Chapter 241: Chapter 241 Time, Indescribably Wonderful

After the woman pushed the door and left, Chen Ke watched her cross the street through the showcase before he came out of the restaurant.

A white bus drove past in front of him, and the woman disappeared at the corner of the street.

“Damn…” Chen Ke cursed under his breath, his pupils turned blue as he activated his Spiritual Vision.

In an instant, the entire world turned a light blue. Centered around Chen Ke, within a spherical range of 200 meters in diameter, all humanoid creatures were outlined in blue.

He crossed the street while searching for the woman. It was already dark, and there weren’t many people on the streets. Locating her shouldn’t be a difficult task.

However, apart from the citizens inside the buildings on the street and the occasional passerby, Chen Ke could no longer pinpoint the woman. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

For some reason, Chen Ke had a bad feeling.

He pulled out his iPhone, considering calling Lester to confirm whether the target had employed any bodyguards or the like, but then thought better of it and put the phone back in his pocket.

Chen Ke thought that doing so would make Lester feel that he was not professional enough… He’d have to improvise when the time came.

Glancing at the time, he saw it was about right, so he gave up searching for the woman and proceeded towards the villa where the target was located.

With the help of Google Maps, Chen Ke quickly found the target among the cluster of villas. It was a villa being constructed midway up a hill, surrounded by a white fence.

Such villas usually have a yard with a small lawn and a swimming pool. During the summer, the middle class holds sunbathing sessions and BBQ parties in their yards to enjoy life.

Chen Ke considered weekends without overtime and leaving work on time as nothing more than an urban myth. Ever since he entered the workforce, all his time had been monopolized by his boss–his physical energy, mental focus, and time… all squandered on someone else’s business.

Although his boss was not stingy and paid a substantial salary, Chen Ke’s neighborhood happened to be within the scope of the national old city reconstruction plan and was demolished two years ago. He had no choice but to take on a mortgage.

Mortgage payments and endless work shackled Chen Ke from his twenties to his fifties. He felt as if his future no longer belonged to him, as though he’d been strapped to a rocket against his will, heading towards stars he’d never seen in his lifetime.

As Chen Ke’s hometown rose to become a new first-tier city, property prices soared by more than tenfold in just a few years. His mortgage term spanned 30 years, and he’d only been paying it off for a little over two years when they forced him to “cross over”…

He wondered how anxious his parents must be by now… The company boss probably thought he had quit…

Fortunately, when he bought the house and arranged the mortgage, he used his own name. So even if he defaulted, it would only affect his credit record and not bring trouble to his parents…

Come to think of it, Chen Ke’s situation seemed to involve soul transference, and the timeline was a bit messy. He had no idea what the current state of affairs actually was.

At the moment, he was using Lin Mo’s body, which meant his own body should still be sleeping at home… If his soul had crossed into this world, then the body lying in bed could be considered dead…

But that brought up the soul hypothesis. As is commonly known, modern science has yet to prove the existence of the soul… Yet Chen Ke was certain that every conscious life form in the world possessed a soul–including himself with over 40 on hand…

Whether there was a chance to return was a question. Moreover, if he delved deeper into the issue, where would he return to…? Until now, Chen Ke had not figured out what the relationship was between this world and his own.

Chen Ke’s thoughts began to drift into speculation once more. So far, he had encountered four different worlds:

The world where he originally resided was the only world Chen Ke believed in until a few weeks ago.

The world he now found himself in, the United Federation in the year 2009, had Nokia, PS3, and even Walmart… but it harbored strange Spiritual Energy, a replica of the modern world.

That gradually vanishing 2006, it seemed to be connected to the current world, an apocalyptic era within a paradox…

The Fan Hede Kingdom… its time unknown, time there had come to a halt, and it appeared rather small, each area sealed off by some cyclical mechanism.

He couldn’t figure out the links between these worlds, nor could he fully control the power of the Life Transfer Gate, which left him quite irritated.

Chen Ke wanted to return to the world that had once existed, yet his ability to open gates did not extend that far.

The logic behind the Life Transfer Gate was rather straightforward: the destination must be a place he’d been before, and to return to a place, his belongings must be there.

This explanation seemed too general, and lacked detail in practice. If the ability to travel back to places he’d visited was so simple, why couldn’t he return to his original world? And why was it impossible to go back to Carefree City in 2006?

Continuing along this line of thought, Chen Ke began to notice some clues.

Only after the ability of the Teleportation Gate had been activated, did it start recording the worlds Chen Ke had traversed, and it only recognized his current body–only places visited by this body could be included in the teleportation list.

This said, the situation with the unattainable world of Carefree City became somewhat puzzling.

Could it be that the countdown of life knew the situation in Carefree City was too dangerous, so it filtered out that world…? If that were the case, isn’t the Fan Hede Kingdom dangerous too…?

Chen Ke shook his head. He didn’t believe the ability was that intelligent. He’d rather believe that Carefree City and Fan Hede were fundamentally different. It was obvious that Carefree City of 2006 and Opportunity City of 2009 were contradictory…

Perhaps it was precisely this nature that led the Teleportation Gate to consider that world nonexistent…?

This seemed plausible, but Chen Ke couldn’t make sense of what the timeline of Carefree City amounted to; a world doomed to destruction, a vanished past. If that past had disappeared, surely a new past would replace it for time to continue…

With this in mind, Chen Ke made a daring guess: perhaps the events of Carefree City in 2006 did indeed occur in this world… but some force had altered history, and for all he knew, his current reality might have been modified…

But this theory was merely Chen Ke’s speculation, and to support it, he had to incorporate two assumptions he had concocted:

First, time can be altered!

Second, there is only one timeline!

Altering time wouldn’t spawn new parallel worlds, as that would be meaningless, equivalent to creating a brand new Brunei. The purpose of altering history was to change one’s own future, not to craft a new one.

However, Chen Ke couldn’t prove either of these hypotheses, so all conjecture regarding Carefree City in 2006 could only remain just that–conjecture.

He didn’t understand how this world functioned, he wanted answers. If Chen Ke could come up with these guesses, then it’s highly likely that Transcendent figures operating on that level could also know about time travel.

The sky around had completely darkened. His chaotic thoughts had unwittingly frittered away 30 minutes. The villa, which had been utterly dark before, now glowed with orange light through the windows, indicating someone was inside.