abnabooks Chapter 486, Page 495: The Broken Cycle 5
Chapter 486, Page 495: The Broken Cycle 5
Chapter 486, Page 495: The Broken Cycle 5
The world became quiet again.
The man in black robes remained kneeling, motionless, as if transformed into another stone statue. All his strength and emotions seemed to have been drained away with the disappearance of that feather. Only an empty, bewildered emptiness remained in his heart, along with a faint glimmer of hope that he dared not even delve into.
"Beep beep beep beep~"
Just then, a silver communication badge bearing the emblem of the Department of Mysteries, which was clipped to his waist, suddenly vibrated slightly and emitted a soft white light.
Then, a calm, rational, and emotionless male voice rang directly in his mind, using encrypted mental communication.
The "Cleanse Code Abyss Echoes" mission has timed out. External monitoring shows the high-energy reaction within the target area has subsided. Please confirm your status and mission completion. Again, please confirm your status and mission completion. According to procedure, after mission confirmation, you need to immediately report to the "Purification Chamber." Please reply.
These are the logistics and surveillance personnel of the Bureau of Mysteries.
They had clearly been monitoring the energy fluctuations here. Saruman's death marked the end of the high-energy reaction; it's just unknown whether these people realized Saruman's intentions.
of course.
Even if you notice it, it's not a big deal.
after all.
They were all people who had received Saruman's favor.
"Do we need to go to the purification chamber?" The man in black was very familiar with that place. It was the final resting place for all the "cleaners" who had carried out cleanup missions in deeply contaminated areas.
Of course, it wasn't an immediate execution.
Rather, it is a kind of—complete "purification".
Ok.
In fact, the result is similar to execution; both end with death.
of course.
There were some survivors, but not many.
The mechanism of that place is very simple, and it is also one of Saruman's alchemical achievements. It uses powerful ancient magic circles and relics to try to strip away, dispel, or at least permanently seal the pollution accumulated on the executor.
Although there is a success rate, very few succeed. Most of them collapse or mutate into something even more terrifying during the process due to the deep binding of their souls with the pollution, and die in a fit of rage. Even if they succeed, it often means that they lose all their power and their memories are incomplete, becoming a "clean useless person" who needs to be closely monitored.
It's not like you just throw it away after you've used it.
Treat Aurors as valuable talents.
This was the ending they knew when they joined; it was the price they had to pay to maintain the seal. The man in black robes neither feared death nor resisted "purification."
That was the fate he had already accepted.
but----
He looked down at Saruman's peaceful face, then looked up at the void where the raven feather had disappeared.
The man in the black robes really wanted to see for himself, or at least wait and see if his teacher had truly succeeded. Could that feather truly carry his teacher's good soul, flowing against the river of time back to R'lyeh a thousand years ago? Could his teacher truly change the fate of Kag and Lina, and avert that tragedy?
Curiosity is both a wizard's greatest strength and his greatest enemy.
The man in black couldn't help but wonder. If he succeeded—would history be slightly skewed as a result?
Even if the deviation is so small that no one notices it, will he, who knows everything, sense it? Or will the world itself provide some kind of positive feedback?
The more I think about it, the more I crave an answer.
and so.
The man in black robes did not want to undergo purification for the time being.
He needs to wait.
Even waiting a moment longer, a few more minutes. Just then, the communication badge glowed again, carrying a hint of urgency: "Please reply immediately. Your vital signs are extremely unstable, pollution level critical. Repeat, please proceed to the purification chamber immediately."
When questioned by colleagues.
The man in black robes slowly reached out and, with his last bit of strength, took the communication badge from his waist. There was no response, nor was it turned off; he simply placed it gently on the ground.
He slid down against the cold wall and sat down next to Saruman's corpse. Then he closed his eyes, ignoring the badge's continued vibrations and the repeated urging voice in his mind.
He simply waited quietly.
Waiting for a miracle that may never come, waiting for a tiny, imperceptible ripple to be created in the long river of history because of it.
The turbulence of time and space cannot be described in any mundane language.
There is no direction, no up or down, no past or future. Only countless fragmented, out-of-control, flickering lights and shadows, and contradictory and paradoxical pieces of information sweeping through like a storm.
The closer you get to your goal.
The more you feel it, the more anchored you become.
Among them are R'lyeh's frantic whispers, the intense light bursting from the magic circle, Saruman's and his companions' gasps as they are sucked in, and the hazy echoes of war from even more distant times.
There is even a fleeting glimpse of a future possibility that has not yet occurred.
In such a place, a dark silver light, like a small boat struggling to move forward in a stormy sea, traversed this absolutely chaotic dimension.
This is the sanctuary formed from the raven's tail feather. Inside, Saruman's soul core, the spiritual essence that embodies his millennia of wisdom, memories, emotions, and purest obsessions, is quietly dormant, or rather, "perceiving" everything in the outside world in a way that transcends comprehension.
It's a legend, isn't it?
They've already surpassed ordinary people.
Voldemort was able to perceive the outside world even with his remaining soul.
Not to mention a complete soul.
Saruman validated his theory.
He is indeed going back to the past.
The power of the feathers did not arbitrarily reverse time, but rather skillfully followed the intricate causal threads that spanned millennia between Saruman himself and R'lyeh, Ian Prince, Kag and Lina, like a spider crawling along its web, searching for the most vulnerable and crucial "node".
Raven feathers are also very fine.
It avoided the heavy, unshakeable "main trunk" of cause and effect, and precisely slid towards the relatively subtle "tributary" that Saruman and his two companions were accidentally swept into the spacetime turbulence.
Countless lights and shadows rushed backward, and countless sounds fell silent.
Finally, the dark silver boat abruptly stopped, as if it had crashed into an invisible but resilient membrane. That was R'lyeh's self-contained spacetime barrier, the barrier between that mad territory and the normal flow of time, and also the "wall" of the temporary passage that Ian Prince had forcibly opened using a magic circle.
"Can we go in?"
Saruman was also somewhat nervous.
If it were an ordinary soul, no matter how powerful, it would be instantly shattered upon encountering this barrier, which contains the aura of the ancient rulers and the aftershocks of legendary magic.
Or they may be completely contaminated and assimilated.
But the raven's feathers are different.
It seems to have an innate affinity with this kind of "anomaly" and "rift" in time and space.
The mysterious runes flowing on the surface of the feathers flickered rapidly, and the dark silver light became liquid, slowly and silently "seeping" into the barrier.
There was still no fierce confrontation, nor any grand scene of energy explosion; there was only a natural fusion process, like water droplets merging into a sponge.
"I knew raven feathers could do that!"
And so, the feather, enveloping Saruman's soul, passed through the barrier and re-entered the chaotic and insane spacetime structure of R'lyeh.
However, it does not manifest in the material world, but rather exists in a more hidden state, almost like "information" or "concept," attached to the underlying rules of this spacetime.
Like a virus lurking in the host's genetic chain, quietly waiting for the right moment to be activated.
Saruman was not in a hurry.
He knew what the raven's feathers were waiting for.
Its goal is clear—a thousand years ago, in the central square of R'lyeh, Ian activated the magic circle, a burst of intense light, and the suction force created that "moment".
This "moment" is fleeting in the normal flow of time, but in R'lyeh's distorted spacetime and Raven's Feather's perception, it is stretched into an operable "window".
As it drew nearer, the dark silver light darted through the cracks of space and time. Finally, it "sensed" that specific coordinate, felt the energy of the berserk magic circle that Saruman was familiar with, and sensed the irresistible pulling and peeling away of the fluctuations of three young and familiar souls!
There was no need for the elderly Saruman to remind them.
It's now!
Raven's Feather was no longer hidden. It suddenly "leaped" out from the spacetime rift, its dark silver light surging instantly, transforming into a thin yet incredibly strong thread that precisely "wrapped" around the most core of the three souls caught in the turbulence, the one most closely connected to Saruman causally.
Young Saruman! At this moment, young Saruman felt as if his soul and body were being torn apart, his consciousness adrift in a torrent of information, about to sink completely into darkness.
"Am I really going to die?"
Young Saruman thought so.
Just then, a strange, indescribable, gentle yet immense will, like a mother's arm, gently supported his fading consciousness.
Countless complex and profound knowledge, memories, and emotions—the true meaning of magic, the mysteries of time, the horrors of R'lyeh, the fate of Kag and Lina, and a millennium-long obsession and plan—all surged into this young body like a flood bursting its banks!
"Ughhhhhh—!" A silent scream emanated from the soul level.
A violent sense of expansion, tearing, and a strange feeling as if he were being forcibly "covered" or "fused" filled his entire being.
This is not possession, nor is it replacement.
The power of the Raven's Feather.
The thousand-year-old soul and wisdom of the elderly Saruman are more like an overly large "operating system" and "database" that has been forcibly installed into a "hardware" with limited capacity.
This is why the elderly Saruman knew he could never go back. Everything went as he had planned. The self-awareness, memories, and emotions of the young Saruman were still the core, but the soul that the elderly Saruman had merged with instantly expanded, elevated, and filled the space with a vast amount of information that did not originally belong to his age and experience.
This process was both incredibly painful and incredibly wonderful.
It felt like a fleeting moment, yet also like a thousand years had passed.
As the impact of that information deluge subsided slightly, and as the excruciating pain in his soul gradually transformed into a feeling of power that was almost overwhelming—Saruman suddenly opened his eyes! What came into view was no longer the dimness of the underground chamber a thousand years later, nor the bizarre and fantastical scenes in the turbulent flow of time and space.
It is light.
An endless, breathtakingly dazzling magic circle of light, filled with blasphemous and chaotic beauty!
It was a deafening shriek that tore space apart and a roar of surging energy!
It's the feeling of weightlessness as your body is being torn apart by an invisible force and falling toward the center of the light!
And, so close at hand, Kag's roar, filled with terror and worry, and Lina's faint, weak voice on his back...
A painful groan.
He is back.
No, to be more precise, the souls of a thousand years later have returned to their rightful place.
Using this young, vibrant body that has reached the threshold of legend as its vessel, carrying wisdom and aspirations that transcend time and space, it returns to this moment that determines everything!
The gale-force winds of R'lyeh tore at his silver robes, and the light from the magic circle reflected in his suddenly deep, complex, and seemingly weathered silver eyes.
The next second, the boundless light completely engulfed the three of them. The true "change" had already begun the instant their souls returned to their rightful place. In the light, Saruman's lips curved upwards in a very slight, cold, and resolute arc.
He is both the elderly Saruman.
It was also a young Saruman.
None of that matters. What matters is that at this moment, Saruman knows many things he shouldn't know, and he understands what he needs to do.
The transmission is ongoing.
Consciousness teetered on the brink of collapse amidst the raging energy currents and the tearing apart of spacetime. Saruman, who had merged millennia of wisdom with a youthful body, forcibly stabilized his mind, which was on the verge of being scattered once again.
"Are we going to face that monster?"
He felt as if he had been thrown into a void tunnel made of pure chaos, surrounded no longer by the green boulders of R'lyeh, but by countless rapidly spinning and meaningless fragments of light and shadow and sharp noise.
The feeling of regaining my eyesight is truly amazing.
of course.
It was quite difficult to discern one's surroundings using only the eyes. Saruman struggled to "open" his more acute, merged eyes of perception, searching through this void.
It wasn't about finding a way out—that was for later—but about immediately confirming the condition of Kag and Lina, and—that crucial figure.
His spiritual tendrils stretched outward like a spiderweb, resisting the scouring of the turbulent currents. Soon, he "sensed" Kag's resilient yet furious soul fluctuations, and Lina's faint, corrupted, flickering flame of life, like a candle in the wind. They were not far apart and were both adrift in this void.
However, just as he was trying to locate them more precisely and think about how to help them, Saruman's "vision" suddenly caught sight of another being.
Just above this chaotic void.
Or rather, on a "level" parallel to their falling trajectory but seemingly a higher dimension, a figure is "standing" there in an extremely stable, even "leisurely" posture.
He was a young man dressed in a simple black robe.
Black, tousled hair fluttered gently in the non-existent energy breeze, revealing a handsome face that was almost otherworldly.
Yet his face was as cold as ancient ice.
It was Ian Prince!
"Cold, shivering—it seems you're the most physically fit among this batch of new recruits." Ian's tone was flat and monotone, as if stating an objective fact unrelated to himself.
Saruman: "————?"
Even with the vast knowledge, forbidden experiences, and profound understanding of Ian Prince's power and mystery accumulated over millennia by the elderly Saruman, his young face still displayed an uncontrollable, glazed expression that could be described as a mixture of astonishment and bewilderment.
Say something.
Saruman couldn't understand a word the other person was saying.