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Chapter 135 After the Disaster
Lin Qing returned to the main store and found Chen Xuan lost in thought again.

He sat at the bar, his hands folded under his chin, his eyes unfocused as he stared ahead, looking anxious and uncertain.

Wait, feeling anxious and uncertain? Lin Qing frowned. Wasn't that the expression often seen on someone newly in love? Remembering how much less often Liu Shuyue had come to the store lately, could it be… they hadn't argued, but Chen Xuan had been dumped?!

As for why it wasn't Liu Shuyue who got dumped... well, Lin Qing couldn't quite picture what it would be like for the other person to confess first. People in ancient times... were generally a bit reserved.

The more she thought about it, the more sense it made.

Liu Shuyue would definitely be too embarrassed to talk about this, so if you ask her if they had argued, she would just shake her head in denial instead of directly stating the reason for the problem.

This cannot continue.

Chen Xuan's heartbreak is not important; what's important is that the shop cannot lose Liu Shuyue. She's still counting on arming the villagers of Spicy Village so they can better cope with the Weixian Agency's frontal attack in the future!

Lin Qing walked to the bar and cleared her throat. "Um... it doesn't necessarily mean that someone rejects you because they don't like you."

"Huh?" Chen Xuan looked up blankly, then lay back down after realizing it was her. "You're back. Did the ammunition deal go smoothly?"

"Of course, he also gave us a hotel. Once the acquisition process is completed, he will give me the gift contract, so the branch can be opened directly in the hotel."

"Send me to a hotel? Why?" Chen Xuan asked in surprise.

"I'm afraid of being eliminated, so I'll strengthen my friendship with the Security Agency," Lin Qing hummed a little tune. "But I've also given them a lot of benefits; a hotel in a remote place is nothing."

Chen Xuan nodded and didn't delve any further.

Something's definitely not right. He would have definitely asked about the benefits before, Lin Qing thought. Now, his mind is completely preoccupied with one worry, and he has no time to think about anything else.

"Have you ever considered that there was no such thing as confessing one's love in ancient times?"

Chen Xuan looked at her suspiciously. "No, why?"

"So confessing your feelings won't work. You have to go through the whole process of proposing marriage and giving betrothal gifts, instead of just dating."

"Who am I with?" Chen Xuan asked, confused.

"Who else could it be but Miss Liu?" Lin Qing pouted. People in ancient times were always so slow and indecisive. Liu Shuyue was like that, and so was Chen Xuan.

"Oh... what?" Chen Xuan suddenly realized, "What happened between her and me?"

"Tell me honestly, did you confess your feelings to her, but she rejected you?"

"No," he immediately denied. "Why would you think that?"

Lin Qing also leaned on the bar counter, facing him. "Then why have you been spacing out every day since you came back from there? You're not reminiscing about Chang'an, are you?"

"This... is a bit complicated to explain."

"It's okay, I have plenty of time, you can take your time."

Chen Xuan organized his thoughts and said, "You said that a world cannot overlap with itself. Is it possible that different periods of a world can overlap with another world? For example, by passing through two different intrusion points, I can travel to the past and future of a world?"

Lin Qing didn't expect the other party to ask such a serious question. "If we consider these worlds as intertwined threads, then there may indeed be signs of multiple overlaps. But just as the universe is very empty, the worlds are also quite empty. Therefore, the dimensional limit mechanism has never had such an erosion record."

Chen Xuan slowly shook his head. "Perhaps they saw it, but didn't recognize it." "What do you mean?"

"Do you remember when I found an intrusion point in a cave on a beach in Brittany?"

“Of course I remember, you also gained two weird and disgusting abilities,” Lin Qing said.

Chen Xuan hesitated for a moment, then decided to reveal this crucial information to the other party: "The shop's app can display descriptions of abilities. These abilities, like black magic, only show the word 'forbidden.' Moreover, the erosion disaster that occurred in Chang'an City seems to have originated from this world."

...After the disaster, Chang'an did not return to its original state overnight.

The erosion had shrunk slightly, but it still covered more than half of the city. This largest city in the world had become a cursed place that everyone feared and avoided. Countless residents died or were injured, conservatively estimated at over 400,000. In particular, those who hid in their homes and stayed indoors were assimilated with their houses by blood and flesh, completely disappearing without a trace, as if they had vanished from the world.

The cultivators also suffered heavy losses, with an estimated thousand deaths. Under these circumstances, it was clearly impossible for the sect competition to proceed as scheduled, and sects in various regions would need a long time to heal their wounds.

The Immortal Alliance considers this a highly provocative invasion.

Over the past few centuries, there have been occasional instances of demons from the grottoes emerging to wreak havoc on humankind, but such organized and purposeful destruction is unprecedented in history.

Xu Quan, the sect leader of Dengxiantai, was elected as the alliance leader, responsible for post-war cleanup and preparations for war. Xu Yuanqing was also promoted from sect elder to vice sect leader. The Weiwo Duzun sect made great contributions to the Immortal Alliance, becoming a well-known savior sect among all cultivators, enjoying unparalleled prestige.

However, these were not the main points of Chen Xuan's concern.

What he cared more about was what the world on the other side of the intrusion point was like, and what the sacrificial ritual truly represented. Unfortunately, the Immortal Alliance successively sent three teams, totaling fifteen cultivators, into the center of the erosion, attempting to enter the enemy's world to find out, but ultimately none of them returned.

This means that the other world is not entirely the same as the near-destruction world he saw. The radioactive dust floating in the sky is indeed terrifying, but it is far from being fatal if you get in contact with it.

When he was sniping Fei Wu Niang, he gained a forbidden ability: coin tossing. And through the door she came out of, he had glimpsed a corner of the other world, which looked like a normal, ancient room, free from radiation hazards and bloody fused monsters.

No one would perceive them as the same world at first glance.

But is the world always the same?
It's perfectly reasonable to say that the Earth 3000 years ago, the Earth today, and the Earth 3000 years from now present completely different scenarios.

"All forbidden abilities?" Lin Qing was hearing this for the first time and murmured softly, "This is quite interesting. Your shop isn't restricted by intrusion points and can travel to different times in a world, which should be considered a rather advanced ability. The information it provides might be quite valuable intelligence. But what's there to worry about?"

"If one world is connected to the past and future of another world, doesn't that mean the future could change at any time? For example, if there's an intrusion point connecting to the era before I was born, and the dimensional mechanism suddenly changes it, then it's hard to say whether I'll even exist."

"I thought something big had happened," Lin Qing said casually. "Don't worry, when the organization was researching erosion, quite a few scholars were troubled by historical nihilism, and some even committed suicide. In the end, they discovered that the historical lines of all worlds are always continuous, and more and more evidence shows that those worlds only seem similar, but in fact they have long since diverged from each other. Especially after the organization mastered more precise methods of measuring gravitational fluctuations, this point can be considered a final conclusion."

"But you also said before that multiple overlaps are not impossible."

“Let’s just consider it a blind spot in our observation. There are indeed no relevant records in the organization… If you believe that Fei Wuniang, black magic, and this erosion disaster all originated from the same world, then their gravitational fluctuations should also be completely consistent,” Lin Qing analyzed. “After all, you’ve experienced no more than twenty intrusion points, and now there are three that are the same, which is terrifyingly high in terms of probability. On the other hand, the organization’s later records show hundreds of intrusion points, and the fact that there isn’t a single pair of completely identical data points also speaks volumes.”

"Okay...you have a point."

"That's it?" Lin Qing moved forward a little more, her nose almost touching Chen Xuan's. "Look me in the eyes and tell me, you really didn't have any trouble with Liu Shuyue?"

"How could that be?" Chen Xuan sighed helplessly, straightening up from the bar.

"Then why hasn't she been showing up as often lately?"

"She stayed here for a long time before because she was training her apprentices," Chen Xuan said dismissively. "Now that the Immortal Alliance matter has come to an end and the Sole Supreme Sect has been disbanded, she naturally has to spend more energy on Spicy Village. It's normal for her to come here occasionally."

(End of this chapter)