MM Racing Page 46
Page 46
Of all those things, only Li Pu himself truly exists.
Even as Chun-Li and the others left afterimages, he remained as steady as a mountain! Like a giant anchor firmly planted on the seabed!
Suddenly recovering from her shock, Chun-Li seemed to know more, and she immediately shouted, "Quick! Look at your watch! Remember the time!"
Right now!
A cold, mechanical voice suddenly rang in Li Pu's mind.
Tifa, having grasped the essence of time through her "Flying Light" destiny, unleashed "Dragon Slayer."
[Dragon Slayer complete. The current time and space are collapsing and will soon overlap with other collapsing timelines...]
[In the eastern sky grows the Ruomu tree, beneath which rests a dragon holding a candle. I will cut off its feet and chew its flesh, so that it may neither return in the morning nor rest at night. Naturally, the old will not die, and the young will not weep…]
【…】
[Anchor point 'Flying Light' is activating...]
[The anchor point 'Flying Light' has taken effect on Tifa; spacetime is stabilizing...]
In an instant, the bizarre overlap of time and space disappeared!
The garage has returned to normal...
All that remained were people looking at each other in bewilderment.
Was that pollution? Or was it 'flying light'...?
Only Li Pu! Based on the various intelligence he possessed and his previous experiences, he felt he understood the essence of Fei Guang!
The author says:
Author's Note: I'm very sorry oz2. After thinking about it for a long time, I decided to tell the story slowly. The inspiration for "Flying Light" comes from SCP-CN-2845. The original text is somewhat obscure, so I've tried my best to simplify and adapt it. But most people are here for the borderline content, so they probably won't care too much about that.
Chapter Forty-Five: Poets of Aunt Mei's Pavilion!
The anchor point "Flying Light" has been deployed.
[Your anchor point is now bound to Tifa; you have become Tifa's anchor point.]
"The shadow of a flying bird... never moved..."
"The shadow of a flying bird... In the eastern sky grows the Ruomu tree..."
Still shaken, Chunli repeated these heavy syllables over and over in the silence with difficulty.
Li Pu frowned slightly; "Flying Light" was playing too big a game.
"What exactly happened just now?"
The White Queen's voice rang out, so close... it was almost as if the air above the back of his neck was vibrating.
Next!
A massive yet soft "presence," accompanied by an instantaneous warm and undeniably powerful touch that enveloped his entire body, descended clearly from all directions!
Like a drowning traveler suddenly pulled back to reality, he was violently shaken!
It's only now that I'm realizing it.
My back is pressed tightly against two soft, fleshy, curved surfaces! It feels like I'm being squeezed tightly!
It has a firm, mature, and voluptuous feel to it, yet it also exudes maternal warmth.
At the same time, the back of the head and the upper part of the shoulders were completely enveloped in a deep, soft, and incredibly elastic "double-peaked embrace"!
The towering, full, warm, and soft jade clung tightly to the back of his body, squeezed into a thick, juicy meat pie that looked like it was about to burst!
The White Queen was protecting him firmly beneath her body!
On the other arm, he felt a soft embrace. Turning his head, he saw it was Tifa.
Even though her head was still throbbing, Tifa stayed close to him.
These two women, without anyone noticing, suddenly appeared and protected her...
At this moment, Chun-Li, who had barely come to her senses, suddenly tried to prop herself up!
“I think I understand now, what exactly is ‘Flying Light’ all about…”
The three of them slowly got up. He helped Tifa, whose headache was gradually subsiding, to her feet. "Don't say anything yet, Chun-Li."
After Tifa realized the true nature of time from the cold, detached prompting, time itself collapsed.
He worried that if Chunli spoke up, it might happen again.
At that point, I don't know if my anchor point will still be useful.
Since the anchor point is now on himself and Tifa...
“I think I guessed it too!” He took a deep breath, his gaze passing over Tifa’s trembling shoulders and precisely locking onto Chun-Li’s eyes, which had just struggled out of the abyss of terror and were now flashing with sharp, thoughtful intelligence.
“I’ll explain, or Chunli, you can just nod or shake your head,” he said, speeding up his speech, “and maybe add some key details or correct my mistakes!”
Chunli realized what was happening and immediately nodded.
Without the slightest hesitation, Li Pu revealed the core message:
"'The shadow of a flying bird'...it hints at the nature of time, doesn't it?"
“Yes!” Chun-Li nodded firmly, then added with extreme caution, “When seagulls fly, their shadows don’t move. It’s just that as the birds flap their wings, the old shadows disappear and new shadows constantly appear. The birds are a reference point for time!”
Li Pu immediately asked again, "In the poem 'The Shortness of the Day,' is there also this kind of hint about time reference points?"
Chun-Li pondered for a moment, then nodded: "Yes!"
"Humans in agrarian civilizations work at sunrise and rest at sunset. The rising and setting of the sun became their first and most direct 'anchor' for perceiving and measuring time!"
"The poem suggests that the feet of the Candle Dragon symbolize the concept of the sun's movement; if it is severed, time will freeze!"
"They didn't consider the consequences of cutting off time at all."
"Moreover, according to the legends of the Eastern Continent in both this world and my world, Ruomu is not in the east of the sky but in the west of the earth. Zhulong is not the sun god; it is Xihe's six dragons that pull the sun."
Li Pu immediately answered, "What follows might touch on core concepts, and we must rely on the stabilizing effect of the 'anchor point,' so it's clear that the sun and the birds here are both reference points!"
"In truth, real time is always just the shadow of a bird! It's unstable, it's 'a single thought, three thousand worlds.' It's... it's the state where countless possible timelines exist simultaneously and evolve in parallel! That... that..."
Chun-Li immediately reminded her: "Quantum superposition state!"
"Yes! So humanity's reference point for time, or rather, the concept of anchoring time, is a cage that locks us in a normal timeline!"
He spoke rapidly, pouring out his sudden realization:
"It's birds! It's the sun! It's the twelve two-hour periods, twenty-four hours, a day, a month, and a year, all based on the rising and setting of the sun! These 'anchor points' construct our understanding of the 'order of time'!"
"Even as birds flap their wings, old shadows disappear and new shadows constantly emerge, but as long as birds exist, shadows will always follow them."
"As long as the sun continues to rise and set according to its 'regularity,' people's understanding of this 'normal timeline' will not fundamentally collapse!"
"But once the reference point becomes abnormal, the 'normal timeline' will also become abnormal, such as a black sun!"
"And time might just be the 'immortality' of this world! Or perhaps it's part of the 'immortal' god!"
"In 'The Short Day', the so-called killing of Zhulong is when the Chosen of Light begin to realize the nature of time, and they have the ability to kill or sever the concept of 'normal timeline' and 'immortality'!"
"Once you realize this, you have 'slayed the dragon,' halted the timeline, and become an immortal god!"
"However, this timeline that has been abruptly severed will collapse! The reference points in this timeline will show obvious anomalies, and the 'immortals' that are killed will shed 'dragon blood' and fall to the ground along with the black sun. This timeline of 'Shadow of the Flying Bird' will officially collapse, and after it collapses, a new timeline and a new Shadow of the Flying Bird will be generated."
"When a timeline collapses, due to the abnormality or loss of the 'reference point' or 'anchor point,' it will revert to the quantum superposition state, return to the 'three thousand worlds,' and begin to overlap and clash with other collapsed timelines!"
"This is why the 'Otherworldly Witch' and I were transported here, because the timeline of our world has collapsed!"
Finally, his words exploded like a thunderclap—
"Gods or evil gods, they are nothing more than the twisted echoes of collapsing timelines squeezing and crushing each other!"
"Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap—!"
A crisp, loud, and powerful round of applause suddenly broke the deathly silence of the garage!
It's Chun-Li, a mature woman!
Very good!
The thought exploded in her chest like a storm!
Clarity! Sharpness! Incisive!
Such a fine gem! Such a wonderful child!
Absolutely not—absolutely not! No! Cannot!—be ruined again by that perverted, overpowering foreign woman next to me, who reeks of body odor!
Unaware of Chun-Li's excitement, Li Pu simply breathed a sigh of relief.
It seems that as long as I set a good anchor point, I should be able to stabilize the timeline and go home soon...
Could it be that I'm a little sun?
But just then, the cold notification sound in my head suddenly rang out again!
[Anchor point 'Flying Light' activated, unlocking a second Destiny Anchor point slot.]
Is there some other destiny?
Other destinies are causing trouble too, aren't they!
Why isn't there a single person among them...?
The author says:
Author's note: Adding this now, bowing and apologizing (oz2 mwah mwah mwah mwah).
Chapter 46 District Z Administrative Head
In the office's living room, the light was warm and yellow, and there were simple dried bread and several bowls of thin porridge on the table.
This was everyone's dinner.
The tension in the air, a feeling of relief after surviving a disaster, was far stronger than the smell of food.
2B and the sleeping little bean have been put to sleep in Chun-Li's bedroom.
No one spoke at that moment; only the faint clinking of dishes and the incessant sound of rain coming from outside the window.
Chun-Li and Tifa sat closest to the wall clock.
Both of them were holding bread, but they ate very slowly and absentmindedly.
Chunli's gaze kept drifting towards the wall clock, her brows furrowing slightly, as if trying to confirm something from the steady ticking of the hands. After a moment, she forced herself to pull her gaze back to the bowl.
Tifa could barely eat. She held the bread in her hand for a long time without taking a bite. Her eyes would always involuntarily glance at the clock. Every time the second hand steadily skipped a number, she could be seen to let out a barely perceptible sigh of relief, as if confirming that the time was still right and had not slipped into the abyss again.
Time, or rather the normal timeline, has indeed inexplicably become stable.
As for why it was stable and what exactly happened, Tifa and Chun-Li had no idea, and they ate the meal with trepidation.
Meanwhile, Li Pu, the boy who started it all, chewed on a dry piece of bread, lost in thought.
The anchor point "Flying Light" has been deployed.
[Your anchor point is now bound to Tifa; you have become Tifa's anchor point.]
He kept replaying the prompt in his mind.
After Tifa was anchored, her "Dragon Slayer" skill became ineffective.
The timeline has stabilized.
In a sense:
This is equivalent to putting a collar on Tifa yourself.
She's now a velvet ball imprisoned by herself, her 'reference point'.
As long as he is still alive, Tifa will be unable to activate "Dragon Slayer," and the timeline she exists in will never collapse.
Although they saved the world quietly.
The problem is that the world they are in now is itself a severed 'shadow of a flying bird' that will uncontrollably overlap with other collapsed timelines until it is completely destroyed.
It collapsed, but not completely...