Salted Fish Chapter 74: Grand Finale (1)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

 

Duan FeiZhou looked helplessly at the Goddess of the Crossroads. “Well, it does sound like nothing serious,” he said resentfully. “It’s just a fatal wound.”

Hecate laughed. “It’s not a big injury for you. Your body has the ability to heal itself anyway, so as long as you don’t die immediately, there’s always a way.”

“Then why am I here?” Duan FeiZhou looked left and right. “Did you summon me?”

“No, you came here yourself. When you were in danger, you instinctively hid in what you thought was a safe place.”

“This instinct really works well. I didn’t even know it myself,” Duan FeiZhou said with sincere sarcasm. “Can I go back now?”

Hecate gave him a strange look. “Do you think you can deal with Leviathan?”

That was a good question, Duan FeiZhou thought. The answer was no, of course. Unless he could make himself as big as a building, how could he possibly defeat a beast the size of an airship?

“Then what should we do? Watch that beast take my companions and stuff them?” Duan FeiZhou crossed his arms. “By the way, Z can communicate with it. Can you send Z on?”

“Leviathan is here by the summons of the Great Lord of Light. Since its master is here, I’m afraid it won’t listen to anyone’s orders.”

“…The Lord?”

Hecate raised her slender hand, and the shifting and shimmering starry sky around her coalesced into a picture.

Leviathan swung his claws, and broke a thick tree with a single blow. Z, Yeats, Xenophon and Mr. N joined the fray. The fact that they were safe meant that Madame Boyle and Carter had been defeated. At least that was good news. However, their attacks were insignificant to the behemoth, and neither the Gatling bullets poured out by Miss Acheson nor the ice crystal storm summoned by Yeats could penetrate Leviathan’s thick scales.

What was worse was that the undying legion previously buried by Duan FeiZhou had come back from the dead (a bit of an odd statement, but true). The mechanical soldiers plowed through the mound, dragged their bodies and crawled out. Now they surrounding the mine as if they were zombies.

On the other side of the mine, the Queen left under the protection of the royal guards. Lord Perlilla and his mother guided her as they approached the oak forest from another direction, presumably to seek refuge from the undead. The members of the Committee for the Advancement of Science were like headless flies in the mine frantically doing Brownian motion. ¹ They accused each other, and weren’t even aware of the approaching danger.

Hecate looked at the chaotic scene with an indifferent smile on her lips. “They are still unaware of the impending disaster. The mortals are trying to dominate the gods. Not only will they pay the price, but the whole world will be dragged into the mire.”

“What do you mean?” A wave of uneasiness surged in Duan FeiZhou’s heart.

“People may still become undead when they die. What do you think will happen if a Forerunner dies?”

Duan FeiZhou thought about it. “Become super invincible undead?”

The Goddess of the Crossroads was amused. “About the same. As long as a Forerunner is willing, his will can be immortal. After all, you can also understand the will as a kind of energy. And energy does not disappear into thin air. The will of the Great Lord of Light has been stored in a scattered form in the Ether crystals – a bit like occult the way practitioners store energy in an energy reservoir. The will is so weak that it is almost like a wisp of thought in the wind. The vast majority are scattered in the air, and not enough to matter.”

She waved her hand, allowing the image to focus on a few panicked members.

“But these arrogant mortals think they can dominate the gods. They injected the will of the Lord of Light into an artificial body. This is a good thing. It is tantamount to coalescing the Lord of Light’s scattered will, and making those thoughts, which cannot even ‘think,’ become one again. The Forerunner then summoned its former pet. It’s ridiculous. If these mortals didn’t covet the Ether crystals inside Leviathan and hadn’t bothered to wake it up, it would still be imprisoned in the Arctic. As a result, they have awakened a powerful enemy for themselves. That gradually coalescing whole is still summoning the rest of him. Soon, the Archon of Light will be resurrected.”

Duan FeiZhou’s jaw dropped. Only after a while did he manage to make a sound, “The Great Lord of Light, the Second Forerunner, will be resurrected?”

“The word ‘resurrection’ is not appropriate. After all, he has never died.” Hecate cocked her head and thought. “Maybe I should say ‘return’.”

“So will it be like the last time when he had a fit, then wanted to destroy the old world and create a new one or something?”

Hecate shrugged. “I’m afraid he will only want more than before. Do you think the world is better now than before?”

“I’m not sure. After all, I’ve never seen the old world either,” Duan FeiZhou said bitterly.

“Well, that’s a good response. But that answer won’t convince the Great Lord of Light.”

Duan FeiZhou turned his head to gaze at the Goddess of the Crossroads. “Wait. Wasn’t it the Forerunners who united to defeat the Lord of Light last time? You are also a Forerunner, can’t you fight against the Lord of Light? The destruction of the world wouldn’t be good for you, right?”

Hecate faintly said, “I do want to help, but cannot. The last time, when the first team went to deal with the Lord, we lost two gods and were strongly defeated. What can I do alone? Even if I join, it will only cause the world’s destruction to be slightly delayed.”

“Where are the other Forerunners? I remember there is another alive…the first Forerunner. Hermes?”

“He remained neutral in the last war, so don’t expect it to be different this time.”

“Then there is still left…There are still left…”

A total of eight Forerunners. Four dead, two continue to climb, and two remain. The only ones left are…Duan FeiZhou looked at Hecate. The Goddess of the Crossroads also looked at him.

“The Fourth Forerunner. Blood Moon…” Duan FeiZhou murmured.

Hecate showed a heartfelt smile in front of him for the first time.

“You finally perceive it. Very well.” She nodded with a childlike expression. “The Fourth Forerunner was divided among his followers, and after his power was taken away by the multitude of believers, it was passed on from generation to generation through the bloodlines. The power was originally scattered everywhere, but because of a chance cohesion together…”

She stopped and gestured for Duan FeiZhou to continue.

“Scarlet Feast,” Duan FeiZhou said in a deep voice. “They looked for people who had inherited the Fourth Forerunner’s powers, devoured them and took the power. Then Duncan McKellen killed and devoured the members of the Scarlet Feast, after that…”

Duncan forced him to eat the flesh and blood of himself and Jack the Ripper. The power they received was gathered in Duan FeiZhou’s body. In other words, eleven of the twelve members of the Scarlet Feast who inherited their powers were in Duan FeiZhou. Only Madame Boyle remained, but she gave up her body and took Madeleine’s body…

“It is a pity that one’s powers are missing,” said Hecate. “But you have inherited most of them. Among the descendants of all the apostles of the Fourth Forerunner, you are the one with the most power. Originally, by inheriting so much power at once, you would have been driven crazy. So the last time you came here, I helped you seal a part of the power. This made your powers weaker, but the benefits were obvious.”

“So I didn’t go crazy like Jack the Ripper because of that…” Duan FeiZhou said to himself. “So the reason my powers aren’t as strong as Jack’s is also because of this?”

Hecate raised the corners of her lips, and nodded her head. “Scarlet Feast’s plan wasn’t wrong on principle. As long as the power of all the apostles’ descendants is seized, the power of the complete Fourth Forerunner can be aggregated. Just like how by aggregating the will of the Lord of Light, the Lord will be resurrected. It’s just that it’s very difficult to do in practice. Being able to retrieve most of these powers is already rare and valuable. Right now, you are basically a crippled Fourth Forerunner.”

Duan FeiZhou stared fixedly at Hecate. He was a crippled Fourth Forerunner. Well, he had inherited the power of Duncan and Jack the Ripper. And Hecate was the Third Forerunner, Goddess of the Underworld, Guardian of the Crossroads. If the two of them were to fight side by side against the newly awakened and still incomplete Archon of Light…?

“Ah, you see what I mean. I like young people with sharp minds.” Hecate looked at him intently.

“The two of us…Is that possible?” Duan FeiZhou was a little beaten up inside.

Hecate smiled again. “Only you, to be precise.”

“You can’t even deal with the Great Lord of Light, but you’re asking me to go? I think you’re just making things difficult for me.” Duan FeiZhou was a little angry.

“I don’t have a method to enter the real world.” The Goddess of the Crossroads looked into the distance with mixed eyes. “Everything in the world has its price. I can watch every branch of the multiple histories. The past me, the present me, and the future me, all are always watching the flow of the river of time. However, the cost is that I can’t affect it personally, only through some… proxy.”

Her gaze lingered meaningfully on Duan FeiZhou for a moment.

“Me?” Duan FeiZhou pointed to himself.

“That’s right. If you wish to defeat the Great Lord of Light, I can give you my power. You will have the power of both the Third Forerunner and the Fourth Forerunner, while the current Great Lord of Light has not yet fully recovered and has limited strength.”

Duan FeiZhou opened his mouth wide, but he didn’t know what to say for a while. The power of the Forerunner was something she was willing to give to him? Was it possible to ask for it back after giving it or what…?

Hecate looked at him with some amusement. As if she had read his inner doubts. “Of course it is impossible to ask for it back. From now then on, the power of the Third Forerunner would belong to you.”

“This self-sacrificing spirit of yours is too noble, isn’t it?” Duan FeiZhou’s tone expressed that he wasn’t quite convinced. He knew that there was never a shortage of saints in the world who were willing to give their lives, but the Goddess of the Underworld did not seem to be able to be associated with “saints.”

The goddess raised her eyebrows. “I am a Forerunner, and my definition of ‘living’ is different from that of you mortals. For me, as long as my power still exists in this world, I am still ‘alive’. Even if that power is inside another person.”

Duan FeiZhou nodded thoughtfully. “So you will always live in my heart, right?”

Hecate laughed out loud. “If you gain too much power that does not belong to you in a short period of time, you will become a prisoner of that power if your will is not strong enough. A typical example is Jack the Ripper. After you receive my power, if your will isn’t strong enough to defeat me, then it will be me who is in control of that body instead.”

Duan FeiZhou raised his eyebrows. “Why does that sound like Madame Boyle’s Art of Ligeia?”

“The Art of Ligeia is an inferior version of this secret art.”

“Then what if…I mean what if, you took control of my body and defeated the Great Lord of Light, then what would happen after that? You will become an immensely powerful Forerunner and have descended into the world in your true form. If you want to do some damage, no one will be able to stop you.”

“That’s right. That’s the risk you’ll have to take,” Hecate said in an enigmatic tone. “So choose. Go back to your world and accept your fate. Watch your beloved companions die one by one. See the world you love destroyed, and there will be nothing you can do about it…Or will you choose to accept my power, become an incredibly powerful occult practitioner, and return to save everything?”

Duan FeiZhou looked down at his hands. Many, many images emerged from the depths of memory. Mire Street in Aberdeen, dilapidated but full of life. The offices of Scotland Yard, filled with typing and laughter. The Secret Trading House. The gilded, glittering, and foggy streets of London with the big bells ringing in the distance. The countryside at Pentecost, with boys and girls wearing garlands of flowers. The Greek islands, the blue Mediterranean. The cold polar regions, the nights so short, but the night dome drifting through the glorious aurora…

He remembered a morning just after he and Z returned to London from the trip to the Arctic. He had leaned over the bed, and was lazily watching Z as he dressed in the morning light. A cigarette case fell out of the pocket of his overcoat. The white-haired policeman bent down to pick up the cigarette case, and casually set it on the bedside table.

“Aren’t you taking it with you?” he asked.

“No.” Z said faintly. “I quit.”

“How come you don’t smoke anymore?”

“Because of you.”

Duan FeiZhou dropped his hand and gazed into Hecate’s dark eyes.

“I choose…”

He didn’t really have much of a choice from the start.

 

Near the old Perlilla Manor site, the Nightmen fought and retreated, yet their alchemical bullets and occult blasts couldn’t hurt a single tiny piece of Leviathan.

“What should we do?” Mr. R had shot all his bullets, and now could only futilely use stones to hit the monster. He had no more bullets left in his Gatling machine gun.

“We can only withdraw to the oak forest.” Miss Acheson gritted her teeth. “That’s not something we can deal with…Not what we humans can deal with!”

When they made the plan, how could they have imagined that there would be a huge monster in the way? The appearance of Leviathan had disrupted everything, and turned what had been an evenly matched battle into a one-sided one. The monster’s tail could topple a tree with a sweep. How could the oak forest stop it?

Finally, even Miss Acheson’s bullets ran out. She paled. The Gatling machine gun was idling, but no more bullets were fired. The barrel of the gun had already overheated, and if it hadn’t been alchemically enriched, it would have exploded. The cold rain hit the hot barrel of the gun and instantly evaporated into gas, which emitted a burst of white mist.

Just as she was about to order a retreat, four figures came racing from afar at breakneck speed. The one in the lead has silver hair, while his trademark brass-colored prosthetics shone under the light of the strange “sun” in the sky.

“Boss!” Miss Acheson called out.

Z rushed towards them, followed by Xenophon and Mr. N. The poet was panting, as he tried to keep his poise despite his exhaustion.

“Sorry, Boss, I really didn’t expect a monster to come out halfway.” Mrs. Q said. After chanting incantations for too long, she was hoarse.

“It was summoned by the Great Lord of Light,” Z whispered. “Humans are no match for it. Let’s retreat first.”

“With all due respect, boss,” Xenophon put his hand on the scaffolding and looked out at the mountainous beast. “I’m afraid we’ll have to retreat all the way back to London, and dispatch a dozen or two dozen airships to destroy that guy.”

“Why don’t we just let the committee clean up the mess?” Mr. R sneered.

Mr. N sneered, “After today, it’s unknown if there is anyone left in the committee.”

Z swept through the crowd, but did not see the young man he was most concerned about.

“Why is there someone missing?” He asked coldly and stiffly.

Miss Acheson and Mr. R. looked at each other.

“Just now we ran away in different directions, and Leviathan went after Chester…”

Z turned sharply to the beast. Despite being washed by the rain for so long, he hadn’t felt the cold, but in that instant, he felt a piercing coldness. There was no way a human could stand up to Leviathan. For that behemoth, the difference between ordinary people and occult practitioners was just the difference between a mole and a mole that bites.

That young man had absolutely no chance of winning. He would die under the sharp teeth of the beast. Z dared not imagine his death. Just by imagining the concept in his head, it was as if a knife was stirring in his heart.

“You guys retreat first,” Z said in a hushed voice. “I’ll go find him.”

Xenophon squeezed his shoulder. “Boss, with all due respect…”

Z shook off his hand, and quickly rushed towards the Leviathan.

Xenophon cursed, turned into a raven and took off into the air. As a bird, he was much faster than Z. He flew towards Leviathan on the wind and leapt lightly under its sharp claws. The bird’s body had the added benefit of being easily ignored by the huge creature. The Leviathan acted as if it didn’t see him, as it concentrated on scavenging for the humans around it.

Xenophon glided lower, as he looked for the young man in a field that was pockmarked by the giant beast. He soon found him. The young man’s blond hair was so conspicuous that he couldn’t have been mistaken. He hovered above the young man, let out a curse, and then flew toward Z as fast as he had ever flown in his life.

Z was darting down a muddy road. The raven swooped down on him, transformed back into human form the moment he was close, and stopped him with one hand.

“Boss, don’t go!” Xenophon yelled.

“What did you see?!” Z asked through gritted teeth.

Xenophon hesitated for a moment, and gathered the courage to tell the truth about what he had seen. He said, “He’s dead.” 

“No!” Z screamed.

Xenophon couldn’t help but take a step back in shock, as if he was afraid of being burned. He had never seen the boss look so angry. Although the boss was often angry, this time was different from the past. The flame of his anger seemed to shoot out directly from the depths of his soul, and engulfed not only his reason, but also burned the world to ashes.

“You’re lying.” Z laughed back in anger.

“I saw it with my own eyes,” Xenophon said. Xenophon tried to stop him, but a sword was placed at his neck.

“If you try to stop me again, I’ll kill you too.”

“Boss, I know you’re upset, but…”

“If you know that, then let go!” Z roared.

Xenophon was stunned. Just a moment ago, he saw something crystal clear flash from the boss’s eyes. It was raining so hard that everyone’s face was wet. It was impossible to tell whether it was rain or…He had seen the boss bleed countless times in his life, but it was the first time he had seen him shed tears.

Z looked in the direction where Leviathan was, and his vision blurred. Damn, damn the rain, so that he could not even see the road. The rain, when did it get so hot?

He didn’t believe a word Xenophon said. He knew Xenophon had always been full of talk, and often as not a good thing. Not far from Leviathan’s feet, a figure staggered up.

Blonde hair stained with blood, covered in mud, staggering, like a drunken man who had had too much to drink, and like a toddler. Z looked at him as if a light had fallen from the sky, that illuminated his entire soul.

How could his bad little thing be dead? He was really just pretending just now. That little liar… really he was…even Xenophon was fooled by him. How could he do that to his own people? He should be punished severely later on.

Z laughed dumbly.

The young man with blond hair opened his eyes. The pupils were still golden green, but the whites of his eyes were pitch black. Like an oddly colored moon hanging in the night sky. He opened his five fingers towards the Leviathan.

The beast let out a mournful roar and retreated. The young man’s palm shot out countless flames, intertwined into a cage of flame that enveloped the Leviathan. Those which encountered rain weren’t extinguished, just burned more fiery.

The young man turned again to the strange sun in the air, and made a gesture of clenching his fist at it.

As he did, two diametrically opposed forces pulled in the air. On one side was total light, and the other side total darkness. The two hit each other, twisted around each other, devoured each other and annihilated each other. The surging power spread in all directions with them as the axis, and even those who knew nothing about the occult arts could feel the vibrating power that penetrated their bodies.

The battle seemed to last for only a few seconds, it seemed to last for centuries, purely in terms of energy against each other.

The strange sun in the sky cracked silently.

It turned into countless crystals that scattered to the ground.

Some of them were picked up by curious people, some fell into the ground, and at a future date, would condense into large crystals, and be rediscovered by people. Just like the people of this era found the Ether crystals.

Leviathan let out a long and mournful wail, dropped its head and wings, never to move again. The flaming cage that enveloped it gradually went out, but it never stood up again.

In the direction of the Perlilla mine, the undying soldiers fell one by one. The limbs that had been repaired by occult magic were torn apart and turned into scraps of iron. The surviving committee members cowered as they poked their heads out from behind bleachers and rocks, and stared in disbelief at the mess before them.

In the middle of the field, the young man dropped his hands. The storm of energy surrounding him gradually subsided. He turned to look at the silver-haired man who was walking toward him.

Z stopped in front of him and took a good look at the young man he knew all too well. He knew every inch of his body, even the parts within his body that he had explored carefully. But now he found that he didn’t know this young man.

Four eyes faced each other, red eyes to green eyes.

After a long time, Z slowly said, “You are not him.”

The young man cracked a mysterious smile, “You could say yes, you could say no.”

“Who are you?”

“To make it easier for you to understand, I’ll tell it in the third person.” The young man spoke in a cloudy voice. “He received the power of another Forerunner, the Goddess of the Crossroads, Hecate, in order to defeat the Archon of Light. The process of coalescence of the Great Lord of Light was interrupted by him, so it has changed back to its former state.”

“Changed back to Ether crystals?”

“That’s right. Maybe the Forerunner will be revived again in the future, but who knows?” The young man shrugged his shoulders. He spoke in such a strange tone, thought Z.

“Then you…Will he recover then?” Z asked.

“Impossible.” The young man looked at him with some sympathy. “This body incorporates the powers of the Third Forerunner, Hecate, and the Fourth Forerunner, Blood Moon, and he will…I will get out of here and move on.”

Z’s eyes widened slightly, “Where to?”

“To a higher level of advancement. To chase the footsteps of the Forerunners who have climbed up.” The young man smiled. “The reason why the Forerunners are called Forerunners is because they are always ahead of others. Now I must depart.”

“Wait, you can’t…” Z rushed forward and stretched out his arms to encircle the young man’s body. However, he lunged in vain.

The young man instantly disappeared and reappeared behind him.

“What a pity. He really liked you,” the young man said. “For his sake, live.”

After he said that, his figure melted into the rain like ice and snow.

 

“What do you think?” Hecate asked.

Duan FeiZhou blinked.

“I think I saw something strange just now,” he answered honestly.

Just when he was about to choose to cooperate with Hecate, a strange scene suddenly appeared in front of him. In that scene, he received Hecate’s power. The two energies merged into one, and became an existence beyond the Forerunner. He returned to the real world, defeated the Archon of Light, and knocked him back to his prototype – the Ether crystal form.

Then he said goodbye to Z, left that world, and embarked on a journey to a higher level. He might disappear from this world, or he might ascend to become a god, or he might become the will of the universe and make a whole new set of laws…But…For Duan FeiZhou, it was just a strange scene, like watching a movie.

“What was that?” Duan FeiZhou asked. He felt slightly uncomfortable. In the little movie he spoke in a strange and disgusting tone, as if someone was using his face.

Hecate calmly replied, “If you choose to work with me, that is what you will experience.”

Duan FeiZhou felt a jolt. “Is that the future? You can see the future and show it to me?”

The goddess smiled faintly. “I’m afraid it’s not appropriate to call it the future. After all, my concept of time is different from yours. Let’s say that history is a river, flowing from upstream to downstream, splitting into countless tributaries and rushing in different directions. You humans are like a small boat that can only travel downstream, either on this tributary or on that tributary. However, I am different. I am a river watcher, I can see the flow of the whole river and see where small boats are located in the river. As long as I’m standing on the bank, I’m free to head upstream or downstream. I just showed you the scenery downstream of a certain tributary.”

Duan FeiZhou seemed to understand and felt that this topic had already penetrated into the realm of quantum physics.

“In other words,” he said after thinking hard. “If I choose to work with you, it means that I am entering a tributary with you?”

“You can understand it that way.”

“Then there are other tributaries?” Duan FeiZhou caught the loophole in Hecate’s words. “If I make a different choice, history will turn out differently. That’s what you always call ‘multiple branches of history’, right?”

The Goddess of the Crossroads said, “You are very clever.”

Duan FeiZhou remembered another life he experienced, in another world, where he lived as an ordinary person for nineteen years. That was also the real history and world, wasn’t it? He often found it strange that the history of that world and this world were roughly the same, yet there were also many differences. For example, there were no Ether crystals in that world, and there were no occult practitioners.

The latter was easy to explain. Occult practitioners lived in secrecy and darkness, and weren’t normally known to ordinary people. On the other hand, what about the Ether crystals? If there was such a powerful energy source in history, and hundreds of steam powered dirigibles, how could people in later generations not know about them? So how was it possible that there was no remnant left?

It could only be understood that that world didn’t exist from the beginning. Ether crystals were that kind of material. If Duan FeiZhou had cooperated with Hecate, he could have defeated the Lord of Light, but the Ether crystals would still be left behind. It meant that that world was not the future of this world.

Duan FeiZhou couldn’t only work with Hecate. He had another choice. That choice would be to make history as he knew it.

Hecate laughed out loud, “Yes, you do have another choice.”

“What is that option?” Duan FeiZhou asked impatiently.

Working with Hecate could save the world, but that meant he would lose himself and leave the world forever. But he could not let go of the prosperous world. He couldn’t let go of the multitude of people. He could not let go of the man who had never bled but had shed a tear for him.

Hecate asked, “Do you want to know why the Ether crystals do not exist in the other world?”

Duan FeiZhou nodded his head like he was chopping garlic.

“It’s simple. Ether crystals are energy crystals made by the fall of the Great Lord of Light. If the Lord never fell, naturally there would be no crystals.”

Duan FeiZhou’s brain took a long time to understand the goddess’ words.

“Wasn’t the Great Lord of Light defeated by the Forerunners teaming up?”

The black eyes of the Goddess of the Crossroads swirled with infinite laughter. “Do you remember why the Great Lord of Light was defeated?”

Duan FeiZhou tried to remember the story Evangeline had told him. “Because the Forerunner’s ally, the Fourth Forerunner ‘Blood Moon’, was betrayed by his apostles. The apostles killed the Forerunner, devoured his body, and took his power. The Archon of Light who lost his ally was outnumbered, so…”

That happened upstream of the River of History, far, far away. Since then, the river has split into two branches.

“I can let you go back in time and return to the moment when the river bifurcated. In that time, you will have the power of the Fourth Forerunner. It is only a part, but it is enough. All you have to do is to assist the Archon of Light in defeating all the other Forerunners and knock the apostles out of the Vault of Heaven forever. Then, as an ally, you ask the Archon of Light to give this world some more grace. It doesn’t need to be long, a few thousand years is enough. For the Forerunner, a few thousand years is just a snap of the fingers. In this way, history will become what you know it to be.”

There were no Ether crystals in that history, because the Archon of Light did not fall.

Without the Ether crystals, there would be no steam aircraft, no Committee for the Advancement of Science. Xenophon’s family would have survived, and Leo Chester’s family would have…

However, Z will die. His heart was powered by the Ether crystals. Without the Ether crystals, he wouldn’t even have had the chance to undergo Madame Boyle’s transformation.

In the history that Duan FeiZhou was familiar with, Z died in battle at a young age, a forgotten name on the list of the fallen.

“Well? Are you willing to choose this path?” Hecate said in a prodding tone.

If he chose to work with the goddess, then Z would lose him forever. If he chose to return to the past and assist the Archon of Light in winning the battle, then he would lose Z forever.

Either one he did not want.

“Isn’t there any other choice?” he asked sullenly.

“Aren’t two choices enough? How many more do you want?” Hecate’s smile gradually turned cold.

Duan FeiZhou gazed into the goddess’ dark eyes.

They were standing at a crossroads. He now understood why this field unique to Hecate had taken on the appearance of a crossroads. It was because he had to make a choice here. A flash of light suddenly crossed his mind. He remembered what Hecate had said the last time he had visited this place.

“I remember you once said…” Duan FeiZhou raised his hand and pointed to the road to Hecate’s left. “That it led to a history that I had seen and that did exist.”

The mysterious and inscrutable smile of the Goddess of the Crossroads disappeared.

“I think you are referring to the “other world” – the one I lived in for nineteen years, right?” Duan FeiZhou said. “If I go in that direction, I will return to the past, fight alongside the Great Lord of Light, defeat the other apostles, and make the history of the world familiar to me. That is indeed a world I have seen and am familiar with.”

He didn’t move to observe Hecate’s expression. The goddess’s face grew colder and colder, as if covered with a layer of frost. He then pointed to the road to Hecate’s right, “You said that road leads to a history that I have not seen, but may exist. I think that refers to this world now. If I promise to work with you, you will let me go down that road. Yes, it is true that I have never seen that history, but if I choose that path, it is possible that it exists.”

Duan FeiZhou took a few steps forward and came face to face with Hecate, “But there is another way.” He pointed behind the goddess. “That path leads to a history that no one has ever seen, and no one knows if it exists.” He smiled triumphantly. “That’s my third choice, isn’t it?”