Chapter 375: If the Holy Infant Needs a Mother, Then Why Not Me? |
Before Cheng Shi revealed part of the answer, Gao Ya was the first to figure it out.
This follower of Folly could always deduce the full picture from the faintest of clues. But she wasn't shocked by the current situation — she'd experienced far more absurd things before.
She only marveled at how many coincidences were laced throughout this affair. The conclusions they led to were somewhat unexpected, yet still within the bounds of comprehension.
Scorpio, on the other hand, was utterly stupefied.
He never imagined that after all its twists and turns, everything had circled right back onto the track Cheng Shi had laid out — and that the one who'd steered it back on course was none other than himself. He didn't know what to think. He could only stare, dumbfounded.
He looked at Turadin, murmuring: "You... and Aph Ros... conceived a child?"
Turadin nodded without reservation. "Yes. He and I conceived a child."
"That fast?
Ah no, what I mean is — so the child's mother is you?"
Cheng Shi immediately thought of something. He raised an eyebrow. "Does this have to do with your prayer?"
Scorpio nodded, his expression complex. His respect for Cheng Shi's ability to read people deepened further.
"Yes. That's right."
"So what exactly did you pray for? Can you tell us now?"
Scorpio wrestled with himself for a moment, then slowly began:
"I prayed to witness a miracle of Time, so that I could comprehend Time at a higher level...
But right now I'm not sure whether what's unfolding before us is really what I was looking for...
If it is — a person from a deduced future conceiving a child with someone in the present — that looks more like a miracle of Birth than anything...
And here's what else I've been thinking. In the deduced future where Aph Ros existed, when I found him, he didn't seem like someone who'd personally experienced Turadin's pregnancy. I could sense a hint of alarm and confusion at my appearance.
Yet now he's become the child's father...
So did he deceive me and conceal something, or did his arrival alter the present's future?
The Time miracle I was searching for — could it really be something I set into motion with my own hands?
But a temporal entanglement of this degree hardly qualifies as a miracle.
Brother Cheng, you said the Uma Sinners at the Inquisition all died in the fire. So who exactly is he?"
Cheng Shi could tell — Scorpio didn't really care who Aph Ros was. What he cared about was why Turadin had chosen Aph Ros as the child's father, because from her attitude, the conception was entirely voluntary.
In other words, it most likely wasn't Aph Ros who chose Turadin — it was Turadin who chose Aph Ros.
Why?
Scorpio, kept in the dark on every front, couldn't figure it out. But this time Cheng Shi couldn't enlighten him either, because these temporal coincidences were beyond his understanding as well.
One thing, however, was certain: Turadin knew everything.
He turned to Turadin with a smile. "You're not the least bit surprised by our discussion, so you know that Aph Ros came from the future, correct?
He confessed this to you?
How fascinating. Even knowing he was someone who shouldn't exist in the present, you still chose him at this critical juncture. So I'm guessing...
you know him, don't you?"
Know him?
Well, one might say she did.
Turadin smiled and stroked her belly. In her eyes mingled both yearning and compassion. Her expression looked even more conflicted than Scorpio's, giving Cheng Shi the odd impression that Turadin felt sorry for Aph Ros.
Sorry? For a vagrant — a philandering, hideous, hoarse-voiced vagrant? What was there to pity?
The moment that thought surfaced, Cheng Shi went rigid as if struck by lightning. He swallowed hard, every nerve twitching violently.
Because he suddenly remembered that Turadin was also a philanderer. Before "he" had become "she" again, Turadin had been an expert in the pursuit of carnal pleasures. Their initial deal had been for Cheng Shi to introduce Gao Ya to him — he'd had designs on Gao Ya, who had already transformed into a woman at the time.
And most importantly, after Cheng Shi's battle with Mo Shu, Turadin had been wounded — flesh mangled beyond recognition by the ravaging power of Oblivion!
Even just moments ago, when she'd called out to the three of them, her voice had still been hoarse!
Philandering. Hideous. Hoarse-voiced...
When three coincidences collide, can they still be called coincidences?
Cheng Shi sucked in a sharp breath and immediately turned to Scorpio for confirmation.
"I'm guessing that before you entered your deduction, you heard thunderous rumbling across the city, right?"
The sudden question caught Scorpio off guard. He then nodded quickly. "That's right. Five great thunderclaps followed by an unbroken rumble. That's when I slipped into the future."
Just as he'd thought!
Cheng Shi narrowed his eyes. It all lined up — because by that point, Turadin had already been thrown out the window and fled, still bearing the wounds inflicted by Oblivion's ravages!
And the Aph Ros he'd never personally met was very likely Turadin from the future — pulled back by Scorpio from some timeline where all the players had vanished and where Corruption's propagation had failed!
The implications were staggering.
Was this too much of a coincidence?
No, no, no — it was too absurd. How could the world produce such serendipity?
Cheng Shi decided he was overthinking. He slapped his own face, clearing his head for a moment. But when he looked at Turadin again, he clearly saw in her eyes something unmistakable — self-pity.
'Oh no. I guessed right!'
'It's him!'
'He is the future Turadin. He is Turadin herself!'
'This is insane!'
'The world has gone insane!'
By now Gao Ya had caught on too. After Cheng Shi's expression shifted dramatically, hers finally changed as well.
The sheer absurdity exceeded even her imagination. She stared at Turadin in shock, and for the first time her tone carried no trace of Folly's sardonic edge — only a burning thirst for Truth's knowledge:
"Aph Ros... is you from the future, isn't he?!"
"Huh?" Scorpio's brain melted. "Wait — no, don't — that can't — huh?"
Turadin caressed her belly and nodded firmly.
"Yes. He met me. He recognized me. He told me everything.
He said he came from a future where 'the evangelism plan failed, all of you vanished unexpectedly, the Corruption faith died in its cradle, and I was expelled from the Church.'
But since he was the Head of Church's child, they didn't drive him out of Dolgod. Instead, they faked Turadin's death, cast him out of the Church, and left him to fend for himself.
Stripped of his identity, all he could do was rename himself Aph Ros.
With nothing left, his only pursuit was to physically embody Corruption's final will to the very end.
Until one day, over a decade later, he saw this brother again."
As she spoke, Turadin turned toward Scorpio. Something detonated inside Scorpio's skull, and understanding crashed over him — back in that dark alley, Aph Ros hadn't been trembling from fear. He'd been trembling from exhilaration!
Because Scorpio's very appearance seemed to confirm something for him, and a spark of hope had suddenly reignited in his heart!
That was why Scorpio had described him as "alarmed yet confused" — because Aph Ros had never expected to see one of those Corruption believers again after all those years!
A Corruption believer who hadn't aged a single day!
"He was so overjoyed he could barely contain himself. He wanted to reveal himself to this brother right then and there, but he realized this brother didn't seem to recognize him anymore.
He noticed the discrepancy but kept silent, terrified that this sole opportunity would slip through his fingers once more.
And when he was truly brought back to the past — to our present — he found peace.
He told me that in that moment, only one thought filled his mind: he could not let Corruption's faith die a second time in this era!"
"..."
Cheng Shi was numb. He didn't know what expression to wear, yet his mind teemed with questions.
"So how did he find you? Some shared-memory instinct?"
"No. It was instinct, but not shared memory.
I don't know what he experienced in his own past, but what I can tell you is that we stumbled upon each other by sheer accident — neither of us deliberately sought out the other."
!!!
That single sentence was enough for Cheng Shi to reconstruct every remaining detail.
Indeed, Turadin was right. Their meeting wasn't born of some intuition shared between two versions of the same person. It was because of...
their fanatical, unwavering devotion to Corruption!
Cheng Shi narrowed his eyes and sighed with deep emotion. "The two of you... met in the prayer room."
"Yes!
I met him in the prayer room. He'd arrived a step before me.
I was thinking — since Corruption's Holy Infant must have a mother, why couldn't that mother be me?
I worship Him. I follow Him. I yearn for His will to save the entire world. If I could have that honor, I would die content.
So the very moment I fought my way back to the Church, the prayer room was my first destination.
And he...
He wanted to change the misfortune of the future, to make amends for the regrets of the past, to ensure Corruption's will would continue to endure. So from the instant he returned to the present — no, even in that alley when he was 'threatened' — he'd already resolved that Corruption's faith must not perish again on Dolgod's soil.
He simply hadn't expected to truly be brought back to the past. So when he discovered he had an even greater opportunity, he seized the first chance to slip into the prayer room.
When I saw him, I didn't recognize him. But he recognized me — after all, my appearance was what he'd once looked like.
And the moment he saw me, he withdrew his steps and yielded the opportunity to me.
He told me the story of his wretched life, and he begged me — please, don't become another him. Don't become another pitiful soul sleepwalking through the second half of life like the walking dead.
It was in that very moment that I suddenly grasped the true essence of Corruption's will.
Because I remembered what you once told me — that following the desires of your heart is the greatest offering to Him.
And at that moment, I had only one desire: to make sure that neither he nor I would ever know regret again!
So I returned to my original self and asked him for a child."
...
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