother curled up in the corner, clutching a golden-haired boy of about four or five years old. They looked up at Chen Ke, their eyes beseeching.

"No offense intended, ma’am. I just want to borrow some clothes," Chen Ke said as he started rifling through the hanging garments in the wardrobe.

He would not pity this mother and son, nor would he try to save them. Such actions were but unnecessary complications.

Fan Hede’s space was a collection of multiple recurring events, and the outcomes were already predetermined. One must remain clear-headed amidst the cycle and not be swayed by everything seen.

Even so, the time loops of Fan Hede couldn’t simply be explained as repetitive snippets of play. Chen Ke had early on noticed that the most critical events within the cycles were missing from each fragment of space-time.

For example, in the last loop, when Fan Hede was overrun with living dead, everything was frozen in the moment when Faralis was imprisoned in the mountainside’s secret chamber.

If no one returned Faralis’s head, then the entire loop would be frozen in that instant.

On the other hand, in the actual era where Fan Hede existed, there was indeed someone who had returned her head, and not only that, but like Chen Ke, had also revived Faralis...

Perhaps, in that space-time, there was also a hero, coming to Fan Hede with his own agenda, who after a series of adventures, influenced the course of space-time, and eventually became a legend...

Thinking this way, Chen Ke thought up some new leads. This could perhaps explain some similarities between the Holy Relics, the suit, and Fan Hede...

Holy Relics possessed numerous special affixes, and the different colors of Holy Relics contained various kinds of effects.

Chen Ke’s legendary suit had special effects because its former owner had been a legendary assassin...

The missing part of Fan Hede’s time loop was a certain vital action...

Putting these three together, although they seemed unrelated, could it indicate that all so-called special effects and events were due to someone in the past who was too incredible and had done too many legendary things, causing their actions to leave residual traces through the influence of Spiritual Energy on the objects and deeds they had used?

This crossed Chen Ke’s mind and not only did he break out in a cold sweat, but if this was the case, the pile of Holy Relics he held in his hands was previously used by various heroes...

Heroes forged legends, and legends were not only passed down through poetry and epics but also through the objects they had used. Their fighting styles, combat skills, and their very behavior patterns were inherited by these items, bestowing power upon those who followed...

And the brother who had adventured in Fan Hede... was even more formidable; his heroic deeds directly etched into the very fabric of spacetime... Chen Ke took a sharp intake of breath. How formidable must that be?!

Of course, Chen Ke did not think it likely to encounter this hero in this spacetime, since although he could travel through time, he had discovered so far that the timelines he crossed were all f*cking abnormal.

Be it Fan Hede or the year 2006, both resembled temporal ruins, where either time was problematic, or the world was. He never truly entered a normal, peaceful past that rightly belonged to that of the past.

He didn’t dismiss the possibility outright; perhaps time travel really could only take one to troubled places, after all, being able to travel to the uneventful past and future would inevitably create a temporal paradox.

In these ruin-like timelines, people from different epochs could enter the same time period through the doors of the Great Void, but from Brother Discouraged’s account, it seemed not so simple.

For example, the woman he encountered when he was assassinating the professor. Going by what the professor said, it was very possible she could also time travel.

And Brother Discouraged, with his remark, "I do not belong to your time," was something that Chen Ke was very concerned about.

If it was impossible to travel through normal spacetime, then how did that woman manage it?

Either there genuinely was a method for freely traversing time to change the past and future.

Or, like Carefree City in 2006, Opportunity City in 2009, was to undergo a calamity.

However, with too few clues and too many questions, Chen Ke did not have enough to ponder and analyze, so he could only pause there for the time being.

And in this Fan Hede, Chen Ke had discovered at least three different forces from different timelines, all coveting the treasures within.

The Si’s consortium and Yasla from his own era, the mysterious Brother Discouraged and the H.C.P organization behind him—perhaps with deeper exploration, more might be encountered.

But evidently, these people all had the ability to enter the Great Void, yet lacked the capability to actualize the cycle; Faralis’s head wasn’t something that could simply be reattached, she had to be resurrected.

Since Fan Hede was so significant, and Chen Ke was able to use the power of the countdown timer to reenact the cycle, why not go see what exactly was hidden in there...?

This world was fraught with unknown dangers, a colossal monster, a group of lethal assassins, no problem, all manageable, continually enhancing his combat abilities, bolstered by the life countdown, Chen Ke believed he could survive.

But what if the timeline he was in had an issue? What then?

This was a universe-scale problem; looking at Ying Baiyi, in the face of a disaster of this scale, what could a human do except wait for death...?

It wasn’t just about becoming stronger, that alone was far from sufficient. Chen Ke was well aware that spacetime itself was not too safe in this world.

Was there truly a way to freely traverse time? Chen Ke wasn’t afraid of the difficulty of the task, only that it might be impossible.

He picked out a set of casual clothes for ease of movement, took off his suit, strapped on his gun holster, and left the villa.