Yarra’s Adventure Notes
Chapter 861 - 125: Incomprehensible State

Chapter 861: Chapter 125: Incomprehensible State

"Shush." Philarx turned his head back at the experiment table, gesturing Pannis to be quiet, then turned back again, focusing his attention on the experiment in front of him without paying any further attention to Pannis, who had just entered the room. It was in the moment that Philarx turned his head that Pannis had a clear view of his face. He involuntarily closed his eyes and sighed deeply within himself. He had seen Philarx again—not the Philarx who was so aged that eating and walking were extremely difficult, who would pant after uttering a few words, whose face was lined with wrinkles and age spots, and whose eyes had gone cloudy with old age—but the Philarx he remembered; mature, indifferent to others, enthusiastic about knowledge, a powerful Demigod who could turn legions of the Undead into dust with a mere flick of his fingers.

Externally, Philarx hadn’t changed a bit, still appearing to be in his thirties. Due to prolonged absence from sunlight, his skin bore the unhealthy paleness unique to Mages. Although frail in body, he always held his back straight, a reveal of the pride and confidence within him. His fingers were slender yet strong, each pinching some experimental apparatus. At this moment, he was transferring purple liquid from one crystal flask to another, his hands as stable as a boulder. The liquid that fell maintained a uniform speed and volume with hardly any unevenness. It was hard to imagine that this Philarx, seemingly walked out of memory, was the same old man who could have died any moment on a recliner chair just a couple of weeks ago.

Pannis closed his eyes and sighed deeply, but when he opened them again, he started to doubt if he was hallucinating—because in front of his eyes, Philarx had suddenly become two. One Philarx had turned back to continue his experiment, while another emerged from the experimenting Philarx as a Phantom and walked towards Pannis, solidifying to form an almost dissatisfied figure saying, "You have intruded again while I am experimenting. Luckily, I was prepared, or else you would have disrupted my train of thought."

Pannis glanced at the Philarx in front of the experiment table and then at the one before him, noticing that each Philarx was engaged in different activities without interfering with one another. He held many questions in his heart, but at that moment, all he could do was to hold these questions to himself, managing a forced smile and saying, "Wasn’t it your maid who told me that you were waiting for me at the old place? Of course, I could only barge in looking for you. What else did you expect me to do, stand at the door waiting?"

"Hmph." Philarx grunted heavily and pointed to a chair beside him, "You’ve disrupted my experiments before. I can’t be bothered to argue with you now. This experiment is almost finished. Just sit down and wait for a while. It won’t take long. Um... the usual then, leaf tea without any additives?"

"You still remember, huh? Leaf tea then," Pannis replied without any reservation, settling down on the chair. As he sat down, the Philarx before him had transformed from two into three. The second Philarx had pulled out the chair across from him to sit, and as he began to pull out the chair, his figure suddenly blurred, splitting in two under Pannis’s gaze. One continued to pull the chair out firmly to sit down, while the other headed towards a small cupboard at the side wall with tea service.

"You’ve finally succeeded, huh?" Pannis leaned back in the chair, observing the three Philarxs, each busy with a different activity, and sighed, "What is this state? It doesn’t seem like a clone or a Phantom, it must be Time magic, right? But what exactly is it? Have you brought your future self to the present to do your bidding?"

"No, no, no, that would be very foolish. It would mean I’d have to repeat everything I’m doing now in the future, totally pointless, I would never do that," the second Philarx said, shaking his head. "As for this state, if you don’t understand Time magic, it’s difficult to explain in detail. To put it simply, I’ve borrowed some time ahead, splitting my state in time, allowing me to appear both here and there at the same point in time, continuing the experiment, talking to you, and even serving tea—all at once. Does that make sense to you?"

"Of course not." Pannis shook his head vigorously, his hair almost leaving afterimages: "Such a bizarre and incomplete explanation, how could I possibly understand it? This is too much for me. And it’s not just me; I think whoever sits here would hardly understand what you’re talking about."

"There’s nothing I can do about it; this is the simplest explanation." Philarx said helplessly: "If you want a more in-depth explanation, the basics alone could take a year or two, and I guess you wouldn’t want to listen to that, right?"

"Well, thank you very much, I definitely won’t listen." Pannis reached out to take the third cup of tea Philarx passed to him, and before he could say anything, he saw the third Philarx put the teapot on the table, then abruptly vanish into nothing. Pannis squinted his eyes and asked softly, "How come the third version of you lasted much shorter than the second?"

"Because the tea was all poured out." It was the first Philarx who answered, who seemed to have finished the experiment by then, clearing the various utensils scattered on the experimental table. From his body, once again three selves separated; one went towards the room’s corner to change into another clean black mage’s robe, another turned to the other side’s sink, diligently washing his hands, and the third walked directly to the opposite side of the table, bending down to record the experimental process and data in a notebook.

"Since the tea was poured, there was no need to keep using up energy." The second Philarx was still sitting steadily across from Pannis, speaking in the cold tone familiar to Pannis: "After all, it’s an abnormal state, maintaining it consumes energy, and we should minimize that as much as possible. However, you have to admit, this technique is really convenient."

"Yeah, it’s a bit too convenient." Pannis grimaced, looking at the five Philarxes each doing their own thing and feeling his head grow bigger and bigger: "I can’t tell which one is the real you anymore."

"That’s because you don’t understand at all; they are all me, I’m just doing different things at the same time," Philarx shook his head: "Everything I do, including my very existence, is real. Moreover, when I no longer need to spend energy, I can decide at any time to terminate any of my states, but the effects caused before termination won’t disappear—like right now."

As he explained, the first Philarx, who was just cleaning the experimental table, finished his task and disappeared into thin air, but the tidied experimental table remained perfectly neat and unchanged. (To be continued. If you enjoy this work, you are welcome to vote and support at qidian.com. Mobile users please visit m.qidian.com to read.)