Wandering Gods of Day and Night
Chapter 455 - 238: The Annual Rings of Jing Country

Chapter 455: Chapter 238: The Annual Rings of Jing Country

"What’s unique about Jing Country?"

Zhou Xuan was deeply curious.

The Buddha Country had been fixated on probing Jing Country,

ever since its first arrival three hundred years ago, it had been infiltrating Jing Country persistently.

If Jing Country were like a bowl of fragrant braised pork, wouldn’t it have some delectable aroma?

Yet Zhou Xuan had never caught a whiff of any such aroma from Jing Country.

In terms of technology, Jing Country was only on par with the Republic of China from his previous life—streets bustling with human-powered rickshaw pullers, and steam trains at the railway stations.

As for resources, nothing particularly outstanding had been observed.

So, what exactly was the Buddha Country so covetous of?

"Ah Xuan, are you curious about something?"

"What is it?"

"Have you ever seen Eight Incense in Mingjiang Prefecture?"

"Perhaps among the Saint Heir and Saintess, but not otherwise."

Zhou Xuan replied.

"Then guess how many Eight Incense emerged in Mingjiang Prefecture over the last century?"

"I have no idea."

"I’ll tell you—a total of twenty-one."

Zhou Xuan was taken aback upon hearing this number.

Twenty-one? Even if the Saint Heir and Saintess counted among the Eight Incense, excluding the two of them still left nineteen.

Where did the other Eight Incense come from?

"How about Nine Incense in Mingjiang Prefecture over the past century?"

"Are there actually people with Nine Incense?"

"Of course, Mingjiang Prefecture has four human Nine Incense."

Zhou Xuan felt his understanding of the world utterly overturned.

He had always thought it exceedingly difficult to cultivate Eight or Nine Incense, so it was understandable that mighty Mingjiang Prefecture would show no evident traces of Eight Incense. Yet unexpectedly... there were even four Nine Incense.

"Four Nine Incense, twenty-one Eight Incense—where are these people, then?"

"The spaces of Mingjiang Prefecture and Jing Country exist in a Folded State."

Miss Qiang explained, "Of course, this is based on my computations, and there might be discrepancies with the truth,

but over two thousand years of calculations, I deduced that Jing Country is a world of multiple spaces and multiple timelines."

Zhou Xuan listened in stunned astonishment,

and simultaneously felt affirmed in his decision—even if faced with the Saint Heir and Saintess’s "use and discard" tendencies, he must take Miss Qiang with him.

This consciousness entity from the Blood Flesh Divine Dynasty possessed attributes akin to a "supermind."

Miss Qiang alone showcased such extraordinary computational prowess—if it were the Blood Flesh Divine Dynasty’s "Main Brain" she spoke of, how profoundly transcendent would its calculations be?

"Tell me about Jing Country’s multi-dimensional time and space first."

Miss Qiang, looking at Zhou Xuan’s astonished expression, felt quite satisfied, like a teacher with an eager student whose curiosity made teaching a delight,

and watching the student’s expressions shift from amazement to calmness as knowledge unfolded—this process was the teacher’s favorite moment.

"In our Blood Flesh Divine Dynasty, time, once passing, is gone—the ancient timelines disappear,

but not in Jing Country. New timelines emerge while the old timelines remain intact. Imagine the old timelines as a circle, then the newly formed timelines as larger circles, and so on—a great circle enveloping a smaller circle, then an even larger circle enveloping the great circle, over and over again.

Can you guess what this model resembles?"

"It’s... like tree rings... the annual rings of a tree."

Zhou Xuan said.

"You’re astoundingly perceptive—that’s right, tree rings!"

In the Secret Realm, Miss Qiang clapped excitedly for Zhou Xuan, jumping around gleefully, leaving Zhou Xuan a bit embarrassed.

All he did was mention tree rings—not invent them—it didn’t warrant such enthusiasm.

Miss Qiang manipulated Black Water to produce an enormous tree stump, its cross-section emblazoned with hundreds of rings.

She pointed at one of the rings and said, "Let’s hypothesize that this ring represents Jing Country’s history," then pointed at the outermost ring and said, "Assume this ring represents Jing Country’s present. Wouldn’t the ’present’ coexist with ’history’?"

"Yes."

Zhou Xuan replied.

"This is the crux of Jing Country’s temporal mystery—history and the present coexist."

"That really twists my mind. If the me from a year ago coexists with the me now, is the me from a year ago the same person as I am now?"

"Of course not—that version of you has all your spiritual essence, consciousness, and thoughts from back then."

Miss Qiang, worried Zhou Xuan might struggle with the concept, pointed at the tree stump and explained, "Let’s suppose this stump is Jing Country’s ’Master.’ The old timeline originally stands barren, but the ’Master’ recreates buildings, people, landscapes, and seas according to the original shape of the old timeline. Everyone is instilled with their respective consciousness and spirit from the era."

"Time passes, but the timelines don’t vanish... instead, the so-called ’Master’ fashions them into new worlds?" Zhou Xuan asked.

"Exactly."

"Then, Miss Qiang, I have a question—if time flows away every second, wouldn’t Jing Country accumulate billions of tree rings?"

"Not quite."

"Tree rings grow one ring per year, but Jing Country’s rings grow roughly one ring every four to five years?"

Miss Qiang elaborated, "Essentially, Jing Country’s ’Master’ reconstructs the time that has passed every five years into a new world. That world contains countless High Incense individuals."

"Can Gods also reconstruct?"

"Of course they can; the Ancestor Tree can too. But Heavenly God Level beings cannot reconstruct."

Miss Qiang commented, "So Jing Country, in essence, is composed of hundreds of timelines, with history and reality jointly forging its present form."

"Why does Jing Country’s ’Master’ reconstruct the timelines?"

"There’s no definitive computational result yet, but I speculate this could be the ’Master’s’ form of inertia. Perhaps it hasn’t awoken and is achieving all this unconsciously."

Miss Qiang remarked, "For entities of the ’Master’s’ level, slumber is their default state—much like the Main Brain of the Blood Flesh Divine Dynasty.