Divine Beast Creator

Chapter 2360 - 2361: Thorny Trouble

"Speaking of which, why did something like this happen? Logically, large-scale space-time overlap shouldn’t just pop up out of nowhere."

Qi Chen wasn’t particularly worried about the Time River itself. What’s done is done; worrying is useless. What he cared more about was why this suddenly happened.

Veronia had originally wanted to say something snarky, but suddenly paused. It looked at Agunas in surprise and said,

"This kind of thing actually happened?"

"This is a real headache..."

"I feel like you two are talking about something we don’t know at all. Okay, stop talking in riddles, just tell us what’s going on already～"

Hearing that Agunas only called it "a headache," Qi Chen let out a breath and couldn’t help teasing him. If it was "just" troublesome, then it meant this wasn’t as serious as he’d imagined. Still, Qi Chen was very curious what exactly had happened.

"That space-time overlap just now was caused by the emergence of Parallel Worlds."

Veronia glanced at Agunas and said, flicked its tail, and Agunas spoke with a throbbing headache,

"And they just had to show up now—two parallel Parallel Worlds. I don’t know if that overlap just now caused people from different timelines to end up in the wrong one."

To Agunas, this was an absolute nightmare, because none of them knew how many people and Lives had appeared in the wrong timeline because of that little "accident" just now.

And that mistake had to be fixed, otherwise all kinds of troublesome things might happen.

"Wait, you mean two parallel, physical branches suddenly appeared within the existing Time River?"

At first Qi Chen didn’t take it that seriously, but he quickly reacted and spoke in shock. Agunas gave him a sideways glance, flicked its tail, and said irritably,

"What else could it be? If not for this, why would I be this stressed?"

While Qi Chen and Agunas were talking among themselves, the train guards all gathered around. They really did suspect Qi Chen and the others’ identities. Fortunately, Qi Chen reacted in time and produced his special ID, preventing the misunderstanding from escalating.

Once they learned who Qi Chen and the others were, the guards didn’t think much more of it. After all, even Divine Beasts wouldn’t necessarily know how to do track maintenance, right?

"Let’s head back to the carriage. They don’t need us here anyway."

Qi Chen glanced at the guards and technicians who were inspecting the tracks, then turned and left with Xiao Ji. In his view, sticking around here was meaningless.

Agunas took one last look at the newly reappeared tracks and then caught up to Qi Chen in front. There was nothing for it; even it felt a migraine coming on over this mess.

Leaving everything else aside, those two suddenly appearing time branches were enough to give it a headache—never mind the fact that the moment they appeared, they intersected and overlapped with the real world, causing the three timelines’ Lives to become displaced.

Back in the carriage, the guard who saw Qi Chen and the others return couldn’t resist probing for information. The intel he got from Qi Chen left him completely dumbfounded. Time branches, temporal overlap—he really didn’t get any of it.

But based on what he’d heard, it felt like something huge had happened. So... can the train still run?

In fact, the moment the rails reappeared, the train’s power supply was already restored. The earlier power outage was simply because the space-time overlap had erased a section of track, breaking the circuit.

Now that the tracks were back, the circuit naturally reconnected. Of course, that only lasted a moment; the tracks’ self-protection system immediately forced a power shutdown in this section and ordered all trains to halt where they were.

There was no way around it. This sudden incident had thrown the train schedule in this entire section into chaos. Until emergency rescheduling was finished, the safest solution was to halt all trains in this section to avoid accidents.

"Two time branches—so that means we’ve got three timelines running in parallel right now?"

Back at his seat, Qi Chen looked at Agunas and asked. The surrounding passengers all pricked up their ears. This stoppage clearly wasn’t normal, and they were eager to know what was really going on.

"That’s right, but..."

"Time branches have to evolve based on the main timeline. They can differ in the details, but they can’t break away from the framework."

"Still, even so, different time branches and the main timeline will end up very different from each other."

Qi Chen rubbed his chin and said. He knew very well what time branches were like. From the looks of it now, their appearance should be related to the earlier return flow of world origin from the Parallel World. Because that portion of world origin was missing, the Time River hadn’t been able to produce branches when it was supposed to.

"So... these time branches won’t affect us?"

An couldn’t help asking. What he was more worried about was whether this would affect the real world. But from what Qi Chen had said, there didn’t seem to be such a risk.

"Hard to say. That time overlap just now is a routine natural phenomenon that happens after time branches appear. The chances aren’t high, but once it happens, it can cause people from different timelines to be shifted into the wrong one."

"Like right now—if we can’t get those people back to their original timelines in time, it’ll definitely trigger historical revision and temporal correction."

Qi Chen spread his hands as he spoke. That part was unavoidable. Of course, in a sense, this kind of temporal overlap also made the possibilities for the world’s evolution more numerous and complicated.

"A timeline whose present and history are completely different from ours? How big is the gap?"

Dou Yanlan’s focus was a bit unusual—she cared more about the differences between the timelines.

"Mm, let’s see... The framework stays the same; everything else can change. For example, take Dynasty transitions. The ’framework’ refers to the fact that one Dynasty replaces another. But the specific situation isn’t restricted."

"The new Dynasty that was supposed to replace the old one gets suddenly overturned by a desperate counterattack. As long as there is a Dynasty transition, it doesn’t count as breaking the framework."

"In simple terms: certain major events have to happen, but the people involved, the details of the process, and the final outcome can all be changed."

Qi Chen thought for a moment and said. Dou Yanlan frowned and asked,

"If you change the history of a branch, will the branch’s present also be corrected?"

"Of course. Even though they’re attached to the main trunk of the Time River, each time branch can be treated as an independent Time River. If you alter their history, it will naturally trigger temporal correction within that time branch."

Qi Chen nodded as he spoke. In a sense, the real world had just gained two partners with different possibilities. Although some rules relied on the main trunk, these branches all had relatively complete systems. Naturally, just like in the real world, any meddling in their history would be reflected in their present.

"This... doesn’t sound like a good thing."

Thinking of certain possibilities, Dou Yanlan’s face darkened a little. An scratched his head, puzzled, and asked,

"Why, is there some problem?"

"You’re worried about people from all three sides jumping across time to mess with each other’s history, right? Well... it’s actually not that big a problem. If someone wants to hop around, aside from gambling on those random temporal overlaps that might appear anywhere, anytime, they can only jump timelines via the Time River itself."

"And there’s something very important: time branches don’t have Divine Beasts in the true sense. Even if they have substitutes, they’re nowhere near as strong as the main trunk’s Divine Beasts."

Qi Chen shrugged and looked at Agunas. He wasn’t very worried about what Dou Yanlan feared—people from other time branches coming to the main trunk to wreak havoc—because they simply couldn’t bypass the protection of Agunas and the others.

Unless they relied on those completely random temporal overlaps, that’s the only way they could sneak into the main trunk timeline where Qi Chen and the others were.

But that method is not only troublesome, it might not even work. After all, once a temporal overlap occurs, that area will be sealed off by a Time Storm.

The reason Qi Chen and the others hadn’t seen it earlier was simply because they were in a tunnel. If they’d been in the wilderness, they definitely would’ve seen a radiant Starry Sky dome descending over the land, slowly rotating.

With the emergency repairs and rescheduling completed, the train finally started up again. This time, nothing else happened, and it steadily carried Qi Chen and the others to Baiman City.

However, even though they had arrived in Baiman City, Qi Chen was still summoned by the local Special Duty Team.

They weren’t trying to give Qi Chen trouble; they just wanted to find out what had happened.